Category: Travels

Not Another List

Travels

Fresh on the heels of the debacle of recommending New York City as a top holiday destination comes this attempt:

The coolest neighbourhoods in the world have been named by the influential Time Out guide, and Norrebro in Copenhagen has claimed the top spot.

I haven’t ever been to Copenhagen, so I can’t comment.  But given some of the other “cool” neighborhoods on the list, my only conclusion is that they’re either on the take, civic boosters, or haven’t actually been there since maybe 2005.  To whit:

#2:  Andersonville, Chicago.  When I lived near there, it was a nice place — just north of the summer bustle of Wrigley Field, I preferred going there in winter — but here’s the latest:

Come summer, Pride Month’s Midsommarfest celebrates Andersonville’s Swedish roots and LGBTQ+ culture. Make a flower crown or don a viking hat, taste Swedish delicacies, and rock out at the Pride stage.

That foolishness used to be confined to the neighborhood I actually lived in:  Lakeview a.k.a. Boys’ Town, where lots of single men lived in neat little apartments with their tiny dogs, and where clubs like The Manhole were the places to be seen.  So now it appears that the rot has spread further north, as these things do.  Pass.

#4:  Leith, Edinburgh.  It’s not bad, although I prefer Haymarket, which is less self-conscious a place (i.e. less precious), and should only be avoided on sporting occasions e.g. when Scotland is playing rugby against, well, anyone.  Okay.

#6:  Chelsea, NYC.  Oy.  To quote the article:  “Little Island, which is a new floating park, The High Line and Hudson River Park have all provided open space for people who needed it more than ever in 2021.”  All true, as long as you avoid the homeless encampments and accompanying discarded hypodermic needles, piles of human excrement and the most aggressive panhandlers in the world.  Pass.

#10:  Richmond, Melbourne.  Yeah right;  visit Richmond and get clubbed to the ground by the most aggressive and Covid-obsessed police force in the world.  Also (according to stepson, who once lived near there), it’s the most expensive place to eat or drink in Australia (“far worse than London”, was the actual quote).  Pass. 

#13:  Dalston, London.  I’ve only ever walked through Dalston, which lies more or less between Islington and Hackney (both haunts of the Tony Blair Set), but be my guest.  South Kensington is more my style, anyway.  Okay.

#14:  Silver Lake, Los Angeles.  Okay, Silver Lake is actually rather nice as it is a wealthy area and therefore pleasant to be in.  However, as with all good neighborhoods in LA, you have to swim through a sea of shit to get to the nice part, and I was last there in about 2007, so gawd knows what it’s like now.  Pass.

#18:  Villeray, Montreal.  Finally, a place I can recommend, if only to visit the Jean Talon Market at its southern corner.  Fine, it’s not the Old City (which is more French than many cities in France), but Villeray is wonderful, as is Plateau Mont-Royal just south of it.  Highly recommended.

Those are just the neighborhoods I know and have visited.  But once again, any list of top places that puts Paris’s exquisite Haut-Marais neighborhood at #36 (??!!) needs to be treated with some suspicion.

Feel free to browse the list and add your comments or recommendations.

Really?

Travels

As our once-confined cousins seek to escape the surly bonds of gloomy Britishland, and are welcomed back (in a fashion) by President Braindead, they are advised as to where best to spend their sterling in these here United States:

All set for America! Holidays to the U.S. are back — and there’s something for everyone. Take your pick from these top trips across the pond

And the #1 recommendation?

New York City.  In the very same edition, mind you, there appeared the following article  with the headline:

Some recommendation.

Other stupid recommendations are San Francisco (!), Chicago (!), New Orleans and Las Vegas.  (For my Brit Readers, a quick summary:  San Francisco is worse than NYC, Chicago is Murder City, New Orleans is trying to catch up to Chicago, and Las Vegas… oy.  The only reason to go to Vegas would be to do some excellent shooting on Vegas’s many fine ranges, but you can do that pretty much anywhere.)

Other Daily Mail  recommendations are scenic tours (e.g. Grand Canyon and the Pacific Coast Highway), and those are indeed okay, if you’re into that kind of thing.  (If doing the PCH, however, avoid San Francisco and Los Angeles like the plague spots they are.)

So, to all my Brit Readers:  if you do want to escape Britishland over the dreary late autumn and early winter this year, let my Murkin Readers give you their recommendations in Comments.

