All stories about "Blogs"

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.

Some travel blogs are all attitude and no original research, seemingly typed by hung-over media manqués whose idea of reporting is to tumble out of bed late each morning and desperately scan the newspapers for items to make sarcastic comments about.

Travel blogs are one of the most common blog types . . . right behind high school sex fantasy diaries. And one would think travel blogs would be insanely popular, given that most everyone travels to some degree. But just like travel writing in general, there's a huge gulf between the number of people who travel and the number of people who care to read about travel. Even Gridskipper, a veritable colossus of travel blog traffic, is easily outmatched by blogs about cat pictures, salad recipes, or, say, knitting. On top of this handicap, the sad truth is that many, many travel blogs (amateur and professional alike) are shit. They wouldn't be readworthy if their subject concerned daily giveaways of gold bars. Fortunately, the reasons why travel blogs suck are very easy -- often painfully easy -- to comprehend.

Cuban authorities have blocked access to one of the country's most popular blogs, "Generacion Y." Yoani Sanchez, the blogger behind it, could no longer visit her website, which garnered 1.2 million hits last month, as of Monday of this week. Sanchez, a 32-year-old philology graduate, has continued to blog about her daily life in Cuba and its economic hardships and political constraints on the blog via alternative portholes, saying "there is no censorship that can stop people who are determined to access the Internet." [ZD Net]

Bloggers are gluttons for self-congratulation and petty ingratitude. Many remarked on the recent maneuver by our despised Transportation Security Administration to establish a somewhat freewheeling blog, though tagged with a clunker of a name ("Evolution of Security"). Now, bloggers are falling all over themselves with glee for having pointed out a foolish TSA screening process taking place at some airports, then wringing a blog apology from the TSA. Except it wasn't an apology, but a surprisingly forthright admission of a mistake. And even that gets mocked, ridiculed, and somehow also considered further proof of the TSA's incompetence. Bloggers! I'm here to tell you: Hang up thy swords, stow thy muskets, and relax. The TSA blog is the best thing to happen to American air travel since the noise-canceling headphone.

If you aren't reading FourFour, you're missing out on the magic that is Rich Juzwiak's world. His Mogwai-inspired cat Winston, Tyra Banks, and obscure but perfect pop-culture references dwell hand in hand with knitted-together montages, mix tapes, and photoshopped British worms. In addition to his home base, Rich also does the deeds on VH1's Celebreality.

We're going to imprison you in the city of your choice for the rest of your natural life. You can do anything you want there, but you must stay in that city forever. Where would you choose?
Where I am! New York.

Watch out, Curbed! Miami developer Tibor Hollo has sued "simple, humble blogger" Lucas Lechuga for $25 million last week, a maneuver that also got Lechuga fired from his realtor's job.

Voting is now open on the 2008 Bloggies weblog award dingus. Of course, no travel blog category yet again -- FASCIST PIGS! -- but, ahem, if you're into this sort of thing, lots of other Gawker Media blogs got nominated all over the place. Go vote for them. Polls close at 10 p.m. EST on January 31.

Did you die a little inside when you read that headline? Good, then the rest of this shouldn't hurt a bit. We're discussing bars popular with New York blogger types as drinking establishments -- not places such people go to actually blog. One can cull a bit of history from this article in last year's Observer, and even more current selections are already fading from relevance. Bloggers be fickle. This list is neither comprehensive nor fair, as bloggers will drink most anywhere really, and the taint of blog can adhere to a place after just one signature blogger-heavy night. And don't blame me for the Lower East Side concentration ... the world is thus. Feel free to dispute, revise, or expand in the comments or tipline.

The folks over at the Guardian's travel blog have a great Tokyo blog roundup -- a sampling of recommendations from the city's best bloggers (including our man Jean Snow). Suggestions cover sake, art, food, shopping, hotels, and all the high-tech wackiness Tokyo is known for. [Guardian]

After gestating for eons in Gawker Media's distended chest cavity, science fiction blog io9 has burst forth in a shower of viscera and pageviews. Check out the mission statement, the regular spoiler alerts, comics nerdery, and dots. More to come, puny human.

