Sidelines

Photo of the Moment: Portal of Sorrow, Gorée Island

Like what you see? Subscribe to the full RSS feed. © The Wandering Angel It’s not so much the photo, but rather the caption that’s important: Gorée Island was one of the biggest slave trading outposts in West Africa during the 16th & 17th Centuries. Men, women & children were collected from the region, and herded into […]

Photo of the Moment: Angelic Monkey, Gibraltar

Signspotting: Alien Men’s Room at the Science Fiction Museum, Seattle

Photo of the Moment: Camels in Amsterdam

Signspotting: Racists, Sexists, Homophobes and A**holes Not Welcome, Seattle

Photo of the Moment: Crater Lake Mirror, Oregon

Bizarre Culture: The Happiest Couple Ever Caught on Tape, All Thanks to a Bidet [Video]

Here’s a bizarre Korean commercial for the LooLoo bidet. Check out the guy’s face 0:25 in. Have you ever personally experienced this level of happiness in your entire life? I’m not sure I’d be that happy … if I won the freakin’ lottery. Or was married to Scarlett Johansson on my own private Polynesian island […]

Photo of the Moment: Lonely Boy, India

Photo of the Moment: Prague in Blue

Barcode Tracker Promises Quicker Luggage Retrieval

The Trace Me Luggage Tracker system might not exactly prevent the airlines from losing your bags, but it does seem to make lost luggage easier to find. The tag has a barcode and an individual serial number, which is then registered on an online database with your contact information. There is no GPS technology involved, […]

Photo of the Moment: Lonely Tree in Tyrol, Austria

Ticketime: Combination Travel Pass and Watch

A new boarding pass design concept called Ticketime features a fringe electronic paper strip that can be ripped off and wound around the wrist like a watch. The time displayed on the watch will be set to the time zone of the destination zone you’re headed to, and will be set by the airline/train/bus […]

Photo of the Moment: Climbing Mount Ranier, Washington

‘Google Me’: Film Follows One Man Around the World to Meet Himself

We’ve all Googled our names at some point, to watch in fear if some undesirable skeletons would tumble out of our virtual closet, or to check who else would turn up in the listings. But Jim Killeen decided to take vanity searches a step further. He went on a journey to meet the other […]

Photo of the Moment: Sunrise Near Rangpur, Bangladesh

Photo of the Moment: BENS Restaurant, Montreal

© colros Word from the photographer: BENS, a classic Streamlined Moderne restaurant in Montreal, visited by many celebrities, is being sold and is in grave danger of being demolished. Sam Benatar, president of SIDEV, the developer, has declared, “It isn’t worth anything.” It is very ironic that there is now an exhibition at the Montreal Museum of […]

The Guantanamo Bay Beach Cages of Bondi, Australia [Photo]

© tarotastic Really, really bizarre. I still haven’t figured out if this is Photoshopped or not. Anyone know for sure? Update: Evidently it’s part of an art installation, according to the Sydney Morning Herald: Inside each of the interconnected four-by-four metre cells was a beach umbrella, a blow-up bed and a garbage bag. It’s called 21 Beach […]

Photo of the Moment: Pizza Man, New York City

Photo of the Moment: Forgotten Village of Kamarbon, Iran

Photo of the Moment: Tarsier Primate, Philippines

Japan Celebrates Annual ‘Festival of the Steel Phallus’

Festival of the Steel Phallus, Japan © Saya M. Every year, hundreds of camera wielding tourists gather around the Kanamara Shrine in Kawasaki, Japan to see something they’ll never get to see in their home towns – a large, twelve foot pink representation of a penis being held aloft by chanting men, and paraded down the […]

Andrew Zimmern Sings Pepto Bismol’s Praises [Video]

I want to like Andrew Zimmern. I really do. I appreciate what he’s doing, but I can’t help but think that he’s all too closely riding Bourdain’s coattails. Plus, he’s just not a very good television host. Note: my slurping rant. But this is just positively painful. Between his all-pink get-up and […]

Photo of the Moment: World’s Largest Animated Talking Man, Minnesota

Turn Your Cell Phone Into a Phrase Book with Trippo

Finally, there’s a way to tell that snooty French waiter your soup is cold without having to fumble through a phrasebook. A new translation tool called Trippo promises to do just that with the help of your cell phone. Trippo is a client-server application that works on all mobile phones that have a data card. […]

Photo of the Moment: The Wild Aubrac Region, France

Japan’s Annual Naked Man Festival

A bizarre ancient festival in the city of Okayama brings together lucky amulets, wooden sticks and men in white diapers, like the ones worn by Sumo wrestlers. In ancient Japan, the festival marked the culmination of the 14-day New Year festivities, during which monks presented paper amulets to the elders of the community. The demand […]

Photo of the Moment: Morning Commute, New York City

Just Another Weekday Commute, NYC © Del Far

Photo of the Moment: Bamboo Jungle, Maui

The Humble Umbrella Goes High Tech: WiFi, Built-In Camera, Espresso Maker

Okay, not specifically travel related, but flashpackers will love this one … Mary Poppins would have been more than impressed. A new high tech umbrella that allows you to take pictures with an built-in digital camera as you’re sauntering along, promises to extricate the umbrella from its fuddy duddy image and give it some high […]