A Respite from Chaos - and Clothing - in Sandy Hook, NJ

Speeding toward Sandy Hook aboard the ferry

"If you're going to North Beach or Gunnison Beach, take the bus to the right. Gunnison is clothing optional."

The park ranger repeats this every few seconds to the stream of beach-goers filing off the Seastreak ferry. It's a mantra that heralds summertime, the promise of a lazy day on white sands without a tourist in sight. A mere 45 minutes ago, we were in the thick of midtown Manhattan, waiting to board. Now, having been whisked down the east river and then out into New York harbor and beyond, the city is a hazy silhouette 20 miles away.

"Gunnison's a nude beach, you know?" a young guy behind me says. His friends whisper and laugh nervously. They're all wearing board shorts. I hazard a guess that they're staying on the bus to North.

We board the yellow school bus - "Shamrock Stage Coach" is emblazoned on the side. I haven't looked up the reasoning behind that and I've decided I'm fine with not knowing - this is a place that invites a little bit of mystery. It's a 5-minute ride over to the beach parking lot and a short walk to the sand from there.

Sandy Hook as seen from the air (Wikipedia)

The ride takes us past a variety of immaculately preserved buildings and protected nature. Owned by the federal government as a unit of the Gateway National Recreation Area, the Sandy Hook barrier split is home to several points of interest - a lighthouse, a science and technology academy, and Fort Hancock, a former military base. One end of the beach we're going to, Gunnison, is roped off - a breeding ground for the threatened piping plover bird.

The significance of Sandy Hook as a regional beach destination away from the crowds of Coney Island and the Rockaways goes back to the mid-1970s, when Fort Hancock was decommissioned. Gunnison was where the unit men skinny-dipped, and it was opened to the public shortly thereafter. It is the only nude beach in New Jersey.

When exactly Gunnison became a major queer beach, as well, is unclear - perhaps it always was. While there are plenty of straight couples and families with children who journey to Sandy Hook, groups of gay men make up most, but not all, of the nude section at Gunnison. As the bus empties out and we walk past the restrooms, outdoor showers, and a truck serving "liquid nitrogen-cooled ice cream," all sound gradually gives way to the crashing waves. A blue mesh walkway eventually ends on open sand, and we're on the beach.

As PG a photo as can be taken - umbrellas in the distance

There's something about a nude beach that serves as the ultimate ice-breaker. Whether there with two friends, seven, or just by yourself, you will almost assuredly meet people. It's a relaxed, jovial environment that recalls the sepia-toned snapshots of Fire Island in the 1960s and 70s. Many people like to bemoan that gay socializing has gone online or lives primarily at drug-fueled parties and cliquish clubs - I don't endorse this viewpoint, but you won't be able to deny that Gunnison removes a layer of unspoken pretension as well as fabric.

The most convenient way to experience Gunnison for yourself, if you live in NYC, is to take the ferry and shuttle buses. Departures are from the East 35th street pier and Pier 11 at Wall Street. Details on pricing and scheduling are on the Seastreak site. Keep in mind that the ferry runs year-round and the beach is officially open from April 1st to October 31st, so you are not limited to the Memorial Day - Labor Day timeframe.

If you're coming from anywhere else, there are hotels in Highlands, the nearest municipality, located right where Sandy Hook joins mainland New Jersey. You can also drive and park at the beach, but spaces fill up very early on nice weekends, so make a long day of it.

After hours of day drinking (legal on federal land!), sun tanning, and laughter, it's time to get back to the shuttle buses and head for the ferry. A nap in the air conditioning sounds nice. We'll be back, and so will you.

Revitalization Brings New Reasons to Visit - and Live - in Downtown Kansas City

Home sweet home (photo Wikipedia)

Stop me if you've heard this one:

A once-significant city center is left behind by the outsourcing of industry, advancements in technology, and the lingering effects of White Flight. The dwindling resources for its remaining residents beckon Urban Blight, which invites its friends, High Crime and Cultural Stagnancy. The three of them party hardy while nobody else cares to join in - not even for a short stay at the cheap hotels.

