The High Roller Observation Wheel is a – dare we say it – revolutionary experience, providing 360 degree views from 170 metres above LINQ’s shopping, dining and entertainment promenade in the heart of Las Vegas. Kick off a night on the town with Happy Half Hour, with an open bar and a private bartender for up to 25 guests.
Belt out your favourite tunes via the karaoke option or just bask in the dazzling lights of the Strip far below. For chocoholics there’s the Ethel M Chocolate tasting extravaganza, or elevate your mind with a bout of Yoga in the Sky.
All four elements of ancient Greek astrology align at the sheer granite monolith of El Capitan, in Yosemite National Park. Water from melting snow and rain courses across the earth, tumbling into the air as it reaches the edge, where it transforms into a blazing stream of fire. Or so it appears.
For just a few minutes a day over a couple of weeks during February, rays from the sinking sun catch on the seasonal Horsetail Fall, sending a dazzling gold thread plunging more than 450 metres into the valley below. Pack a Thermos, pull on gloves and a woolly hat and make for the picnic area, which offers the best views of the falls. You won’t be alone – shutterbugs have been flowing here since National Geographic photographer Galen Rowell snapped the phenomenon back in 1973.
I don’t want to go. It isn’t that I’m not intrigued. As a wholehearted aficionado of all things Halloween, I have envisioned myself among the madness in the Castro hundreds of times, wearing some absurd costume, trying on a different life for a night.
No, it’s because I’ve heard Halloween in the Castro just isn’t the same any more. After a string of annual violence that culminated in a 2006 shooting, the city of San Francisco aggressively moved to put an end to the famous 60-year-old holiday festival. Tonight the police are reported to be ready for a full-scale riot along Castro Street, so I’m not exactly feeling the free-spirited enthusiasm I once had for the event. Besides, Halloween is alive and well and running rampant right outside my hotel in Fillmore, even though the late October sun is still sitting high over the Golden City.
But downstairs, as I walk through the hotel lobby to get a closer look at the madness that’s simmering out on the street, I’m stopped by some fellow travellers who are jonesing to get over to the real celebration.
“What do you mean you’re not interested?” they ask incredulously. “It’s Halloween. In the Castro.”
What can I say? They’re right. Every keen traveller in San Francisco during Halloween knows that a trip to the Castro is a box ripe for the ticking. Before I know it, I’m with the pack on the 24 bus, heading southwest through the city’s rolling, vibrating streets. Not far off, a fog-laden dusk seeps in, as if the gods have just cranked on the smoke machine for the night’s main act.
The blocks fade as the bus ascends to some of the highest points in the city. Throngs of mini-skirted she-devils, bloody vampires, naughty schoolgirls and drunken Jack Sparrows filter on and off, all caught up in their adopted caricatures and evening itineraries.
At Golden Gate Avenue I look east between the legions of pastel Victorians and catch a glimpse of the Financial District’s glass and concrete fingers rising up from the banks of an inky San Francisco Bay. Dipping down again for a moment we pass Haight Street and I can only imagine the characters amassing a few blocks up at Ashbury. But throughout this entertaining, alcohol-fuelled procession, I’m only getting excited for what lies ahead – this, I hope, is nothing compared to that.
You don’t begin your first Castro experience from anywhere else but at 17th and Market, exactly where we step off the bus. Standing at Harvey Milk Plaza beneath the lazily swaying rainbow pride flag, I finally get a glimpse of the mythical, maniacal Halloween celebration.
At its zenith in the early 2000s, Halloween in the Castro was a festival teasing the fringes of absolute chaos. Although the famed event began in the 1940s as a modest neighbourhood costume party, by the 1970s it had become Mecca for the LGBTQIA+ community worldwide. Crowd numbers soared into the hundreds of thousands. But by the time things came to a head in 2006, the crowd of some 300,000 revellers was an uninterrupted cross-section of humanity. Bay Area gangbangers bumped elbows with gay men wearing nothing but their birthday suits. So when gunfire rang out, leaving nine bystanders seriously wounded, city officials immediately called for drastic changes to the festival. In the years that followed, Castro Street was closed down, street performances were banned and police presence increased five-fold.
