Matador Network's Blog, page 2198

Hurricane Odile damages Mexico

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I REMEMBER RETURNING TO MY APARTMENT a few days after Hurricane Sandy; it looked as though someone had set off a bomb in my one-bedroom home. I cried more than I want to admit, and the recovery period seemed never ending. I am definitely more sensitive to events such as this, and my heart goes out to the people affected by Hurricane Odile, which hit areas of Baja California on September 14, 2014.

Stories by stranded American travelers are starting to emerge; I could tell that the situation was terrifying, and the emotional damage very present. Lines at the international airports for emergency charter flights were over a mile long, and passengers had to wait outside on the tarmac in the hot sun for hours.

But what really concerns me is the state of the locals in these areas. While the vacationer experience seemed harrowing, at least they have a places to go back to; many residents of Cabo will have damaged homes, or become homeless, and will be out of work while the resorts begin an arduous recovery period.

Please take some time to think about how you can help relieve the stress inflicted on these areas of Mexico. Matador will post helpful resources as we collect them:

Thirst No More

YachtAid

Cruz Roja Mexicana

Incredible New Zealand timelapse

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New Zealand has some of the most rugged landscapes in the world. Filmmaker Martin Heck spent months traveling around the country, taking gorgeous timelapse videos of the coasts and mountains, and put together this incredible video.

Pro wakeboarding on flooded street

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CHARLESTON IS NOT A DRY CITY — in any sense of the term. Between August and November, when it’s still hot as balls, I’d traipse through storms to get to class on time, in my rain boots and windbreaker. Only when the streets flooded so badly that cars couldn’t drive, and businesses actually shut down from high waters, did I stay tucked up at home. It wasn’t unusual to see people kayaking down King Street, so watching this video by Wesley Mark Jacobson, Davey Blair and Wes Huber, who set up a sick wakeboarding course around the corner from my old apartment, was pretty nostalgic.

Why millennials are awesome traveler

Photo: Marco Gomes

1. We’re searching for individual experiences.

While I was growing up, my great aunt Mary always entertained me with her travel stories. She was a single woman in the 1970s, visiting Jamaica with her best friend. She went to two days of Woodstock with a much older man. She spent a year cooking for the Rockefellers in New York City. I used to eat these stories up, but after a while they just made me jealous. As a millennial, it wasn’t enough for me to just hear her stories. I needed to have my own.

Millennials are people currently between the ages of about 25 and 32. What sets us apart from other generational groups is that we absolutely require our own individual experiences. When we were little, adults told us we could be whoever we wanted. We never stopped believing that was true.

Whether we’re talking about where we want to work or where we want to travel, we don’t set limits for ourselves. All of those legendary destinations we read about in National Geographic — the Great Wall of China, Mount Kilimanjaro, the temples of Tibet — they’re not just photographs to us. They’re places we plan to see for ourselves.

2. We’ll try anything on the road.

This mentality goes back to that search for an individual experience. We don’t just want to stay in a hotel, hit all the tourist traps, and go home. We’re using resources like WorkAway, WWOOFing. Couchsurfing, and Airbnb to make travel more personal.

We’re okay with sacrificing a bit of comfort or privacy if it means we’ll save a little cash and make some new friends. We’ll harvest some vegetables in Hawaii or sleep on someone’s smelly futon in Prague. We don’t just want to visit. We want to immerse.

3. We’re taking our time settling down.

When my mother was my age, she was already married with a kid. When my grandmother was my age, she was married with four. We respect our parents and grandparents, but we don’t necessarily want to imitate their timelines. Millennials are in no rush to ‘put our degree to use’ or ‘meet the person we want to marry.’ We believe in testing the waters.

If we went to school for accounting — but realized at 22 that we actually hate working in an office — we’re not going to freak out about it. We’re enjoying our youth and the uncertainty that goes along with it.

According to the Pew Research Center, only 26% of millennials are married by age 32, proving that marriage isn’t really our goal. For us it’s more important to define our life’s purpose before we even thinking about bringing anyone else into it.

So maybe we sign up to volunteer with the Peace Corps, maybe we hike the Appalachian Trail or spend a winter training to be a yoga teacher in Costa Rica. Maybe we do all three. Whatever we decide, we’re not going to rush. We’re counting on life being long. And we want to spend it doing something — and with someone — we actually love.

