Travelogues & History
I lived about 20 miles from the heart of downtown Los Angeles when I was growing up, but it was a place I visited only rarely. I recall a school field trip to historic Olvera Street, and my father once took me to his office in a downtown
I’ve had the good fortune to visit Barcelona twice in my lifetime – once in 1977, when I was 22 and about three months into half a year’s traveling all over Europe; and again in 1994, when I was there for a European pool show as editor of Pool & Spa News. On both occasions, I was in the city for six days – but the two adventures could not have been more
It was nice taking a break after so many consecutive annual pilgrimages to Las Vegas by heading over to New Orleans for the 2012 edition of the International Pool|Spa|Patio Expo. I’ve been to the Crescent City about a dozen times through the past 30 years and have always enjoyed
St. Louis is a great American city. My brother lived there for a time, and I have many friends who live within easy reach of that special point on the map where the Missouri River joins the Mississippi River as it flows to the Gulf of Mexico. I’ve passed through town on several occasions through the years and was able to play the serious tourist once while visiting in the Spring of 1998. In addition to the famous zoo, a few museums and the Busch brewery, I basked in the splendor of Eero Saarinen’s Gateway Arch (although I didn’t ride to the top until a later visit) and, for the first time ever, saw the Gateway Geyser put on its
Back in October 2001, Hal Hagen wrote “The Soul of the River” about his passion for restoring damaged or compromised stretches of wild water. His insights from back then ring true, perhaps with even greater urgency, 10 years later: ‘At the most basic level, all rivers do is
Every once in a while, a watershape impresses me for reasons not even I quite understand. A case in point is the grand-scale fountain in San Francisco by the Canadian sculptor and performance artist
As I’ve mentioned before in these Travelogues, I have strong ties to Pennsylvania and have spent a considerable amount of time exploring all it has to offer visitors, from the basic touristy stuff to some wonderfully off-the-beaten-path sorts of experiences. My brother Tom lived in Philadelphia through most of the 1980s, and both work and pleasure led me to visit him on so many occasions that I came to know the city quite well. The waterfront is amazing, and so is the historic district
Ever since people started adding swimming pools to their backyards, the companies that make the equipment, tools, systems and accessories that drive or ease their use have tried to reach and influence consumers. Real successes in those efforts can probably be counted on the fingers of a hand or two; I’ve always thought that, as an industry, we do a much better job of talking among ourselves at trade shows and in trade magazines than we do at getting to consumers where they live. You’ll be glad to know that this is not a discussion I want to pursue here; rather, I want to focus
By Jim McCloskey A few weeks back, I came across a story on a celebration that ran off the rails in San Diego’s Balboa Park. In the wee hours of August 12, a party instantly organized on social media lured an estimated 1,500 people to participate in a gigantic water fight. Unfortunately, the park’s largest open and available source of water to
Back in a time before I had anything to do with watershaping, I lived for a few years in Eugene, Ore. – a smallish college town that always left me craving more-urban spaces. Portland was up the road by a couple hours, and in the days before our first child appeared, my wife and I would make fairly frequent trips to visit the closest real city we had available. We loved
