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[leisure] VIDEO PODCAST EPISODE 1
Teleport City's Leisure section -- travel, adventure, food, drink, and general thoughts and rambling -- has been moved to The Astounding Cabinet of Wonders. And in honor of the new location and new content, we're proud(ish) to make the following announcement. It took some time, and I'm still ironing out the wrinkles to get the podcast to appear on iTunes, but while that's going on, here it is: the inaugural episode of the Teleport City video podcast, complete with narration that makes me sound like a lethargic cross between Paul Jr from American Chopper, Tom Bodett, and one of those guys who narrates an old 4H nature documentary. And sorry about the video quality -- I'm still getting the hang of prepping my massive uncompressed 2 gig avi's into Quicktime. A couple years ago, I heard that there was climbing in Central Park. Always on the prowl for interesting ways to enjoy the great outdoors in the heart of New York City (like kayaking in the Gowanus Canal or Jamaica Bay), I headed up to check things out.
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[leisure] HOTEL MONTE VISTA
We were searching for something almost regal. The kind of place where they leave Aveda products in your bathroom. The kind of place where Clarke Gable and Humphrey Bogart once stayed. Historic. Antique. Old American regal, that combination of elegant class and refined ruggedness. Robert Mitchum made into a hotel. The Monte Vista was just that sort of place. Situated at the corner of Aspen and San Francisco Streets in downtown Flagstaff just a block away from Route 66, the Hotel Monte Vista has served as the home away from home for movie stars, socialites, and Route 66 pilgrims. It was born from the mind of Lowell Observatory astronomer VM Slipher, and built using money from a municipal bond championed by Slipher in order to meet the need for posh digs that catered to the growing number of tourists heading out west. Slipher himself designed the hotel, and on New Years Eve 1927, doors opened in time for everyone to come together for the excessive drinking of bootleg gin, wearing of novelty hats, and cursing of those Temperance League ladies.
[leisure] CENTRALIA, PA
I was staring directly into the fissure -- a gory, ragged scar that ripped across the face of the asphalt and heaved up mounds of broken black rock on either side of the opening like a cartoon gopher trail leading off into the swaying scrub that grew alongside the weed-dotted road. I read the sign, photographed for posterity the warning that he was standing on top of a raging, merciless underground fire that, at any moment could swallow him whole or belch forth great stinking yellow fumes of noxious gas that would drop him right where he stood. That didn't stop me from plunging my face right into the rising steam, a youthful indiscretion that, at age thirty, was crossing over into that realm that is equal parts dangerous and just plain embarrassing. It's not as if there was anything to gain by enveloping my head in the acrid, billowing clouds that wafted up from the fissure. If anything, visibility was considerably worse in that position.
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REBEL YELL
While my dad tagged Yellowstone as the absolute worst crap he ever drank, he said the bad stuff he drank most often was a little treat called Rebel Yell. It got him through many a "camping" trip to the Natural Bridge/Red River Gorge recreational area. And it turns out that, hundreds of miles and years apart, I encountered many other people who were greatly helped in their studies by the consumption of large quantities of this elixir known as Rebel Yell. What magical properties must it have to enhance memory and the ability to learn, I wondered, that made it so popular with college students? Had we in Florida, with our dedication to King Cobra malt liquor, missed out on improving our minds with whatever incredible properties were contained by Rebel Yell? There was only one way to find out.
FIGHTING COCK
Fighting Cock comes to us courtesy of the Heaven Hill distillery, a facility responsible for products that span the shelves top to bottom. In time, you and I will be quite familiar with their spirits. Fighting Cock is somewhere right in the middle, about where you'd find your standard bottle of Jim Beam. I'd heard some pretty bad things about about Fighting Cock, but if the Internet has taught me anything besides "everything is true," it's "you can't believe anything." For everyone who put Fighting Cock on a 'worst of" list, someone else was putting it on a "best of" or, at the very least, "surprisingly good" list. It was obvious that, while in the company of my friends watching stuff explode in the night sky, I was going to have to decide for myself.
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JAPAN, NEW JERSEY
Here are a few Keycam photos from a day's trip to the Japanese market in Edgewater, NJ, a while back. Yes, some people use their little cameras to take clandestine upskirt pictures of girls' panties. I use it to take clandestine pictures of shrimp shumai. My favorite item of the day was this candy emblazoned with uplifting motivational slogans like "Go for it! Take a chance!" and a buff gorilla telling a frightened looking girl raccoon to "Do me a favor."
LAS RAMBLAS
I have not, traditionally, gone out and done very much on St. Patrick's Day. For a while, this was because I stopped drinking (oh, so many days wasted on sobriety). And for a while, this was because I was going through a cranky phase and didn't want to combat drunken masses crammed shoulder-to-shoulder in a New York pub. These are no longer concerns for me. As for temperance, I have returned to my Scotch-Irish roots. And as for drunken crowds crammed into pubs, I have discovered that I actually enjoy the convivial revelry of such a gathering.
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MAD ROCK FLASH CLIMBING SHOES
After struggling multiple times to stay on the wall wearing a pair of cross-trainers, I realized that if I was going to get in any way serious about climbing as both a gym workout and an outdoors hobby, I was going to eventually have to fork over for a pair of specialized climbing shoes. Now I've bought all sorts of sports footwear, from trail runners to soccer cleats, hiking boots to water shoes. But climbing shoes were entirely new to me, and it was pretty clear that this wasn't the sort of purchase I could jump into without getting a little guidance. I had no idea how the shoes were supposed to fit, which design would be best for what I wanted to do, how it should feel, what material -- basically, I had no idea, and when in doubt, I head to Eastern Mountain Sports to take advantage of their expertise.
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