Daniel415

I drink here at least once every time I go home. An excellent beer selection, and a nice, woody, pubby vibe, equal parts hipster haven and old-fashioned neighborhood dive. I’ve never been there when it was particularly crowded, but that could be because I’m always there on weeknights, and around Christmas, when the Pioneer Valley’s population falls by half.

Madison has a pretty good reputation as a food town, and it’s mostly quite well-earned. Nevertheless, collegetown sophistication notwithstanding, a lot of the food in Madison does have a little bit of a Midwestern feel. It tends to be a little milder than it is in other places. Just a touch more American. A little conservative. Heavy on sweet, pleasant but indistinct cheeses. This is particularly true when it comes to “nice” restaurants, as opposed to cheap-and-ethnic; these tend mostly to be pretty boring meat-and-potatoes joints. L’Etoile is an exceptional restaurant.

L’Etoile is the city’s foremost fine dining destination without much question. It’s an exquisite, very modern, sustainable new-American menu that wouldn’t be out of place in a city of any size or location. Also, the founding chef was a real pioneer in the slow food and local/sustainable food movements. This place deserves the honors it has received—it is without question among the country’s best restaurants.

It’s a very attractive wine bar and an intimate performance space featuring some very eclectic programming. Good times can be had.

He was eating a banana split, made from wonderful local icecream. I was drinking beer. Later, as the Damned started a kickass set, he described the banana split as, “the best I’ve ever had, and I’ve had a lot.”

Yeah, it’s probably most famous for the terrace, which is indeed a magical place to while away some time with some beers. But it’s also a good place to get ice cream, watch bands, and feel a part of a community. Madison actually happens to have a lot of community-building spots; must be something about it being such a Midwestern place—it’s simultaneously sophisticated and a little insular. But this is a particularly good one if you have anything to do with UW.

Phnom Penh can be a pretty overwhelming place, even by Southeast Asian standards. I’m no slouch; I studied Southeast Asian history in school, can speak a little Khmer, and had been to the border a couple of times. I’d also traveled pretty widely in Laos, the poorer parts of Thailand (visit the countryside in the northeast for a few days and be reminded that it’s still a developing country), and Vietnam. So I was arrogant enough to think I’d have a pretty good sense of what to expect when I finally got there last year.

But of course, I was totally wrong. There were a number of things that reminded me of other Asian cities I’d visited, particularly in Thailand, which modeled many of its architectural and ceremonial traditions after ancient Cambodian precursors, and exerted a significant influence in the other direction in subsequent centuries. There are also obvious parallels to Laos, and to other parts of the Theravadin world. But there are also at least as many unique and sometimes deeply startling aspects as well.

The most immediately jarring features of this colorful, bustling, extremely friendly, and still more than a little unsteady little metropolis are without much doubt the urchins and the amputees. Little kids selling shoeshines, postcards, water, and other stuff throng the little clot of tourist-oriented hotels, bars, and restaurants along Sisowath Quay. Landmine victims beg for change at the temples and on the streetcorners.

I gave a lot, bought a lot of stuff I didn’t need, and got into a lot of conversations with the street kids, especially over the first few days, but with deep misgivings. I knew that the kids probably weren’t getting the money in the end. I recognized with particular discomfort that the surprisingly fluid English of one adolescent girl with an armload of bootleg guidebooks was riddled with lies. Of course she is needy, and I’m sure her true story, whatever it is, is compelling, but she was also obviously hustling me. It was hard not to feel creeped out, and worried for her future.

The next thing I found startling, maybe even more than the poverty, were the city’s striking parallel, or even multiple, economies. Not so much for the shockingly expensive luxury-tourism facilities that are proliferating-Cambodia’s worth going to, and where people want to go, expensive hotels get built. But the facilities set up for those who are there to stay were more amazing. There’s a very healthy international development community that has taken up residence in some of the best-refurbished colonial buildings the old quarters of town, and international development aid budgets, have to offer. They’re clearly setting up for the long haul, and doubtless living a lifestyle that, modest though it may be by international standards, is all but incomprehensible to their Cambodian neighbors.

Maybe even weirder, there’s also a growing community of Western aesthetes-antiquarians, artisans, clothing designers, restauranteurs, and others-who’ve made Phnom Penh their home base. Surprisingly expensive galleries and ateliers abound, offering everything from handicrafts to modern silk dresses. Coffeeshops and bakeries that would not be out of place in Palo Alto, California, (except for the fact that they’re served in French mansions from the 1930s), right down to the kiwi tartlets and $2.50 lattes, dot the urban landscape to service fellow expats.