Despite some drastic changes, however, I can see the famed celebration has lost none of its lustre. Standing beneath the red neon glow of the Castro Theatre, it’s quite clear that, around these parts, the she-devil is considered a lazy pursuit, Jack Sparrow an indefensible cliché. No longer outnumbered by the thousands of uncostumed party crashers of years past, the Castro’s most flamboyant specimens float along, popping in and out of bars and swaggering as if the sidewalk were a fashion week catwalk. Like they originally were in the 1970s, these men and women – the heart and soul of the Castro – are once again the centre of attention.
It is here, at the theatre, that I meet a flighty Art Deco drag queen shining with make-up and pearls that immediately make me sure this ain’t her first rodeo. “Darlin’, I haven’t missed Halloween in the Castro for six years!” she says to me as she bounces about, posing for passers-by’s cameras.
When I ask her what motivates her to keep dressing up so lavishly, she is predictably succinct. “It’s tradition!” she yelps, then falls into a lively conversation with a couple of other drag queens.
Soon we are consumed in the growing procession of more drag queens, sailors, priests, nuns, the Super Mario Bros and Carol from Where the Wild Things Are. The sidewalks reach maximum capacity and queues begin snaking from the many notorious bars and restaurants lining Castro Street. Things inside and out are heating up.
Near Cafe Mystique we run into a virtual wall of lively spectators. Camera flashes pop without pause as laughter and cheers drown out the sounds of celebration further along. I crane my neck above the sea of shoulders to see a pair of the Castro’s famous nudists casually chatting just the same as two co-workers would after a long day at the office. While I’ve seen my fair shake of costumes in my day, I have never witnessed this: the fabled birthday suit – the boldest of them all.
In a bizarre way, we all agree that our tour of Halloween in the Castro is complete. With the night well on its way to morning, and the neighbourhood bars the domain of only the colourful local residents, we hop on the 24 bus and head back to Fillmore, where the lure of live jazz is too much to pass up.
At close to 2am we are standing in the Sheba Piano Lounge. Along Fillmore Street, Halloween is still alive, though it’s the she-devils, schoolgirls, vampires and Jack Sparrows – rather than the drag queens – that reign supreme.
In the low-lit purple and pink tones of the lounge, patrons are busy talking about the sort of things folks talk about in the smallest hours of the night. Behind the bar, lounge owner Netsanet Alemayehu and another bartender turn out cocktails while holding multiple conversations all without missing a beat. I lean in and catch Alemayehu just before the stroke of two, when bars in San Francisco must legally cut off the booze. She obliges my last call and slides me a couple of red wines. With the amount of people still lingering about she reckons she’ll stay open until three. Despite working the closing shift more often than not, Alemayehu doesn’t look tired. Rather she looks like one of her own customers, smoothed by the daily musical therapy cascading from the house grand piano and its players on the other side of the lounge.
Outside on the Sheba’s verandah, cigarette smoke hangs thick in the cold autumn air as the sounds of jazz filter out from the dim doorways of Yoshi’s, the Fillmore and the Boom Boom Room down the street. The sidewalks host the occasional inebriated vampire or kitty cat, but one is left with the feeling that this scene is merely the offspring of the ever-flamboyant Castro District, truly the grand-daddy of all San Fran Halloween celebrations.
As the last notes of San Francisco’s finest jazz disappear with closing time, we make our way back to the hotel for a few hours of sleep. In the lobby, Elvis has passed out on the couch. Next to him is a fairy. This Halloween, it seems, has been a success.
The next morning gives way to a lucid autumn day. The famous fog bank hangs abated out over a green, lolling Pacific Ocean. I have made my way to one of San Francisco’s most overlooked neighbourhoods, Ocean Beach. Before me, cold slabs of raw ocean swell detonate on distant sand banks. Behind me rises a grid of Victorians. Beyond that, the big smoke.
For days I have walked the streets of San Francisco’s most famous areas: Haight and Ashbury, the Mission, Fisherman’s Wharf, Japantown, Pacific Heights, Nob Hill and, finally, the Castro. Since Friday I have found myself tangled up in one Halloween bash after another.
