quiddities and agonies of the ruling class - a rolling new york times thread

haa this bar she visited multiple times is on the roof of the hotel shes staying in

I shivered. This time, it wasn’t because I was chilly. It was because the Windy City blew me away.

*writing*

do they just let anyone write these dravel diaries because ive seen a lot of bad ones

Luckily, exploring Chicago on your own is not like wandering around Turks & Caicos..

what a relief

its just like some randos personal travel blog level writing idgi

It looks like she's written quite a lot for the Times actually

i guess people tend to get uninteresting when they have to talk abt their own uninteresting experiences

Whenever I read stories about tourists' visits to Chicago, I always get a little nervous -- fearful, I guess, that their very particular experiences will skew their impressions of the city. This article mostly struck me as pointless rather than misguided, though.

(I've actually been to one of the bars in the Wit -- a coworker once dragged me to watch her boyfriend play background music -- but not to the one on the roof.)

Gazing out at Marina City’s towers, rising like two corncobs (as the locals call them)

GTFO

I know! that sentence!

The wit roof top bar isn't too bad. But there are about 500 more interesting places to go.

Like Navy Pier.

Is this being talked about in the Chicago threads at all? I feel like that would be entertaining.

the stupid thing about bad travel writing is that you'd assume tons of great writers would be like YES PLZ COMP MY TRAVEL & PAY ME TO WRITE ABOUT IT & yet so many travel writing is just completely terrible

my favorite part tho was this:

This is the second in a series of articles about traveling alone.

is "traveling alone" a special genre of travel writing? can't all travel writing just be applied to whatever your situation is?

and the feeling you get from the piece is 'weird! chicago is not like new york!' which surely can't be what people want from travel writing

I assumed most travel writing was 'travelling alone'

She actually comes off as so PROVINCIAL, like those people who say "OMG, the McDonalds in Arizona had quesadillas! It was so weird!"

I assumed most travel writing was 'travelling alone'

― Peppermint Patty Hearst (VegemiteGrrl), Friday, July 6, 2012 10:47 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

well travel writers travel alone, but i guess the implication is that they write about things that are to be done for people that are travelling in a group? but that really doesn't matter at all. almost anything you would or could do while travelling in a group you could or would do while travelling alone. if the NYT travel editor thinks that's novel, that person is not very good at his or her job.

Wasn't there some article where a young Sulzberger traveled around the midwest and wrote about it or something? Perhaps even in this thread?

is it true abt the mcquesadilla

I linked to this thread on the Chicago thread so we're talking about it here.

i don't think i have ever looked at a chicago thread. seems like it would be rude to.

Well hey, *y'all* Chicagoans are welcome here on our thread. I hope it's not too intimidating and different, this is a BIG city, not like Chicago!

lol at thinking nytimes is ny-specific

joeks

I don't think that at all, my parents always subscribed and we lived in DC

I game their system for the weekday shit and occasionally subscribe to Sunday edition

Oh god I just came in here to mock that fucking corn cob sentence. Fuck you forever, lady.

what bums me out the most is I finish read it and I *don't* want to visit chicago. Chicago's a cool place!

*reading

"You could spend a whole weekend in places like Wicker Park and Bucktown with their neighborhood bars and denim-and-flannel dress code."

What? I mean, what???

I don't think she actually went to Chicago. She just read five or six previously published shitty Chicago travel articles and was like, "The Loop, Millenium Park, the Pump Room, call it the 'windy city' and file it!"

"People in their 20s and 30s adorned with clunky 1980s-style headphones and glasses were reading and eating alone on couches, or clacking on their Macs."

Oh wait no. She nailed it.

Also she stayed in the business district and criticized the lack of foot traffic on the street at night. Also she can't read a map and she wrote this: "Yet I was foiled again and again like a video game avatar."

what bums me out the most is I finish read it and I *don't* want to visit chicago. Chicago's a cool place!

― Peppermint Patty Hearst (VegemiteGrrl), Saturday, July 7, 2012 3:54 AM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I don't either!

wait which chicago mcdonalds have mcquesadillas??

I shivered. This time, it wasn’t because I was chilly. It was because the Windy City blew me away.

no idea why but i heard this to the tune of "wkrp in cincinatti"

wkrp in cincinatti reboot

voiceover reads 'single in chicago' nytimes travel piece

wkrp theme plays

I have no idea whether any McDonalds has ever actually served a quesadilla, I just meant lol regional differences like "OMG there's a grocery store here called Piggly Wiggly" -- those kinds of disgusting savages who say that kind of stuff.

where can i get a mcdonalds quesadilla tho

cleveland mcdonalds serve pierogies

and degradation

mmm degradation

Mchumiliation wraps

mcdilla

I just meant lol regional differences like "OMG there's a grocery store here called Piggly Wiggly"

http://cdn.discountqueens.com/uploads/2011/05/hellmans.png

Granted, I'm not single, but when I read that piece to my wife she wondered why the writer spent half her stay hanging at the Wit and other spots a block from her office. Really? The denim and flanel line cracked her up, too. She asked if this was an article from 1994. I can't believe the editor OK'd something so boilerplate and cliched, from loading up the iPod with Sinatra to all the attention paid to the politeness of the midwest.

"[A New Yorker is] usually someone who, for one thing, thinks this is the only place in the world to be. Which is to say, you don't think of the other options one would have in life."

"[A New Yorker is] usually someone who, for one thing, thinks this is the only place in the world to be. Which is to say, you don't think of the other options one would have in life."

lol even here New Yorkers are so oblivious as to how obtuse they really can be.

truly all new yorkers think with one mind