4. Social media connects us to a place even if we’ve never been there.

Nearly four years ago, millennials from all over the world participated in the Egyptian Revolution. Even if we weren’t there on #Jan25 in Tahrir Square, we were staying updated on Twitter and voicing our own opinions.

When we’re interested in a place, we research it across all platforms. Long before we buy a ticket to visit, we’re connecting with the locals through social media and are actually playing a part in their culture. Social media platforms allow us to stay up to date on what’s going on across our borders. We can immerse ourselves in local fashions on Instagram, popular restaurants on Trip Advisor, and local meetups on Couchsurfing.

It only takes finding the right hashtag to get involved in a place, even if it’s oceans away.

5. We’re educated.

Nineteen percent of millennials have a college degree, and 40% are still in school. If we haven’t gone to college, we’ve probably gone into the trades, spent time traveling or volunteering, or signed up for the service.

As a generation, we value education and have a lot of experience in academic settings. The modern classroom setting has taught us the importance of quality discussion. Many of my university classes were arranged in a circle and focused on group work. The emphasis was on developing a well-researched opinion and being able to back it up, all while working with others who might feel differently. Each class I took in college — whether it was in journalism, philosophy, or women’s studies — taught me how to respect and listen to others. And how to recognize the lens that I look through, and respect that it might be different from someone else’s.

6. We’re redefining the meaning of a “successful future.”

Success to us is measured by where we’ve been and what we’ve experienced. We don’t really care what Ivy League school you went to or how much money you’re making at your “stable-income job.” What matters to us is that you’ve ventured out. You’ve combated the status quo.

Being broke and confused in life isn’t a source of embarrassment like it used to be. It’s a source of storytelling. We idolize literary characters like Dean Moriarty and Sal Paradise. We’re not looking to be the next Richard Cory.

Resurrecting America’s ghost trains

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At its height nearly 100 years ago, the railroad network of the United States had just over 254,000 miles of track. It’s now down to 140,000 miles. What happened to all that rail? And what happened to all of those trains?

It turns out, a lot of them ended up in Cleveland’s B&O roundhouse, in what is called “America’s train graveyard.” In the roundhouse, a group men are restoring old train cars to their former glory so that they can be put on display to the public. It’s sad to see how dilapidated so many of these cars have become, especially since now, in the era of climate change, trains may well need to reside more in our country’s future than its past.

On learning not to hate New Jersey

Photo: Tiago

Steph is a Giants fan, so when they made it to the Super Bowl in 2012, she put together a viewing party in our building’s common room in London. Her roommate was a friend of mine, so I dropped by to scavenge the pizza and buffalo chicken dip. The seat closest to the hors d’oeuvres also happened to be the one closest to Steph, so I sat next to her. The first thing I said to her was, “So where you from?”

“The Jersey Shore,” she said.

“Wow,” I said, “I’m surprised you’re willing to admit that.”

“Oh you can go fuck yourself,” she said. “That show is bullshit. Most of them aren’t even from Jersey. And I’m not from Seaside where the show is shot. I’m from Point Pleasant. Home of Jersey Mike’s.”

“I’m more of a Subway guy,” I said.

She turned to my friend and said, “Who is this fuckin’ guy?”

It was love at first “go fuck yourself.” We eventually started dating, and when we moved back to the US, we both moved to Washington, DC. But I knew staying with Steph inevitably meant that someday I’d be moving to New Jersey.

The “Armpit of America”

American pop culture is not kind to Jersey. Sure, it’s the state that’s given us national treasures like Jon Stewart, Bruce Springsteen, Frank Sinatra, and Tara Reid, but pretty much any story set in Jersey is about gangsters, urban decay, or corrupt politicians. Springsteen is basically the state’s patron saint, but his best song, “Born to Run,” is about teenagers desperately wanting to leave Jersey. In the DC Comics universe, Superman’s shiny, art-deco home of Metropolis is in New York, but Batman’s grimy, crime-ridden Gotham is in Jersey.

For me personally, Jersey belonged on my State Hate list. My State Hate list is composed solely of states I hate because I was forced to drive through them. Right now, the only list members are Delaware and Nebraska. I’ve never done anything in either of those states except drive, and because highways are the worst places on Earth, I have extremely negative reactions to those states. Unfair? Yes. But hate isn’t a rational emotion, and the Jersey Turnpike is, objectively, hellish.

