The Poverty Jet Set

Here’s a lil’ extreme sports vid for the week. It take a big to get going, but the payoff is sweet.

Thanks, Wend.

These kids are amazing. I love this photo essay. Check out the gorgeous, heart breaking shots of kids riding rails, living the free(?) life. I’ve met so many of these kinds of people during my travels and always had such a conflicted feeling of envy and heartbreak.

Thanks, Vagabondish. And btw, if you haven’t read Vagabondish, you should. Especially if you love the more adventure travel stuff that I write about here on the PJS. Much love and props, Mike. You’re doing a great job.

One of my best friends, Sammy bought a house a couple years back in Fishtown, an up-and-coming neighborhood on the outskirts of downtown. He’s been rehabbing it, spending his blood, sweat and tears to build it out to something nice. Every so often, something jumps out and reminds him - he’s a pioneer here. Poverty and violence persist still in this area of town. It’s getting better. But then he emails me when something like this happens:

“monday night a dude tried to rob me, my neighbor beth, her friend maureen, and my buddy steve. we sit in beth’s livingroom with the front door open every night, drinking beers. black man around 40 165 lbs 5′11″ at 8 pm walked in and told us not to move and to give him our money. all four of us immediately stood up. i said ‘are you fucking kidding me’, to the reply ‘i’ve got a piece.’ dude obviously didn’t have a gun, but apparently had a small (brand new shitty little) knife. i cornered him in the doorway, as he wasn’t about to get any further in the house, and began to tell him ‘everything’s okay, i’ve got money right here, all the money, just calm down, you can take the money and leave, it all be over soon.’ i began counting out the $83 bucks i had in my pocket. he didn’t trust me, thought i was tricking him. the girls were leaving the room and calling the cops. dude didn’t take the money and wasn’t looking at me, seconds passed. Steve was directly behind me, ‘that’s it you have to leave right now’, pushes past me slamming the guy against the screen door.

Read more after the jump… (more…)

[Note: Audrey's gonna write her own posts on The Poverty Jet Set now, too! Hurray!]

Today my trusty steed, Ron Burgundy, was towed away to rest his rusty bones in some kind of junkyard. Yes, my burgundy 1994, four-door Oldsmobile had a name, and he served me well. We shared many moments together. Mark and I were with Ron when he hit 100,000 on the odometer back on our road trip last winter. Here, you can watch for yourself…

All I have left to remember him by are these videos and this I BRAKE FOR GOLF COURSES plate cover. Heh. Adios, Ron.

Behold, glacier wave surfing. Oh yeah, it’s exactly as you imagine. DeepwaterFilms gets heavy into it as world champion big wave surfers, Garrett McNamara and Kealii Mamala ride into a monster tsunami created by Child’s Glacier in South-Central Alaska.

I’ve seen these glaciers up close while I was adventure guiding in Alaska and I can tell you, surfing like this is completely insane. But totally awesome. Speaking of Alaskan surfing adventures, have you ever seen someone surf the tidal bore on the Turnagain Arm? I have. It’s also awesome. Nothing cooler than a ten-mile tidal wave.

Ride ‘em while you can, folks. We’ll be out of glaciers in a few years.

Hat tip to Vagabondish.

When I was younger, I spent a couple summers in Alaska as an adventure tour guide. The first summer there, on the first day I arrived, a guy at the youth hostel in Anchorage handed me a beat-up copy of ‘Into the Wild‘. He just said, “Welcome to Alaska. Read this. It’ll change your life.” I love when books do that! I devoured Jon Krakauer’s book in a couple days, probably shirking some of my duties as guide to get an extra few pages in before packing gear or setting up tents or making dinner.

I won’t get into the details of the book now. Believe me, you should read it. Period. But a bit of exciting news just belatedly crossed the editorial desk here at The Poverty Jet Set! ‘Into the Wild‘ has been made into a big-budget feature film directed by Sean Penn! Sa-weet! The trailer looks friggin’ amazing!

Here’s something I didn’t expect. As I was trolling YouTube for a copy of the trailer, I found these excellent videos made by a couple of cool, yet nutty Alaskans (aren’t they all?) having their version of fun with a 4-wheel drive truck in the dead of winter, retracing the steps Christopher McCandless took on his fateful journey to the heart of darkness/the wilderness. Make sure to watch both parts of this really well done homemade exploration video! Here’s part one:

NewTeeVee just linked to a new web video project about a dude, Alex Boylan, traveling around the world with nothing but the shirt on his back. No money. No plan. Just a video crew and (presumably) a laptop to blog with. I can dig that. You as his audience can interract and tell dude where to go, what to do, who to hang with. Around the World for Free could be pretty awesome. We’ll see once he starts off on his journey next Tuesday from New York.

Something smells a little fishy about this effort, though. Maybe it’s the uber-Flash FanRocket site with no permalinks, auto browser resizing and crazy strobing ads. Maybe it’s the oddly corporate Press Release. Or the non-embedable videos. I dunno. I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. They might have a great production team on board, following guy around to make some super entertaining vids.

I just wish companies like this would have a better understanding of social media. I wish it was more grassrootsy. More authentic. Like the kids over at In a Van By the River. Or all the other adventure travel series I’ve posted about before. Or, for that matter, as humble and wonderful as the New York Times’ Frugal Traveler. Who can compete with Matt Gross? The man’s a master. Lucky for him he’s got a great video editor and a media giant in his corner. That helps.

The vernable travel guidebook company, Lonely Planet, is going to start letting you slice, dice and mashup it’s guidebooks so you can create customized books for exactly the info you want for your particular trip. No more carrying around your 2000-pound copy of SE Asia on a Shoestring! Well, not quite yet. So far, they’ve made South America, Central America, Mexico and the Caribbean available.

It’s a brilliant idea and a long time coming. When I go traveling, often, I would just head to the library and photocopy the sections I wanted so I didn’t have to lug the whole book around. And while I love libraries, it probably costs just as much with the copier charges as to just buy these.

How does it work? Well, all you have to do it head to their Pick and Mix page, find the chapters you want, download the PDF of each, staple them together and voila! Each chapter costs between $2-4 and they’ll throw in the “Planning Your Trip” chapter for free. Cool.

[via Intelligent Travel, photo The Wandering Angel]

50 years published, that is. It hasn’t been duly noted in the mainstream press that Kerouac wrote the book during the later 1940’s and carried the manuscript around with him for years before anyone would publish it. Kinda makes me think people are capitalizing on the Kerouac ‘brand’ to sell more books they once hated and found too edgy. Hmmm… Nah. They’d never do that. I wonder, though. Would Kerouac have been a blogger? A digital self-publisher?

The consummate starving artist. An American icon. And of course, one of my greatest heroes! If you’re way into Kerouac like I am, yet haven’t read Ann Charter’s Kerouac biography, treat yourself! It’s a great read in its own right and really brings to light the life and times of the beats and all their awesome real-life adventures.

In the world of long-distance adventures, this guy Andrew Skurka sure ranks up there. The dude is what one might call a professional backpacker. I love that there even is such a thing because it gives me the vague daydream that I might do that some day.

Kristen Pope writes in Vagabonding:

This summer, he is hiking the Great Western Loop, a 6,875 mile loop of the Western United States that has him scheduled to log between 30 and 37.5 miles per day. He is hiking through 12 National Parks, 75 wilderness areas, and passing through many areas that could be deeply affected by global warming. He is hoping to raise awareness of the ecological damage global warming would cause.

That’s pretty awesome. While he’s not a videoblogger, per se, I’m psyched he does have cool videos. They do the trick. Also, check out this vid JourneyFilm made about his journey: