Daily Archives: February 29, 2020

When thinking of Nevada, Las Vegas is usually the city that immediately springs to mind.

However, it could be time to think again, as the the Silver State has so much more to offer than the excesses of Sin City.

While Vegas offers up plenty of glitz and glamour, head beyond the neon and you'll find vast expanses of rocky desert that drift up to snowcapped mountains and alpine forests.

There's ample opportunity for once-in-a-lifetime road trips too, thanks to the skinny highways snaking through giant landscapes and forgotten ghost towns.

Oh, and make sure to leave space on the itinerary to discover the state's glorious national and state parks.

We take a look at seven breathtaking spots in Nevada if you're looking to take a break from the hedonism in Las Vegas...

You dont have to go far to get remote. These two amazing sites in the surrounding Mojave Desert are exactly how you imagine the American Far West to be. Stunning red sandstone hills and cliffs. Psychedelic rock formations. Arid valleys of cactus and scrub.

Red Rock Canyon is just beyond Vegas city limits to the west, while the Valley of Fire is about an hour northeast.

You can hike, climb, or drive around both, and theyre perfect for picnics or mini road trips. Be sure to stay until late afternoon when as their names suggest the peaks seemingly catch ablaze in the setting sun.

Find out more at redrockcanyonlv.org and parks.nv.gov/parks/valley-of-fire

Less than two north hours of Vegas is Route 375, dubbed the ET Highway due to decades of UFO sightings and its proximity to the top-secret Area 51 air force base.

The drive up through the magnificent surreal landscape is worth the effort (and scores of photos) alone. But then youre greeted by cool alien-themed shops and road signs, before arriving at the Little ALeInn in the remote desert hamlet of Rachel.

Featured in the Simon Pegg movie Paul, the fantastic inn has a trove of alien paraphernalia and is a mecca for UFO-enthusiasts. It's also as close as you can get to Area 51. Make sure you obey the no trespassing signs, the men in black are watching you.

Great for a day trip, or get a room at the inn and take your chances with the night. Find out more at littlealeinn.com.

Further northeast, next to the Utah border, is the handsome Great Basin National Park. The Great Basin itself is the vast watershed that covers most of Nevada north of Vegas, as well as half of Utah and parts of Oregon and California.

The national park is a snapshot of the Basins wide-ranging topography, flora and fauna. Rising sharply from the desert valley, you soon reach elevated glacial lakes and pretty temperate forests, culminating in the towering 13,000ft-high Wheeler Peak.

There's also groves of ancient bristlecone pines some over 5,000 years old as well as scenic driving routes, visitor centres, hiking trails, and the popular Lehman caves with their labyrinth of giant stalactites and mites. Find out more at http://www.nps.gov/grba.

The Nevada section of Highway 50 is ultimate road trip country. Starting at the Great Basin National Park, it stretches clean across central Nevada, following the route of the old Overland Stagecoach and Pony Express.

It gained its ambiguous title of The Loneliest Road in America due to its sheer remoteness. Youll see scenes straight from a movie, with big country, and even bigger sky.

The very empty highway arrows through panoramic valleys, then rises and snakes through mountain ranges, before descending into the next valley. Wave after wave for hundreds of miles.

The elevated desert is less hot than the blazing Mojave to the south, though the occasional oncoming vehicle will still materialise out of the shimmering horizon like a mirage.

But dont fear the road less travelled, there are spots of civilisation every 70 miles or so to stock up on supplies. The coolest being Ely and Eureka, two Old West towns now undergoing regeneration. The historic Hotel Nevada in Ely is an oasis of neon and retro gambling, a great place to get out of the saddle for the night.

Find out more at elynevada.net.

After finishing Highway 50, Reno will live up to its billing as the 'biggest little city in the world'.

Locals dont like their town being thought of as a little Las Vegas, but that'll probably be your first impression.

With its old-school casinos, blazing neon, massive murals, and low-slung motels, you could easily mistake yourself for being in Downtown Vegas.

And then theres the three main casino hotels of Eldorado, Circus Circus, and Silver Legacy, which have interconnected to become The Row, a mega-resort akin to Vegass more modern Strip. With a warren of restaurants, bars, and shows, you can top up on your hedonism after all that nature.

Reno is also a city on the up aside from tourism. The cool Midtown District has a rapidly growing collection of contemporary restaurants, bars, galleries, and boutique shops.

And what with Tesla opening its huge Gigafactory, plus Apple and Google also expanding out from the relatively nearby San Francisco Bay Area, it could soon become a little Silicon Valley.

Just dont let the locals hear you call it that.