Now that the holiday has met its end, I’m actually feeling refreshed. Then I’m approached by a vampire who hands me a flyer for some sort of final Halloween hoorah tonight. I blame the Castro for this. But I wouldn’t miss this chance to celebrate my favourite holiday just one last time.
Every August, more than 50,000 hardy (or foolhardy) souls pack up food, sleeping bags and tents, as well as PVC pipe, thrift-store costumes, blinking lights, mechanical gizmos and enormous quantities of bottled water, and convoy out to Nevada’s Black Rock Desert. On the 13 square kilometres of flat alkaline playa where they are heading – parched and grey and ringed by red-tinged mountains –there is not one native plant or insect, bird or mammal. The annual Burning Man festival is perhaps the world’s most surreal outdoor event, along with South Africa’s AfrikaBurn,
Celebrating the quirky side of Canada’s City of Design, Nuit Blanche flips the bird at the weatherman and proves Montrealers can party under any circumstances.
From 6pm to 6am revellers let loose across town as galleries throw open their doors, projections dance over buildings and art lurks in dark corners. To work up to the all-nighter, the 11-day Montréal en Lumiére festival precedes the event, but wild Nuit Blanche is the ultimate climax.
Bundle up and hope for snow, swill a cocktail, then try your hand at an art class – after a few tipples you won’t give a damn when your painting resembles a four-year-old’s masterpiece.
Spear a sausage and roast it over the braziers at Place des Festivals, then head to the street stalls selling maple syrup taffy poured into fresh snow. The sugar fix should help you gain top speed while hurtling down the 110-metre ice slide that slices through an open-air dance party, before you shake it to pulsing sound, lasers and smoke while enclosed in a giant glass cube.
Head underground to escape the frost as Art Souterrain (Art Underground) kicks off with live performances and art projects scattered throughout the pedestrian network. Many activities wrap up around 2am but the best parties pump on till dawn.
If, among the comedy, poetry, dance, flicks, karaoke, beer tasting, circus acts, erotic bondage, rock climbing and ice carving, you don’t stumble upon something that excites you, then you haven’t explored enough. Exhibitions change each year – although we’d love the return of Aquart, an underwater art gallery explored with a scuba kit – so there’s always something new to unearth.
Step into the mothership of eco living. This all-sustainable lodging blends functionality with the curves and zany gingerbread house style of Gaudi. Think solar panels, walls constructed from coloured glass bottles and old tires, and a sometimes fireplace/sometimes waterfall in the living room. Don’t be surprised if a parrot swoops by while you bathe – your rainwater bath nourishes a verdant indoor jungle.
This greenhouse shelters chirping cockatiels and a pond teeming with fish and turtles. Peel a homegrown banana, sink into a couch nestled amongst the foliage and you can even forget there is a desert just beyond the door. If you feel up to the challenge, however, there is some prime hiking and mountain biking right on your doorstep, amid the Sangre de Cristo mountains. Scramble up New Mexico’s highest summit, Wheeler Peak, which measures more than thirteen thousand feet tall, or simply wake up with the sunrise and admire warm light falling on its crest from afar. Sustainable desert living has never been this lush.
Fancy a globalised drinking experience, where Indian spices mingle with Austrian chocolate, and Twinings tea loses its virginity? Then step into Mexico City’s Limantour, where bartenders aspire to unite the flavours of the world in cocktail form. Limantour – which rocked in at a rather impressive number 13 on the World’s 50 Best Bars list in 2017 – has an extraordinary collection of drinking vessels hidden among its cupboards. Think anything from kitsch ceramic mugs to flaming molecular apparatus.
The bartenders are equally renowned among their industry brethren, and their global drinking adventures chronicled on the bar’s website. Perfection takes time, however, so grab a seat amid the minimalist Art Deco decor and glance upwards at the tilted ceiling mirrors where you can see reflections of the cocktail wizards working their magic. And with cocktails starting from just US$6.50, you might as well get to work on the menu stat. Welcome to the heart of the Mexican capital’s “New Old Days”.
