Coming Back to Going Away
Edible Manhattan/Edible Brooklyn, Summer/Fall 2021
By Julia Sexton
We've always done regional travel stories, but our 2019 and 2021 Vacationland issues were the most comprehensive. I especially love this one because of its imagery. The photographs of the Black Surfing Association in Rockaway Beach (shot by Kyle Terboss) really made this issue sing. It was my idea to give his photos an Endless Summer treatment, but it was the idea of our crack designer, Lori Pedrick, to hire Neil Jamieson to do the job. Use the "Vacationland 2021" tag below to see the entire package.
Ed Note
Out of Office
I went to my first hotel since the pandemic in spring 2021. It was as if I’d never been anywhere before. I was absurdly grateful for a bed that I didn’t have to make, a bathroom that I didn’t have to clean, and coffee that I didn’t have to brew. I was a good guest: I made my bed, I hung up my towels, and I put all of my trash in the can. I was afraid that if didn’t behave, something karmic would make me go home.
Soon, someone very smart will discover the lingering psychological effects of the shutdown, but I can tell you that for me, the result was a paradoxical blend of agoraphobia and a new, romantic agoraphilia. I kept asking: Remember how we crammed into loud bars and screamed moist conversations into each other’s faces? Remember singing giant lung-fulls of spit-flecked air, shoulder to shoulder, down front at concerts? The sweat-slick arms of strangers freely sliding across your own?
Remember that being OK?
Outside became scary. At one point, I caught myself needing to dress up—ever so slightly—just to go to the grocery store. I no longer felt safe without mascara; my naturally blonde eyelashes were too soft, too personal, too intimate, without a hard carapace of black.
Obviously, for my moment at the hotel, I overpacked. In my duffel, there were too many masks and pairs of shoes for two nights. My laptop—why? Two pairs of pajamas. Full-size vitamin bottles. Checking in made me anxious—do they have our res? Scan my license, run my credit card. Where’s the elevator?
I could only breathe after the keycard delivered me inside four walls. It actually took a moment.
But then I heaved off the huge weight that I’d been carrying for a year—that weight that was now far away, lying in wait at home. We’d escaped all the anxiety-producing shit that makes up our every day: deadlines, obligations, mail, school, chores, thank-you notes. We were on vacation.
From the bottom of my chilled-out heart, I thank you, Science. I thank you, vaccine.
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