Find out more at visitrenotahoe.com.

In 1859 one of the greatest ever discoveries of silver sparked a frenzied rush to the hills 25 miles south of Reno.

Virginia City sprang up as a wild boomtown above the mines, and was once described as a den of 'avarice, lust, and devilry'.

The boom only lasted 25 years and the town slowly withered away. But then it became the location for the Wild West TV show Bonanza and was reborn as a top tourist destination.

The ornate historic wooden buildings and boardwalks of the main road have been restored to original style, and are now mostly occupied by dozens of fantastically cheesy saloons and souvenir shops.

Theres also an old steam train, museums, ghost tours, and plenty of real cowboys and cowgirls.

Its a great place to while away a few hours, but can be a bit of a Wild West theme park. Get there before high noon when the town gets overrun by posses of tourists spending fistfuls of dollars.

Find out more at visitvirginiacitynv.com.

Just half an hour from Reno is Lake Tahoe. Nestled in the Sierra Nevada mountains on the border with California, its a verdant retreat from the deserts below.

In summer, the cobalt waters of the 22-mile-long lake are awash with aquatic activity - swimming, sailing, kayaking, and the like. In winter, its all about the snow. Over a dozen resorts in the area cater for the crowds who come to ski and snowboard amid the colossal conifers.

The north side of the lake is more rustic and chic, while Tahoe South is a buzz of hotels, bars, shops, and restaurants. There, the only real demarcation between the two states is the sudden cessation of casinos as you cross the street into California.

Drive the 72-mile rugged road around the shore and youll find beaches, forests, state parks, and hiking trails, all with a view of the shimmering lake.

Go on. Relax and take a dip. Youll be back in the heat and hustle of Vegas in no time.

Find out more at tahoesouth.com.

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Best things to see in Nevada aside from Las Vegas including Red Rock Canyon - Mirror Online

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Aubree Peterson (front) as Sally Bowles and Mathias Oliver as the emcee in Spokane Civic's Cabaret.

The Firth J. Chew studio in the lower level of the Spokane Civic Theatre has always been a small space with big possibilities. Over the years its interior has been rearranged for performances that faced north and east, for stages in a three-sided thrust format or in the round, and for players entering and exiting from every direction.

The different physical configurations have allowed audiences to experience familiar productions in novel ways. They've also allowed directors, actors and set designers to approach shows from unconventional angles. Quite literally.

A new production of Cabaret directed by Heather McHenry-Kroetch is continuing the studio's tradition of spatial exploration by redrawing the usual boundaries between the action and the audience.

"Denny Pham designed the set after we'd had a couple conversations about how we could open it up," she says. "It's going to be really interesting. It's never been set up like this before. The [seating] risers are all gone. It's all cocktail tables, and the audience is seated at the tables."

Without doing anything more than taking their seats, Cabaret's theatergoers will become the patrons of the musical's Kit Kat Klub, complete with its own purpose-built stage, catwalk and live band. The show, which is more broadly set in 1930s Berlin during the insidious rise of Nazism, will more or less envelop them.

"Some things will be happening right in front of you, and some things will be happening behind you, and some things will be happening up above to your right. It's very immersive. You have an opportunity to really feel the atmosphere."

That same immediacy and intimacy opened up new opportunities for the cast and creative team. With a show like Cabaret, it can sometimes be difficult to escape the shadow of the show's many Broadway revivals or the 1972 film version directed by dance legend Bob Fosse. But in shrinking the traditional buffer between performer and spectator, the set design has invited the choreographers to reimagine the characters' movements and the actors to make "different choices," says McHenry-Kroetch.

"I can't tell you how cool it is to be able to work on it and discover things about it. I think most of the extra challenges in this are because none of us have ever worked in this space the way it is right now. It changes everything. It changes sound configuration, lighting configurations and costumes. It changes hair and makeup because you'll be right next to people."

In the leading role of Sally Bowles, an ex-pat cabaret singer at the Kit Kat, is Aubree Peterson. Bowles falls in love with the American writer Cliff (Joshua Baig), but neither their relationship nor their circle of friends is immune to the growing social and political unrest.

Though she's no stranger to the local stage, Peterson says that this Cabaret is new territory for her, too.

"It's the scariest thing I've ever done in my life. When we're out on the stage, we could reach out and touch somebody," she says. That proximity creates an uncommon sense of vulnerability for actors and audience members alike.

"It's very raw. I think it allows for people to relate to the characters more because they're so involved in the show," Peterson says. "But being that close to some of the characters can also break your heart. And with Cabaret being such a huge dance show, you expect it to be a large space which we don't have for a lot of dancers to do a lot of things. So it's making the choreography really tight."

