Mother Nature's Son.

When I was a kid, my family started taking annual vacations Out West, this being my father's preferred part of the planet in exactly the same way as Europe eventually became mine.

Yes, there are photographs. When I finish digitizing the last 35 years, maybe I can get to them. 

Rog Sr. was an outdoorsman at heart, and the point of our journeys was to avoid spending any more time than necessary in cities -- of which there were quite few in the Dakotas and Montana, anyway.

The first westward extravaganza came in 1969, when I was nine years old. The secondary motivation for making these trips was my father's desire to reconnect with a few World War II buddies; one was close to Denver, another near Laramie in Wyoming. For some reason we were in Utah for the moon landing, and watched it on a motel room television.

As a result of these holidays, America's national park system became an obsession with me, as well as a peek into the way my brain works, or doesn't.

Nature in the abstract was all well and good with me, at least from a distance, and I enjoyed walking through the fields and woods in pre-subdivided Georgetown. The same was true of places like Yellowstone and Glacier parks, but what grabbed me at the time was the very concept of a national park, the manner of its adfarm-near-me/">ministration, and the way the concept was presented to visitors.

Specifically, I became aware that each national park unit we entered would have someone on duty to hand us a small interpretive brochure at the visitor's center, with a map and basic information.

These became a collector's item for me. Back home, I'd write letters to the various parks throughout the country, asking them to please send me the official government printing office pamphlet, as well as other information. I'd check out library books about the national park system and make lists of the various formats (national monuments, national historic sites, etc).

I was ten, maybe eleven.

At some point later, the National Park Service changed the design, and I was aghast at this shameless assault on tradition. Not only that, but the park offices began asking for stamped, self-addressed envelopes.

Blasphemy!

And yet the bug still managed to bite, even in high school. Grudgingly, when I was in junior high school, my father had agreed to organize trips around visits to the designated battlefields and historic sites pertaining to the American Civil War.

The topic mildly interested him, but the problem was that these places (a) were not located Out West in God's Country, and (b) tended to be too near major cities. But we managed somehow, and as a Civil War buff, I was delighted.

(It occurs to me that my mother was a part of all this, naturally, and it is a measure of her sphinx-like demeanor throughout her life that I couldn't begin to tell you what her opinion was about any of it. She literally never expressed a preference.) 

Anyway, I decided to become a park ranger, although not because the natural world drew me to this career choice. I merely wanted to be the guy in the uniform at the visitor's center, giving the talks about what the site meant, especially the stories about its history.

As you might imagine, eventually it dawned on me that history itself was the lure, and this had little to do with natural parks in any specific sense.
Consequently, my university major was philosophy; however, this will have to be another story for another time.

Until then, here's every U.S. National Park ranked.

A little-known monument in Fairview Cemetery.

You won't find it in the tourist guides -- do we HAVE tourists? -- but it's one of Fairview Cemetery's most compelling monuments, called the Memorial to the Victims of Inept Urban Forestry.

ON THE AVENUES: Food is my friend, but please, I'm no foodie.

What is a “foodie,” anyway, other than a concept I’ve never thought applied to me in the slightest?

According to Merriam-Webster, a foodie is “a person having an avid interest in the latest food fads.”

Cambridge Dictionary describes a foodie as “a person who loves food and is very interested in different types of food.”

And, at Wikipedia, it’s “a person who has an ardent or refined interest in food and who eats food not only out of hunger but due to their interest or hobby.”

These definitions surely cover the waterfront, which by no great coincidence tends to be the place closest to the boats, and consequently where the freshest fish are to be found. Of course, as the late Anthony Bourdain taught us so many years ago, there are enduringly solid reasons for avoiding theoretically fresh seafood in restaurants in Keokuk on Monday.

Why? Read his book Kitchen Confidential and find out, but just because I remember this passage after two decades, it doesn’t necessarily make me a “foodie.”

In the increasingly remote days of my youth, certain of the elderly wits around town used to say “I don’t eat to live – I live to eat,” and while this statement encapsulates my own point of view, chronologically as well as measured by a current poundage in the neighborhood of 265, the word “foodie” has never seemed proper as a descriptor.

Where did this whole foodie business start, anyway? I turn to The Guardian for answers.

People with an overweening interest in food have been calling themselves "foodies" since a Harper's & Queen article entitled "Cuisine Poseur" in 1982, one of whose editors then co-wrote the semi-satirical The Official Foodie Handbook of 1984. The OED's very first citation of "foodie" is from 1980, an oozing New York magazine celebration of the mistress of a Parisian restaurant and her "devotees, serious foodies".

