Still thinking about my trip abroad two weeks later. The scene opens on me, in London listening to the Kooks and flouncing down Greek Street from high culture (the theatre) to lowbrow (the dive). Jump scare to me, at home, sitting on the toilet reading that Banksy’s true identity has finally been revealed and the Atlantic current is about to collapse. The shock of re-entry.
As I’ve thought more about the way I travel now, I’ve realized that there are six key things I want out of a trip:
A ritual: As covered last week, this was a trip to a temple of football, but anywhere else it could be to a sauna.
An errand: Something I need in normal life. A trip to a stationery store to get an ink refill for the Pilot Kakuna fountain pen I use when journaling. A re-waxing of the Barbour jacket in its home country. This gets back to the idea of vacating your life at home, and simply living it elsewhere for a time (which I have written about before).
A memento: A gold chain at the open-air vintage market in Camden, or a pin to add some flair to the jacket.
A gift: For the boy, it was a giant William Saliba poster included in the matchday programme. For the girl, an enamel pin in the shape of a cannon. For the wife who so graciously blessed this trip and created the time for it to happen, books and vinyl by British artists — all part of our project to turn our living room into a library that houses our personal canons. (The subject of next week’s newsletter.)
A pastoral moment: A bike ride is always a good idea. If there’s water, even better: a boat picnic is a guaranteed recipe no matter if it’s from Marina Towers on the Chicago River or the Regent’s Canal in Paddington. Simply seeing and being, while moving through a place, is enough.
A side quest: It would be hard to top the night out at Bemelmans Bar in New York. Or the time I found myself karaoke-ing Franki Valli with the barman in the belly of a mall in San Francisco’s Japantown. But I am always trying, and in London, a descent into Trisha’s (an 84-year-old basement gambling den in Soho you’ll be reading more about in a moment) got me close.
And now, some thoughts that are likely to be a bit more controversial. I have traveled a lot, but this was the first time with AI.
In Peru, Ireland, France, and the U.K. before 2008, I relied on maps, guidebooks, and local recommendations as gospel. By Brazil and Israel in 2014, I had a global internet plan in my pocket that made it easy to pore over reviews and photos — the optimization of everything all but eliminating the serendipitous drop-in.
Now in London, my electronic familiar responded instantly and never tired of my incessant qualifying questions or geographical pivots, suggesting that I take a punt on a £20 standing ticket to see Sadie Sink’s Juliet and Noah Jupe’s Romeo.
In the end I took a hybrid approach:
A negroni, a cigarette, and a panini at Bar Italia (a friend’s recommendation)
A slosh-around next to eccentric gentlemen and the spirits of Francis Bacon and Charles de Gaulle at The French House (Claude’s recommendation)
A jaunt to a member’s-only basement bar, where I was lucky to be a guest of management (Bourdain’s recommendation)
Predictably, Claude also got a lot of things wrong, serving up out-of-date information about permanently closed destinations. However, this wasn’t altogether different from TripAdvisor, which indicated French House was closed on Mondays and Tuesdays (which was the opposite of true). I avoided calamitous detours through fact-checking.
But what strikes me is that, for the first time, I found myself in conversation with an itinerary that could talk back. It raised perverse and often baffling questions:
Were Claude’s suggestions genuinely tailored to me, based on the context of our collaboration to date?
Or were they simply an average of all the content created to Algorithmically persuade someone like me (a corpo-burnout who once fancied himself a wannabe Bourdain) where to spend his money?
Who am I, and what are humans, anyway: creative and unique and special souls…or manipulable meat sacks governed by a herd mentality?
I believe that finding the right local is always a better way to sniff out an adventure. But one thing I find undeniably curious is that as a travel tool, an LLM offers a Nico-esque, mirror-like quality quality that can be of value…to the extent you find self-reflection valuable. It had an answer ready to go when I asked it to describe my travel philosophy:
“He gravitates toward neighborhoods with genuine character over tourist infrastructure — he’d rather stay in Bloomsbury and walk everywhere than pay more to be somewhere flashy. He’s comfortable in hostels and budget hotels, unbothered by shared bathrooms or self check-in, and actively interested in the social dimension of communal travel spaces.
His niche interests drive itinerary decisions more than conventional sightseeing. He has a journalist’s instinct for the telling detail and a genuine curiosity about a place — not just what a city looks like but how it works, who lives there, what it means. He’s drawn to the kind of travel writing that takes ordinary experience seriously: Kate Fox’s social analysis, Bill Bryson’s affectionate specificity, Bourdain’s appetite for the unglamorous and real.”
Here, caught squarely between the infinite peril and infinite promise of this new era, I am finding the value of synthetic intelligence depends entirely on intention and effort. Claude is a looking glass no guidebook or online review can match, but only if I’ve put myself into it first.
This is the Dean Martin of drinking establishments
By Tracy Kawalik for The Face
Best line: “For those who make it past the bouncer, Trisha’s is a part of the fabric of Soho: a bar as much beloved by friends of Lucien Clarke as it is friends of Lucien Freud.”
Update: Our man in the field is pleased to report that six years on, Trisha’s was indeed saved.
My take: This is a website that allows you to “ask a chatbot” but it’s actually another human you’re talking to. If you run out of credits, you have to LARP as an AI to earn more. Early 2000s punk internet vibes.
Best line: “Send in a prompt and revel in your (relatively negligible) water waste.”
The Knowledge, London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test, Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS by Jody Rosen for T: The New York Times Style Magazine (🎁)
Best line: “The examination to become a London cabby is possibly the most difficult test in the world — demanding years of study to memorize the labyrinthine city’s 25,000 streets and any business or landmark on them. As GPS and Uber imperil this tradition, is there an argument for learning as an end in itself?”
I Bought Friendster for $30K — Here’s What I’m Doing With It by Mike Carson on Medium
Best line: “Today I feel that social networks foster a lot of negativity, but I remembered Friendster as being a really positive and enjoyable experience (except when the site would not load, which was really frustrating). I wanted to create something positive — something that people would enjoy and find useful.
My wife and I met on OkCupid. I wouldn’t have my kids without it. Websites like that genuinely change the course of people’s lives — people meet, fall in love, build families. That’s incredible to me. If Friendster helps even a few people find that kind of connection, it will have been worth it.”
home tour
Milkman Ruurd Wiersma spent five years decorating the walls of his modest house in Burdaard
By Marie-France Boyer for World of Interiors
Best line: “The work of the melkvaarder consisted of visiting 20 farms – by boat, or by sledge in winter – to collect the milk churns set out on a small pontoon at the side of the canal and take them to the dairy. Like the milking, this collection took place twice daily, 6–9am and 4–7pm. So, like his father, Wiersma spent his life on the canals; like his father too, he knew every last plant and bird in a land where migrations were significant events. This was a time when the first child to find a lapwing’s egg was given a reward at the town hall. In winter, Burdaard hosted a skating race, the Elfstedentocht (‘Eleven cities tour’) – though it has not been held since 1997, as the canals no longer freeze over. When the milkman retired at the age of 60, he bought half of a small brick-built cottage painted white with red doors, windows and skirting boards, just a stone’s throw from the canal.”
Seth Putnam is an editor and writer in Chicago. He lives with his wife, son, and daughter in a 1920s home that is the epitome of a work in progress.
“Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.” —Mary Oliver