I'm in a Brochure!

it's the AMERICAN dream



Something remarkable has happened.



A few years ago I flirted with the idea of restaging the Battle of Brooklyn, the obscure (but huge) battle of the Revolutionary War that sent scampy colonials running for the Bronx via Manhattan -- a huge, potential war-ending victory for the British before the war really got started.



The problem is, someone already was 'restaging' it, more or less, at Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery. So I went. (Read about it here.)



This week is 'Battle Wedk' in Brooklyn, with a host of events linked with the battle. I happened to grab a brochure today, and noticed something shocking: I'M IN IT.



Check it out:







See the guy in the background? NO ONE but me wears green shorts like that. And the reenactor in question is someone I talked to too (footage also made this video). Here's my photo of the same bloke:







Getting accidentally included in a brochure due to bad photo-cropping skills? Check that off my list. So no matter what happens next, I got that going for me.



For more on Battle Week, go to www.theoldstonehouse.org.

How to Like Atlantic City

Recently, my pal Paul Brady called Atlantic City a place that's 'hard to love.' I get that. During a short visit last year for Lonely Planet, I didn't exactly fall in love with Atlantic City either, but I got plenty out of my 35 hours of tracking down the source of all the Monopoly board properties.



Here's a video of the experience:







Using Monopoly as a 'guidebook' to AC, and it wasn't always easy to do, led me away from the casinos into a place where I found local-lifers in love with their home. It led me to used bookstores, old pizza places, lighthouses. The hunt for the Electric Company, actually a modern complex outside the center, almost felt like tracking down a buried treasure.



And also, I had fun.



To be honest, I could live happily if I never made it back to AC (though I felt a night at the Irish Pub was a time-travel experience, unlike anything I've had anywhere in the USA). But by searching out a pre-Trumpian era of AC, and meeting up with those who do love it, made me see it differently.



Sometimes I think that's the main thing travel is for.