"Foodie" has now pretty much everywhere replaced "gourmet", perhaps because the latter more strongly evokes privilege and a snobbish claim to uncommon sensory discrimination – even though those qualities are rampant among the "foodies" themselves. The word "foodie", it is true, lays claim to a kind of cloying, infantile cuteness which is in a way appropriate to its subject; but one should not allow them the rhetorical claim of harmless innocence implied. The Official Foodie Handbook spoke of the "foodism" worldview; I propose to call its adherents foodists.

The term "foodist" is actually much older, used from the late 19th century for hucksters selling fad diets (which is quite apt); and as late as 1987 one New York Times writer proposed it semi-seriously as a positive description, to replace the unlovely "gastronaut": "In the tradition of nudist, philanthropist and Buddhist, may I suggest 'foodist', one who is enthusiastic about good eating?" The writer's joking offer of "nudist" as an analogy is telling. I like "foodist" precisely for its taint of an -ism. Like a racist or a sexist, a foodist operates under the prejudices of a governing ideology, viewing the whole world through the grease-smeared lenses of a militant eater.

Foodie, foodist; gourmets, gourmands and gastronauts. Epicures. It all reeks of self-satire. Can’t we just be eaters? After all, when it comes to drinking beer, the simplest and least annoying term of reference remains “beer drinker.”

---

Granted, some people insist on calling me a beer “expert,” but I’m painfully aware of how much I don’t know about the topic in spite of reveling in it for the past 40 years.

The term “beer geek” is too pimply adolescent for me (that “cloying, infantile cuteness” again), and “beer snob” frankly sounds like a pejorative. “Connoisseur” and “aficionado” both strike me as pretentious.

Before the television series Seinfeld became a stale and anachronistic cobwebbed cultural artifact, there were utter morons who preferred the term “beer Nazi.” I’m down with gazpacho, but the comedian’s “soup Nazi” humor didn’t improve a gutter word, one already objectionable by its own considerable historical demerits.

But yes, when I’m not drinking lots of beer, I’m probably eating all sorts of food. True, I’ve been in the food service business for the better part of 30 years. Indisputably, I’m currently being paid to write about food.

So, what the hell am I, apart from consistently hungry?

My personal preference remains “trencherman,” or one possessing a hearty appetite and a disdain for portion control. My pal Graham tagged me a “trencherman” when we road-tripped to the Pacific Coast in 2006 and I kept finishing his leftovers after polishing off my own platters.

Trencherman? I resemble that remark.

---

Happily, and quite apart from restaurant meals, cooking appeals to me. I listened just enough to the lessons of my high school home economics teacher (her name was “mom” and she taught at home, too) to feel comfortable enough in the kitchen.

There’s nothing intuitive about it. I follow recipes, measure everything and seldom improvise, although since the advent of COVID-19, having prepared more home-cooked meals during the past two months than ever before, I’m getting better using the ingredients I have available, and making substitutions when necessary.

Victory gardening doesn’t interest me much, although I’ve planted tomatoes out in the yard the past few years. It isn’t clear whether any of them will get in the ground in 2020, because I don’t feel much like going out and battling the unmasked covidiocracy at the nursery in order to buy tomato plants.

Trencherman and amateur cook? Sure, just leave “foodie” out of it.

Perhaps my biggest beef with the word “foodie” is that it always sounds faddish to me, and as a contrarian, chasing trends is a form of exercise that always alarms and perturbs.

Granted, self-identification as a “foodie” can be good-natured and self-deprecatory, but just as often, out there in Narcissism Land, it devolves into a secret club with self-contained language, passwords, knowing winks and nods, and various efforts to impress.

Allow me to shrug. I’ve never watched the Food Network, and shows like Top Chef, Chopped, Bizarre Foods or anything with some guy called Fieri aren’t going to be streaming from my device any time soon.

Food interests me; very much, in fact.

Sensationalizing and trivializing it, not so much. As with beer and pubs, all of my interests collide during a meal: history, sociology, geography and the culture of it.

Whatever latent interests about food and cooking were lurking inside me during  the early 1980s became overt following my first trip to Europe. Once I’d traveled overseas, there was a problem; I’d become enamored of menu items from the various cuisines, and Louisville had far fewer ethnic eateries then as now. The only solution was to learn how to replicate them as best I could with my own kitchen as base.

Hence one of the most influential books of my life, Betty Crocker’s International Cookbook (1980 edition). My friend Bob discovered it. I had found a few Greek and Russian recipes at the library prior to the trip in 1985, learning that venison was a fine stand-in for lamb in moussaka, and borscht wasn’t necessarily thin or cold; make it Ukrainian and it could feed legions.