The pen may be mightier than the sword, but the blog is truly the new weapon of choice. Michael K, creator and writer of Dlisted--one of the web's most popular and unforgiving gossip-blogs--is able to take on the ridiculous and give it a twist of the wit. You may be shocked and addicted, but as his site warns, be very afraid.

Bowing down before the mighty power of Blog, sometime local sponsor Virgin America dragooned a cadre of popular tech bloggers to staff up its latest cartoon advertising initiative. The "Virgin Americans" -- please, withhold your guffaws, churlish types -- feature appearances by Boing Boing's Xeni Jardin, Cory Doctrow, David Pescovitz, and Mark Frauenfelder; Engadget's Pete Rojas; and Diggnation's Alex Albrecht and Kevin Rose. No travel bloggers in sight, since they're such a surly and unattractive lot. At least Rojas gets a line in the latest spot.

Virgin America's Virgin Americans [via Newlaunches]

Our pal Benji Lanyado at the Guardian asked myself and Amanda to rate a handful of travel blogs/sites in a "cool off." We got into the preposterous nature of the enterprise, which you can read here. They cut some of the meanness from our submissions (apparently "one legged man in an ass kicking contest" doesn't translate idiomatically), and they led with a stock photo of some nice bikiniblogging. At least I got to defend Arthur Frommer's honor.

Battle of the blogs [Guardian]

The erstwhile foodies at Menupages have launched another blog, this one focusing on Miami and South Florida as a companion for their menu listings on the same area. Anything that features a Cheetoh-eatin' crab is off to a promising start.

Menupages South Florida [Official site]

Your recommended lunchtime browsing is La Taco (or is it LA Taco? or just Taco, like Prince?), a great blog that combines the not so disparate Los Angeles lifestyle choices of street art and taco truck patronage. Lots of intrepid fieldwork reviewing various super-cheap taco truck delicacies, plus lush photos of great graffiti and the occasional inspirational tattoo.

La Taco [Official site]

We've traveled enough to know that some attractions, no matter how well-loved, suck. Pisa, for example. The Leaning Tower is just a poorly built little stub. And the rest of the town is a mess of traffic and tchotchke shacks. And yet we went, which makes me angry whenever I think about those hours that I'll never have again. Thankfully we have folks like Ben Groundwater at the Sydney Morning Herald's travel blog. He's been to the dullest, most mind-numbingly trite places, and he's here to warn you off.

Bad Directions is a good new startup blog covering Mumbai dining -- kind of like the local version of Chowhound. They're just beginning, but early posts (like one on an example of Mumbai's finer Chinese) are promising. Needs more photos like any foodblog, but worth a look.

Bad Directions [Official site]

Immediately direct your attention to Jezebel.com, the newest site from our progenitors at Gawker Media. The bouncing baby blog will cover "celebrity, sex, and fashion for women -- without airbrushing." We like the ladies, even those of us who are ladies and don't normally like like ladies. Speaking of ladies, check out the ladies in charge of Jezebel, read and absorb their manifesto, and consider what you could do with their $10,000 prize for the best unretouched lady-mag cover photo.

Jezebel [Official site]

A simple but eminently useful aggregator, BlogSoop collects blog restaurant reviews and compiles them by city and restaurant for easy browsing. You can search by name, neighborhood, cuisine, or zip code, and users can rate individual blog reviews. One nice touch is a small icon indicating the number of photos a particular blog-review contains. Some of the entries are less substantive than others, but overall it's a good way to collect and organize massive amounts of food bloggery.

BlogSoop [Official site]

-- Chris Mohney

All trendspotting is local, as they say (or, well, as they don't say). So let us praise Buenos Aires Spotting, a bilingual site that tracks everything from Motorla's cobranding with Argentine fashionista Jessica Trosman to the growth of Buenos Aires's SUBA street fashion to the ... invasion of tangolates, the tae-bo style bastard child of tango and pilates ginned up by Buenos Aires pilates queen Tamara Di Tella. Next? Namblada, the combination of lambada (the forbidden dance) and NAMBLA (the forbidden love)? One shivers in front of the possibilities.

