Regional Contests: Louisville and Stowe

No matter where you go in the world, you are sure to find spots that capture the essence of the local culture—those favorite places that exemplify your hometown, or hotspots in a city you can't help but return to again and again. We are excited to announce two regional contests: the Louisville Writing Contest and the Stowe Writing Contest. For these, we invite residents and visitors of these regions to submit short trips about their favorite spots and activities, including mom-and-pop shops, parks, festivals, underground spots, foodie destinations, unique shops, neighborhood hangouts, historical sites, local institutions, and romantic places.

Among the prizes for these contests are hotel stays at 21c Museum Hotel in Louisville and the Stoweflake Mountain Resort and Spa in Stowe, dining and gift certificates, and other goodies. Visit the Louisville and Stowe contest pages for rules, prizes, and information about our sponsors. We look forward to reading your entries!

Writing Contest--$30,000 in Prizes & Travel

A hotbed of foodie culture, neighborhood flair, summers of love, and a gay community that has flourished like nowhere else... San Francisco is arguably America's most delicious city. Inspired by our sponsor city, this contest is about the places around the world that people inhabit, where local culture flourishes and makes its indelible mark. You can submit up to five trips (one for each theme) and feel free to write about any urban area—except for the final theme, which is restricted to trips about the city of San Francisco. Learn how to enter the San Francisco Writing Contest and win.

Hawaii Writing Contest Winners Announced

The People's Choice Award winning trip by Adrienne Wilson, the Editors' Choice Award winning trip by Heather McNeill, and our ten Editors' Choice Runners-Up trips were announced on December 28, 2009. Click here to see all the winners.

Hawaii Writing Contest

Big announcement: Together with the Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau, we created the Hawaii Writing Contest. There are two Grand Prizes -- a $7000 trip for two to Hawaii, and a $6000 writer's residency in Hawaii -- plus 10 freelance writing prizes.

For this contest, our generous sponsor wants Trazzlers to write about their favorite island experiences around the globe.

Isolated and adrift, an island is, as Charles Darwin put it, "a little world within itself." Island life evolves differently than it would on the mainland. Those of us confined to a continent can't resist the romantic lure of an island's unending coastline, crossroads of cultures, and independent spirit. Historically, islands have been places of escape, exile, and enigma. No matter where you live, there's bound to be one nearby.

When you sit down to write, get cinematic and zoom in: on a particular moment, action, experience, observation, insight, sensation—sound, sight, taste, smell, feeling—transport us to this place through your writing. Our travel-writing philosophy is different from anything else out there, so be sure to study our writing guide, editor's favorites, and tips for getting published.

Go to the contest

The Travel Personality

At Trazzler, we've always recommended trips unique to your location. In the background, we also kept track of the trips you've added to your Wishlist, trips you've written, and places you've been. We've been calling this data the Travel Personality, but we haven't done much with it... until now.

Over the weekend, we launched the first version of the Trazzler algorithm. Our new recommendation engine delves into your Travel Personality to create a personalized list of trips based on the preferences of other travelers who have the same interests as you (a collaborative filtering model). Now when you log in to Trazzler, the local recommendations that you see are tailored to you. While the site doesn't look any different, there is a lot more going on behind the scenes.

Over the next few months, we'll continue to improve the recommendations, and we'll be introducing a series of new ways to browse recommendations far beyond your local region.

In the meantime, we'd love to hear from you. Do the recommendations feel right? As you wishlist more trips and return the next day (the data crunching currently takes place overnight), do you notice a difference in the recommendations? The more you use the site and wishlist trips, the better your recommendations will get. Please let us know what you think in our discussion forum.

Pizza

In 1999, I was busing tables and cleaning sheets at a hostel in Miami. I'd been hitching around the country for three months-- and had just arrived from a week-long stay with Trappist Monks in Kentucky.

One night, after a few drinks and a midnight swim, a bold Australian told the crowd of gathered vagabonds that he knew where the best pizza in the world was made. Better yet, he would share this secret with us the next day.

About a dozen warning bells went off in my mind.

