Shefali Anand, Wall Street Journal, writes about Brattleboro, Vermont’s naked city. What started this bout of nakidity apparently was some boys went skinnydipping at a pond outside the town and then decided to go back to town, same as they were. The epidemic caught on, and as you can see in the pic, even attracted PETA, whose love for animals is equalled only by their love of nakedness. Photo courtesy & copyrights - Wall Street Journal

In fact, until just a few months ago, public nudity was perfectly legal here — as it still is in many Vermont towns. However, over the past two years, Brattleboro, pop. 12,000, has experienced sporadic outbreaks of naked bicycling, naked hula-hooping, and nakedness in general. That, in turn, triggered a period of civic navel-gazing, both literally and figuratively.

Short while back, I wrote about Nakations (naked vacations) becoming popular at resorts across the country. Well, now they tell me…That info was outdated. You don’t need a resort. You just need to catch a flight to Vermont.

LAT has an article which lists the pros and cons of development hitting Borrego Springs, CA.

Like Palm Springs, Twentynine Palms and Joshua Tree, this desert retreat lies a few hours’ drive from Los Angeles, cradled by dry, dramatic mountains. But Borrego is a sort of desert island: 70 square miles of unincorporated town (no chain stores or restaurants), surrounded by the 935 square miles of Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, the biggest state park in California. Perlman and his investment partners have bought up thousands of acres here since 2004… In December, his company GH Capital added the town’s marquee hotel, the Casa del Zorro. He’s spent close to $45 million so far — but he has also closed down one of the town’s two grocery stores and inadvertently bulldozed a nearly 2-mile path through Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. - In Borrego Springs, development dreams — and pitfalls, Christopher Reynolds, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer  May 19, 2008

Who cares about a bunch of lizards and some wildflowers you can’t even name and an almost extinct desert ecosystem anyway? I say raze the entire state park and build a Wal-Mart and some amusement parks there. Call some PETA activists and we can all party till the cows come home. Or global warming makes the Pacific rise up and swallow the desert.

Next up on the list, Chris Welch, Sun Times, writes about the joys of slow vacations aka slowcations. Point being, he says, to enjoy a vacation until you feel satiated and not in need of another holiday as soon as you return from one.

The idea that fast isn’t best has now crept into other arenas: Slow design, slow sex and slow cities have their own movements. “Slow travel refers to traveling at a pace that allows the traveler to fully appreciate the place he or she has traveled to,” said Geir Berthelsen, a Norwegian activist who started the World Institute of Slowness in 1999. The idea is “to relax more and not return after a vacation feeling like we need another.” To that end, slow travelers prefer rental housing to hotels, walking or biking to cars, and cars or trains over airplanes. They try to immerse themselves in one place rather than pursuing multiple stamps for their passports. - Chris Welch, Chicago Sun Times, May 18, 2008

That I can relate to. I mean, when you’re on a Florida vacation, there’s so many things to do in Miami, how can you pull up the tent and move to Fort Lauderdale? My idea of a slow travel is to land up at a place, visit every restaurant in town, eat everything in sight and get on first name basis with every barkeep within a 100 miles. And of course, you amble into the odd museum or two when you want to walk off an especially heavy meal.

Posted on May 19th, 2008 by PLing
Filed under: Travel News