Shanghai Diaries featured in TIME magazine
It seems that when you neglect your blog for most of the month of July, major magazines take notice … and reward you for it. TIME magazine, in its Europe and Asia editions for August 8, ran a story titled “Web of Knowledge: Some of the most informative travel guides are now online,” by Graham Holliday, who writes a column called “Time Traveler.” Here’s an excerpt:
Planning a trip and need a heads-up on the hidden quarters and cool hangouts that the average visitor doesn’t get to hear about? Then leave your guidebook at home and instead let a growing army of travel bloggers show you the way. Traditional travel books often can’t compete with the vast breadth of information on the Internet — or a dedicated blogger’s constantly updated insights into his home turf or topic. So whether you’re after the best burger in Brooklyn or the hottest hotel in Berlin, simply log on. There’s a blogger waiting to help.Our favorites:
SHANGHAIDIARIES.COM This stylish blog is the work of American journalist Dan Washburn, who moved to China in 2002. Alongside Shanghai restaurant reviews and city listings, you’ll find hundreds of articles, pictures and short videos. And if that isn’t enough coverage of China’s most dynamic city, Washburn also edits online city guide shanghaiist.com.
Other sites featured in the story are Notes From The Road, Vagablogging, Derelict London and Gridskipper.
While I’m bragging, Shanghaiist, my other online project, has been getting a fair amount of international attention, as well. You can read all about that here. And, in case you didn’t already know, the real brains behind both of these operations is Frank — he’s going to own the internet one day.
Links:
Story in TIME Asia
Story in TIME Europe
UPDATE: I am quoted, somewhat randomly, in Sunday’s New York Daily News. Rumor has it I will also be making make an appearance in Monday’s paper. And my friend Liu Yi should be featured in Wednesday’s Daily News.
08.05.2005, 11:59 PM · Featured, Site News · Comments (3)
My dad, Billy Baldwin and Al Bevilacqua
WARNING: Excessive name-dropping follows
On Sunday — the same day I toured Shanghai’s Sex Expo — my dad, David E. Washburn, turned 67. He was also inducted into the Massapequa High School Hall of Fame on Sunday, in Long Island, New York, 49 years after he was a member of MHS’s first-ever graduating class. I’m still not clear what one must do to enter the Hall — it’s not just about sports, although my dad was quite the sports star in high school — but if any school requires a Hall of Fame, it is Massapequa. That place has produced more than its share of notable names. Here’s a rundown: Jerry Seinfeld, all of the Baldwin brothers, Steve Guttenberg (set to appear on Veronica Mars this fall), Peggy Noonan, Ron Kovic, Brian Setzer, Brian Baldinger, Timothy Van Patten (he’s directed episodes of Homicide: Life on the Street, Sex and the City, The Sopranos and The Wire … but he’ll always be “Salami” from The White Shadow to me) and, yes, Joey Buttafuoco and Jessica Hahn. Can we just go ahead and call that the cast of Surreal Life 6? I’ve thought and thought and thought, but I can’t come up with one famous person who graduated from Bloomsburg High School, my alma mater, and that place has been around for a lot more than 49 years. My college produced a girl who went on to appear on Survivor. Does that count?
Billy Baldwin — excuse me, William — appeared at the Hall of Fame ceremony because his mom, also a 2005 inductee, was unable to attend. My dad knew the Baldwins’ father, Alexander Baldwin, who was a social studies teacher at Massapequa. William hasn’t appeared in a movie with a name I recognize since the 1995 stinker Fair Game with Cindy Crawford. But don’t call him “Guttenberg” just yet. He’s getting great buzz for his portrayal of a hippie tennis pro in this fall’s The Squid and the Whale, a Sundance favorite written and directed by regular Wes Anderson collaborator Noah Baumbach, the man behind one of my favorite movies, Kicking and Screaming. Baldwin also has been tapped to star in a new series called Pros and Cons, created by J.J. Abrams of Alias and Lost fame. Talk about six degrees of Massapequa High School.
Anyway, as much as the Sexual Love Magic Ball amused me, I wish I could have been in Massapequa on Sunday (even though Chynna Phillips-Baldwin didn’t make the trip). Congratulations, dad. And happy birthday.
(Oh, and who is the other guy in the photo? The one on the left? None other than former Massapequa wrestling coach Al Bevilacqua, who was immortalized in the Seinfeld episode “The Race.”)
08.05.2005, 1:24 AM · Diary · Comments (4)