First of all: an Australian? What do they know about pizza? (Now, if he had said he knew where to find the best meat-pies, that would be a different story) Second: In Miami? I don't think so.

The next day he took us to a hole-in-the-wall that I'm certain I could never find again. What they served wasn't pizza in the sense that I knew it, but it was undoubtedly delicious. The crust was thick and doughy, the sauce had meat and sausage in it. And maybe it was just the fact that I was weakened by giving platelets to drum up bus fare...but I'm pretty sure it was the best pizza I'd ever tasted.

Of course, that was before I'd spent any amount of time in New York. Because there's pizza and there's New York Pizza. There's artisan flat-bread covered with vine-ripened tomato sauce, organic buffalo mozzarella and dusted with fresh basil--- and then there's New York Pizza. I may rave about Vista Springs Cafe and American Dream back in my home state of Oregon, but I am keenly aware of the fact that New York Pizza is playing on a whole different field. A field in which grease is not necessarily the enemy, in which slices can be folded, and it's perfectly acceptable to eat standing up.

When I lived in Brooklyn in 2001-2002, I was an Americorps volunteer with a $50.00/month stipend. On average, I spent about two-thirds of that on pizza. So I'm willing to claim some knowledge of the subject. As I prepare to return to New York for the first time in nearly ten years, here are the places I will. not. miss. (Either because I've been there before or received shockingly impassioned e-mails about them in recent weeks):::

1. Lucali - Brooklyn
2. Lombardi's - Manhattan
3. Grimaldi's - Brooklyn
4. Zero-Otto-Nove - Bronx
5. Nick's - Queens
6. Patsy's - Harlem
7. Totonno's - Coney Island
8. Salvatore of Soho - Staten Island
9. Di Fara's - Brooklyn
10. Tony's Brick Oven -Staten Island

Any recommendations? Endorsements? Names that don't deserve to make the list?

Empire State of Mind

[Editor's note: Steve Bramucci, our #NYCGO Writing Contest Grand Prize winner is guest blogging.]

Even before the dates are set, I have to admit that I'm ridiculously excited for my two-week writing residency in New York City. It'll be my first trip back since teaching high school in Queens and living in Brooklyn in 2001-2002.

My I-pod now features a playlist titled "Empire State of Mind" that I've been running on repeat for the past week. In its own way, each song leaves me eager to explore the nooks and crannies of the five boroughs during my trip.

Here's the list as it stands-- post a few of your favorites in the comments so I can give them a spin:

1. Empire State of Mind (Jay-Z w/Alicia Keys): If you even remotely like rap music and have at least the slightest affection for New York, you'll love this track. East Coast rappers supply us with a steady stream of songs about New York but in my mind this one towers over them all. Every time I hear it, I think back on when I taught in Queens and had my students write a persuasive essay on a topic of their choice. On the day the papers were due I found that not one, not two but five different students had decided to write their essay on "Why Jay-Z is the King of New York" Obviously, they convinced me.
2. New York, New York (Frank Sinatra): This pick might seem a little too easy but you can't make a New York playlist without Frank. Part of my love for this song comes for the fact that it's so popular in karaoke bars around the world. By my count, I've heard it belted out in Mexico, Kenya, Thailand, Australia and Fiji. It's not the amateur karaoke singers who take on Old Blue Eyes either, it's always the regulars.
3. Chelsea Hotel #2 (Leonard Cohen): This song is delicate and honest and beautiful. Out here in California we love our sensitive songwriters, full of hope and longing-- but the edges of their songs sometimes end up softened by sunshine and excellent avocados. With a song like this everything is sharp and direct and cuts to the bone. I've never been to the Chelsea Hotel but having a drink in the lobby is definitely on my list.
4. Rhapsody in Blue (George Gershwin): On the theme of this piece Gershwin said, "I heard it as a sort of musical kaleidoscope of America, of our vast melting pot, of our unduplicated national pep, of our blues, our metropolitan madness." From my experience in New York during the aftermath of September 11th, I would offer that the those phrases could be used to describe the city itself.
5. Autumn in New York (Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong): Every time I hear Louis's voice come rumbling in after the Ella's first verse (which is pure honey), I start clicking away on the computer to look for flight deals to New York between September and November. The song makes me want to get lost in Central Park watching the leaves turn burnt orange.
6. Me & Julio Down by the Schoolyard (Paul Simon): Paul Simon once did a music video for this song featuring Biz Markee and Spud Webb (seriously)-- but for me the images associated with the music always come from the movie The Royal Tennebaums. New York always feels exciting-- but this song (and Wes Anderson's movie) make it seem exciting in a whimsical, fresh way that I can't get enough of.
7. People Who Died (Jim Carroll): My introduction to New York City came from a book by Jim Carroll called The Basketball Diaries. It's still one of my favorite books and I'm a big fan of the movie too. The movie featured a scene with this song written and performed by the author himself. I could elaborate on what the song is about, but better to just say that it rocks and leave it at that.
8. Lua (Bright Eyes).
9. Rockaway Beach (The Ramones).
10. Coney Island Baby (Lou Reed).
11. Hello Brooklyn (The Beastie Boys).
12. New York- Ya Out There? (Rakim).

