Old Dog, New(s) Tricks
Article by: Chip Conley|@ChipConleyTue November 12, 2013 | 00:00 AM
One of my favorite weekend rituals – when I’m in town – is to take the gigantic Sunday San Francisco Chronicle and New York Times papers to the gym (there’s something about real newsprint versus reading online) and ride a stationary bike while I devour them both.
This Sunday, I got goose bumps.
The Chronicle featured the Pushkar Camel Fair. Sadly, I had to cancel my trip there due to a product launch I’m overseeing at Airbnb this week. But, I’m thrilled that my friend and former Design Editor for the Chronicle, Zahid Sardar, is at Pushkar covering the fair for Fest300. We’ll be getting some colorful content from him soon.
And, then, in Sunday’s New York Times, I saw a nearly full-page story on great Caribbean music festivals this winter. There are some obvious ones here, like Reggae Sumfest. But there are some intriguing ones as well: Moonsplash, St. Kitt’s Music Festival, and Dominica World Creole Music Festival. I found this article to be pretty fascinating as it shows the diversity of music in the Caribbean (the first restaurant I opened was a Jamaican place with a reggae bar, Miss Pearl’s Jam House).
Online media is covering the excitement at festivals more and more, so it’s encouraging to see the old schoolers tapping into cultural curiosity as a trending topic, too. (For a few months now, the Chronicle has featured a global festival in its first few pages of the A section of the Sunday paper.) Have you noticed more articles recently about global festivals?