It was a start.

The photocopied recipes accumulated: Segedínský guláš (pork and sauerkraut goulash), pasta puttanesca, herring salad, paella, steak and kidney pie, gołąbki (stuffed cabbage rolls), colcannon, cassoulet, risotto – and the list goes on and on. Each trip yielded a new eating experience, to be attempted once I was back home.

In Europe, these foods generally had been consumed in small family restaurants (and the occasional huge beer hall), and accompanied by local beer, wine and slivovitz. Those beverages weren’t common back then, but they or their stylistic equivalents could be found with a little effort. I never mastered any of it, just improved sufficiently to mark time, keeping alive the dream of the next journey.

And here’s the rub: The majority of European meals and libations were nothing fancy. They were cooked by ordinary people, for ordinary people, and derived from regional ingredients. To my mind, these recipes were synonymous with national and ethnic heritages, nourishing me and also mirroring all the things I was trying to learn by traveling in Europe to begin with. They were inexorably tied together, bound into an immersive experience.

(There are few extant photos of food from my early European trips. Believe it or not, there was a time when folks were regarded as absolutely crazy for photographing their meals in public. The peer pressure got to me, although I wish it hadn’t. I regret this.)

Just tonight, that dog-eared international cookbook once again came off the shelf. On hand were a half-bag of noodles, onions, eggs, and some ham in the fridge that was about to go south. I remembered an Austrian recipe for ham and noodle casserole (Schinkennudeln) – with sour cream, butter, caraway seeds, black pepper and a pinch of smoked paprika.

We had a bag of frozen peas and a bottle of Italian white table wine. All that was missing was a nice crusty loaf, but you can’t always have everything.

I’m no foodie. It was a wonderful meal.

To be honest, I’d have preferred being in Salzburg. Sadly, there'll be many more such meals prepared at home before Europe comes around again. All I can do is keep eating.

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Recent columns:

May 7: ON THE AVENUES: COVID tolls for thee -- whatever, so hurry and get your ass back into this seat.

April 30: ON THE AVENUES: A week that was wooden like Pinocchio and dry as an unused water park or an unfilled glass.

April 23: ON THE AVENUES: Hemingway in a time of mercifully silent thunder.

April 16: ON THE AVENUES: Bunker mentalities, bunker abnormalities; bunker dreams, bunker screams.

52 Places to Go in 2020? Only 52?

I just scrolled through the New York Times' 52 Places to Go in 2020, including Japan, Bolivia, Kenya and Greenland, in addition to a few European standbys (Paris; Krakow; Transylvania; Asturias).

Maybe I'm tired; I know I'm older than I used to be, but I wasn't ready to be overwhelmed by a pervasive melancholy. Since I was a little kid teaching myself to read by looking at encyclopedias, I've seen photos of faraway places and wanted to go there. My entire adult life has been calculated to scratch the Europe itch.

People always want to know what you do, as though one's job corresponds with what he or she is as a human. At heart, whether or not I've ever made money from them, I'm a writer, a traveler and a beer drinker.

Put those on my tombstone.

Time marches on, and the opportunities gradually atrophy. I've been very fortunate; I've also made a lot of my own breaks, and have marvelous memories galore. However, the odds are good that the returns will diminish from here; there'll be fewer opportunities to roam as age and decrepitude intrude.

If we could leave tomorrow and spend a month in Sicily ...

 

For any such place one might miss, there are dozens awaiting discovery.

Haarlem.

The cities profiled below, each of which has had issues with over-tourism, are Amsterdam, Barcelona, Florence and Prague. I've never been to Barcelona. It's been 14 years since my last visit to Prague, and 33 for Florence.

Amsterdam is an interesting case for me. We've been through Schiphol airport so many times I've lost count, but it's been at least 15 years since I've set foot in the city itself. The primary reason for this is the sheer serendipity of having friends in Haarlem, which is a lovely city of 232,000 people just 15 miles from Amsterdam.

Apart from the contents of certain famous museums, there's really nothing to be missed in Amsterdam by someone choosing to spend time instead in Haarlem. A day trip to Amsterdam to visit those museums can be facilitated by frequent and inexpensive public transportation. In addition, these trains and buses run the opposite direction to the North Sea beaches at Zandvoort.

I'll always adore Prague, but if an opportunity comes to return to Czech Republic, there are smaller cities I'd rather explore, like Brno or Olomouc. In recent years, we've enjoyed wonderful stays in Trieste and Catania (Sicily), Italian cities having nowhere the tourist traffic of Florence. Someday, Spain once more; however, having learned from our fine time in Porto (neighboring Portugal) rather than Lisbon, I doubt Barcelona would be on the itinerary.