Steph has far more home-state pride than I do. I’m from Ohio, which is another state whose citizens are irrationally proud. I really like the chili in Cincinnati, but being from the birthplace of a popular type of watery spiced meat never really filled me with a quivering, patriotic pride. I never ate Cincinnati chili and thought, “This is the best goddamn place on Earth.” There just didn’t seem to be any reason to be proud of the place I was born. I could just as easily have been born in Djibouti.

When you arrive in Newark Airport, as I did before the Fourth of July weekend in 2012 to meet Steph’s parents, you don’t initially see much to be proud of. Newark and Trenton aren’t the prettiest of cities, and even if they were, they were always doomed to be overshadowed by the towering Metropolis across the river. Driving south from Newark and Trenton, you pass factories and urban sprawl, and you realize most of the tourists aren’t driving to Jersey to get to a place in Jersey. They’re probably on their way to Philly or New York. The entire state is a way station. That’s why they call it “the Armpit of America.”

How I became a defender of New Jersey

Steph and I are getting married in November 2015 in Asbury Park, New Jersey. Right there on the hated Jersey Shore. We’re in the process of moving to Jersey City now. I’m probably going to be living there for the foreseeable future. I’m not too concerned about it.

The progression of switching from a Jersey basher to a Jersey defender was relatively easy. First of all, both New Jersey and the Midwest are places held in some degree of contempt by the cosmopolitans in New York, so I was able to transfer my deluded sense of being a scrappy Midwestern underdog fighting for respect over to Jersey.

Second, Steph’s family and friends are amazing. They are friendly, warm, welcoming, and they pour stiff martinis. I was in Point Pleasant a couple days after Hurricane Sandy to help Steph’s parents clean up their yard, and I saw the same thing there that I saw in my hometown when we got hit by a tornado in 1998: people helping each other.

I doubt New Jersey is ever going to be the most beloved state in the country, no matter how many Bruce Springsteens and Frank Sinatras it produces. But it doesn’t deserve to be maligned as much as it is. The people in Jersey are great. And it’s hard to hate a place when you come to love its people.

Inside JetBlue Flight 1416 when its engine fails

AS SOMEONE WITH a chronic fear of flying, I was super impressed by the majority of people on this JetBlue flight from California to Texas. One of the plane’s engines blew out, the cabin filled with smoke, and oxygen masks dropped…but pretty much everyone seen here in passenger Mike Welsh’s video seems calm and cooperative. I’m not sure if I could have done the same.

Read more about the experience here.

Vintage versions of social media

MY OLD BOSS once asked me to organize her Rolodex, and I laughed in her face. “Just make an Excel spreadsheet,” I suggested. It annoyed me that the other people I worked with were so stuck in the past, but in reality, they were only doing what had worked for them so many years prior to the internet.

What will freelance writing tools look like ten years from now? It’s hard to imagine my career without Twitter, Facebook, and more. But there was a time when journalists used typewriters, film cameras, and literally copy and pasted articles together, to make a magazine spread. I like how this infographic takes historical information and compares it to the methods used today. I remember being Skype’s biggest fan when it first came out, merely because dealing with International calling cards was a huge pain in the ass abroad.

Image via Zerofox/Ragan. Click to enlarge. img src=”http://cdn.matadornetwork.com.s3.amaz...” />

12 signs you're from Buenos Aires

Photo: Nando.uy

Hacé clic para leer este artículo en español. Tambien podés darnos un “me gusta” en Facebook!
1. Nobody else from Latin America (or the rest of Argentina) can stand you.
2. And you don’t understand why. Especially since you’re the most seductive person in the world.

The thing is, guys (and girls) want to know what’s behind our infamous mix of arrogance / seductiveness. It’s this particular yin-yang that makes us irresistible.

3. You use the words “Argentina” and “Buenos Aires” as if they were the same.

Porteños vacillate between feeling very Argentine and feeling as if we are the only Argentines. The saying goes “Argentina ends at la General Paz,” (which marks the end of the city).

4. At certain times you’ve felt as if you really belonged somewhere else.

That European blood of our grandparents pulls on us, and we’re always looking at the port of Buenos Aires. Many of us actually have double nationalities — Italian, Spanish — and those who don’t want one like crazy.