Buenos Aires Spotting [Official site]

-- Ian Mount

The first post on this English-language blog about Prague dining concerns a Greek deli, and it contains this photo of marinated octopus. I have never advocated the consumption of tentacles, and I'm not about to start now, but I felt the photo was worth sharing. Perhaps as a cautionary measure. I mean, there's calamari, and then there's the Kraken.

Olympia Delicastesy a Vina [Czech Please]

-- Chris Mohney

Aerotropically obsessed reporter Greg Lindsay -- who once did a stint as guest editor in these very pages -- is on a six-month worldwide safari collecting material for his book on air culture. Meanwhile, he's blogging the experience at City magazine, starting with a ride on the superjumbo Airbus A380. Unfortunately, Lufthansa shut down the bar, and the interiors of the plane aren't final yet. Lindsay points out a few interesting operational details , but beyond affirming the bigness, his world remains aeronautically unrocked.

In Transit [City]

-- Chris Mohney

Nominees for the James Beard Foundation Awards were announced yesterday, and among the dozens of restaurants, chefs, and others in line, there's also a respectable clutch of online foodsters. Dr. Vino's Wine Blog, Epicurious, and Leite's Culinaria are highlighted in the website category, with CIAprochef, Spatulatta, and Grape Radio showing up in the podcast category. The Beard Awards are quite the respectable affair, so don't expect to see any overlooked bloggers killing themselves à la Michelin stars.

2007 James Beard Foundation Awards Nominees [PDF]

Since I'm a few months out of practice, I'm soliciting reader suggestions for the better urban blogs out there these days. Blogs can be of any scope or topic, as long as they're associated with a particular city, or an urban subject, or even urban travel generally. I need to bulk up the RSS feed to account for attrition in the blog population, so help a brother out. I'll pull material from and shower links upon any site(s) I like. If you're in the mood to self-pimp, feel free to submit your own blogsite. Send thy blogs to tips@gridskipper.com or post in the comments below.

As Thrillist notes in today's email, "uwishunu is the no-BS insider's guide to Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love." Not mentioned is that the site is run by the tourist office so you won't be finding any articles chronicling the malfeasance (Thanks, Natgeotravelina) malfeance of Mayor John Street or the massive layoffs at the Inky. So no bullshit but maybe some spin. That's the bad news. The good news? Philly is sweet enough one could, though we don't know how, write a blog that's 100% laudatory. We wish we knew how. Or, rather, uwishunu knows how. Their posts include mini-agitprop masterworks on BYOB Sushi, large organs and Pennypack Park where I used to go to smoke weed in high school. That, sadly, isn't mentioned. Not good PR, I guess.

Uwishunu

Previously: Read This Document! The Best Libraries in the USA, Philly Noir: Fried Chicken and Soul Music, Least Loved Exhibits in City of Bro Love, Philly's Water Works: Will It Hold Water?, Murals of Philadelphia, More Than Cheesesteaks, Pork Nose for Instance, James Dominic: There's A Bit Waiting For You Here

We've been covering Pittsburgh a lot thanks to intern Omri and contrib Alicia. It looks like the Western PA city is experiencing something of a blogaissance. Metroblogging recently birthed another city blog, it's 52nd: Pittsburgh Metroblogging. Though recently launched the site already has a post about a dude who gave his girlfriend the severed head of a kitten wrapped in a sweet pink box, has already made an "Insert (Insert Obvious Joke Reference) Joke Here" joke and included some pretty stellar events. Well, Mazel Tov, P-town Metblog. I can't wait to come to the bris.

Pittsburgh Metroblogging

Previously: Bowling for Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh's Sharp Edge: Yinzer Lager, Eat N' Park. Park N' Eat. Eat n' Eat