For any such place one might miss, there are dozens awaiting discovery.

Overtourism in Europe's historic cities sparks backlash, by Jon Henley and Guardian correspondents

Angry protests from residents in popular areas force city hall officials to take action

Across Europe, historic cities are buckling. Mass tourism, encouraged by cash-hungry councils after the 2008 crash and fuelled by the explosion of cheap flights and online room rentals, has become a monster. The backlash, however, has begun ...

TRAVEL: An alternative "hotlist" of ethical and sustainable travel destinations.

Portugal (from the article).

A view of Lake Bled in Slovenia leads this article at The Guardian: "Our pick of 20 places to visit in 2020 celebrates inspiring conservation and community projects that are making a difference to people and the planet."

It's nice to know that for once, we were ever so slightly ahead of the curve when selecting destinations. Speaking personally, just about every place mentioned in this excellent read intrigues me. I've been to several of the choices in Europe, including Copenhagen, Vienna, Rotterdam, Finland, Romania and Portugal.

As always, the only problem is financing the journeys. Here's the link:

Where to go on holiday in 2020: the alternative hotlist (various writers)

Big, big world out there: Isn't one remedy for overtourism to visit neglected places with fewer tourists?

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference
-- Robert Frost

The photo was taken on the Charles Bridge in Prague one afternoon in June of 1989, and of course at the time Czechoslovakia was "behind" the Iron Curtain (from our vantage point, at least), and nowhere close to the level of accessibility the city experiences today.

It's been too long since I've been to Prague, but based on the photos I see today and the testimony of recent visitors, you'd be compelled to visit the bridge by the light of the moon just before dawn to find it as emptied of people as in this photo. Most of the people pictured here were natives, walking back and forth, to and from places important to them in their own lives.

Overtourism is a thing. Maybe it always was, but we seem to have missed it for the most part these past few years. Our destinations have included Tallinn, Estonia; Mechelen and Poperinge, Belgium; Catania (Sicily) and Valletta (Malta); Porto, Portugal and Gdansk, Poland. There have been tourists in these places, though not a ridiculous selfie-ridden scrum, and part of the reason for this might be our habit of off-season travel in addition to choosing secondary locales.

To me, they're just as exciting as the places you're "supposed" to go.

Haarlem, Netherlands is only a few minutes from Amsterdam. To be in Haarlem, which is a large city in its own right, is to enjoy everything wonderful about the Dutch way of life without stumbling over tourists in the fashion of Amsterdam. Yes, there are museums and sights in Amsterdam that cannot be found in Haarlem, but thanks to an amazing public transportation system, they're all within easy reach from outside the larger city.

My next trip to Europe will be my 40th since 1985, so I can't say I'm not a tourist like all the rest. Just the same, the smaller cities and "lesser" attractions have come to captivate me. My advice is to vacate the beaten path and find the place that speaks to you like all the others can't.

These are the cities overtourism could threaten next, by Hannah Sampson (Washington Post)

Amsterdam, Venice, Barcelona, Paris — the poster children for overtourism are well-known. Now, 20 more cities are on alert lest they turn into the future face of the problem, according to a new report from the World Travel & Tourism Council and commercial real estate firm JLL.

The report, called “Destination 2030,” examines the tourism “readiness” of 50 destinations around the world and groups cities into five types. The “emerging performers” category includes destinations where infrastructure and tourism momentum are growing along with the pressures associated with more tourists. Those cities were Bangkok; Cape Town, South Africa; Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam; Istanbul; Jakarta, Indonesia; Mexico City; and New Delhi.

Another 13 cities — called “mature performers” — were described as having an established tourism infrastructure, strong leisure or business travel, and good positioning to manage current growth levels. “But there is a risk of future strains related to visit volume, infrastructure or activity that is testing readiness for additional growth,” the report said. It listed Auckland, New Zealand; Berlin; Dublin; Las Vegas; Lisbon; London; Los Angeles; Madrid; Miami; New York; Seoul; Seville, Spain; and Sydney in this category.

The study adds a fresh layer to the ongoing conversation over how much tourism is too much, and how both iconic and emerging destinations can cope with the world’s apparently insatiable appetite for travel.

“Over the past few years … several destinations, and cities in particular, have been criticized in the media for the under-management of travel and tourism and the stresses that visitor numbers have put on urban systems and residents,” the report said.

ON THE AVENUES: Challenges are forever, but downtown New Albany's food and drink purveyors keep on keeping on.

Last week Cox’s Hot Chicken in downtown New Albany disappeared overnight. A few days later, NABC’s Bank Street Brewhouse wound down after ten years, just as its owners had announced earlier.