In spite of all this, and in spite of the heaps of garbage and pervasive dust and all the other problems that the Khmer capital will continue to wrestle with well into the future, there is also a real sense of hope in many quarters. Dozens of restaurants and shops supporting worthy causes can be found around town. Alongside (and even among) bloated government expenditures some positive impact is being had by local and international NGOs. And independent of all the global concern their long term guests seem to express, local people are mostly very warm, open, and welcoming.

Finally, grungy and shambolic as it is, the city itself has a great deal of charm in its own right – historical architecture, lovely markets, temples, and riverside promenades are all worth experiencing if you like urban areas.

So go and visit. Try to see more than just the grim monuments to the tragedy of the 1970s, and try to spend conscientiously, but be prepared for at least a little sensory and cognitive overload.

OK, so there’s not much there beyond a tax haven and some beautiful Pyrenees scenery. But it’s a pretty, friendly, weird little mini-country where everyone speaks Spanish, French, and Catalan with about equal fluency, so Bravo!

But Japantown’s still got some good shopping, decent-if-not-spectacular food (my favorite Japanese places in SF are actually both in the Mission, curiously enough), and bits of culture high and low. I like the Japanese supermarket and the Super 7 toy and design gallery, among other places… if you like Japanese stuff, like the oh-so-stylish pop cultural ephemera which have captured the world’s heart in the past decade or two, you’ll find stuff you like here.

It’s particularly interesting given that so few Japanese people actually live here nowadays (it never recovered from the internment, like most Japanese centers in California). They certainly come back in droves to shop on the weekends.

Go during one of its several festivals for a good time.

I spent my…. thirty-first birthday in this place, I believe. The signature tropical drinks are huge, expensive, and terrible (heavy on the Kool-Aid), and the food is edible but overpriced.

But none of that matters. You need know only two things about the Tonga Room:
1) Band on an island in the pool at the center of the room, playing easy listening classics , and
2) Artificial thunderstorms, every hour on the hour!!!

It’s a brilliant look at what someone thought was fancy thirty or more years ago, and is now even more surreal and agreeably seedy. It’s amplified by the fact that the Fairmont Hotel, despite its location in among the most expensive parts of town, is clearly showing its age a bit. Totally worth a visit. A very good time can be had in tiki-bar splendor before you stagger down one of the steepest bits of Nob Hill in the fog.

If you have to grow up, go to college, or get a job in a small town in New England, Amherst is a wonderful one to choose.

Some of its best features include:

A density of cultural attractions far greater than a non-college town of its diminutive size could support; excellent new and used bookstores, and independent record stores; reasonable proximity to several large cities (NYC and Boston), and very close proximity to a couple of other cute little college and peri-college towns (such as Northampton, its similar but slightly larger, less villagey and vaguely more urbane neighbor across the Connecticut, and a thoroughly charming place); a freewheeling, slightly-smug worldly-liberal atmosphere that is nicely tempered by the town’s close proximity to generations of old-school New England rednecks; historic village aspects, and beautiful fall foliage. It’s also got very good public schools, good public transit for somewhere so small, and better restaurants than most towns under 30,000 people.

I grew up there, still have friends and family there, and always look forward to opportunities to return to the area. But unless you’ve got roots, like I do, or you’re coming for an academic conference, to go to school, or maaaaybe to visit Emily’s house or grave (where generations of sullen professors’ children have left offerings of wildflowers and/or smoked weed, given the graveyard’s proximity to the high school and gothic appeal), I have a hard time thinking of the Amherst area as a tourist attraction or a place to visit. It’s a very pleasant, reasonably wealthy, highly educated, and quite small town a couple of hours west of Boston. If that’s the kind of place you like to go on vacation, great! But it seems more like the kind of place you’re thinking about moving to or going to school in, which I, as a former townie, endorse.

Hayes Valley is fascinating because it’s a tiny neighborhood featuring some of the most stylish, high-end stuff in San Francisco (a pretty stylish and high-end place in general), full of wealthy yuppies (some with hipster aspirations), and it’s immediately adjacent to some of the worst housing projects in the Western Addition—among the most enduring pockets of poverty and systematic disadvantage the city has got.

But its reputation for style and taste is clearly strong—a growing percentage of real estate advertisements for places in the Lower Haight, the Western Addition, and even the Civic Center district are calling themselves Hayes Valley nowadays.

I go here quite a bit - I live not far away, and my video store is here - and never fail to be surprised by the combination of dazzling and borderline frightening this ‘hood offers from block to block. Sort of San Francisco in a nutshell.