Buy a travel book. I have a very conflicted relationship with travel books, but I usually end up with at least one on the area I’m visiting. They can be interesting and useful, but they have so many downsides:
1.They start going out-of-date almost immediately after being printed.
2. They are generally expensive.
3. You usually only want about 1/4 of the information in them.
Nevertheless, things like self-guided walking tours, suggested day trips, museum listings, and restaurant price range listings can be be very helpful. In Houston, I actually bought lots of books that each had a section or two of information that I actually wanted. I made photocopies of those sections, and then returned the books for a full refund. It’s not a super classy thing to do, but it’s also not my fault that these books are only 1/4 appealing. Another option is buying these books on discount websites like half.com and amazon.com. I’ve found some $20+ travel books for less than a dollar on these sites.
In the midst of the overwhelming abundance of mediocre travel books, I have found one absolutely perfect travel guide. Unfortunately it has a very limited number of titles, but they have more in production. They are called PLACENOTES. Here is an excerpt from their website:
PLACENOTES is dedicated to the simple proposition that good places, whether they be ones we make, or ones that surround us naturally, are central to the quality of our lives, and the well-being of our communities. Everything that we do, in fact, is somehow connected to a place. Life Takes Place.
PLACENOTES is an attempt to lead people to and teach them about the qualities of good and enduring places - places that makes us feel rooted and connected, and places that we wish to preserve and care about.
It is a very intriguingly packaged set of cards, each dedicated to a location within the city that both contributes to and communicates that city’s Spirit of Place. The decision to print each “page” on an individual card allows you to take a few cards with you (and maybe slide them into your Moleskine journal pocket, if you are feeling trendy) as opposed to having to carry around a cumbersome travel book. The front of each card has photograph of the location. The back has pertinent information (descriptions, quotes from the architect, hours, address, phone numbers, websites, maps etc.) I really encourage you to check out the website. It’s very interesting. I found PLACENOTES while looking for a travel book for Houston. Fortunately, Houston is one of their nine titles in publication. Hopefully there will be many more in the future.
placenotes.com
1 comment:
Salut Robert! Thanks for the heads up about PLACENOTES. I actually debated whether or not to preserve that arguably pretentious capitalization in my comment, but ultimately figured eh, what the hell. I'll pick some up when I finally get around to that trip to NY, if I don't happen to hit any of their other cities before that.
I'm liking the blog so far. Already has me thinking about things we tend to take for granted. Keep it coming! Have you encountered this blog called A Daily Dose of Architecture?
http://archidose.blogspot.com/
I stumbled upon it a few days ago. Haven't quite gotten to the must. check. every. day. degree of blog addiction with it yet, but it certainly seems promising.
By the by, at work right now we're still working on that... er... psychic nazis game... but the interesting thing is that right now we're working on actually creating the main city of the game. That it's a game backdrop presents us with some pretty odd constraints, but on the flip side we have some wild freedoms. There's no need to worry about disabled parking spaces, for one thing. Anyway, thought you might be interested in trading some emails over it or something since it has to do with a bizarre variety of city planning.
Cheers!
-Zack
Post a Comment