What’s New in New York City, Plus a Look at the Top Trends in Camping Vacations

Foreign.

Welcome to the Fromer Travel Show.

It's my latest guidebook to the city.

And to help me talk about what a New York City vacation currently holds, what was changed in the book, what's been changed since then, I have Jason Cochran on the line, a former maybe always New Yorker.

He lived in New York City for many years.

He's the editor in Chief of fromers.com hey Jason, always great to talk with you.

Hi Pauline.

Yeah, I lived there for about 25 years.

I think if you were there before 9 11, during 911 and after 911 you are always a New Yorker.

Yes.

Oh absolutely.

And one could say the same about the pandemic, quite honestly.

Cause that was a crazy time New York.

So my latest book came out this fall and we should have talked about it then.

I'm now researching the next book and the pace of change in the city.

Boy, it's just a whirlwind right now in good ways and bad good ways.

There are some really interesting new attractions opening and old attractions fully redoing what they have done so well for so many years.

In the former category, we are getting a new observation deck that will be seven in the city, but it's called one Times Square and I think the name gives it away.

It's in the building where the ball comes down.

On New Year's.

Yeah, on New Year's Eve.

And so it's in the heart of Times Square.

I thought when I heard about this, oh my God, do we need another observation deck?

I mean, but I don't know.

Being in the middle of Times Square at night, not during the day.

I don't think you should go to the top of this observation deck during the day.

I think that's a waste of money.

But at night, surrounded by all the neon lights, I think it's going to be pretty damn cool.

Yeah, there isn't really an observation deck for Times Square right now.

There's lots of bars that you can go to and right in some of the hotels.

But this is something Times Square has sort of needed.

It is Times Square by itself.

Even if you don't know what you're going to do when you're in Times Square is a world class tourist site.

So now you have an observation deck that's not going to give you a view of the whole city, but it'll give you a Great view of Times Square, which is like a city unto itself.

Yeah.

And it's pretty exciting.

I got to take a hardhat tour because it'll be opening in a couple of weeks.

So I didn't see it in its fully open state, but what I saw was kind of weird and wonderful.

Weird and wonderful in one part I think is really gaudy and I think will close.

But the main deck, where you get a 365 degree view of 42nd Street.

So you see Times Square in front of you, you see both sides of 42nd street and then you can see downtown.

Those views are pretty damn thrilling.

You also, if you pay more and the amount hasn't been set, you can also have what they're calling the ball experience, which sounds erotic to me.

But that's the old 42nd street on the new 42nd street though, so that.

Means you get to have a close up look at the ball.

And I did.

And it's, you know, beautiful, big and glowing and it's covered with Swarovski.

How do you pronounce that?

Swarovski.

You got that right there.

Yeah, that's Swarovski.

Swarovski crystals.

And interestingly, there's something like, I think there's 5,000 plus of them.

They're going to sell those crystals over the course of a year.

So you can buy a Swarovski crystal right off the ball to take home.

And then what you do is you make a wish for the coming year that is inscribed in a crystal that's then put back on the ball.

But not only is it inscribed, at midnight on New Year's Eve, your wish is going to go out in Morse code.

There's a team of people at a desk somewhere thinking of ideas.

Yeah.

So either that's going to be really great or just really stupid.

We'll see.

It'll be interesting to see if 5,000 crystals are enough.

Are they going to sell out before.

I'm still.

I think just seeing Times Square is quite enough for your money because it's such a fascinating destination.

That's attractions number one and two at one Times Square.

Attraction number three is called Eye Candy New York City.

And it's a four story attraction.

You start at the top, you're given a bucket that can hold two pounds of candy.

And you go through this cartoony, kind of garish looking recreation of the iconic sites of New York City.

And in front of each iconic site is some kind of candy that has something to do with what you're looking at.

Sometimes it's very vaguely to do and you're able to kind of trick or treat.

You go up and you grab handfuls of candy and put it into this jar until all two pounds of this jar is filled up.

So this is either going to be very popular with families or a total flop, I think.

Yeah.

I would think it's either for children or I guess, hopped up teenagers or for Instagrammers.

Is it going to be one of those really pretty things that you also want to take Instagram pictures of?

People may think it's pretty.

