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  • Podcast #111 — Seatback Recline Wars; Craft Beer Tourism

    Podcast #111 — Seatback Recline Wars; Craft Beer Tourism

    Just a little snug for the next 14 hours...
    It’ll be a bit snug for the next 14 hours…

    I tried to hold back, but I just couldn’t. I have to finally weigh in on the seatback recline wars. I’m stunned at the number of people who convert a couple of inches of seat movement into some sort of Manichean morality play. From that you can probably guess where I come out on this. On a much lighter side, I talk about finally taking Atlanta’s MARTA subway from the airport and tagging on some beer hunting to some Midwest business travel. All this and more  at the direct link to the podcast file or listening to it right here by clicking on the arrow below.

    Here are the transcript of TravelCommons podcast #111:

    • Intro music — Warmth by Makkina
    • Coming to you from the TravelCommons studios outside of Chicago, IL having, through nothing other than sheer blind luck, dodged the cancellations caused by fire and attempted suicide at the Air Route Traffic Control Center in Aurora, IL. Wasn’t that a heck of a story. A guy living outside Chicago tips over the edge after being told he’s getting transferred to Hawaii. It usually happens the other way around, especially after last winter.
    • And it’s still a mess. Kinda helped me with my decision to drive to Indianapolis last Friday. Indy is right on the cusp of the fly-vs-drive break point — about 180 miles from Chicago but it’s straight, flat, and most of it has a 70 mph speed limit. Also pushed me to take a break from ORD this week. Aurora’s supposed to be back online Oct 13 which is the next airline ticket I have, so I hope someone is cracking the whip over there.
    • This episode should sound better than the last one. I did some eBay shopping and significantly upgraded my recording rig. I’d been recording with an iRiver MP3 recorder/player and little condenser mic since the beginning of this podcast. Unfortunately, iRiver didn’t feel like upgrading the drivers from Windows XP to Windows 7 or 8, and when my last XP machine was converted to a VMWare image, it just got to be a hassle pulling the audio off of it. So I applied a firmware upgrade that was supposed to make it look like a regular jump drive, which it did, but it also reduced the gain, the volume on my mic to almost nothing. After struggling with it for a bit, I finally gave up. The last episode was recorded on my HTC One with a significant amount of massaging in Adobe Audition. But now, I think I’ve got something that’ll work. We’ll see how this goes.
    • Bridge Music — Miss America by Beyond 7