I look forward to hearing your favorite New York tracks and adding them to my list.

--Steve

[Editor's note: I'd add five: Take the A Train (Ellington/Strayhorn), I'll Take New York (Tom Waits), The Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side (Magnetic Fields), My My Metrocard (Le Tigre), and Un Verano en Nueva York (El Gran Combo)]

#NYCGO Writing Contest Winners

Hello Trazzlers--
Happy first day of fall! Thank you to all who participated in our #NYCGO Oasis Contest by writing trips or voting for your favorites. Many of you are new to Trazzler--welcome!
>Read the entries

Why Trazzler is Different
So many other travel sites are essentially reworded reference material with logistical information, tourist bureau propaganda, or an unedited, overwhelming morass of useful and useless information. Trazzlers meander through a world of trips--hand-picked, concise, compellingly written slices of life that pull the reader into a real experience: a hotel stay, walk, adventure, spa, restaurant, ice cream stand, pony ride... really anywhere that travel can take you. The more you use the site, the better our recommendations get.

Now, on to the big announcement...

#NYCGO Summer Writing Contest: Oasis
Winner: Stephen Bramucci, Laguna Beach, California
Winning Trip: Walking in the Footsteps of Pirates in Ambodifototra, Madagascar

Grand Prize: $10,000 contract to be a two-week writer-in-residence in New York City and write 30 Trazzler trips covering the five boroughs of NYC. Hotel accommodations (14 nights) provided by AKA luxury hotel residences. Round-trip airfare provided by JetBlue.

An island is a reverse-oasis for those who live at sea. Stephen invites us to imagine the world of the 17th- and 18th-century pirates who terrorized the trade routes and occasionally took a break by setting foot on dry land. All of the judges agreed that this trip was well-crafted and loaded with intriguing details. In just 140 words, Stephen was able to conjure up the weight of the past at the resting place of these rogues--a peaceful cemetery overlooking the sea.

9 Runners Up: Courtney Scott, Alex Dweezy Dwyer, Sandra Foster Lovas, Paul Justin Cox III, Kate Sommers, Marie Elena Martinez, Stephanie Fine Sasse, Paul Koning, and Traci Hui
Prizes: $250 freelance contracts to write 10 Trazzler trips

One of our objectives at Trazzler is to create a writing medium that captures the subjective and diverse nature of travel. We think the top ten trips illustrate how smart, adventurous travelers can experience the world in different ways. About the social-media savvy and creativity of all ten finalists (and those who came so close)--you far surpassed our expectations--thank you for making the contest such a success.

4 Editors' Choice Award Winners: Craig Bridger, Ethan Gelber, Thalia Kwok, and Karen Dion
Prizes: $500 freelance contracts to write 15 Trazzler trips

It was no easy task to narrow it down to just four trips--a teahouse, a moderately seedy Class A baseball game, the world's oldest sand dunes, and a nonexistent and poorly signed micronation. Each an oasis in its own way, these trips stuck with us, even after reading hundreds and hundreds of entries. For these awards, we didn't take the wishlisting votes into account at all--we realize that not everyone is a social-media expert and we always want to find a way to reward writers who embrace the idea of Trazzler.