I thought it was pretty garish looking.

I didn't love the look of it.

But what part of town's it in?

It's in one Times Square and.

Oh, and down below the.

The ball.

Yeah.

So these are all.

And the other new attraction in One Times Square is called Onelavs.lavs.

they've created an entire floor of bathroom stalls for men and women because.

Because it's very hard to find a.

Place that is actually pretty good.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's hard to find a place in New York in Times Square to go to the bathroom.

So you can pay now $2 to go to the bathroom.

It's interesting because that building, years and years and years and years ago was the New York Times's headquarters.

Yeah.

By the turn of the previous century.

It's been a very long time since it has been.

There's maybe some.

Some commentary one could make of what's happened to that building.

Well, actually they do a history museum as well that you get to go through when you go see the view.

So, you know, they do pay H to the New York Times.

Time.

No, I was laughing because, you know, some people still call it Times Square without the.

Without the plural.

It's Times Square because it was named for the New York Times.

Just putting it out there so people could remember it if they'd ever had trouble remembering that.

Right.

Interesting.

So that's attraction number one, the fully brand new one, the Studio Museum.

After eight years of reconstruction, they built a beautiful new skyscraper has finally reopened.

And it's pretty nice.

The Studio Museum, for those who don't know it, is in Harlem.

It was the very first museum dedicated to the art of people of color.

So, you know, it's a museum with an incredibly important heritage and goal.

And I think it has the building it deserves.

Finally, it's really, really a Beautiful new space.

And the art is always spectacular.

So that's reopened.

Sotheby's has opened in the former Breuer Building, which was built for the Whitney Museum originally.

It's on Madison Avenue, right off Museum Row.

And you could always visit Sotheby's for free, but because it used to be on the Far east side of New York, far away from where any tourists ever went, nobody did.

Now I think they will.

And I gotta say, I don't know if this says something ugly about my soul, but seeing the art and some of the art they have for auction is extraordinary.

But seeing it and knowing how much it kind of may cost, it all depends on what the auction gets up to.

But they give a price range right in the label next to the art.

It's kind of interesting.

It makes art viewing.

It gives it another dimension in an ugly, capitalist way, I guess.

So you can have some of the greatest artworks in the world that aren't in museums are going to be appearing for the short term at Sotheby's before they're sold.

So you'll never know what you're going to get, too, which also is interesting.

Each time you go, it'll be a whole new set of masterworks.

Some of them you'll never see again because they're going to private homes, but they're still masterworks.

Yeah, that was what was so poignant when I went, because there was this incredible portrait by Klimt, Gustav Klimt, that would be the centerpiece of any museum that bought it.

And it's going to be in some billionaire's bathroom, probably, you know, outside of public viewing.

That said, I know most museums show only a fraction of the art they hold.

That's right.

So is this any worse?

I don't know.

Those are a couple of the new ones.

The Jewish Museum also decided to redo their core exhibit.

They used to have what I thought was a terrific core exhibit, which showed the history of Judaism chronologically with some very beautiful artifacts, lots of wall text.

It talked about the Diaspora of the Jews.

When I heard that was going away, I thought, oh, that's terrible.

It was such a good learning exhibit.

What they've done instead is they've looked at themes in Jewish life over the millennia and used interesting artifacts for which they then tell an entire story about that artifact.

So in a way, it's a more scattershot approach to telling history.

But you figure the Jewish Diaspora, I mean, my God, Jews went to every country on Earth.

They were dispersed for thousands of years, and Learning the intricate history of, say, 40 different menorahs, each of which tell a really unique story.

Like one menorah was created in a concentration camp in Germany and hidden from the Jew.

Hidden from the Nazis until after the war.

I mean, it survived.

And they were able to worship with this menorah in the middle of a concentration camp.

Another menorah was made from artillery shells during the Korean War by Jewish soldiers fighting in Korea.

Another one was from the Middle East.

Another one is just a simple lamp and they're not sure if it was a menorah.

Just so many different stories.

It actually turned out to be, I thought, just as effective.

Well, I wish more museums presented their artifacts that way.

I think provenance, which is sort of what you're talking about, it's the history of the object is what hooks me most often at a museum.

