Cool gifts and Russian stuff to buy in Moscow
| Oct 6, 2011
Expats in Moscow spend a lot of time ferrying guests, family members and friends-of-friends who happen to be in town on business to the following locations for Russian fur hats, Russian tea sets, porcelain, Russian chocolate with funky socialist-realist wrappers, old Soviet junk and so on. It’s tourist stuff, but very cool tourist stuff from a culture with a distinctive tradition of graphic design. Over the years, much paranoid debate about what to do with the byzantine exiting-Russia customs form has been resolved in favor of ‘do not declare’….but don't say you heard it from us when they drag you into that little room at Sheremetyevo. MORE
Art to See in Zurich This Fall
| Sep 16, 2011
It’s officially fall. Artforum is bigger than September Vogue. Galleries have started keeping their posted hours again. The art season is upon us. In Zurich, despite ongoing construction on a few major museums, there’s lots to see. Most of the artists aren’t locals, and the city tends to skew minimal, conceptual and emotionally cold, but that should be no surprise in the capital of numbered bank accounts and theoretical wealth. Kunst for everyone! MORE
London's alternative theater venues
| Jul 21, 2011
This is a summer of exciting interactive and alternative theater opportunities, with British company Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More running in New York City and You Me Bum Bum Train at the Barbican in London (through July 24 only). It’s not surprising that both come from England, since theater and performance there tends to be much more avant-garde than in the U.S., especially at major venues. In the states, experimental approaches tend to have less funding and lower production values. To see how it’s done when directors and audiences aren’t afraid of the smart and the new, check the schedule at any of the following venues. MORE
Six Great Books About New York City to read while in New York City
| Jun 22, 2011
There’s that backpacker thing where certain novels topical to the country get passed around. Everyone in Myanmar is reading The Glass Palace, or everyone in India has an enormous, soft, tattered copy of Shantaram. These are the kind of books that you’ll find left behind in your hostel or will discover multiple copies of in the foreign-language used bookstores in places like Khao San Road. It’s more of a challenge to choose a book about New York City to read in New York City, mainly because there are so many of them, and because though independent bookstores like Freebird in Red Hook, Brooklyn and BookCourt on Court Street in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn and The Strand on Union Square, have special New York sections, they don’t have that dirty hand-to-hand authenticity of backpacker’s choice. Here are the books we’d suggest reading and abandoning in NYC. Other ideas? Please comment. MORE
Where to go out during White Nights in St. Petersburg, Russia
| Jun 17, 2011
The midnight sun in St. Petersburg is eerie, low and murky. The summer evenings have an icy snap. Visiting Russia's northern capital during white Nights sounds sexy, but the reality has always freaked us out a bit. There's a classical music festival and plentiful tourist attractions, but we choose to hide from the cataract sky, preferably in a series of basement bars, drinking with the students and adulterous businessmen and all the other Raskolnikovs who give the city its chilly, neurotic, debased glamour. MORE
Best New York City Hotels for a Sex Weekend
| Jun 8, 2011
It’s a positive sign for humanity that this is a Frequently Asked Question over at GDBK H.Q. The kind of Sex Weekend we are talking isn’t to sample the city’s sex clubs or hookers or sleazy hotels (for that, see this post), but the kind when you come to NYC to meet a lover—or you live in NYC, and for whatever reason you’re putting your lover up in a hotel—and while you may be planning on getting out some to enjoy the city, you’re mainly planning on staying in to enjoy the company. (This post Xposted on Gridskipper.) MORE
Location Lit: For travelers to New York City, Ben Ryder Howe's memoir "My Korean Deli"
| Apr 5, 2011
My first New York City deli was on the Upper West Side, near a college boyfriend’s apartment. It was all new for a girl from the American suburbs—the grungy cracked linoleum, the towering narrow aisles, the unfriendly Asian proprietor, the counter crowded with unfamiliar items massed in plastic wrap, such as sesame-honey bars, halvah, and black-and-white cookies—but it was also thrilling, an inconceivably convenient 3a.m. source of white Toblerone bars, cigarettes, flowers and Sapporo beer in big blue cans. And it wasn’t my last first-deli, either. I now think of delis as access-points to a neighborhood, or to New York itself, each one with a distinct personality, a unique thumbprint made from small perishables and weird real estate. MORE
101 Thai Kitchen: GDBK's vote for Best Thai Restaurant in London
| Feb 25, 2011
The more educated a non-Thai person’s taste becomes regarding Thai food, the more difficult it is to find a truly superb Thai restaurant outside of Thailand itself, and this is especially true for those of us who satisfy the urge for Thai flavors by cooking authentic Thai at home. So it’s with great fanfare that we unveil a truly outstanding Thai restaurant in London—hell, we’ll just say the best Thai restaurant in London. 101 Thai Kitchen on King Street in Chiswick is a casual pink-and-yellow painted space (the favorite colors of the Thai monarchs) with portraits of their majesties on the walls and—check one!— that ultimate sign of authenticity in a Thai restaurant, a flat-screen TV tuned to a Thai channel. MORE
Paris update: New Paris gastro-tapas and new boutique hotel, Le Dauphin (restaurant) and Hotel Amour
| Feb 7, 2011
GDBK is supposed to be like "your in-the-know friend who just got back from... " and, in fact, this week a discerning friend of ours—from hiptopia Portland, Oregan, no less—crashed with us in New York on his way back from Paris. He highly recommended a cheap, hideaway new hotel in the 11th Arrondissement, and a white-hot new restaurant that's the casual, tapas branch of an all-star Paris eatery called Chateaubriand. (Photo above is of the ground-floor restaurant at the hotel, also worthy of mention.) MORE
Disturbingly delightful: Cameroon offers monkeys, mountains, art and champagne
| Jan 18, 2011
Julie Isabelle, 32, moved to Douala, Cameroon from Quebec four years ago. In this Q&A, the mother of four shares her insights on what adventurous travelers can expect to find in Douala in 2011. VGDBK: What should travelers know about Douala, Cameroon? Don't freak at the airport. It only gets better after that. VGDBK: How did you celebrate the New Year in Douala? My husband, Sylvain, and I rented our friend’s beach villa at Kribi (a three hour drive from Douala). We celebrated the New Year on the beach with our kids and friends, eating foie gras and drinking champagne—this is soo French. MORE