It may be slowly emerging from financial crises, but one Motor City scene has thrived for more than 30 years. Sophia Softky digs into the history of techno and feels its force.
A first-time visitor to Detroit, Michigan – it’s pronounced DEE-troit by locals – might expect to find a city broken following decades of socio-economic strife and a 2013 declaration of bankruptcy. But what the fear-mongering headlines so often fail to capture is the city’s radical beauty and the incredible cultural vibrancy that thrums just below the surface.
Since the 1960s, the Motor City has been a musical powerhouse, having not only birthed Motown, but also a slew of world-class artists, from Diana Ross to Eminem, across all genres. Few, however, realise it’s also the birthplace of techno music. Three teenagers – Juan Atkins, Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson – began producing an electrifying new sound in the early 1980s, and continue to sell out festivals and club shows around the world today.
Even as the popularity of electronic dance music has spread, it is impossible to understand techno without getting to grips with the history of the city itself. “To really understand the depth of dance music you need to understand a lot of un-righted wrongs in Black and Latino communities,” says DJ Peter Croce of local record label Rocksteady Disco. “Detroit is exhibit A for a place that decided to leave a bunch of people for dead, but those people refused to die and [instead] they made techno.”
There is indeed plenty of un-righted wrong in Detroit, which shows during any drive (because at 370 square kilometres, the city is hardly walkable) beyond the ‘rejuvenated’ Downtown area, to where thousands of crumbling houses, abandoned shopfronts and empty blocks are returning to prairie. But while Detroit might not boast the glistening club districts of New York or Berlin, there is a dynamic nightlife culture to rival any metropolis… if you know where to look.
Given Detroit’s hard-scrabble, lawless reputation, it is fitting that the best, most exciting music is played in anonymous-looking buildings scattered throughout the urban sprawl. A prime example is Tires, a converted warehouse on the east side whose plain exterior is at odds with the weekly parties soundtracked by an impressive roster of world-class DJs happening within. Recently, hometown heroes Juan Atkins, Jay Daniel and John Collins have spun sets accompanied by sophisticated light shows and live performance art. If that doesn’t sound cool enough, the dance floor doubles as a skate ramp.
Marble Bar is another hidden gem: a windowless brick building on an otherwise abandoned block, with a surprisingly luxe interior – all polished wood, shining brass and, true to the name, swirling marble. In a classic illustration of how the dance music scene in Detroit is not restricted by age or even by genre, DJ Stacey ‘Hotwaxx’ Hale, who has been spinning records for more than 30 years, recently played at her own sixtieth birthday party here, accompanied by live classical musicians Nyumba Muziki (the name means house music in Swahili) and internationally renowned DJ Minx. That show, like almost every other event in the city, was attended by an astonishingly diverse cross-section of Detroiters, with twenty-something weekend warriors tearing up the dance floor alongside grandmotherly women in sensible shoes.
For dance music to suit all tastes, there is Temple Bar, a small, no-frills venue in the Midtown area, and likely the only club where you will be greeted at the door by a dog and a cat (they belong to owner and beloved local personality, George Boukas). It is also, by popular consensus, the favourite of both punters and DJs. “It has become a symbol for where Detroiters hang,” says Jon Dones of resident duo Haute to Death, which specialises in a mix of house, disco and all-eras pop. “It’s not the new, shiny, suburban tourist trap or craft cocktail soiree. It’s where a whole mix of people from the city’s various cultures collide. It’s unpretentious but with a healthy dose of sass.”
Andrew Schireson, aka Dretraxx, hosts the monthly party Body Worx at Temple Bar. “It’s home base,” he says. “I know so many people there. George is always there slinging drinks and mingling. His father used to own the bar. It’s just a piece of history. You can’t listen to techno in Detroit without being aware of being in Detroit.”
That sense of place is a unique aspect of the city that local musicians do their best to honour. Super fans and novices up for a challenge should seek out Exhibit 3000. Run by legendary DJ collective Underground Resistance, this ‘secret museum’ explores the history of techno. Then there’s Assemble Sound, a converted Lutheran church that serves as a collaboratively run recording studio and venue, and Paramita Sound, a new-era vinyl store and label dealing exclusively with Detroit and Michigan-based artists.
