Flung

Christopher Wool’s New Show Redefines Disused Office Space

Sarah Stodola — Fri, 05 Apr 2024 00:02:18 +0000

In 1967, while covering the proposed plan for a cross-Manhattan expressway that would have cut straight through the lower portion of the island, the New York Times described the structures that would be sacrificed for the project as “grimy loft buildings west of Lafayette Street. The buildings, most of them 5 to 10 stories high, are occupied largely by manufacturers and wholesalers.” At the time, a handful of artists were also living and working in those buildings, which comprised an […]

Source

From Blueberries to Baby Blanket: History’s Most Entertaining Efforts to Describe the Color of the Ocean

Sarah Stodola — Sat, 04 Jun 2022 19:04:37 +0000

During the several years that I researched The Last Resort: A Chronicle of Paradise, Profit, and Peril at the Beach, I immersed myself in our cultural obsession with the beach. One byproduct of this obsession that kept me perpetually entertained: the writers major and minor the world over who have taken up the challenge to finally describe the ocean satisfactorily. Here, I’ve collected some of the best and most amusing attempts I’ve come across. [T]he beach itself is still the […]

Source

Public Spaces for Extrovert Faces: The Ace Hotel in Brooklyn

Sarah Stodola — Mon, 06 Dec 2021 16:46:02 +0000

On my first night staying at the new Ace Hotel in Downtown Brooklyn, I returned around midnight and, having realized that I’d forgotten to pack toothpaste, stopped by the front desk to ask for some. (It would be promptly delivered.) As I chatted with the night clerk, I remembered that I’d also been unable to find coffee in my room. He confirmed that indeed, as a policy Ace Hotels don’t provide coffee beyond the ground floor. It’s one of the […]

Source

It’s Time to Look at Summer 2021’s Notable Hotel Openings

Sarah Stodola — Mon, 16 Aug 2021 22:52:01 +0000

What a delight to discover that we once again live in a world in which new hotels open. In this continuing pandemic era, of course, depending on the country of the hotel and of your residency and your vaccination status, you may or may not be allowed to visit most of them. This is fine; we are all unlikely to visit most of the world’s hotels during our lifetimes. But even perusing the surprising number of Summer 2021 openings from […]

Source

A Look Back at the New Yorker’s ‘Bar Tab’

Sarah Stodola — Tue, 19 Jan 2021 19:32:46 +0000

Way back when I was too young to legally get into one, I went to my first bar. It bestowed an immediate sense of a door opening, of magic being unleashed. Going forward, I’d sidle up to any one that would have me—a suburban Chicago spot that didn’t start carding until 9pm, a honky-tonk place on the outskirts of Tampa, the bar in my college town where I was friends with the bouncer. Little alternate universes, all of them, with […]

Source

Is Travel Worthy of Its Carbon Footprint?

Sarah Stodola — Thu, 19 Nov 2020 13:19:53 +0000

To read travel magazines or watch Anthony Bourdain’s shows or browse Instagram today is to come away always with the sense that travel, intrinsically, improves both the traveler and the world. It is to be inundated with familiar quotes that cumulatively tell us that as a concept, travel does not contain multitudes, it contains only positives. Not all those who wander are lost. I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list. The world is a book, and those who […]

Source

Flung Is Back!

Sarah Stodola — Fri, 23 Oct 2020 15:39:33 +0000

Flung is back! If you are reading this, you may have already noticed the completely redesigned website. Among the design improvements are a better mobile experience, enhanced presentation of photographs, a new logo, and a more streamlined reading experience overall. But more significant changes will be found in the content priorities of the new Flung. Gone will be traditional travel writing—the kind that relies on lists of recommendations, or roundups of the best, say, romantic hotels in the U.S. Instead, […]

Source

PowerPoint from Paradise

Sarah Stodola — Fri, 16 Oct 2020 14:09:19 +0000

I often tell people that I became a writer at least in part because of the untethered lifestyle it offered. I knew that nine-to-five office culture didn’t appeal to me, one of the few things I got right in my early twenties. At the time, most jobs required an employee to show up to his or her place of employment on a daily basis. Writing seemed an exception. No more. In this fall of 2020, programmers are doing their Silicon […]

Source

Tokyo –> Seattle in Delta’s Premium Select Cabin

Sarah Stodola — Wed, 31 Jul 2019 13:47:13 +0000

In Flight Reviews, Flung writers provide key information about flights they take in order to leave the flying public better informed in an age of frustration, obfuscation and increasingly unfriendly skies. NRT —> SEA on Delta Flight 166 Flight: DELTA 166 in the airline’s new Premium Select Cabin. Scheduled Date and Time: Jul 22, 2019 at 4:25pm. Check In and Security: Transferring in Tokyo from Singapore, I had to go through security again directly upon landing, during which I had to […]

Source

The New TWA Hotel: An Overnight Stay in Pictures

Sarah Stodola — Tue, 21 May 2019 19:08:17 +0000

After spending years as that amazing abandoned building I strained to see from Terminal 5 every time I flew jetBlue from JFK, this past weekend the airport’s Saarinen-designed former TWA Terminal became the site of my only-ever staycation in New York City. It’s a holdover from when this huge swath of land was still called Idlewild Airport, but it’s now the TWA Hotel, which mostly does justice to the spectacular piece of architecture that contains it. Two friends and myself […]

Source