But wait, there's more!

Slap me in the face if you've heard the sequel: a generation of whippersnappers raised in blasé suburbs craves the convenience, excitement, and culture of urban living. Disillusioned with the skyrocketing $tress of pursuing their dreams in the coastal cities, they look toward the downtowns they spent very little time in as children. Realizing the potential, they tell their friends about the #epic real estate deals and everybody moves in with their tech startups, artists studios, and organic coffee cooperatives. Big money developers notice the trend, smell the green, and voila, your once-dumpy downtown is suddenly hip again!

Jack Stack BBQ (photo from HagMott)

(For a complete cultural analysis of the controversial process known as gentrification, please see another blog).

Ah, Kansas City - my hometown. Land of BBQ (now served with 500% more arugula), jazz music, Boulevard Brewing Company, and once-generationally successful sports franchises. There are an awful lot of fountains and an art museum perhaps best known for its collection of Asian art and for featuring a giant sculpture of a badminton birdie on the lawn. The area was the childhood home to a dead president and sees occasional national news coverage when there's one of these in uncomfortably close proximity.

Here's the problem - you already know most of this. You learned all of this in one conversation at a cocktail party in 1992, when you met one of the city's zealously passionate residents outside of their natural habitat.

Sprint Center (photo from Populous)

They also told you that the part of the city that matters is located in Missouri, not Kansas. This is the only thing they said that you probably forgot.

The city's national invisibility is something that can and should change. While the downtown residential boom I hinted at above is a fairly new phenomenon, the situation with visitors has been changing for several years now. Projects like the Power and Light district, Sprint Center, and family-friendly additions to longtime staple Crown Center have encouraged residents of the suburbs to visit outside of working hours with greater frequency, and have left tourists delighted.

Great food, abundant cultural attractions, a newly invigorated sense of cosmopolitanism,  and - it should be noted - one of the kitschiest, most wildly-unique LGBT nightclubs in the Midwest. Are you sold on giving KC a chance, yet? Then read on.

Country Club Plaza lights - photo credit Eric Bowers

Timing your visit to plan for weather should not be priority #1 - it's among the most unpredictable in the nation. October is probably the most reliably pleasant month, but spring and autumn are both rather short and hard to gauge. Summer is uncomfortably hot and humid, but brings the greatest concentration of interesting outdoor festivals (related: there is a large Irish presence in Kansas City, and excellent concerts of traditional music are almost as easy to find as blues and jazz).

Wintertime is not recommended unless you plan on swinging by the upscale Country Club Plaza shopping district to see the holiday lights. From Thanksgiving to mid-January, this tradition - now in its 86th year - serves up a beautifully festive display all along the edges of the charming Spanish architecture.

As a tourist, the closer you stay to downtown, the better. Renting a car is a must - this is a driving town, although a long-overdue streetcar system is coming back into development after more than half a century without one. You can walk to many of the major attractions if you locate yourself central to the P&L district. Hotel rates downtown are imminently reasonable, even for four-star properties.

Interesting diversions outside of the city center are easy to find. Lending strength to the idea of an October trip, the Weston Red Barn Farm brings apple orchards and corn mazes to the sure delight of your family. During the summer, spending a weekend at the Lake of the Ozarks is popular with residents statewide. The Worlds of Fun / Oceans of Fun amusement park is open from April through Halloween and it's absolutely worth a day on your itinerary - it's also indisputably the main reason to visit the suburban northland.

Kansas City is truly an American city with an idealistic American trajectory - it was left behind, but now feels determined to come roaring back. I may have left, but it will always hold a special place in my heart, and you can't say you've experienced the heart of America until you see it for yourself.

Old Meets New in Beautiful San Juan

A stretch of the beach in the Condado district

A New Yorker visiting San Juan needs to get accustomed to "island time."

This is the phenomenon where you sit down at a restaurant and the waiter takes 20 minutes to bring you the water. It's where long nights at the club bleed into long mornings on the beach, the hands on the clock a mere suggestion as to the appropriate activity. It's where the people on the street and the cat sleeping beneath your patio brunch table find spiritual equilibrium.

Pictured: Aforementioned patio cat

It's the ability, in other words, to relax, you neurotic freak!

Also, brush off your high-school level Spanish.

Despite no need for a passport and plane tickets no more expensive than any other domestic route, San Juan still remains an underutilized and underrated escape. Overshadowed in the American imagination by the bustling glamour of Miami Beach, LA, or the spring break meccas of Texas and Mexico, San Juan fills a niche. It is accessible, yet authentic, beautiful, yet slightly troubled - not enough to make you feel unsafe, but just enough for you to realize that you're someplace real people live real lives.

In the Condado district, resort hotels and luxury shopping play to the tourist who craves the feel of Miami Beach, only with the signs in Spanish first and English second. Old San Juan is the must-see historical district complete with fine restaurants, museums, old forts, and stunning architecture dotting cobblestone streets. Much of the nightlife is centered in Condado or just to the south and west, in Miramar.

A street in Old San Juan

It's highly recommended that you think outside the box and engage with the locals to get the most out of San Juan. I traveled with a large group that stayed at the Coqui Del Mar  guest house in the Ocean Park neighborhood - this is about a 30-minute walk from the major tourist district in Condado and a cheap cab ride (negotiate price upfront!) from Old San Juan. It was a wonderful experience with a very attentive and friendly housekeeper by the name of Estee. So, if you're going with more than three people, I highly recommend checking them out!

While you walk from Ocean Park to destinations further west, be sure to drop by La B de Burro for some of the finest Mexican in the city, or Mango's Ocean Park for brunch and a breakfast cocktail to get you over the previous night's partying!

Your soaked and windswept blogger / friends on their mini-boat

An article covering everything there is to see and do in Puerto Rico is well beyond the scope of my first visit. That said, it's worth it to rent a car and get out of San Juan - most of the commonwealth is within an easy day trip, but popular destinations include the Arecibo Observatory (frequently used as a filming location), the El Yunque National Forest, and coral reef snorkeling off the coast of Fajardo. Check out Kayaking Puerto Rico for excellent tour guides and snorkeling instructors - you get to pilot your own mini-boat, which is a slightly terrifying and salt-water-soaked adventure in its own right!

Also, while I did not personally make it there on this trip, I hear the Bioluminescent Bay in Fajardo is quite the sight. Avatar fans, take note.

So, the next time that the sky is spitting ice crystals, the wind hurts your face, and you're thinking of escaping someplace sunny, give the United States' Caribbean commonwealth your consideration. You are sure to find the weather and people that will bring much-needed warmth to your frozen body and defeated spirits.

Finding Warmth in the Icelandic Winter

Reykjavik from atop Hallgrimskirja, its tallest structure

I landed at Keflavik International Airport at 7am on the day after Thanksgiving. Leaving the impeccably modern terminal, I was greeted by pitch darkness and a blustering, horizontal rain. As I followed a British family out into the gale, our shuttle bus driver shouted over his shoulder, “welcome to lovely Iceland!”

Iceland in November may not figure into most people’s bucket lists. During the endless daylight of summer, this spacious but sparsely populated country has always been a popular destination for adventurous nature lovers and photographers. In recent peak seasons, crowds of coach bus tourists have also been descending, iPhones at the ready.

However, when most people hear "winter in Iceland," they imagine scenes straight out of the Iditarod and they book a trip to St. Thomas instead. You would be putting it mildly to say Iceland is often misunderstood or simply forgotten about; you may find in a search for maps of Europe that it's not even included.

Due to Iceland’s invisibility, the question “how do you like Iceland?” has taken on inside-joke status, as natives deploy it to put foreigners on the spot. But the sentiment is sincere – Icelanders are fiercely proud of their culture and they want you to be, too.