While Detroit still faces clear challenges, culturally it is a city on the rise – and there are far too many excellent venues (TV Lounge and Populux for big-name out-of-town acts, Motor City Wine for low-key jazz and soul, The Works and Doug’s Body Shop for hard-hitting, grungy late-nights, UFO Factory for eclectic programming and decor), local DJs (Erika, Monty Luke, Ryan Spencer, Joey TwoLanes and Mother Cyborg, to name-check just a few) and broad-genre up-and-coming ‘it’ bands (Shigeto, Gosh Pith, Flint Eastwood) to experience in a weekend, a month or even a year. “The music scene is exploding right now,” says Schireson. “It seems like for every old venue closing down, there are two opening up. I feel very positive about the future. I know it’s in good hands.”
“Should have grown that mo,” I think to myself. “A thick fat caterpillar on my top lip. And I should have worn a Hawaiian shirt.”
Our replica Magnum PI helicopter has just taken off across one of Turtle Bay Resort’s two golf courses. The iconic eighties TV show soundtrack is blaring through our headphones and, as the chopper lurches upwards over the disappearing North Shore, I grip the handles above me and check my seatbelt for the fifth time in five minutes.
Our pilot, whom I call TC (he tells me he’s heard it before), points out the famed surf breaks of Sunset Beach, Waimea Bay and the treacherous Pipeline. From this height they don’t seem so nasty. TC banks sharply inland and, as the helicopter leans, I’m looking directly down at the coast. It isn’t the first time in this hour-long circumference of Hawaii’s O’ahu that I question asking for the “no doors” option.
We fly south over vast pineapple and farming plantations. In the distance the rims of ancient volcanoes jag upwards. Within minutes we can see the south coast and Pearl Harbor’s collection of battleships. From our high vantage point directly overhead it looks like a young boy’s bedroom, an enviable collection of toy ships waiting for playtime. TC circles the USS Arizona, sunk by the Japanese on 7 December 1941 leading the USA into World War II. The silhouette of her hull is still visible through the clear Pacific waters.
Ahead commercial airplanes take off and land as we dart through Honolulu International Airport for a quick pit stop. TC picks his route and, as a United Airlines flight departs, we skim across the runway, rising up and out over a forest of skyscrapers shadowing Waikiki Beach from the morning sun.
Circling the imposing Diamond Head we make our way north along the west coast. I can’t help but look back. This ancient volcano stands like a naturally formed colosseum about one kilometre wide. It is a perfect example of the stunning landscape of Hawaii’s islands and is even more impressive from this perspective.
The west coast is dotted with small communities among soaring peaks and islands poking through the ocean’s surface. It is obvious why this island was chosen to film the Jurassic Park series. All that’s missing is a pterodactyl gliding alongside us. TC points out the house where Magnum lived (in the series) then darts inland to Kaliuwa’a (Sacred Falls). We hover above the 330-metre cascade for a few minutes before a final pass over the North Shore surf breaks.
Still shaking as we walk from the chopper, I suggest to TC a Ferrari to take us back to the hotel would be the perfect finish, and he smiles a wide grin. I get the feeling he loves the experience as much as I have even though he’s flown it hundreds of times. He must surely be sick of that theme song though.
The location of the world’s second largest desert might surprise you. Covering a whopping 5.4 million square miles, the Arctic in fact holds that mantle. On first inspection this desolate expanse of frozen land – chunks of which belong to Denmark, Russia, Canada and more – seems home to nothing more than the howl of high winds. But a careful study reveals a landscape that cradles some rather curious wild creatures, from the elfin features of the American pine marten (a small furry member of the weasel family) to the snow-white fur of Arctic foxes and the fiercely powerful paws of the polar bear.
Canada’s extensive terrain offers ample opportunity to spy on some of these animals of the tundra – from the Barren Lands to the iceberg-freckled Hudson Bay and the so-called Land of the Little Sticks. For those who want to journey through all three landscapes with experts on hand, Rail Plus offers a nine-day tour of tundra trekking, bush plane chartering and wildlife viewing.
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