Six months versus ten years; a self-described sports bar that never jelled, as opposed to an eatery/brewery/taproom unable to solve the daunting mathematics of an oversized brewing system.

In slightly differing ways both these stories were viral for NA Confidential, which is highly appreciated by the editor (that’s me). Lots of new readers came to the page, and I hope they remain.

Concurrently a bizarrely detached News and Tribune didn’t help much in clarifying these events, with most staffers apparently diverted to serve as hucksters for Abbey Road on the River occurring right behind their office in Jeffersonville (it was a fine event, by the way).

I felt bad for one of the newspaper’s newest reporters, who was forced to cite Facebook posts as sources because the business owners involved weren’t answering calls. However, at Insider Louisville old pro Kevin Gibson went deeper on the Cox’s situation.

The building is owned by Bertrand Properties LLC, and the lease is held by Matt McMahan, who opened the now-defunct Big Four Burgers restaurants. Cox’s Hot Chicken is owned by Andrew Cox.

McMahan confirmed there is another restaurant working on opening in the building, but declined to say who they are or what the concept will be.

Asked why Cox’s closed so suddenly, McMahan said only, “partnership issues.”

Or, purely typical.

The heavy metal commentator Eddie Trunk is fond of saying that somewhere around 95% of music-related disputes are about money, and this percentage probably reflects reality in the food and drink sector.

Not enough money = not much of a future.

At the same time, each of these cases is entirely unique. It’s all about location -- except when it isn’t. Prices were too high, or not high enough. Bad service and noisy ambiance, too-hard barstools, unclean bathrooms, filthy smoking areas, awful on-line ratings; the list goes on and on, with enough variables to prompt doctoral dissertations.

Concurrently an overview of social media comments, taken in aggregate, suggest that very few of us know how the restaurant business actually works or understand the multi-dimensional dynamic of a (presumably) free market.

But let’s not blame the Internet for this one. Do you think it’s a coincidence that Richard Nixon resigned at roughly the same time Burger King started saying this?

Hold the pickles, hold the lettuce. Special orders, don't upset us. All we ask is that you let us serve it your way.

Seriously?

Their way?

You want these people, barely capable of matching their own socks and who can’t bear the thought of using Arabic numerals, to believe they deserve to have “it” their way?

Egads. The decline of civilization began in 1974. The arrival of Yelp only made it worse.

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What I’ve enjoyed most these past few days are the on-line experts debating what these two recent business closings say about downtown New Albany.

They say quite a lot, although not in the way many observers intend. While not absolving our City Hall from culpability (more about that in a moment), let’s survey the food, drink and dining scene over the past year and a half.

Spoiler alert: a free-fall it ain't.

Match Cigar Bar's branch on Main Street closed, and quickly was replaced by Double Barrel. Roadrunner Kitchen came to life adjacent to Double Barrel, where Urban Bread and others used to be, then moved to Underground Station near the estimable Aladdin. Mirin subsequently replaced Roadrunner Kitchen.

Feast BBQ closed and the space was purchased by The Exchange. Comfy Cow on Market ceased to exist and was remodeled as a bar called The Earl.

Following a fire, Hitching Post underwent a complete (and notably shrewd) rebuild. Nearby, Dragon King’s Daughter’s occupied another renovated former supermarket building. La Tiendita got bigger, sank, and was replaced by El Sinaloa.

Pints&union and Longboard’s Taco & Tiki both came into being, and Quill’s vacated one space for occupancy of another. La Catrina occupied the former DKD slot facing Elm Street. Gospel Bird perished, but NA Standard will be opening there soon.

The Elks Lodge and the Red Men both continue to serve food and drink. Meanwhile no establishment downtown is using its indoor and outdoor square footage more wisely than Floyd County Brewing Company, which has come into its own as a beer and brewing destination.

The huge old department store building where La Rosita once lived, which everyone (including me) thought would be impossible to repurpose, soon will become RecBar, an entertainment venue with a kitchen of its own. At the Breakwater, Bliss Artisan recently began serving pizza and ice cream.

Then there’s Toast, Café 157, 410 Bakery and Adrienne’s; Daisy's, Lady Tron, Hugh Bir's and Brooklyn & the Butcher; Seeds & Greens, Brownie’s, Habana Blues, Hull & High Water and Bella Roma. Pride and Pastime. All of them keep regular business hours sans palpable drama.

Yes, Cox’s Hot Chicken and Bank Street Brewhouse are gone. As Gibson informs us, the former will become something else soon enough, all but assured by McMahan’s continued involvement.