5. To you, there are no shades of gray.

It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about Messi, Maradona, Kristina, the Pope, the weather, or “el laburo,” our opinions are always black and white. Something is extremely positive — “lo mejor que hay” — or, conversely, “the biggest shit that ever existed.”

6. You have a reputation as a chanta.

Okay, so maybe we’re not all chantas, but all you have to do is take a taxi in Buenos Aires to prove there’s something to this stereotype. And yet, the majority of Porteños are (brutally) honest. Still, I always recommend to my foreign friends that they take their time trusting a Porteño to see whether or not they’re a chanta, knowing that as soon as they discover they’re not, they’ll have a friend for life.

7. The city is your personal heaven and hell.

When you leave the city, you realize there’s no place in the world that can compare to Buenos Aires. Nowhere else has such a spirit of lost paradise, of the best of Europe planted in the Americas. You miss everything — the food, the nightlife, how much fun you have going out, even the ex-girlfriend who left you without your realizing it.

But when you live in Buenos Aires, you feel like it’s a corner of hell along the banks of the Río de la Plata. The traffic, the humidity, the crowds of people, the insecurity, the hysteria, the machismo.

8. You’re convinced you speak the most beautiful Spanish.

And it’s true!

9. You’re tough. Always.

Maybe it’s living our childhoods out in the streets. Or maybe it’s our blood-soaked history that gives us fire. But Porteños are valiant.

10. You’re a specialist in everything.

Porteños have everything “re clara.” We’ve been beneficiaries of wisdom and knowledge on every possible topic. We’ve been everywhere and in all situations and know about all subjects…or at least we have a brother or friend or someone we know who has.

11. You’re multicultural and racist at the same time.

If you’re Porteño, for sure you’re open minded. Buenos Aires is a city of diversity, a cosmopolis, a place for everyone. It’s the gay capital of Latin America and all religions and ethnicities are represented. We’re friendly, integrated.

But at the same time we have our “enano fascista,” who appears rapidly when we get angry or in those painful jokes and expressions like negro de mierda, bolita, paragua, sudaca, brazuca, latinaje, and son todos putos.

12. You kiss all the time.

Who cares if we’re all men or if it’s a group of total strangers — we always greet with a kiss. Now that I live outside the country, I feel like something’s missing when I meet someone and when I say goodbye. How cold a handshake is! Our cheek-kiss cuts the distance and invites friendship.

12 signs you're a travel junkie

Photo: Bre Pettis

1. You can make friends with anyone just about anywhere. Anywhere. You once had a lovely sushi dinner with a French girl you met on a San Francisco park bench. You taught a Swedish guy about American democracy while wandering around the Louvre. You even toured the Tower of London with a Chinese girl you met in a public restroom.

2. You’ve run out of pages in your passport.

3. You’ve either quit or been on the verge of quitting your high-paying job to farm sheep in New Zealand.

4. When your friends ask you for help planning a trip, you find yourself feeling more and more excited, till the next thing you know you’re climbing into a van with them on the way to a trailhead. They haven’t really invited you, but it doesn’t matter. They’re just as obsessed with getting lost as you.

5. You try really hard not to start every sentence with “When I was in…” But you fail almost every time. And even if your friend’s eyes glaze over, you carry on with your story of Thailand or Majorca or Vancouver Island. And, truth be told, you’d rather listen to their travel stories than anything else they have to say.

6. You might regularly misplace your keys or cellphone, but you always know where to find your passport.

7. You live out of a suitcase even when at home.

8. You check Kayak and SkyScanner more than Facebook. Sure, you’re probably missing out on the joys of potty-training a firstborn or the reliving of drunken college glory days as experienced by friends you hardly know anymore. But you know finding a roundtrip flight to Lima, Peru, for under $600 is a hell of a lot more exciting.

9. You don’t have a lot of belongings, especially if you can’t carry them on your back. Who needs a kitchen table when you can eat dim-sum sitting cross-legged on your living-room floor?

10. Your favorite place is the one you haven’t been to yet.

11. You have more photos of mountains in Alaska or a little canyon in Utah (or some lump of a hill whose name you can’t remember) than you do of your family and friends.

12. The minute you saw this title, you knew you had to find out — not because you want help, definitely not because you want a cure — just because you’d rather be a travel junkie than anything else.