I could go through a place like the British Museum and it just says amulet Egypt, 300 BC or something.

Well, yeah.

Okay.

Where was it found?

Whose possession has this been?

In?

Which private billionaire's private bathroom did this hang in before it came here?

That is all super interesting to me.

So I love that.

I would really dig new presentation.

Oh yeah, they do an excellent job.

Actually.

I walked in with a preconception that I was going to slam it because they had gotten rid of the chronological order.

And I came out loving it.

You know, I just thought it was.

Really human, which all objects are.

Yeah, yeah, they have portraits and they have other religious objects and then they have just like fashion objects.

Like Isaac Mizrahi created a belt buckle with the Star of David on it.

What does that mean?

Who should be wearing that belt buckle?

They go into all the interesting issues.

I don't know.

It was well done.

So those are a couple of the new things you'll see in New York City if you come to visit, if you can afford to stay here.

Last year when I saw how much the hotel prices had risen for the first time ever, I added hotels in New Jersey to the book.

Just because I was so stunned by how much in high season places cost.

I mean, in high season now it is not unusual for the average price of a one night stay in New York to be $500 plus dollars.

And that is for a hotel that in low season goes for $149.

So I thought it couldn't get worse.

It hasn't gotten that much worse on the high end.

But in off season now, prices are slightly higher.

So there's still this incredible swinging that goes between high season and low for pricing, but it's a little higher on the low end too now, sadly.

And then restaurant prices also have just gone through the roof, but I think that's across the United States.

Yeah, I see that everywhere now.

And before we go away from hotels, you just wrote an interesting article about Mamdani getting rid of junk fees.

Or did he?

What actually happened?

It was announced by the New York City mayor Mandani, that hotel junk fees will now be required to be disclosed from the very start of every transaction.

So you have to be told it up front when you get, you know, when you enter the, you know, the purchase process.

That's something that California did a couple years ago as well, something the FTC has been sniffing around.

So there is a lot of legal support for that.

But he also added, if a hotel takes a credit card hold or a deposit, which is something that I think a lot of the, the less expensive hotels do, especially for younger travelers, they also have to tell you up ahead of time, it's, it's being more regulated.

It's being, they're keeping a sharp eye on it and they pro.

The city's consumer, you know, protection division is promising to go to bat for people if they feel like either of those new rules is being violated.

That that's gone into effect in, in the, in.

In February.

Yeah, sometime in February.

So, yeah, it's something.

It's not.

It's not, you know, restaurants aren't included.

They can, Restaurants can still stick hidden fees on there, but, you know, we're getting there.

Interestingly, Mandani didn't.

Isn't the one who wrote this up.

Previous mayor and has already gone through the public comment period even before Mamdani took over.

So this is, this has been something that the city has been trying to do for quite a while and they got it through.

Yeah, no, I like it.

I'm very happy that they're doing it.

And the final thing I'm seeing that's different or will be different in my next edition is there's two new really unexpected cuisine trends in New York City.

And I mention them not only for visitors to New York City, but because I do think, and maybe this is the New York snob in me, that the culinary trends that start in New York often go to other parts of the country.

And the first Culinary trend is Caribbean food, but I'm not talking about cheap patties and, I don't know, jerk chicken that is sold very inexpensively.

Caribbean food has gone high end.

And some of the best chefs working in New York City are exploring trends in Caribbean food from all parts of the Caribbean, many different nations, and elevating them.

And I had something called a blas.

I think it was called a blas, which is actually a seafood stew at this new restaurant called Kabawa, where they're playing reggae and ska and soca and other Caribbean music as you eat, as you do this three course tasting menu that is $145 but is incredibly delicious, incredibly memorable because you sit at a counter around the kitchen and so you can talk to the chefs and watch what they're doing.

And it's, it's really fun.

One of the best meals I had and that's what I.

What so surprised me is I feel like they're doing this in New York City.

You often don't get this in the Caribbean.

In the Caribbean, when you go out for a high end meal, it's usually going to be French or Italian.

It's not Caribbean food, you know, so it usually you either get so, so inexpensive Caribbean food in the Caribbean or you get high end food from another cuisine tradition.

So I'm hoping that the Caribbean will take note and maybe support their own cuisine styles.

