My essay on how a love of the unsung can help solve the problem of overtourism: https://lithub.com/standing-room-only-on-overtravel-and-the-joy-of-the-unsung/
On Facebook yesterday Spud Hilton, the recently retired travel editor at the San Francisco Chronicle, posted the news that the paper was discontinuing its Travel section.
Travel writing flourishes in the Bay Area as nowhere else in the United States, and the Chronicle Travel section was both a reflection of and a contributor to that phenomenon. If you were a travel writer, one of the highlights of any visit to San Francisco was picking up the Chronicle and reading the Travel section. Imagining the paper without a Travel section is like picturing the city without cable cars.
At Books & Books last night, Matthew Kepnes (aka Nomadic Matt) spoke about his new memoir, Ten Years a Nomad, before a standing-room-only crowd, one member of which, a tall, thin woman, wore a T-shirt that displayed three small boxes labeled "Single," "Taken," and "Collecting Passport Stamps." Not surprisingly, the last box was checked.
At the airport in Lisbon the officer stamped my passport and, handing it back, said, “Have a nice flight.” Moments later, waiting to board, I was pulled out of the line and taken to the side for a pat-down and a search of my luggage. After the man had completed the procedure, I asked him why I had been singled out. He pointed to the four letters at the bottom of my boarding pass and then gave me something I’ve never received from TSA: an apologetic shrug.
In Lisbon I took Uber a few times – Lyft doesn’t operate there – and twice I had non-Portuguese drivers. One was from Cape Verde, a man who spoke excellent English, the result of his having lived in England for a number of years. He was very happy about his move to Portugal, not least because there was a lot less racism there. My other driver was an electrical engineering student from Iran. “You’re American?” he asked, and when I said yes, he fairly shouted, in a voice steeped in irony, “We’re friends!” He then proceeded to speak to me as if we were. He too loved Portugal, and I got the feeling he wished he could stay.