Bank Street Brewhouse is available for purchase as a turnkey operation, admittedly complicated by the brewing system’s size. Judging from the calls I’ve rerouted as an ex-owner, interest definitely is there. Be reminded that Steve Resch still owns the building, and it should be obvious that he gets things done. There’ll be a new occupant.

River City Winery is a special case. Successful for nine years, it hit the skids in late 2018 – neither for lack of patronage nor the quality of the food and wine, which were excellent, but because of an ownership dispute. This one's murky.

Lastly, the Green Mouse says there may soon be a tenant for the kitchen incubator space in the rear of Destinations Booksellers -- and the long moribund Vincennes Street corridor is showing signs of revival.

Does any of this sound like a death knell?

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Agreed: there are reasons to be concerned ... but downtown is not in catastrophic retreat. Independent food service operators, whose job it is to do the math, keep filling the spaces left when a previous operator departs. Would they be doing this in the expectation of failure?

Turnover isn’t the sign of a ghost town. It’s indication of relative health in the grassroots, where capitalism occasionally remains capitalistic. Why must a socialist like me be the one to inform you that market corrections are constant and ongoing. They're happening all the time. It helps to remember that grassroots entrepreneurial capitalism tends to lack a net. It’s unforgiving, and casualties are a constant.

For local independent business owners and managers, life stays complicated. Decision-making involves numerous moving parts, deriving from the input of hundreds of key players, including workers, farmers, bankers, media, middle men, lawmakers, and of course, customers.

As such, pertaining to lifting all the downtown food and dining boats, together and as a unified growth sector of the economy, previously I’ve reiterated the need for greater cooperation between these entities in the form of a completed restaurant association.

Rather than repeat these arguments, you can read the post here: ON THE AVENUES: Necessity was the mother of NARBA, a food and drink invention in need of re-animation.

Wait – what was that?

"NEVER MIND, DOWNTOWN IS IMPOSSIBLE BECAUSE OMIGOD THE PARKING IS HORRIBLE."

That’s plain stupid, but obviously certain preconditions have quantifiable influence, including wharehousing one's car, the economic climate as a whole, today’s snow storm, tomorrow’s heat wave, who we are as a city, and where we want to be.

By the way, we’re having an election in November.

Of course, the state of infrastructure matters much: sewers, the power grid, water, garbage, policing and ordinance enforcement. Transportation concerns exist beyond coddling your ride: shall we remain 100% car-centric, or are there multi-modal mobility options?

Jeff Speck thought so, but Jeff Gahan apparently doesn’t. Consequently a huge opportunity was squandered in 2017.

To me, job one is encouraging density in downtown residency, not by bribing huge developers to pursue one or two showpiece projects, but by providing fair incentives for two-dozen smaller ones.

The more people living within walking and biking distance of historic downtown business district, the better the business climate, and the speedier the shift to balanced offerings; as Bluegill has been asking forever, how far must one walk from his or her home NOT to drink craft-brewed pastry stouts or eat Peruvian street food, but just buy a damn roll of toilet paper?

Still, my conclusion is that one good way to assure a future for your favorite downtown eatery or watering hole is to encourage residential infill. Several acres of downtown real estate have been scraped clean of buildings and now sit, coated with rain-deflecting asphalt, to be used only on widely scattered occasions as special event parking lots.

Until people are living downtown in bricks and mortar rising from the current unproductive barrenness, we’ll continue chasing our tails.

I’ve also come to realize that in spite of the advantages of having a combined Clark and Floyd County tourism bureau, which include a fine staff and useful economies of scale, the city of New Albany needs to devote time and resources to itself, for itself – and by this I’m NOT talking about the blind man’s bluff approach of billboards and advertisements currently emitted by the city, which generally serve as mayoral campaign blurbs more than “Come to Squalidity City” enticements.

To put it bluntly, outsiders contemplating where to spend their money simply don’t give a flying fug who currently serves as mayor, whether it's Gahan, Real or the ghost of Erni. Rather, they’re looking for reasons to come check out the city.

Can we please begin providing them with these reasons, and not settling for North Korean-sized images of our own Dear Leader?

Our combined tourist bureau would be even more conducive to us with a visitor center presence in Floyd County, preferably downtown New Albany. I’m told this is something that has been considered by SoIn. Which candidate for mayor will work with them to make this happen?

Finally, we need to be doing whatever we can to promote local independent businesses.

When it comes to the city’s typical economic development expenditures and abatements, it cannot be denied that the bigger the subsidy, the more likely it is being deployed to support chains and far flung corporate empires that drain cash from the local economy every single day.