    Following Up

    • Regular listeners know that I always like to check out rapid transit to and from airports. On a trip to Atlanta last month, I finally decided to buck up and try MARTA. I’ve flown into Atlanta for years, but always rented a car because I never did work in Atlanta, always some place between 10 o’clock and 2 o’clock on the I-285 beltway. Which is always lovely because the airport sits at 6 o’clock — directly opposite of where I normally need to be. So my usual MO is to rent a car and grind it out through the traffic — either straight up the city or around the beltway — which is why I try very hard to avoid meetings in Atlanta. So anyway, on this particular Thursday, I caught the 6am flight from ORD, hitting Atlanta right at the tail end of the morning rush. I guess I was being a bit passive aggressive on this trip, but I didn’t book a rental car. I just didn’t want to deal with the traffic. I had planned on taking a cab, but walking past the MARTA station in the airport, I plugged the office address into Google Maps and hit the Transit button, and found it was a straight shot up the Red Line and then a 5 minute walk from the station. For a $2.50 fare, it seemed worth a shot. And it was. The toughest part was trying to figure out which station exit to use so that I got on the correct side of the six-lane divided street I needed to walk along. I got it wrong the first time. I was pleasantly surprised, though, to find sidewalks — not a common amenity in office park land. The lone pedestrian sprinting across a couple of intersections to avoid turning cars, I got to my destination without fighting traffic and more than an order of magnitude cheaper than cab fare.
    • I got an interesting reaction from people when I told them about my morning’s MARTA journey. “Well that’s adventuresome” and “What time were you on? Rush hour? That’s OK. I wouldn’t try that after dark though” I never felt unsafe or uncomfortable during my ride. But then again, I never felt unsafe on train rides in Brussels — until my backpack was stolen. I never felt unsafe on DC’s Metro system — until the day a woman reached across the aisle, tapped my arm and strongly suggested that I put my iPad away. But I dunno, MARTA seemed as safe as the Metro system or the L in Chicago. And it was a damn sight cleaner than BART in San Francisco. I’ll take it again when I have to go back down to Atlanta in two weeks.
    • Especially after I sprung the dollar for the Breeze card, which is the contactless/touch card that MARTA now requires you to buy instead of issuing the little paper cards like New York or DC. The fare machine concierge assured me “It’s good for 10 years!” Yes, provided I remember to bring it with me next time. These things are starting to stack up. I have a London Oyster card in some desk drawer; I forgot how much that card cost me. Chicago’s Ventra card cost $5(!) which they say will be put back on the card if I register it — which I did but didn’t see any $5 credit. Maybe all these new cards are great for regular riders, but for the minority like me — the occasional rider — it’s a bit of a pain; more cost, more confusion, and a growing stack of plastic in my desk drawer. The Chicago system theoretically lets you use the NFC capabilities of newer Android phones like my HTC One to tap and pay with Google Wallet. I’m planning to check that out the next time I take the L. Would’ve been nice to know before I sprung the $5, but I’ll look harder for that when I’m in a new city. Of course, we could always go back to the cash box, like they still have on the New Orleans streetcars. But there I’m find myself fishing around for a quarter to drop the exact change into the cash box. For all the whining, it’s still better than renting a car.
    • In episode #107 earlier this year, I talked about the checklist I run through when I decide to review a hotel on TripAdvisor — the bathroom, room size, workout room, location, service quality. And it’s that last one — service quality — that I really see the difference. It’s not at the front desk. Hotels have their training and employee selection programs nailed. It’s been a long time since I’ve been treated with anything less than enthusiastic hospitality. No, where it falls down is the back of the house. The latest example was a couple of weeks ago. I check in around 5:30. Walking up to my room, I see dirty room service dishes — the little ketchup and mustard bottles suggest it was the remnants of a burger. I get ready to turn around — I bet they gave me an occupied room by mistake. But nope, my key worked and the room was clean and empty. Hmmm… I call down to the front desk to tell them about the dishes. The very nice woman who just checked me in greeted me by name and apologize profusely, saying she’d send someone up right away. I walk out for dinner. I come back a couple hours later — dishes are still there. I go out a bit later to grab a beer — dishes are still there. I come back — yup, the burger carcass is still there. Now I’m thinking, what else is lying around. I call back down to the nice woman. I’ll be checking out tomorrow morning.
    • And if you have any travel experiences — thoughts, questions, a story, a comment, a travel tip – the voice of the traveler, send it along. The e-mail address is comments@travelcommons.com — you can use your smartphone to record and send in an audio comment; send a Twitter message to @mpeacock, or you can post your thoughts on the TravelCommons’ Facebook page — or you can always go old-school and post your thoughts on the web site at TravelCommons.com.
    • Bridge Music — On Condition of Anonymity by the West Exit

