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"I wish I could fold up Patrick Smith and put him in my suitcase."
- Stephen Dubner,
Coauthor ofFreakonomics
"Always excellent."
– James Fallows,
The Atlantic
I’m pleased to report the demise of two annoying travel trends. Maybe you’ve noticed as well?
The first is pillows. Not all that long ago, it was impossible to walk through an airport without encountering gaggles of teenage girls carrying giant fluffy pillows. I’m uncertain when this trend got started, but, for a while, peaking somewhere around the year 2010, you saw it everywhere.
Granted it was a helpful idea, now that many carriers no longer dispense even tiny, non-fluffy pillows on all but the longest flights. In a window seat, putting a pillow between your body and the sidewall creates a comfy sleeping surface. The trouble was, people like me were out of the club. Grown-up men can’t walk through airports with giant fluffy pillows unless we’re willing to get laughed at. Over the years I’ve seen thousands of girls carrying pillows, but I’m not sure that I’ve ever witnessed a man or even a boy with one.
Well, I no longer feel left out, because, for whatever the reasons, this phenomenon has died away. I haven’t seen a pillow in ages. I can’t say why. It’s not that airplanes have become more comfortable; certainly not in economy class, where, presumably, the majority of pillows were deployed. I guess those padded neck brace things won the battle.
It’s the second change, though, that brings us truer joy.
I’m talking about selfie sticks. These too have mostly gone away. Oh sure, they’re still out there, but in nowhere near the clusters of just a few years ago, when forests of extendable bayonets surrounded pretty much every tourist attraction on the planet, sticking, jamming, poking and prodding anyone who got too close.
Have the masses wised up? Is our faith in humanity restored? Or is this just the inevitable rise and fall of a fad — the kind that happens in deference to some universal mathematics rather than people acting sensibly? Whatever the reasons, sightseeing is now a more pleasant experience that it was in, say, 2015.
I should point out, however, that while selfiesticks are fewer and further between, the selfie plague itself remains with us. (And that was the telling irony of the selfie-stick: it wasn’t designed so that travelers could take better pictures of their surroundings, it was designed so that travelers could take better picturesof themselves.) How and why did people — younger people in particular — became so fixated with self-photography?
I understand the desire to have a picture of yourself in a notable spot. I understand, too, that run-of-the-mill pics of landmarks or scenery can be tedious and redundant — they show nothing a million postcards don’t show already. Putting yourself in the frame, well that makes itpersonal. I do it. We all do it.
But it’s gone too far. People now photograph themselves obsessively. Here you are in this incredible spot, and effectively you’ve got the camera turned around backwards. Instagram, Facebook, and so on, have become an endless archives of vanity pics. We’ve entered a scary new age of narcissism. Traveling abroad, I’ve been in the company of people who did nothing but photograph themselves, over and over and over.
The only more ubiquitous trend in travel photography, maybe, is that of food pics on social media.
I guess that I don’t “see” food the way a lot of people do, as such a valuable and poignant representation of culture? A photo of a meal somewhere, totally out of context, tells me little. In any case, it’s less about the concept than the sheer volume of these pictures. They’re relentless.
They’re so relentless, in fact, that my only option is to surrender and stop complaining about it. I have no choice, it seems, but to join in, asmy Instagram stream reveals.
Further, I have an idea: In the days ahead, I plan to upload dozens of pictures of my favorite restaurant cuisine, domestic and foreign. The twist is, the pictures will show the platesafter I’ve finished eating.
I mean, what could be a better testament to the tastiness of a dish than what’s left over — a shot of bones, sauce residue, and some rice grains that you spat onto your plate?
Let’s get started. Here, for example, is some jollof rice and chicken that I enjoyed recently at the Buka restaurant in Accra, Ghana. Doesn’t that look delicious?
At Tandoor restaurant, also in Accra, I savored a delectable coconut chicken kabab with basmati rice. Tell methis doesn’t get your gastric juices flowing.
And here’s a delicious pizza from Pini’s, here in Somerville.
More to follow.
Related Story:
WOE IS THE SPINNER BAG
Lee Taplingersays:Claire, the empty plates are a joke, get it? Tough crowd.