Summit Springs is the most purely grotesque current example, an inexcusable and atrocious 100% car-centric environmental blotch, set to be stacked with national franchises offering low-income jobs to workers who can’t find affordable housing amid Gahan’s mantra of luxury-first.

Will the people staying in those hotel rooms even know there’s a classic downtown setting less than a mile away, or will they hop back into their cars and head to Louisville -- or Veteran's Parkway?

Yes, we have issues like these, and they need to be addressed.

No, the sky’s not falling because two independent small businesses closed.

And: Death to Burger King and all the rest of the chains.

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Recent columns:

May 21: ON THE AVENUES: "Pints&union, where the classic beer hits keep right on pouring."

May 14: ON THE AVENUES: Where do we go from here?

May 6: ON THE AVENUES REWOUND: Ghosts within these stones, defiance in these bones (2018).

May 5: ON THE AVENUES REWOUND: Our great and noble leader soon will be going away, so let's break out the țuică and make a joyful noise.

Complete compendium of 2018 travelogues: Porto, Gdansk and Munich.

Diana and I are exceedingly fortunate to have been able to visit Europe three times in 2018. We're very well matched as travel partners, and it's a pure joy. For years I refused to take a phone with me when traveling, but eventually relented, and since 2016 we've been "facebooking" our trips.

Your comments are much appreciated by both of us, and because so many of you have told me that you enjoy the photos, I've taken to arranging them at the blog in the form of travelogues.

Following are the links to our 2018 trips; Munich and Gdansk are in the form of links to "search by label," so just click and scroll. Porto was arranged earlier with all links in one place. Each trip also was accompanied by a prelude of articles of historical and topical interest pertaining to our destination.

I hope you enjoy all these articles, and thanks for reading.

Munich, Germany (and a side trip to Bamberg)
Bavarian Christmas Interlude 2018
Prelude: Munich Tales 2018

Gdansk, Poland
Gdansk Pilgrimage 2018
Prelude: Eight Days of Gdansk

I did it a bit differently last spring.

Porto, Portugal (and a side trip to Madeira)

Your courtesy compendium of links to the "Portugal Trip 2018" and "Focus on Portugal 2018" series.

Bavarian Christmas Interlude 2018, Monday: 39 up, 39 down. What's next?

Diana and I visited Bavaria (Munich and Bamberg) just before Christmas. Prior to departure, there was a series entitled Munich Tales 2018. This is the last of seven installments summarizing what we did, saw, ate and drank. They're being back-dated to the day we were there.

Previously: Cool Paulaner and some delicious döner kebap.

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A few random thoughts to close this series ...

On Monday morning we rose, gathered our belongings and made the short walk to the Hauptbahnhof, where the automated machine disgorged two tickets for the S-Bahn to the airport. Departure rituals are hard, and I always feel conflicting emotions when it comes time to leave Europe and return home.

Our short trip to Munich in December was the 39th visit to Europe for me, with the first one occurring in 1985. That's easily north of $150,000 invested on a return of absolutely nothing  -- apart from memories and experience, which are priceless. I have no regrets whatever.

Being in Munich for the first time in 1985 had lots more to do with drinking, as opposed to thinking. In those days most of what we assumed about planetary beer culture revolved around a dead certainty that America had been Bavaria at one time in terms of beer & bratwurst, then somehow lost its mojo after Prohibition amid a sea of lightweight swill and fast food chains.

Of course, the 33 years of my life elapsing since then have been devoted to finally grasping that we always had been guilty of oversimplification. Germans and other immigrants came to America and kept some of their traditions intact, but in a metaphysical sense they were no longer German (or Vietnamese, or Indian). They were American, and being American was something different.

Returning to Munich in 2018 was a chance to see how those beer traditions were holding up there -- not in America. The most honest answer is they are, except when they're not. There'll probably come a time when I'll step into a Munich beer hall and (a) see televised sports, (b) order an India Pale Ale, and (c) eat Buffalo wings. I hope not, but it's likely.

And when it happens, I'll probably cry. They won't be tears of joy.

Happily we're not there yet, and ultimately I don't know what any of it means. I'm grateful that we had the chance to go to Munich, especially during the Christmas season, because it seems less commercialized than the way we do it -- outdoor markets notwithstanding, and anyway, those markets are about drinking and socializing as much as anything else.

Our sole evening in Bamberg served to reinforce a truth of which I've been aware for quite some time: If either of us ever won the lottery, or inherited vast wealth, there'd be a cloud of dust from which we'd emerge in Bamberg to stay.