It does make sense.

But, you know, a lot of places where you get high end food in the Caribbean are hotels and resorts.

Sure.

They're often not run by Caribbeans.

Right.

They're run by outside forces.

Right.

So it will be interesting to see if, as these great chefs of New York City gain more, you know, power and influence, that they're poached to go to the Caribbean and bring Caribbean food back to the Caribbean islands.

Yeah, I hope so.

I hope so because I've been really impressed.

There's another restaurant called Tatiana, which is Lincoln center, where the same thing is happening.

And I think there are more in the works.

So that's trend number one.

Trend number two are wine bars.

When I say wine, I mean wine made with grapes that are serving really delicious Asian food, which is also kind of an unexpected combination.

Usually if it's a great Asian restaurant, they'll be serving rice wine or alcohol or maybe grape wine, but it's usually not the focus.

It's usually the focus on the food here.

These great Asian chefs have teamed up with great sommeliers.

So they're doing Korean food or they're doing Vietnamese.

Food, or they're doing Chinese food with incredible European wines.

So it's kind of an odd combination, but it works.

It's delicious.

One is called Ha's Snack Bar.

That's my least favorite of the three that was put on the list by the New York Times of the top 10 new restaurants in New York City.

And because of that, it's impossible to get a reservation.

In fact, I was sitting next to a finance bro when I went.

I waited in line in the cold for an hour.

Get in.

And I lucked out.

I got a seat.

The people around me online all got room at the standing counter, so they had to eat their meal standing up.

I was seated next to this finance bro, and his friends were saying to him, how'd you get the reservation?

He's like, oh, I got an app.

And so I said to him, what's the app?

What's the app?

He said, well, I feel like an asshole telling you this, But I pay $65 a month for AI to go in through this app and grab the first reservation.

He said, do you want me to recommend you?

I have to.

You have to know somebody to get on the app.

And I said, no, thanks.

That's.

Oh, they're using AI to cordon people out of experiences now like that.

Oh, that's gross.

Yeah.

Isn't that gross?

So Ha Snack Bar is one that was my least favorite in terms of food and in terms of how insane it is to get in.

My.

My favorite.

I went with.

To.

With our mutual friend Adrian.

It's called Suns S U n N. And that is Korean food.

And they have an incredible assortment of banchan.

Those are the little dishes that you get with the Korean meal.

But here it's elevated to a, you know, high art.

I had candied anchovies, and if I could have candied anchovies every day, I would.

They were delicious.

So sons.

And then the other one was.

Oh, gosh.

What was the other one?

The other.

I'm blanking on the name, but it.

Will be in the book.

It will be in the book.

So that's a reason to buy the book.

You really did blank, though.

That wasn't a joke.

I mean, no.

And it will be in the book.

Yes.

Yes, it will be in the book.

So it's been a fun time running around New York.

Things are always changing.

I also went to.

You were talking about views in Times Square.

The revolving restaurant in Times Square is now back.

It's at the top of the Marriott Marquis.

It slowly goes around.

You have a Great view.

The.

Sometimes the cuisine is by restaurateur Danny Myers, and it's better than it has to be, but it's not as good as you'd get for other.

At the same price point in other places.

But it's.

It's better than it used to be.

So I'm.

I'm recommending that again because it's.

It's fun to be revolving around time.

You know, revolving restaurants.

Remember, they were so huge when we were young and now they're hard to find.

Yeah, no, no, I think this is probably one of the few left.

So that's it.

Thank you so much, Jason, for coming on and talking New York City with me.

Camping is a hugely popular way to vacation, to get your family out into the wilderness, to get yourself out into the outdoors.

And one of the greatest experts in that vacation sphere is Kevin Long.

He is the CEO of the Dyrt.

The Dyrt is spelled D Y R t dot com and it is an excellent website to help you find room at the camp space.

Hey, Kevin, thank you so much for returning to the Fromer Travel Show.

Thanks for having me.

Good to see you.

Good to see you too.

So you guys do an annual study that always has some really interesting findings in it.

Before we get to the findings, tell me how the study is done.

So, you know, the study is built by the Dirt.

