Tip your editors:
tips@gridskipper.com
Editor:
John Rambow |
Email | AIM
Assistant Editor:
Hunter Walker |
Email
Blogger:
Alisa Gould-Simon |
Email
Editor-at-Large:
Chris Mohney |
Email
Congratulations to Tokyo at 3 AM, winner of The Corolla Dream Destinations contest. After a week of deliberations, our esteemed panel of jurors agreed with the popular vote. Says juror Lockhart Steele on the winner, "The others felt like tourist itineraries, but Tokyo felt like the kind of night you'd really like to stumble into." Thanks to all who played and congratulations to Tokyo, who now gets to pack his bags and head to Roppongi.
Hunter, Alisa, and I have been posting from a front table at that hoary blogger watering hole, Schiller's, and some of us have been drinking — I won't tell you who. What I can say is that it's been a great two months, in large part because I entered a site left in such great shape by its current editor-at-large, and one with such dedicated and witty writers and contributors installed.
More »
Remember the story about the pilgrim colony where the settlers all disappeared? The whole town vanished with no trace except a bunch of empty houses and a creepy message on a tree that no one understood. This post is going to be kind of like that tree message. I can't tell you anything about what's going to happen next here at Gridskipper or how I'm going to keep paying for the salmon roe, espresso, and fine Dutchmaster brand cigars that I need to keep me alive. What I can tell you is that I've learned so much while working for this crazy little web site. In fact, my time here has taught me so much that, as a parting gift to you, my dear readers, I wanted to share this list of the Top Five Life Lessons I've Learned From the Blogosphere.
More »
". . . walking through Williamsburg several years ago, I was stopped in my tracks by the haunting face of a young girl peering out at me from within a doorframe. Pasted on a door was a beautifully detailed woodcut print I would later learn had been crafted by the street artist Swoon. Down the street, I discovered what looked like a cover of a tawdry pulp fiction novel stenciled on some wooden scaffolding by a collective known as Faile . . . from that moment on, I was hooked. With a little patience, you too can develop a street art habit."
Most Popular Stories
Mark Jolly, the founder of the luxury travel website, globorati and a writer for for Conde Nast Traveler and Travel + Leisure, has been guest blogging for the NY Times' The Moment this week. A recent entry starts off as a condemnation of former travel writer Thomas Kohnstamm's new book about lying and cheating his way through the travel industry, and selling a few drugs in the meantime. Can Jolly relate? Not exactly. "Even during my lean years I never accepted a guidebook commission since the pay was always pitiful," he says. Duh, if Kohnstamm had just gotten a job with Conde Nast none of this ever would have happened. All the same, though, "the real shock is that [Kohnstamm's] the first to blow the whistle on the travel industry's dirty little secret."
More »
When we wrote about downtown's Trifecta we were like "sure they're douchebags but at least they're douchebags running a sports bar in downtown LA." And then when we wrote about the Grand Sports Bar we were like "they kind of suck but at least they're running a sports bars in downtown LA." And then both of them went out of business. And then the Flower Sports Bar went out of business. And now downtown is more or less bereft of watering holes servicing both man's need for alcoholic nourishment and his need to drunkenly declare that he's about to fight that out-of-town sports fan over there. Luckily downtown still has a few bars and restaurants where you can catch the occasional game. If you show up at just the right time. If they happen to be open that day. If they haven't closed early. If you're lucky. Fuck. (photo)
More »
Hey, it's Gridskipper's last day at the parent company! Who knows what will happen at our shiny new home. I, for one, will be bowing out of my relatively specious remaining duties, and for all we know, Adam's housecat will be in charge after sundown. But there's been lots of speculation — OK, some occasional speculation — regarding who or what might have tried to pry Gridskipper out of Gawker Media's warm, supple, sticky tentacles. Here's the exclusive behind-the-chiffarobe report on what really went down in Nick Denton's smoke-filled lavatory.
More »
Paris rat-catchers tackle rodents. Officials in Paris have launched a citywide campaign to eliminate the 8 million rats living below the City of Lights' surface. Ew, nothing cool or cute about that (except maybe a BBC photo editor's choice of putting a Ratatouille still as the article's accompanying image).
I still can't figure out why my boyfriend doesn't desire a day at the spa like I do. It's especially odd, because there are all kinds of barbershops, boutique salons and spas that cater to the manly men of this city. Maybe he thinks that a $100 treatment called "The Commander in Chief" that includes a manicure is both emasculating and expensive? It sounds good to me. Anyway, here are a few spots in Washington where you can clean up your filthy boyfriend.
More »
Blogs define the undefinable — that's why they're blogs and not logs or frogs. Monsieur, you might ask, mais, qu'est-ce que c'est le gridskipping? Indeed, all these years and nobody's had the balls to just ask. Is it because Gridskipper is a loan word that only cool, edumacated people know and practice, or is it because just like the word zeitgeist, gridskipping is nothing more than a zeitgeist for a generation of jaded travelers? Someday, when Martian archeologists are dusting nuclear fallout dust from our petrified servers and piecing together the human spirit for a touching museum exhibit on Earth people, they just may come upon these motheaten annals of travel debauchery and wonder, as we sometimes do, just what this was all about. In their search for real answers, the future bubble-helmeted historians might sift through the Rosetta stone that is Wikipedia, or maybe even a real dictionary. But for the sake of them and future generations of Chinese people, let me lay it out for you in this handy-dandy time capsule format. Forgive me for just cutting and pasting stuff from off the net, but that's all that writers are good for these days.
More »
Come summer in NYC, few things compare to being able to drinking outdoors (that is, unless you're lucky enough to have summer Fridays, but that's another story). Be it in a backyard or on a rooftop, pairing a cocktail with a cool summer breeze is pretty much the best it gets. And what better place to do so than the epicenter of all things hip? That's right folks, next stop: Williamsburg, where there are dozens of places to slap on a pair of wayfarers and down a few PBRs while basking in the sun. (photo)
More »
Slate Magazine has a photo that may be more disturbing than the Annie Leibovitz shoot of Miley Cyrus for Vanity Fair: a Disney underwear ad by way of China. The handpuppet-infested image is after the jump.
More »
Every so often a book is published that makes you ask yourself: how much weight did the author put on researching it? Jamie Cahill, author of the recently published Pâtisseries of Paris, has compiled the city's best pastry shops, bakeries, ice cream shops, chocolatiers, and salons de thé. Many of them happen to be concentrated in Saint-Germain, which has a sort of cruel irony to it, as this former intellectual nerve center of Paris has undergone a transformation in the last 10 years to become the center of a very expensive, very chic fashion scene, putting the Rive Gauche in YSL. But it's time you learned the sublime tension of consuming millefeuilles while not gaining mille poids. Cahill's publicist, by the way, reassures us that even after four years of this research, plus a professional pâtissier's course, plus two children, Cahill has managed to stay a size 2. "But that's another story," we are told. So, Jamie? What's the story? We'd love to know.
More »
Megan Zanke is known throughout the pages of this site, but she's moved on to work as an editor of Coutorture — a fantastic fashion-centered website with bite. While she definitiely knows a thing or two about fashion, Megan also knows a thing or two about being young and hitting the streets of New York.
More »
Gridskipper