    Last Word (Hopefully) On Seatback Recline Wars

    • I’ve resisted doing this topic, but how can I claim to be doing a podcast that gives the “voice of the traveler” and is “more about the journey than the destination” and not take some cut at whole seatback recline option explosion? Because it seems like no one else — hard core traveler or rank amateur — has kept their thoughts to themselves. The sheer amount of time and words — physical or cyber — devoted to this topic has been amazing.
    • Let’s separate the specific from the general. First, let’s recap the incident that lit the fuse. A guy on his last leg home from Moscow, sitting in United’s Economy Plus, uses a Knee Defender to keep the woman in front of him from reclining her seat so he can get some work done on his laptop. She flags down the flight attendant about her seemingly malfunctioning seat, the flight attendant notices the Knee Defender and tells the guy to take it off. He does, and the woman slams her seat back to full recline. When she goes to the rest room, he pushes her seat back up and puts his Knee Defender back in. She comes back, pissed that she can’t recline her seat, tosses her glass of Sprite at him. The pilot makes an unscheduled landing to them both off the plane where, surprisingly, neither of them are rung up on charges.
    • So the first thing to say is — yes, these are two grown adults — which is head-shakingly amazing. This would be out-of-bounds behavior at a ball park or a rock concert, let alone in a packed metal tube hurtling along at 600 mph at 36,000 feet. Now, that being said and in no way forgiving the woman, the guy was definitely the bigger pinhead in this escapade.
    • The guy is 6’-1” — about my size so I’ve got a pretty good frame of reference. Sitting in United’s Economy Plus, he had a extra 3-4 inches over the folks in the back of the plane. It’s roomy as coach seats go. When I’m flying United, I’ll regularly choose an E+ middle seat over a regular E aisle seat. From first hand experience, I call bull on his premise that he needed to use the Knee Defender to work on his laptop — unless he has an undisclosed medical condition requiring him to type with completely extended arms, or his arms are long enough so he can tie his shoes without bending over.
    • And moving from the specific case to the general discussion (argument?) about the morality of seat reclines, why does this guy (or anybody) think their right to work on a flight trumps another passenger’s right to comfort? I got it — lots of people need those 2, 3, 4 hours to crank out stuff. But likewise, when I’m catching a 6:30am flight out Monday morning, I need to an hour or two of sleep to make it through the end of the day. And I don’t know of anyone who can sleep without reclining their seat. Which again get me to the question — what’s with people casting this as some sort of Manichean morality play — sitting straight up — Good (morally upright?); space-hogging slouching recliners — pure Evil.
    • Of course, there are ways around this — they just cost money. If you need the extra space to work — or sleep — then pay the extra money for a seat in something like United’s Economy Plus or American’s Main Cabin Extra — or flight them enough to earn status and you get it for free. As I said earlier, I regularly give up shoulder space for leg room. Unfortunately, it’s a choice I have to make more often than I like, booking flights at the last minute in this age of high plane utilization. Need more space, get more status or buy a more expensive ticket that will get you to the top of the queue for an upgrade. Or just buy the 1st class ticket you need the space.
    • But that’s not the story we want to hear — we want more space than we’re willing to pay for. Airlines are pushing seats closer together because travelers shop purely on price — a seat is a commodity. Years ago, American Airlines tried to differentiate themselves on legroom, pulling out rows of seats to increase pitch. I would fly those planes whenever I could. Unfortunately for American, I was in the small minority. They got their clocks cleaned and eventually had to put those rows back in. Most travelers don’t pay attention to seat pitch. They just click on the cheapest fare and then bitch about the lack of space.
    • Don’t want to pay for the extra space, then do what our guy did when he had to get home after his unscheduled connection in Chicago. He flew Spirit. Their seats don’t recline.
    • Bridge Music — Subtle Vice by Solace

    Sneaking In Some Craft Beer Tourism

    • As regular podcast listeners know, I’m pretty much all-in with the US craft brew explosion. I was drinking Sierra Nevada in the ‘80’s while
      Patron Saint of Craft Brewers
      Patron Saint of Craft Brewers

      skiing at Lake Tahoe, got deep into Belgian beers in the early ‘90’s when I would travel to Brussels a half-dozen times a year while selling to the pharmaceutical industry, started homebrewing in the mid ‘90’s, and have just continued onward.

