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36 Hours - New York Times Google Map

Weekend travelers take note - Google Maps and the New York Times have partnered to create the 36 Hours - City by City guide.

 

A compilation of the Times' popular Friday Escapes pieces, the guide offers a map of America with rolliver tags indicating its archive of destinations. Articles cover offerings in less-heralded cities for travelers and smaller getaways towns, framed from Friday happy hour Friday to a late Sunday brunch.

Whether Houston hip hop or Minneapolis theater, Carolina bluegrass or Lake Tahoe trekking, the guide contains surprises worth investigating before you depart.

Downtown LA's Comeback

  Rooftop blue 
  Originally uploaded by Divwerf.

Once an urban blight, Downtown LA is now red-hot. Home to top restaurants, hotels and art centers, it's become a Hollywood success story: as A-list neighborhood.

Jay Cooke covers Downtown LA's ascendent mix for the May 2006 Business Traveler Magazine.

He traverses mixed-use neighborhoods, canvassing Chinatown galleres, the American Apparel home factory, the LA basin's last winery and the Downtown Standard Hotel rooftop bar.

A travel writer and change journalist, Jay Cooke covers California and the West for VIA, the San Francisco Examiner and the San-Francisco Bay Guardian, among others. He profiled socially responsible businesses in San Francisco for Business Traveler in September 2004.

Santa Monica Mountains

Researching California State Parks camping options for the summer, I came across another way to travel LA car-free. The National Park Service's Parklink Shuttle, inaugarated last summer, follows a loop through the Santa Monica Mountains, offering hop-on, hop-off access at signature destinations like Malibu Lagoon, Paramount Ranch, Zuma Beach and more.

With air-con, bike racks, ample cooler/stroller/board storage and scheduled half-hour pickups at ten spots along the loop, the shuttle lets you base at one part of the park, and not stress driving to other attractions. So you can camp at Malibu Creek State Park (the MASH set), grab breakfast in Malibu Village and catchwaves at Westward Beach, all via the shuttle, all for $1 per ride.

An added bonus is the Parklink has two trailhead stops along the Backbone Trail, allowing hardcore hikers and bikers more chances to scramble 13 miles one-way across the ridgetops of the Santa Monica Mountains. 

In Colorado, Pt I

In Boulder, CO for the past four days, base-camped at our friend Kelly's mid-city brick ranch house with requisite views of the Flatirons, and adjacent biking trails leading into the Open Space or bypassing cafes and coffeeshops city-wide. Tonight we'll see music, namely the Hot Buttered Rum String Band, who on tour travel via veggie oil in a biodiesel bus. Tomorrow, we're headed in our gaz-guzzling loaner Land Cruiser northwest to Streamboat Springs.

Some observations on Boulder, the Austin TX of Colorado: 1:

1. They're active here - hiking, biking, rock climbing, fly fishing, rafting, paddling, mountain climbing, orienteering, spelunking, horseback riding, roller blading, glider piloting, hula hooping, on and on. And that ain't even touching on winter yet.
2. They're moneyed, too - once more, a cool community that's pricing out its elements of individuality.
3. It's carbo-loaded - good for energy bursters, bad for diabetics, the Boulder diet is a doughy one
4. Beer's cheaper than Wine- at least, wine's cheaper at Trader Joes
5. Boulderites love recommendations - within a day, we had two weeks worth of suggestions
6. Boulderites bum that they can't stay - like the Bay Area, homebuying is a dream for the rich. Unlike the BA, and more like Austin, salaries can't compete. Unlike Austin, there are no $250,000 2-1's anymore. So for now, they keep renting, keep rafting and peddling, grasping on to the present in good hope the future won't descend anytime soon like sudden weather, and blow them into the futures of their fate.