They also have quite the objective right to be proud. By every possible measure used to gauge the success of nations, Iceland is one of the happiest, safest, greenest, and most peaceful countries to ever exist. But what does it offer the traveler, and why should you not fear the darkness of late autumn to make your trip?

Expect a lot of sights like this

Well, as the bartender at 73 - a restaurant in Reykjavik - said to me when I let slip that I planned to come back in the summer and drive around "the whole country":

"How many weeks will you set aside for this?"

She wasn't kidding.

In essence, Iceland offers you the ability to drive for hours, pull off the road, walk into an expansive field surrounded by mountains and glaciers, and wonder if you’re the first person to ever stand in that exact spot.

Want to go snorkeling between two continental plates? You can do it here.

Want to drive a modified jeep across a glacier, camp out under a crystal clear night sky and watch the aurora borealis dance, or take photographs of scenery so unspoiled that it feels downright alien? Check.

An #Instagram #Selfie at Gulfoss

How about swim in a geothermal hot spring or heated pool under the midnight sun, or, conversely, experience a 4-hour day where the sun appears just long enough to cast the soft light of morning onto the snowcapped peaks surrounding Reykjavik, before slipping away?

You get the point – the extremes of nature are Iceland’s main selling point, and it’s impossible to overstate how naturally beautiful this place is around every corner, along every road, from the edges of Reykjavik to far-flung fjords and lava fields. Pick a direction and forge your path – it’s impossible to go wrong.

The main reason you shouldn't fear an off-season trip is because the country offers so many activities unique to the time of year – you have no hope of seeing the northern lights when the sun is up at 11pm, for instance. Prices are also much lower in the off-season, sometimes shockingly low if you book well enough in advance. If you're seeking the best compromise between daylight, weather (winter is wet), and price, you might look to late September-early November or March-April.

Even if you’re not really the outdoorsy type, you’d be wasting a trip to not spend at least one day driving the Golden Circle route (or taking a tour – but I prefer driving). This popular tourist trek takes you to three of Iceland’s most notable sights, all accessible in a day-trip from Reykjavik: Thingvellir (Þingvellir) national park, a field of geysers at Haukadalur that erupt like clockwork, and the waterfall at Gullfoss.

Thingvellir National Park

The major roads all over the country are well-maintained and easy for an attentive and cautious driver to navigate in any standard vehicle, but they are usually two lanes and rather twisty at times. Thankfully, there are many places you can pull over and safely take photos. Most roads to the deep (and uninhabited) interior of the country are closed in the off-season and require a 4-wheel drive to navigate even when they’re open, but driving the major highways around the country will be enough for most – the diversity of scenery will impress, and you won’t be outside your comfort and safety zone.

This being my first trip, my home base was in Reykjavik. There is enough to do in Reykjavik to demand its own article, from world-class dining, cute shopping, striking architecture, and museums that range from the historical to the…err, unique! Try the Icelandic Phallological Museum for an educational display of 200 types of mammalian penises! I bought a wooden penis bottle-opener from the (I assume, very lucrative) gift shop.

With quality and geographical isolation comes relatively high prices for commodities – food and drink is expensive year-round, especially alcohol, so be prepared for a little sticker shock. Even fast food tends to be as pricey as a casual sit-down chain back home. Iceland uses its own version of the krona - one krona is roughly equal to an American penny, so the mental conversion math is simple  - 700 krona is about seven dollars. Visa and Mastercard are widely accepted, but don’t even bother bringing your Discover or American Express. Carry some cash.

As I settled into the rental car and prepared to drive the 45 minutes to my hotel in Reykjavik, drenched and frazzled, I wondered if maybe I'd made a terrible mistake. Ultimately, I was proven wrong, just as I knew I would be. If you buck the trend and make an off-season Icelandic escape part of your travel plans, you're sure to discover the magic for yourself.