Better still, wait until April / May next year, when you could enjoy an actual spring and attend things like Boomershoot.  But that can wait for another time.

Parallel Universe

Travels

If you publish a list of The World’s Greatest Cities, you need to ensure that your #1 pick doesn’t cause howls of incredulous laughter, coupled with snorts of irritation and open-jawed astonishment.  Here’s Time Out’s list:

When did they take this survey — in 1965?  Certainly, it was pre-WuFlu, except:

Good grief.

If you’re going to make a list of places to visit, try this one instead.  It’s pretty much as full of shit as the first one, though.

Taking A Stand

Culture, Food & Drink, Good Stuff, Travels

Now here’s a place I’d like to visit the next time I go Over There, because the owner seems to have the Right Stuff.

A pub boss has called last orders on customers in sportswear in a bid to drive out ‘chavs and roadmen with bumbags’ from his watering hole.
Landlord Brian Hoyle, who runs The Orange Tree in Hereford, has put a blanket ban on customers wearing hoodies, tracksuits and Stone Island clothing in his pub.
He is also barring under 21’s from the city centre pub at weekends due to youngsters being ‘unable to handle their booze’.

Needless to say, his dress code and age limit have aroused the anger of The Usual Suspects:

But the ban, which Hoyle says is aimed at making his watering hole a ‘proper’ Hereford pub again, has proved controversial among residents in the cathedral city.
Some of the residents have accused the policy of being ‘discriminatory’.

You see, this is what happens when you start ascribing motives to an ordinary word, used in its original (and correct) sense for centuries.

Let me say right now:  there’s nothing wrong with being discriminatory:  it’s a human trait that distinguishes civilized men from savages and animals, and helps us provide order in our world.

Sadly, of course, “discrimination” these days is used almost exclusively to demonize racial discrimination, which is not necessarily a Good Thing when applied purely as a measurement of skin color.  But historically, that is actually the least of the word’s many applications.  Here are a couple more.

When I say, for example, that I loathe “American” cheese (that orange paste stuff) and prefer to eat Jarlsberg, Cheddar or Emmenthaler, I am showing that I have a discriminating taste — just as is someone who would prefer to own and shoot a Colt Government over a Jennings Saturday Night Special, or prefers to own good knives made by Ken Onion over cheap brittle stuff made in China.  Nothing wrong with that.  Experience has taught you that stuff of inferior quality is not worth ownership or use.

When you prefer to invite people of your own sort to dinner parties, you’re being discriminating in your choice of friends — and once again, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

So of course, our worthy publican in the above story is setting his preferences — because over many years and much experience, he had discovered that people who dress a certain way and/or of a certain age tend to abuse his hospitality, so he wants to preclude them from coming in and, let it be known, spoiling things for people with manners, respect and proper attire.

Somebody needs to put an end to the loutish, boorish behavior of the younger generation, and he’s chosen to make a stand.

And good for him, say I.  If I were in his shoes, I would do precisely the same.

Oz Reich (2)

Behind Enemy Lines

Following on from yesterday’s post about Festung  Australia comes a report from an Oz resident:

[Victoria Premier] Andrews has vastly increased state power under a “state of emergency” that was promised to run for four weeks. It’s now been in place for over a year, with no end in sight. The only sunset clause in Victoria is that the premier has declared it out-of-bounds to sit on the beach to watch the sunset.
Police in Victoria may now detain any person or group for as long as “reasonably necessary,” restrict the movement of any person in the state, close any premises, and “require the destruction or disposal of anything.” Police can enter homes and seize property without a warrant.
Police and army patrol the Murray River—the border between Victoria and New South Wales—like Stasi watching over the Berlin Wall. Drones buzz in the Melbourne skies, and snitches diligently scan social media for WrongThink.

Horrifying.

You know, the reason I’m banging on about this is simple.  Were this kind of stuff taking place in some Third World hellhole, former Soviet satellite state or Muslim pisspot, I’d be largely unmoved, because tyrannical oppression is a longstanding albeit ugly tradition.

But this bullying is taking place in the Anglosphere, to one of our longest-standing allied people and in a country I’ve always respected (although it may not seem that way at times).

And the pity of it is that I don’t see it ending soon, and don’t see it being changed nor even challenged at the polls either.  It’s pretty fucking bleak, Down Under.