Clairesays:You can use the .5 setting to zoom out for selfies that don’t require sticks. Agree 100% with Salty D about the gang signs, etc. and the tongue thing is the worst. Also don’t understand the bare legs in the airport and the plane. Do you really want your flesh touching those seats?? It’s not like they are cleaned between passengers.
Sorry, Patrick, love you but please, no, on the dirty plates. We also don’t want to see the next stage of the food.
Kevinsays:You should eat your crusts, lad!
Maybe the pizza dough wasn’t all it should have been.
JamesPsays:I guess I’m lucky, I ain’t pretty enough to be taking selfies all the time so I have no need for the cursed sticks lol.
Gimlet Wingletsays:Last time I was in Firenze the hazard wasn’t so much getting whacked by a selfie stick, it was dodging the street vendors who marked a tourist and wanted to make a sale (of a selfie stick).
But I’ll ask a different question, for an elderly relative who recently wore out his short-duration trip carryon, what would you recommend? It’s good that he’s still flying places, at his age staying active and doing things means staying alive. But I don’t want him going to the usual suspect online vendors of mass cheap crap and finding himself 1200 miles from home with a broken zipper spilling contents (this happened visiting me and I was able to salvage his bag enough to get him home). Minimum 2 wheels because carrying through terminals is out of the question, and yes maybe the dreaded spinner bag is in order (though 2 wheels is lighter).
I searched your back posts, and around 2018 you basically said pilots (higher income) tend to go for luggageworks and flight attendants tend to go for travelpro. Still the (er) case? Any updates on brand favorites?
I am thinking about splurging on a Briggs & Reilly model. Not for work, but for personal travel, keeping my LuggageWorks bag for my pilot stuff.
Wilsonsays:This piece of Patrick’s blog was so much better on his podcast. Sayyin.
Rodsays:The proof of the pudding, after all, is in the eating.
However, plate empty is a guessing game. Maybe it’d be better to post Two pics for each meal: first the finished plate, then how it looked freshly served (which can be wonderful or ho-hum).
But yeah, the compulsive taking of selfies grates. The British thinker Paul Kingsnorth says that we’re hard-wired to worship. And if people no longer worship a deity, then they’ll worship an ideology or just the modern managerial consumer techno-state, which ultimately means worshipping themselves: selfies, & the food that sustains them. Pure consumerism.
Salty Dsays:I see the vapid fishlips/mega-headtilt/fake-gang-signs thing is still around but the fishlips seem to be fading in favor of sticking your tone way out like a damn toddler.
Not seeing too many pillows in airports lately… what I find icky are very young women wearing “shorts” with basically no inseam, especially when accompanied by mommy who’s often in the same getup. It’s just gross; maybe some like that kind of thing but girl we do not need to see your butt or anything else hanging out.
/old man yells at cloud
JohnGsays:Eddie beat me to what I was going to post.
But the one time I ate at Pini’s (years ago) the sauce was way too sweet. Is it still sweet? I have a thing about savory foods not being sweet (although I seem to be okay with sweet foods also being savory).
Richsays:I don’t know about selfie sticks, but — at least among certain demographics — bringing a pillow on the plane is alive and well. Just two weeks ago I was on a packed flight to MSP that included the women’s volleyball team from nearby Directional State University. I think each player had a rolling carry-on, a stuffed-full backpack, a pillow, and an iced coffee drink. Boarding took a while.
Davesays:At the phenomenal Hidcote Gardens, we watched as a young woman had a friend record her coming down a picturesque set of steps…at least 5 times to get it just right for her feed. She never did enter the garden, just got the take she wanted and went back up…
Petersays:Love the pics of the empty plates! I hope you’ve started a trend. We went to one of Yotam Ottolenghi’s restaurants in London last year and did exactly the same thing. Probably one of the more popular photos from our trip. 🙂
Eddiesays:I too have a visceral aversion to selfie sticks, which came to a head during a visit to Venice. However, I think their demise is due to phone cameras getting better at taking wide-angle shots at close range. The selfie craze remains and still annoys the hell out of me!
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