    • The listeners who I’m friends with on Untappd can see that I’ve checked in over 2,200 unique beers. It’s a passion that one could arguably say has tipped over a bit to obsession. So when I had a couple of Midwest trips recently — I mentioned the Indy run, but also had a couple days in St Louis in September — rather than bolting out of town immediately after my meetings, I did a bit of craft beer tourism, hitting some of the local microbreweries. In St Louis, where I had a bit more time, I hit Urban Chestnut for a dunkelweiss and a board full of knockwurst, stewed apples, cabbage, and pumpernickel bread — which I managed to consume during a conference call with the judicious use of the mute button. I had some great sour beers at Perennial Ales, and then at Civil Life Brewing, a very English pub-like place (not in the ersatz way of Union Jacks and Tube signs hanging around, but in the true sense of a pub — a cozy local place) I had yet more encased meat — a Hungarian bratwurst this time. Which was very pleasant change considering everything I’d eaten over the prior 48 hours had been from the Airport Marriott.
    • In Indianapolis, I only had time for one stop and as it turned out, my meeting was 8 minutes away from Sun King Brewing. I followed the line of growler-toting folks into the brewery. No taproom, but they gave me tickets and bottle caps good for 6 small samples. They had a Friday sale on growlers, but I’m already long in glassware, and when’s the next time I’m gonna be in Indy? Instead, I bought a couple of 4-packs of the beers I liked best. Since I drove, I didn’t have to make that decision — is the beer good enough to justify checking luggage?
    • Nowadays most hotel bars will have at least one decent craft beer on tap or available in bottles. The St Louis Airport Marriott had a nice selection with about 4 local draft handles including a Schlafly pumpkin beer — not my favorite style, but you gotta give them props for giving it a tap. The Sheraton on Canal St in New Orleans has stepped up its game — adding 1-2 more local taps in addition to the ubiquitous Abita tap. But on that 4th or 5th week in the same hotel — or more; I just made Starwood Platinum at the Canal St Sheraton — even those additional taps start to get boring. Luckily, some of the upscale grocery stores like Whole Foods are also tapped into the craft beer trend and sell single beers. On my first day in New Orleans, I tend to swing by Rouse’s, kind of a local version of Whole Foods, grab a couple of good beers and take them back to the Sheraton. The first time I did this, though, I had a problem — there wasn’t a bottle opener in the room; these craft beers don’t typically come in twist-offs. I’m rummaging around, but nothing. It kinda pulled me up short — when did hotels stop stocking their rooms with bottle openers? I go down to the front desk. They’re pretty puzzled too — they start rummaging around their drawers. “Maybe you can borrow one from the bar?” Ever since, I always pack a bottle opener in my backpack. Just another thing to keep in the travel kit.
    • Some airports are serving up great beer. I found two microbrewery joints at BWI, and I always try to swing by the Great Lakes Brewery spot in CLE. But in my last trip through ATL, a bartender saw me struggling with her Bud/Coors/Sam Adams draft selection. “Go down to the end of the terminal,” she said, “there’s a new craft beer bar just opened up” Great! I wheel my bag down the terminal but pull up short of the bar. This new beer bar is a smoking bar! That’s right — I’m in the South. I watch the cigarette smoke billow out under the door. I turn around a walk away. Even an obsession has its limits.

    Closing

    • Closing music — iTunes link to Pictures of You by Evangeline
    • OK, that’s it, that’s the end of TravelCommons podcast #111
    • I hope you all enjoyed this podcast and I hope you decide to stay subscribed.
    • The bridge music is from Magnatune, the we are not evil label. Miss America by Beyond 7, On Condition of Anonymity by the West End, and Subtle Vice by Solace. You can find these and more at magnatunes.com.
    • If you have a story, thought, comment, gripe – the voice of the traveler — send ‘em along, text or audio file, to comments@travelcommons.com or to @mpeacock on Twitter, or post them on our website at travelcommons.com. Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to send in e-mails, Tweets and post comments on the website
    • Follow me on Twitter
    • “Like” the TravelCommons fan page on Facebook
    • Direct link to the show

  • Podcast #101 — Future of Mileage Tracking Tools; Searching for Local Food and Craft Beer

    Search for Nashville Hot Chicken Led to Interesting Neighborhoods

    Back in the TravelCommons studios after a couple months of summer break. We open up with thoughts about skipping rental cars, sharing listener comments on the Chicago Layover Excursion video, and the current state of American Airlines — great new airplanes, deteriorating on-time stats. Michael Komarnitsky, the founder and CEO of GoMiles, talks about why he sold his company to Traxo and where he sees the mileage tracking industry going. We wrap with my thoughts about how I break through the frequent traveler “travel bubble” by looking for local artisanal food and craft beers. Here’s a direct link to the podcast file or you can listen to it right here by clicking on the arrow below.

    Here are the transcript of TravelCommons podcast #101:

    • Intro music — Warmth by Makkina
    • Coming to you again from the TravelCommons studios outside of Chicago. Back after a couple of month hiatus. The Episode 100 celebrations ran a little long…
    • Last week, Jeremy Phillips tweeted “Listening to Travel Commons by @mpeacock episode 100 while en route ATL -> SEA. I kind of miss the bathroom acoustics but love the podcast.” Jeremy, I was thinking of recording at least the intro to this episode in one of the studio bathrooms, but thought that would be a bit too contrived. I will see, though, if I can get my act together enough for the next episode to do a bit of throw-back recording from a hotel bathroom.
    • Not a lot of travel since the last episode — two flights to San Francisco and a day trip to Atlanta — though my arrivals in each place had some interesting twists. For all these trips, I had car service arranged to pick me up from the airport and to take me back. The cost and hassles of car rental seem to be on an upward spiral. We’ve talked in past episodes about costs — not so much the rental cost itself, but all the add-on fees, surcharges, and taxes. In an Oct 2009 blog post about skipping rental cars, I looked at my receipts from rentals in LA, SF, Seattle, and Philadelphia and found that add-on charges increased my final bill 27-51%. I don’t think those percentages have gone down in the intervening 3 years.
    • The hassles of car rental are just as off-putting — airports are reclaiming close-in car rental sites to expand parking, pushing the rental companies further out. I’ve timed trips at Phoenix and BWI — 30 minutes to get from the terminal to the rental cars.
    • So, with all that, I have little problem justifying the cost of a car to haul me between the airport and my locations. But even hire cars are not without their hassles. In ATL, it took me three phone calls — to the driver and the car service — to figure out where to meet the car. Unlike, say , ORD or LGA, there are different places you can “surface” from the gates and terminals. Apparently I followed the wrong “Ground Transportation” signs and ended up at the wrong end of the airport. No big problem — maybe a 10-minute delay.
    • My last trip to SF was a bit more problematic. I text the driver “I’m here” and “Here’s the door I’m at” — not a big opportunity for location confusion at SFO Terminal 3. I’m standing there — a couple of cars pull up, a guy gets in one, a woman in another. 5 minutes go by, where’s the car that said he was a minute away. Turns out that the guy who got into one of those cars got into mine. He told the driver his name which, to the non-native English speaking driver, sounded like Peacock and off they went. Except when I’m still texting him — confusing when he thinks I’m in the back seat. Somewhere on the 101 South, the driver and the passenger figure out the mix-up. The car comes back to SFO, picks me up, leaving my doppelganger — whose last name sounds nothing like Peacock — wandering aimless on the sidewalk looking for his long-gone car.
    • All reinforcing the feeling that there’s just nothing about travel nowadays that “just works”…
    • Bridge Music — Science vs. Romance by Rilo Kiley

    Following Up

    • For those not following the various TravelCommons sites — Twitter, Facebook, the TravelCommons web site (I don’t do Pinterest because, well, I’m a guy, and I don’t do Tumblr because I’m over 25 years old) — a couple of pointers to some content that didn’t make it into the iTunes feed.
    • First, I did follow through on the threat/promise I made at the end of the last episode — to do my own Chicago version of the One City, Five Hours sprint tours that United used to do in their Hemispheres magazine. Last year, I did the Frankfurt tour while on a long layover between Mumbai and Chicago.  I video’d my results; it’s on the TravelCommons site as “Video #2”. I had such a great time following that tour — seeing new areas of Frankfurt rather than flipping through my iPad in the United lounge — that I wanted to offer up a similar tour of Chicago to people with long layovers — whether planned or not.
    • While the Frankfurt video was a one-day affair — shot on my iPhone and edited in iMovie on the flight home, the Chicago video turned out to be a lot more work. Of course I had to create the tour rather than following someone else’s. And the constraints of the format — start and end at ORD, 5 hours long (which I failed; mine clocked in just over 6),  using in only public transit, and trying to show something other than the usual photo op sites — made for some tough choices.
    • Also, I wanted to provide detailed transit and walking directions — showing street signs at crossings, building a detailed Google trip map for the show notes — because that was my one frustration with United’s Frankfurt article — I kept getting lost which cut into my already limited time budget.
    • I posted on the TravelCommons site and Facebook page about a month ago. I didn’t push it through the iTunes feed because I thought it would be too big of a download and wouldn’t be of interest to everyone.
    • The TravelCommons Facebook community had some good things to say. Lisa Besso’s comment voiced a common theme —
      • “Wouldn’t it be great to have these for all major hubs where we all spend too much time?”
    • I got to thinking about this… If you think through the top 10 US hubs — ATL, ORD, DFW, DEN, PHX, MSP, IAH, DTW, EWR, SFO — how many of these could you do a 5-hour city/neighborhood tour without needing a rental car.
      • San Francisco is an obvious one
      • Newark – take the PATH train to downtown Manhattan and walk up thru TriBeCa and Greenwich Village
      • Atlanta – Downtown and Buckhead via Marta?
      • Denver – You’ve landed in the middle of a buffalo herd. Maybe catch a bus to LoDo?
      • And after that, my voice trails off. Anybody else have any ideas?
    • Bob Fenerty and Robby Smith also left comments — both compared the ORD video to Anthony Bourdain’s “Layover” series. Bob said
      • “Very fun; like watching an amateur version of ‘The Layover’”
    • Robby liked it because you could knock it off in an afternoon, unlike Bourdain’s 2-3 day layover.
    • If you haven’t seen it already, go to the TravelCommons web site or Facebook page, check it out and leave some comments. I created a new “Video” category on the site — you can find it on the right-hand nav bar if you want to quickly find last year’s Frankfurt video. And send along your thoughts on other layover tours if you have them.
    • Another blog post follows up on the topic in the last episode about my “great circle” through the Mid South — I-65 from Chicago to the Gulf Coast, across US-90 and then back up I-55 and 57. Listeners who follow my social media natterings on Twitter and Untappd had seen my food and beer comments along the tour and asked for a summary, which I posted on the site in August — a city-by-city listing of the restaurants and bars I thought were the best — along with a link to a Flickr photo set, pulling together some of my better shots, though probably a bit overdone with Instagram filters. If you’re visiting Nashville, Louisville, Memphis soon, check that out.
    • And finally, a follow-up on episode 100’s other topic — breaking up with American Airline, I dunno, it’s 1 step forward and 2 steps back. One of my biggest complaints in that rant was the age of AA’s fleet — the MD-80’s that have been around for 25-30 years — they’re small, dingy, uncomfortable, and in my experience, more and more prone to maintenance delays. Last month, I flew on a new American 737-800 — what a great plane! Huge luggage bins, some styling cues from the 787 Dreamliner, and regular electrical outlets in coach. Such a huge upgrade from the MD-80s — especially the ones picked up with the TWA merger — those are the worst. So, good forward movement with the planes — which then gets completely offset (and more) by seats on their old planes coming loose and disgruntled pilots causing flight delays through a work-to-rule campaign. New planes are great, but I have to be able to depend upon them. So I’m completely off American until they get all of this cleared up.
    • If you have a question, a story, a comment, a travel tip – the voice of the traveler, send it along.  The e-mail address is comments@travelcommons.com — use the Voice Memo app on your iPhone or something like Virtual Recorder on your Android phone to record and send in an audio comment; send a Twitter message to mpeacock, or you can post your thoughts on the TravelCommons’ Facebook page — or you can always go old-school and post your thoughts on the web site at TravelCommons.com.
    • Bridge music — Voodoo Dub by Cyrusfx

    Future of Mileage Tracking Tools

    • Two years ago, in episode 85, I talked to Michael Komarnitsky, the founder and CEO of GoMiles, about his year-old mileage/awards points tracking service. Last month, Michael sold GoMiles to Traxo, a trip aggregation/travel management site. I caught up with him last week to get his thoughts on where the mileage/awards tracking market is going. I first asked him to remind us what GoMiles did for the traveler…
    • Bridge music —Not Enough (Inside You, Part 2) by Saurab Bhargava

    Bursting the Travel Bubble with Local Food and Craft Beer

    • As I mentioned earlier, those who follow me on Twitter and Untappd (a sort of FourSquare for beer nerds), see a lot of posts and pictures of food and beer. Though I guess it shouldn’t be surprising — I think travel, food, and alcohol (beer, wine, scotch,…) naturally go together; if you’re interested in one, you’re interested in them all. It’s all about being interested in exploring cultures. One of the main reasons we travel (voluntarily, that is) is to experience other people, other cultures. And if you want to get deeper into a culture, it’s much easier to eat and drink with them than to marry them.  Not to say marrying is a bad thing, just a bit more permanent — or perhaps that’s the old-school Catholic in me talking…
    • In past episodes, we’ve talked about how frequent travelers often float above the day-to-day activities, the reality of the cities their visiting in a “travel bubble” — kinda like Glenda the Good Witch in “Wicked”. In one of those episodes, I talked about how I like using public transportation, skipping the airport limos or private car services as a way to pop that bubble.
    • But in my trips this summer to SF and through the Mid-South, the search for local food and beer popped the travel bubble, and it was a helluva lot more fun than wrestling with a fare card machine in Brooklyn