There are, however, core components of Cabaret that stay the same across venues and versions. This production, based on the 1998 Broadway revival, will naturally still feature the emcee (played here by Mathias Oliver), a group of bawdy Kit Kat girls and boys, and earworms like "Two Ladies" and "Willkommen." The strains of hedonism, prejudice, fatalism, willful ignorance, fear and Gleichschaltung (the process of Nazification in Hitler's Germany) that flow through its narrative have a timelessness and timeliness as well.

From McHenry-Kroetch's perspective, those strains were best left to speak for themselves. Very early on she decided not to go searching for any contemporary parallels and chose to concentrate instead on Cabaret's universal themes and character-driven plot.

"I don't think there's really anything you have to add or subtract or highlight to make this seem relevant. The story is powerful even if it was just an historical statement," she says.

"It's really about, do you act out of fear? Do you become apathetic? Do you take a stand for something? Do you live your life passionately? As the cast and crew and I go through it, it all has something we can identify with."

Cabaret Feb. 28-Mar. 22; Thu-Sat at 7:30 pm, Sun at 2 pm $25 Spokane Civic Theatre 1020 N. Howard St. spokanecivictheatre.com 325-2507

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The Civic's studio production of Cabaret seats its audience right at the tables of the Kit Kat Klub - Pacific Northwest Inlander

Due to Basildon's new town status, it doesn't have the history that some other towns in Essex has.

Whereas some places like Southend-on-Sea and Colchester can boast about centuries of history, the majority of Basildon has only been built over the past 70 years.

When most people think of the area, they may imagine its concrete town centre and rough reputations.

But including the villages of Vange, Pitsea and Laindon which sit within its boundaries, there are some wonderful gems that if you don't go to Basildon often, you may not have enjoyed.

If you've only been to Wat Tyler Park for the kids playground, you're missing out.

The park is full of brilliant artwork and sculptures dotted around the fields and marshes.

As well as this, The Green Centre building houses a wonderful selection of history and community activities for all ages.

There's also access to Pitsea Creek and a wonderful environment for wildlife spotting.

Bowers Marshes is a RSPB protected wildlife habitat with a brilliant selection of birds, animals and insects available to view.

Within the protected zone, are kingfishers, rare finches water voles and a huge amount of insects.

It's brilliant for pedestrians too, with a 5km walking route for birdwatchers, hikers and cyclists.

Tucked away in the middle of the Pitsea suburbs between Felmores and Eversley, sits Great Chalvedon Hall.

This grade II listed building from 16th century now acts as a pub with a fresh seafood stall to boot.

It's sat away from houses in the middle of recreational field with a small lake nearby, and is perfect for a sunny afternoon.

We all know about Bas Vegas, the nightclub and restaurant hot spot of the town famous for its hedonism and drunken night full of regret.

But locals will know that if you travel behind the leisure park, you find the Aquatel lake, which now has become a wakeboarding lake.

Wakeboarding is a thrilling activity where you ride a board whilst being pulled along the lake via a zipwire system.

The lake also operates an inflatable obstacle course at some times throughout the year depending through year.

At the end of Wat Tyler Park sits Pitsea Creek.

This small river leads straight into the Thames Estuary, and makes for a great walk along watching private boats glide through the marshes nearby.

It's so peaceful you wouldn't realise you were a stones throw from Pitsea tip or the A13.

At the top of the Langdon Hills village by the former The Crown pub, sits Westley Heights.

This woody country park is a great spot for bird watching and has a solid network of horse and cycle tracks too.

It's flower-rich meadows and ancient woodlands date back to prehistoric time, so it's well worth a visit if the weather is nice.

Former known as Aunt Fanny's, this is one of Basildon's top rated pubs and restaurants.

On Trip Advisor, it is rated as the third best restaurant in the town out of 105, with a four-and-a-half star rating.

It is a popular place for events due to two large function rooms and the pub serves classic pub grub as well as Mediterranean cuisine.

It's sat along London Road in between Pitsea centre and the Saddlers Farm roundabout.

Read more from the original source:

The seven hidden gems in Basildon that are worth shouting about - Essex Live

Courtesy Christopher Bryant, Mobile

Its Mardi Gras time! The annual tradition will culminate tomorrow on fat Tuesday with parades, booze, moon pies, beads, and general hedonism, but where did this tradition come from? I know your first instinct is to say New Orleans, of course, since no city in the US more associated with Mardi Gras, but you may be interested to know that the first Mardi Gras celebrations in America didnt start in NoLa they started slightly to the East, in Mobile, Alabama.

Now before we discuss Mardi Gras in America, we have to discuss its continental roots and larger history. Mardi Gras is one of many iterations around the globe of Carnivale, which is technically the period between Epiphany and Shrove Tuesday/Ash Wednesday.

Epiphany, also known as Three Kings Day, by the way, is the celebration of the three magi actually making it to Bethlehem to give Jesus his presents and when Christ received the holy spirit. There was a dove and thats why the twelve days of Christmas are actually the twelve days after Christmas. But anyway! Back to Carnivale!

Most Carnivale traditions dont go on for that entire time (thank god), but the general idea is living it up before the fasting and prayer of Lent. Mardi Gras literally means Fat Tuesday and is the Tuesday well you get, well, fat before lent. (The Monday before is Lundi Gras). Its a very catholic thing, but of course like all good holiday traditions, it probably has deeper pagan roots in winter and early spring festivals like Saturnalia and Lupercalia where the Romans (who liked any excise to a party) would go wild.

Now to America. The first celebrants of Mardi Gras in America were French soldiers led by a guy by the name of Pierre Le Moyne dIberville. In 1699, they were exploring the area around was is now New Orleans. They came to a point around sixty miles upriver and made camp and realized it was Shrive Tuesday and names the spot Point Du Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday point!).

Now, Pierre was on this expedition with his younger brother Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville, who went on to found a settlement in the same general area near the Gulf of Mexico, the first capital of French Louisiana Mobile. The first organized Mardi Gras celebration in America happened in Mobile in 1703. The capital of Louisiana was moved to New Orleans in 1723 (five years after the city was founded in 1718), but the Mardi Gras tradition in Mobile continued, mainly thanks to the parades and festivities as organized by mystic societies or krewes of which Mobile had the first.

Joe Cain day float in Mobile. Photo: Christopher Bryant.

While Mardi Gras continued as a tradition in much of the French-influenced and settled areas of the deep south, like New Orleans and Mobile, it wasnt always met with approval by the various controlling governments. First the Spanish and then the Americans either banned or tolerated Mardi Gras and the first official Mardi Gras parade in New Orleans didnt happen until 1837.

Mardi Gras in Mobile for its part had a similarly checkered history under various controlling governments, including the victorious Union forces that were occupying Mobile in 1868, when a man named Joe Cain, inspired by the Parades in New Orleans, decided to stage his own parade in front of Union troops dressed as a fiction Chickasaw Indian as a means of mocking them. The racial and historical context of that is complicated and fraught, but Joe Cain Day is still celebrated in Mobile with the peoples parade the only procession not run by a formal parade krewe.

Mardi Gras is a beloved tradition in Mobile and other strongly cajun southern cities, but thats not to say Mardi Gras is the same in those places as it is in New Orleans. For one thing, its much smaller and less of a tourist draw and tends to be a little more family-friendly and community-focused than its raucous cousin in Lousiana. But there are still beads, masks, and treats aplenty.

So whether youre enjoying King cakes or moon pies tomorrow when you throw on your green, gold, and purple, remember that the Mardi Gras we know and love today has deep roots and a fascinating history thats worth knowing.

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The Roots of Mardi Gras Arent Just in New Orleans - The Mary Sue

What drives extreme athletes or, sometimes, any outdoor-oriented person to court the perilous edge?

What ethical and moral obligations do people have to loved ones should they be rendered widowed survivors?

How much pressure are sponsored athletes under to keep pushing the envelope by outdoor gear manufacturers, and what kind of toll does it take on them psychologically?

Why does our society seem to have such a weird voyeuristic fascination with desiring to witness people doing extraordinary things that could result in them perishing right in front of us?

How do maturity and ego evolve over time?

When does self-centered yen give way to self-effacing zen?

These are not obtuse existential questions. They are examined in a March 2020New Yorker profile of two Bozeman friends.

Fascinating is that part of the background for Paumgartens investigation began with a series of pieces Tate had written for Bozeman-based Mountain Journal and his column, "Community Psyche."Some of Tates writings deal with the trauma of athletes being lost to the mountains and the grief that settles in hard as people search for meaning. He often invites readers to reflect on the ultimate personal inquiry: for what purpose are we here? When we head into the wilderness is it to lose ourselves or find ourselves?

This piece caught the attention of Anker and via social media it generated hundreds of thousands of views around the world in a couple of weeks. He thought Tate was hitting upon something that no one else was really raising.

If I may acknowledge a bias here, Conrad is fundamentally a good caring person; a consummate introvert; a valued neighbor; a person who thinks deep about the problems of the world. And, as a physical specimen, hes reached the highest rafters of the planet with skill and grit. Now he's trying to make sense of it all.

