Savoring the holiday weekend in SoCal

I did an interview this week with LAist Editor Zach Behrens, who asked about SoCal getaways for the holiday weekend and my new project, the Seal Beach Daily website.

On long weekends I like to escape up the coast or plan a kickback retreat to the desert. But this tumultuous season of fires, storms and economic meltdowns feels like a good time to stick closer to home. So I suggested a handful of day trips. Among them: the California landscape exhibit at the Long Beach Museum of Art. Orange County’s timeless Crystal Cove. Southern California’s other Wine Country. Bargain hunting in LA’s Fashion District.

Browse the entire LAist interview here.

More buzz: Check out Shelby Grad’s nice take today on the LAist interview at the LAT’s LA Now blog. Michelle Vranizan Rafter also writes about Seal Beach Daily at the excellent Word Count website.

**Photo of the Seal Beach Pier by Kate Cohen/Seal Beach Daily

Two authors, the next president and a burger shack

Santa Barbara travel writer Pico Iyer shares an essay in Time magazine about his chance encounter with Barak Obama in Hawaii.

“It was three days before the New Year in late 2006, and I was eating a burger with the traveler and writer Paul Theroux on Oahu’s North Shore. Beside us in the rickety little shack was a quintessentially Hawaiian group of Chinese Americans, African Americans, semi–Southeast Asians and kids who could have been any or all of the above, waiting for the dad in the group to bring over their avocado burgers from the counter. It took Paul and me a few seconds to realize that the dad in question — who looked like a skinny teenager — was, in fact, the freshman Senator from Illinois, who was expected to enter the presidential race in the next week or two…”

At Sunset Magazine’s travel blog, editor Amy Wolf wonders: What burger shack was it that happened to be serving Pico Iyer, Paul Theroux, and Barack Obama at the very same time? And how good were the burgers?

Malibu getaway: Checking in to check out the high-tech toys

Juliana Shallcross, an editor at HotelChatter.com, posts an iPhone hotel review from Malibu’s Billionaire’s Beach:

When we found out that The Malibu Beach Inn was running the world’s first iPhone guest management system, Hotel Evolution, naturally we had to go and try it out.

Despite the hotel’s website telling us that rooms were a steep $385 a night (on a Tuesday in a recession), we actually found a rate of $258 within the site. We clicked on one of their promotions which was offering a room and dinner for select days only. Our day happened to be a select day.

So a few hours later we were checking into the Malibu Beach Inn on PCH…

Keep reading here.

David Geffen opened his refurbished Malibu Beach Inn last fall, promising the “true Malibu experience” and allowing only registered guests to dine in his hotel restaurant. Since then, room rates aren’t the only thing that have dropped: I received a recent promo email announcing that the Malibu Beach Inn welcomes reservations for Thanksgiving dinner. A follow up call revealed that the hotel restaurant is now open to visitors the rest of the year, too, — with or without a room reservation.

*Updated: The New York Times does a round up on hotels offering the latest tech tools: “Hotels are under such pressure to keep up with their gadget-obsessed guests that they are working with technology companies to regain their edge.” Read more here.