Although Diana might want to go to the United Kingdom, and that's fine; naturally Belgium and Netherlands would be marvelous, and there's always Copenhagen. But it's surely too late for me to be an expatriate, and I'm not sure what I think of this.

The lead-in selfie was taken at the Murphy's theme pub inside Schiphol (Amsterdam), where we changed for the flight home to Detroit. Come to think of it, Ireland would be good for this expatriate-minded Nawbanian, too.

How a "desire for the perfect Instagram snap" leads to over-tourism.

No one was here in 1985.

There are multiple issues impacting this topic, and below there's an excellent overview.

Interestingly, my own bucket list has long since shifted from the Parthenon and Hofbrauhaus to the Archduke Franz Ferdinand's ancestral estate in the countryside and an artisan brewery somewhere out the back forty.

Part of this is because I covered the "biggies" long ago. More importantly, as experiences multiplied, so did epiphanies about what really matters to me.

From the start, I was a lone wolf traveler, perfectly content to muck around on my own rather than board the tour bus. Particularly for a naturally shy person like me (don't confuse my learned behavior with a default mindset), this sort of solo wandering can lead to a degree of voyeurism; you kick back and just watch life pass by.

Sometimes you can learn a lot this way.

Lately the missus and I have been choosing more lightly trod destinations like Tallin, Catania, Porto, Poperinge, Mechelen and even Haarlem; the latter is a few minutes from bursting-at-the-seams Amsterdam, and foreigners seem not to go there. There's something to do and to learn almost anywhere you go.

It helps to have food and alcohol readily available. 

Where does Gdansk, Poland fit into all this? We're about to find out.

Wish you weren’t here: The backlash against overtourism (The Economist)

More people are travelling, and many are visiting the same places

 ... The growing backlash against tourism has coincided with extraordinary growth in visitor numbers. According to the World Tourism Organisation, an agency of the United Nations, the number of international visitors making overnight stays grew to 1.3bn in 2017. That is twice the number in 2000, and more than four times the level in 1980. Even so, the rise in numbers is not the real problem, says Alex Dichter of McKinsey. “People in 99% of countries in the world are crying out for more, not fewer, tourists,” he explains. The problem is that these extra tourists are converging on the same places.

This has surprised many in the travel industry. The spread of the internet was meant to disperse tourists by making less well-known places easier to find. Why has the opposite happened? Analysts at Skift, a travel website, attribute it to the rise of “bucket lists”. Popularised by a film of the same name in 2007, which featured a “list of things to do before I kick the bucket”, these internet lists direct tourists to the same “must see” places. The desire for the perfect Instagram snap has a similar result.

Mr Dichter also points to several other reasons for the shift. When flag carriers ran air travel as a cartel, flights cost a fortune—over £200 ($230) for the 300-mile jaunt between London and Dublin in the mid-1980s, for instance. But low-cost carriers like Ryanair (whose average fare was €40, or $46, last year) have transformed the industry. The rise of services like Airbnb, that allow locals to rent their homes to visitors, means that a place’s capacity for overnight stays is no longer limited by the number of hotel rooms.

Partly as a result, the share of tourists who are making their first trips has soared. Newbies often want to visit famous landmarks. In Amsterdam almost all first-time visitors head for the Van Gogh museum and Anne Frank’s house, says Geerte Udo of its tourist authority. Meanwhile tourists from China and India often dislike tanning and therefore skip beach destinations, adding to the crowds in a handful of popular cities.

Such overcrowding brings costs, which are borne by local residents ...

CTA means two very different things to me, but for now, it's a Certified Tourism Ambassador.

Actually the CTA test I took yesterday had only 28 questions -- and anytime I hear the initials CTA, I always think of Chicago's debut album.

But we need a clip with Terry Kath, in which we find the basic rock and roll combo functioning quite effectively without those defining horns. 

Yesterday I went to the Radisson, had a training and became a Certified Tourism Ambassador.

Investing In Your Destination's People Infrastructure

The Certified Tourism AmbassadorTM (CTA) program is industry-recognized certification that aligns the destination's people infrastructure ─ its stakeholder businesses and front-line ─ to increase tourism by Enhancing the Visitor ExperienceTM. With over 17,000 current CTAs, the program drives visitor spending through in-depth knowledge of the destination 'product'; gives destinations a competitive advantage; and ensures consistent delivery of a positive destination brand experience. In today's consumer-driven world, savvy destinations realize the importance of CTA

Cutting through the verbiage, I found it a very useful training, and it makes the sort of points everyone in the hospitality business should be practicing, anyway: know the area, be able to answer questions and direct folks to resources, think a bit about how one frames thoughts when speaking, and so on.

Weird New Albania pub crawls ... coming soon.