Arc Magazine

Yes, Greece. You might think they’re a bunch of ouzo-drinking, tax-dodging yahoos, but da-yum, have they got the cold caffeine down. Check it: First, we have the classic frappe, the signature drink of Greeks young and old. Whether you’re in a café in Athens or at a beachfront cantina, it should take you no less than four hours to drink a single one.

B-Square Ranch is weird. In a good way. But really weird. The place is up near Farmington, New Mexico, and it’s got two museums on it – ”museums” being a slightly grand term for what is really just two collections amassed by what appear to be obsessive people.

Long ago, I’d heard there was mutton stew on the menu at the KFC. When I called to confirm, the guy who answered the phone said, “Hell yeah man, we got it” in a very New Mexican accent. That proud response has echoed in my head ever since, so of course I stopped at the KFC first thing.

For want of a better term, I think I’ll call them “vintage hotels.” “Antique hotels” might also work. “Nostalgia bivouacs” are what they really are. And the funny thing is that Peter, he of the Edison bulbs and steam trains, thinks I like these hotels more than he does. Maybe he’s right–I sure have spent a lot of time thinking about what makes one of these hotels exactly what it is.

Amsterdam is great for this kind of thing–everywhere you turn, it seems, someone is pulling some odd stunt or staging an experimental something or showing off his/her lifelong obsession.