      San Francisco Farmers’ Market Near UN Plaza
    • Now this is more than just skipping restaurant chains for local joints. Searching out a SF farmers market took me through the Tenderloin district and had me dodging cup-shaking panhandlers much further up Market St than I’d been before. Searching for Nashville hot chicken took me way off the usual Broadway tourist drag, to Bolton’s, a squat cinder block building in what felt like a bit of a sketch section of East Nashville for some very good and very spicy fried chicken. We ate under a wheezing air conditioner as a steady stream of neighborhood folk banged the screen door, ordering the Friday hot chicken and catching up with the owner.
    • Hunting down local beers has been just as rewarding. Walking from SF’s Union Square to the edge of the SoMa neighborhood to find the City Beer Store took me a good bit out of the tourist zone. I ended up drinking local Magnolia beer, talking with a group of guys who were stopping off for one on their way to the bus stop. Following Google Maps off I-65 in Birmingham, AL, I found myself parking in what looked like a neighborhood trying hard to re-develop so I could try a beer at Avondale Brewing.
    • I keep a running list of web clippings in Evernote of the restaurants, beer/wine bars, breweries I want to visit. I have folders for the cities I visit often or plan to visit soon. I also use social media — in episode #96, I talked about how I use Untappd, Foodspotting and Chowhound — as well as asking the Twitter-verse for ideas.

      Mash Tanks at Avondale Brewing, Birmingham, AL
    • But that’s just so I have a starting point for my searches. Searching new places forces me to break that travel bubble wall between visitor (me) and residents. In Louisville, I headed over to the Louisville Beer Store in the downtown NuLu district. Drinking a couple of beers and talking to the owner, he said I had to visit his other place, the Holy Grale, an old church converted to a beer bar. While there, talking to some folks at the bar, a guy told me I had to visit New Orleans’ Bywater District if I wanted to latest in good local non-tourist food there. Three days later, I was driving into New Orleans. Have been there many times, but never heard of the Bywater District. A little web searching on the iPhone and I found my way there, ending up having dinner at the bar of Maurepas Foods, a very local place with very good food.
    • Frequent travelers tend toward a rhythm, a pattern that allows them to quickly and efficiently navigate the hassles of today’s travel experience. There’s a thin line, though, between, efficiency and a rut, and the travel bubble straddles that line. It takes some effort to pop that bubble; good food and beer can help…

    Closing

    • Closing music — iTunes link to Pictures of You by Evangeline
    • OK, that’s it, that’s the end of TravelCommons podcast #101
    • I hope you all enjoyed this podcast and I hope you decide to stay subscribed.
    • Bridge music from Mevio’s Music Alley and from Saurab Bhargava’s album Chromatique
    • If you have a story, thought, comment, gripe – the voice of the traveler — send ‘em along, text or audio file, to comments@travelcommons.com or to @mpeacock on Twitter, or post them on our website at travelcommons.com. Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to send in e-mails, Tweets and post comments on the website
    • Follow me on Twitter
    • “Like” the TravelCommons fan page on Facebook
    • Direct link to the show
  • Food and Drink Highlights from My Drive South

    Food and Drink Highlights from My Drive South

    Young Elvis Before Too Many Peanut Butter & Banana Sandwiches

    On my Drive South, I ate and drank my way down I-65 and back up I-55. I had excellent meals throughout my trip — something you expect in New Orleans, but might find a bit more surprising in Louisville or Nashville if you haven’t been paying attention.  Every city I visited had neighborhoods with restaurants serving local artisan food and local craft beers. (Here’s a Flickr photo set of some of my better pictures).

    The chefs, bartenders, and owners with whom I talked were all on top of the latest food trends in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and London. Indeed, many had worked in the top restaurants in those cities for 5-10 years and were bringing those experiences and ways of thinking about food back home with them.  But rather than just recreating Chicago dishes, they’re twisting them to fit their new homes — replacing prosciutto with country ham, topping a bit crispy chicken skin with dots of Wonder Bread purée, and aging sour brown ales in bourbon casks.  If you’re heading south, here are the places I recommend you search out:

    Nashville

    • Catbird Seat – In most restaurants, the chef’s table is a 6-top in the corner of the kitchen were the diners watch their food being prepared and, if they’re lucky, get to exchange a couple of words with the chef. At Catbird Seat, the entire restaurant is a chef’s table — a bar that wraps around the cooking stations. There are no waiters — the food is served and explained by the chefs. And, as should be expected from chefs who worked at places like Alinea and French Laundry, an explanation from the chef of all the flavors on the plate helps your appreciation of what’s been set before you. At $100 for 9 courses and $40 for the (recommended) wine pairing, it’s not a cheap meal, but it’s every bit on par with the best restaurants in New York (here’s a recent NY Times write-up), Chicago, and San Francisco.  If you like imaginative fine cuisine, don’t miss it.  Show up early enough to have a cocktail in Patterson House, the speakeasy looking bar that’s in the same building.
    • Yazoo Brewing Company – Tucked away at the edge of the Gulch neighborhood, Yazoo Brewing has a good-sized taproom serving a nice variety of craft beers. I can be a bit of a hop-head, so I like their Hop Project, but their Dos Perros surprised me as did the Rye Saison they were serving in the taproom.

      Today’s Selections at the Ham Bar

    Louisville

    • Garage Bar – The people and tables spill out of this re-purposed gas station into the unfortunately named NuLu neighborhood in a way that pulls you off the sidewalk into the melee.  The night I was there, a band was playing under what used to be the gas pump awning while on the other side of the patio, a bunch of people jumped out of seats to take their picture with the neighborhood tortoise that was (slowly) moving through. The ham bar offered a selection of country ham from Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee (a good-sized portion for $5), good craft beer and, because you’re in Kentucky, craft bourbons.
    • Against The Grain – It’s a brewpub attached to Louisville’s minor league baseball park on the Ohio River, about a 10 minute walk from the NuLu area. They have a great beer selection, but when they described the sour brown ale, I was sold.  My time in Belgium has given me a soft spot for sour beers.  The bartender couldn’t understand my excitement. “That’s the only beer we make that I have to spit out”.
    • Holy Grale– Housed in a former Unitarian Church in the Highlands’ neighborhood, Holy Grale is a cozy (tight?) gastropub with a great selection of local and Belgian beers and the right kind of bar food (brats, pork belly, poutine) to soak it up.

      Nice Set of Tanks at Avondale Brewing Company

    Birmingham, Alabama

    • Avondale Brewing Company – Finding this place took me off the beaten path to Birmingham’s Avondale neighborhood. The neighborhood looks like it’s trying to gentrify with a few hip storefronts, but Avondale Brewing seems to attract most of the crowds. The taproom was full early Saturday afternoon, but the beer was worth waiting my turn — another sour brown ale…

    New Orleans

    • Maurepas Foods –  I didn’t plan on visiting New Orleans. I’d intended to stay on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, but as they still try to rebuild after Katrina’s direct hit, there isn’t much other than the casinos in Biloxi.  Remembering a conversation two nights prior with the guy sitting next to me at Holy Grale in Louisville, I skipped my usual haunts in the Arts/Warehouse District and headed over to the Bywater neighborhood. I parked near Maurepas Foods, looked at the menu, and walked in. It’s a neighborhood place, but not a dive. The bartender offered me the Sunday night tasting menu complete with paired cocktails, but I wasn’t that hungry. I had a sausage and squid sandwich — sounds awful but tasted great.  They have a good cocktail and craft beer selection that matches up well with their menu. It’s a nice break from the usual French Quarter drill.

    Memphis

    2 Piece Dark Meat Plate At Gus’s
    • Beauty Shop – In an old beauty shop in the midtown Cooper Young neighborhood, Beauty Shop is run by a Memphis art student who went to New York, learned to cook, and then brought her training home. Has a hip vibe and menu.
    • South of Beale – A good downtown gastropub in the South Main district — walking distance from Beale Street but a nice place to get away from the noise and crowds. A duck patty melt and rabbit sausage sandwich are on the menu that’s a step up from typical pub grub, and there’s a good selection of Southern craft beers and whiskey.
    • Gus’s World Famous Fried Chicken – Not every meal on my trip was at posh hipster places. Gus’s is about as unhip as you can get, but they’ve perfected fried chicken. Crispy (but not overly) outside, moist inside — if it’s not “world famous”, it deserves to be. The sides are serviceable, but no one cares because it’s all about the chicken. Gus’s is a small place on a marginal block, so pick your time — don’t go during lunch rush, but don’t wait until the sun goes down. But do go…