Tag: travel
Day of Reckoning: TSPLOST
The Price of Gridlock
The Texas Transportation Institute’s Urban Mobility Report calculates the cost of congestion in 101 urban areas. Among its most recent findings:
Into the Wild
In 2007, not long after getting divorced, Pat Morrin received his first deer mount. It was a gift from a neighbor. Five years later, it sits above the fireplace in the living room of his three-bedroom home in a Duluth subdivision, surrounded by some 300 other mounts, skulls, and hides arranged in alarmingly convincing poses.
Maryland’s Eastern Shore
As a native marylander, I’ve crossed the William Preston Lane Jr. Memorial Bridge—commonly known as the Chesapeake Bay Bridge—hundreds of times, but its majesty still...
The Aperitif Hour
Unlike the American happy hour—the main purpose of which, it seems to me, is to wait out traffic and perhaps fill up on nasty food—the l’heure de l’apéritif is a sort of gentle musing, accompanied by a glass of something modestly alcoholic such as a vermouth (a fortified wine, flavored with herbs and spices) or a pastis (an anise-flavored liqueur) diluted with water.
Your Personal Sommelier
When I met Michael Bowden, I blurted out the same words to him that I often hear when people learn I’m a food critic: “Man, I want your job!” Bowden identifies himself as a “personal sommelier.” He manages the cellars of two wealthy oenophiles (who wish to remain anonymous), keeping track of 130,000 bottles of wine between them.
Join a Brew Crew
The booming U.S. craft beer industry (up 15 percent in sales in 2011 and 12 percent in 2010) can trace its spate of stardom to enterprising do-it-yourselfers. The American Homebrewers Association estimates that at least 90 percent of the country’s professional beer makers began by mastering their skills in their houses.
Dahlonega Spa Resort, GA
Every yoga practitioner quickly learns to love one posture: savasana, the flat-on-your-back, arms-and-legs-flopped-out attitude of rest that concludes every class. But despite...
Cocktail Improv
The new breed of cocktail list, with its eccentrically named spirits and esoteric brands, sometimes needs as much interpretation as an overwhelming wine menu. More than ever, serious bartenders have to foster an articulate exchange with customers.
Bygone Bars
The Piedmont Hotel Bar: Shortly after the hotel’s 1903 opening, it was decried as a “cesspool of sin,” a reputation earned in part due to an opulent bar featuring a fountain with a Venus statue clad in a grape wreath and little else.