Tate has been his confidante and blood brother. Hes had a therapy practice in downtown Bozeman for decades and he admits to being a shamanistic seeker. He is rapt with Carl Jungians theory of the archetype, and tales of the quest to find the holy grail and ancient religions, be they indigenous or druid. He is, in the truest sense, a character.

His columns in Mountain Journal are popular with readers if not interpreted by some as Quixotic musings. They call attention to not only the bright lights of illumination that come with living in outdoor-oriented towns where a premium is placed on spectacular gestures of athletic hedonism, but there are downsides, the dark sides, the shadows and sometimes wailing pain of self-destruction.

Eco-conscious fun-hoggery, as an ethos, a culture, a life style, and an industry, spans the world, and even rules some corners of it. Chouinard is its best-known avatar and entrepreneur, its principal originator and philosopher-king, and is as responsible as anyone for guiding it from the primitive tin-can and hobnail aesthetic of the mid-twentieth century to the slackline and dome-tent attitude of today, Paumgarten wrote.

He added: He [Chouinard] has made it more comfortable, and more glamorous, to be outside, in harsh conditions. His influence is way out of proportion to his revenue footprint. He has mixed feelings about all thissome apprehension about the world he has made. He celebrates the spread of an ecological consciousness but laments the disappearance of danger and novelty, and the way that the wilderness has become a hobby, or even a vocation. He disdains ski areas ('Theyre golf courses'), the idea of professional climbing ('I just dont like the whole paid-climber thing'), and the proliferation of extreme sports as programming and marketing ('Red Bulls in the snuff-film business').

Paumgarten went on, When I ventured to mention how the catalogue sometimes irked me, he was quiet for a while, and then said, When you see the guides on the Bighorn, theyre all out of central casting. Beard, bill cap, Buff around the neck, dog in the bow. Oh, my God, its so predictable. Thats what magazines likeOutsideare promoting. Everyone doing this outdoor life style thing. Its the death of the outdoors.

I dont want to give too much away about the Paumgarten piece on Anker and Tate except to say his goal wasnt to perpetuate a cult a hero worship. He lays threadbare the human trajectory of soaring high and falling back again to earth.For some, it will be a hard and cursing read, viewed as an attack on fun hog culture. For others, an insightful glimpse into the compulsions of outdoor rock stars who seem larger than life.

Paumgarten seems to explore the issue with equal measures awe and bewilderment. With Anker and friends, he has protagonists who are wrestling with the big questions, with the same ones we doof how do we confront our own mortality, whats the value of love and leaving behind more than weve taken or squandered?

Tate has his own interpretations. Is he really Bozemans version of Gandalf?

Originally posted here:

The Gravity Of Grief And Pressure In Extreme Outdoor Sports - Mountain Journal

After their much talked-about debut season, Octan Ibiza returns bigger and better than ever on Thursday, 7th May 2020 to kick start their second summer in Ibiza.

Their opening party will be hosting all the key residents and new ones, plus some tasteful headliners that will bring those serious non-stop grooves we became accustomed to last summer. The season programming will see weekly residencies in addition, and will also be showcasing a series of special one-offs all summer long.

In 2019, the brand new club quickly established itself as an Island and cult favourite for those looking for a more underground and intimate experience. Octans Basement is the perfect underground space that gives you a raw and intense energy alongside its dark aesthetic, low ceilings and a world class sound system. The style is sleek and stripped back with low key lighting and immersive lighting all making it an atmospheric space of pure hedonism.

Last summer saw Octan host Apollonias first weekly residency, Planet Claire, which offered the underground heads serious sets from the likes of Nicolas Lutz, Traumer, Cristi Cons, Francesco Del Garda, Doc Martin, Anthea, Pearson Sound and many more. You also saw Steve Lawler return to the Island with his Warriors brand who had artists Enzo Siragusa, GUTI, Yousef, East End Dubs, Seb Zito, Darius Syrossian and more join them in the Basement.

New for this summer, the Terrace has been fully redone and improved plus there have been various stylistic renovations inside the club. Whats more, the iconic artwork that adorns the outside of the venue will be all re-done by a brand new artist this season that will be the case at the start of every new summer. The club will be open across a number of nights during the week, with special parties next to new resident brands all catering to the beat in cutting edge house, techno and minimal.

Keep your eyes peeled for the first wave of names, but be assured that Octan is set to be the most talked about underground venue on the White Isle this summer.

Early Bird 15 tickets available here!

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Octan Ibiza returns bigger and better than ever - Rave Jungle