And as you know, the Dirt is the app to get the best campsites built by the largest RVing and camping community in the US so we at the Dirt are at a particular advantage to be able to capture information because we have 20 million campers that visit our platform every year.

Wow.

What we do is we survey our entire audience, plus we hire a third party provider to survey the nation.

And then we put all of that data together on a report that we've been doing for years now.

This is the third year in a row that we partnered with Toyota Trucks, and so they help us really have the resources to be able to dive much deeper into the data than we normally would otherwise.

Interesting.

And you also poll campsite owners too, right?

So it's campers, campsite owners, and then just everybody in America.

That way we have a really nice sloth of data to be able to pull from.

Well, let's talk about some of the numbers.

How many people did a camping vacation this year, to the best of your knowledge?

Yeah.

That's the second highest year on record.

Interesting.

I think when you're up in the 80s, 80 millions, it's just showing that camping is consistent and strong.

And last year was a really good year for camping.

Last year was a really good year.

I think there was this sur travel in all modalities, not just camping.

Exactly.

And so when you see that, well, last year was the second highest year on record.

And we've been doing this report, you know, for over five years now.

I think it shows that camping is, is holding strong.

So I think what that's showing is that camping has a continual influx of people coming into the segment year after year after year.

Well, that's the good news.

The bad news is half of your respondents said they had trouble finding room at campgrounds.

Right.

It is tough because camping is growing and you know, there's only so many spots to go around.

When I, when you look at the difficulty booking, 53% of campers had trouble booking because the campsites were full.

Now that was down slightly, but three out of the last four years it has been over 50% of our respondents have said that they've had troubles booking.

So they had trouble booking.

Does that mean they canceled their vacations or they simply couldn't get their first choice?

Cannot get their first choice because campgrounds are full.

You know, state parks and national parks are definitely the, the, the two trickiest because they're so popular.

And you know, this is a big reason that, that we form the dirt is because we have state parks and national parks, but we also have all the private land, all the RV parks, all the county parks and all the free camping.

So what we really encourage people at the dirt to do is, is understand that there are so many different types of camping if you're willing to go look at the dirt, because we have all the inventory now.

You don't list like Walmart parking lots, do you?

I remember that RV campers always, sometimes use them when they can't find places elsewhere.

Is that what you're talking about?

Or different types of private land?

It's a good question.

There's a few different segments of it.

So one, there's private land and these are just landowners that have a farm or just have space.

And they decided, hey, I'm Going to open up 10 spots for campers that want to camp on our 50 acres of land.

They list their private land on the dirt, they take bookings and they essentially become an Airbnb campground.

And they're listed right on the dirt.

So that's private land.

Then you have free camping on any Bureau of Land Management and National Forests.

You can camp anywhere for free.

And on the dirt, we have a free camping location with over 5,000 locations where campers have stayed there, taken pictures, done reviews, added the location.

So you don't just have to guess where to camp on federal land using dirt, you can actually see the spot.

And then the last category on that free camping area is the Walmarts, the Cracker Barrels, all the places that allow one night overnight for free, which what we find is a lot of campers use those.

When you're working your way across the country and you want to get a big day of driving in, you know, you're pulling in at ten o' clock at night, you're getting back on at five in the morning.

It's pretty nice to be able to pull in a parking lot, get a good night's sleep and then in the morning, you know, run in and get a cup of coffee or some supplies and you're out on the road.

Right, right.

You also found two other things that I think bear explaining.

You found that short term cancellations are up and that more people are leaving early.

So what do you think that means in the larger scope of things?

You know, there's a couple things.

First thing is etiquette.

Right.

And so we always look at etiquette and we survey etiquette every year on the dirt.

What we found is that 73% of campers used all their reservations.

That's pretty good.

And this number has actually been increasing the last three years in a row.

So I think there is a little bit more awareness coming in the camping category that like, hey, a lot of these reservations are hard to get.

People want them.

If you're not going to use them, you should cancel them.

Right.

No, shows were down 5%, but short term notice cancellations, you're right, we're up 22%.

So we're not quite sure why that happened this year.

This is a little bit of an anomaly of our stats.

Right.

But these last minute cancellations are up.

Now what's nice about it is the cancellations are happening because cancellations are better than no shows.

Sure.

Because people can still get those reservations.

Can people still get the reservations if somebody leaves early or Is that another etiquette issue?

That's another etiquette issue.

That's the same as not using a reservation in our eyes.

Now we know or we don't know, but a lot of people are looking at signs that the economy may be slowing down.

Will that affect camping?

Will people still take these types of vacations or is this the type of non necessary expenditure that people are going to cut back on, do you think?

Well, camping has been proven over and over again to be recession proof.

On a down economy, camping goes up.

You don't get on those airplanes with the whole family.

You don't have those expensive hotels.

Camping is one of the most affordable vacations you can go on.

And it's even more affordable if you leverage free camping.

You know, in the United States we have an unbelievable amount of epic, epic Bureau of Land Management property that you can camp anywhere for free.

Right.

And our survey at the Dirt this year showed that 60% of all campers have camped for free at least once.

80% of those actually went on dispersed land.

So not just staying at Walmarts, but actually going out on dispersed land.

The, the free camping on dispersed land too.

I can't.

Can you define dispersed land?

Yeah, dispersed.

I should say dispersed camping on Bureau of Land Management property.

Oh, I see.

Okay.

Yeah.

So dispersed camping is what I meant.

I think about where I've gone.

I've gone on Bureau of Land Management property.

I've driven up on dirt roads and back roads and you go up to a winding mountain and I come through like an opening and boom.

All of a sudden I'm at the top of this huge hill that was like a rock quarry probably from 50 years ago that hasn't been touched.

And imagine the size of almost a football field.

And I am up there by myself for four days raising, yeah, camping.

And that's free, right.

We pay for that with our taxes to have this land, to have this beautiful country.

And I, and I.

If I had to make a prediction of the future, I would think that free camping is going to have a big surge this next year because of the things we're going to be going through with the economy.

Right.

One last question.

I'm going to be on the Kelly and Mark show Thursday.

We're talking about affordable beach vacations.

Does camping out change in the summer?

Do people need to take anything into account if they're going to a beachy destination that they don't need to for other types of destinations?

Reserve in advance.

You know, when you look at beach, a lot of beach Properties are state parks along the actual ocean fronts.

Those book way in advance.

So that's one thing that you want to be looking at.

Another thing that users can think about is on the dirt.

We have the dirt alerts where you can get reservations at sold out campgrounds.

So you can say, I want to go to that state park on that beach on these dates.

And we will sit there and ping the reservation system every five minutes.

And as soon as someone cancels, we send you a text.

Hey, Pauline, the campground you wanted on the dates you wanted just opened up.

Go book it.

So there is.

Even though things look full, people all the time are getting dirt alerts through the dirt.

The other thing I would say for your readers and viewers to think about is people underestimate the power of these private landowner properties and we have thousands and thousands of them on the dirt.

And if that state park is full, I bet you five miles down the road right on the ocean is someone who owns private land and they're renting it out to campers for 20 bucks a night, you know, so really encourage people.

If you want to go hit that beach vacation, check out that, check out private property land as well.

Very cool.

Well, thank you so much, Kevin.

Always such a delight speaking with you.

Great to talk to you.

And that is it for this week's show.

If you've enjoyed what you've heard, I hope you'll give us a five star rating.

If you haven't, well, nice knowing you.

And I thank you all for listening to those who are traveling.

May I wish you a hearty bon voyage.

Sour candy on the table.

Lazy afternoons in your sweatpants watching cable well, it feels so far away.

All.

The channels seem the same.

Trying to remember all the time Songs we like to play.

Cause those lazy afternoons don't come so frequently these days.

Oh, it's been so long and I cannot help but wonder Are you ever coming home?

I like you with your sour candy in the boat house on the lake.

Oh, but I hate, I hate I, I hate, I hate, I hate, I hate the way it takes.

I can't get you off of my mind Looking out the window where we spend so much of our time.

Cause I miss the way it felt.

But I guess you can't control those damn cards with Babe.

I know that both of us are happy when we're free.

But would it be so hard to find your freedom here with me?

Oh, it's been so long and I cannot help but wonder Are you ever coming home?

I like you with your sour candy in the boat house on the lake.

But I hate, I hate, I hate, I hate, I hate, I hate the way it takes.