About Our Sponsors
nycgo.com--New York City's official marketing, tourism and partnership organization--has very generously sponsored the grand prize: a $10,000 contract to write 30 Trazzler trips with free airfare and hotel for two weeks. Our grand prize winner will stay in the heart of New York City's own urban oasis, and enjoy the attentiveness worthy a celebrity VIP at the AKA luxury hotel residences. Think insanely great location (one block off 5th Avenue and Central Park) and swanky in-suite spa services. JetBlue will be providing flight to NYC. JetBlue offers flights to more than 50 destinations, with free TV and the most legroom in coach.

Upcoming Contests and Giveaways
We have big plans for more writing contests this fall. For details, follow us on Twitter @trazzler or keep an eye out for our next newsletter (we send one per month). We will also be doing more travel giveaways on Twitter. (We just gave away a two-night stay at the Jupiter Hotel in Portland, Oregon.)

Happy Trazzling...


Megan Cytron
Executive Editor


P.S. If you have any questions or feedback, you can find us @trazzler on Twitter or on Get Satisfaction.

Trazzler #NYCGO Summer Contest Semifinals

After two weeks of nonstop reading, we are excited to announce our #NYCGO Oasis Contest Semifinalists: http://www.trazzler.com/contests/nyc/semifinals

Judging writing contests is never easy--we often have to eliminate entries that are very well-written, but don't adhere to the contest rules or don't quite belong on Trazzler. Our trips are different from what you will find on other travel sites. From the start, we decided to put certain limitations on the form and style of our writing to make the experience of skipping from one place to the next more enjoyable. As a writer, I also strongly believe that limitations lead to spontaneity and spark creativity.

We often get asked why one entry is chosen over another. As I was reading the entries for this contest, I took these notes (from the mundane to the philosophical--and admittedly a bit jumbled):

• Trip was created prior to the contest start date
  
• Self promotion--writing about your own business.
  
• Too long (Our limit was 160 words--we gave a little leeway, but many trips were much longer.)
  
• Misspellings, typos, lack of proper syntax, missing punctuation, missing spaces, abbreviation, or lack of capitalization
  
• Written in verse, not narrative, or otherwise not in keeping with the Trazzler trip page form
  
• Not about an experience that others can have or a place that others can visit (We had some very well written trips in this category.)
  
• Choice of place is too broad (We don't publish trips on entire cities, our focus is much narrower.)
  
• No discernible place, more about a state of mind than a physical place or discrete experience
  
• Too personal--more about the person who wrote it than the place itself
  
• Too abstract or nebulous--no concrete information about the place (Trips about sunsets and sunrises are especially prone to this one.)
  
• Stylistically or lexically repetitive (in 65-120 words, repeated words or ideas stick out like a sore thumb)
  
• Syntactically repetitive; repetitive sentence structure (trips in which every sentence starts the same way: go here, do this, then do another thing, etc.)
  
• Too many cliched adjectives or verbal crutches... stunning, breathtaking, amazing, incredible, etc... (It's best to do away with these words and evoke the idea of them in your description of the place.)
  
• Platitudes: X is the place to be. There's something for everyone in X. You can't miss X. X is the best. X is a definite can't-miss, etc.
  
• Metawriting--writing about the act of writing (This is perfectly fine in a blog, but it doesn't work in the context of our site, where we want each trip to be a microcosm.)
  
• Many exclamation points
  
• Not in keeping with the "oasis" contest theme
  
• Not travel writing; not appropriate for a travel site (Though I have to confess, we loved reading some of these slices of life and sociological sketches.)
  
• Too tied to one moment in time; not a reproducible experience
  
• Well-written, but the specifics or concrete details about the place slip through the cracks, making it hard to understand the significance of the experience without having been there.

I hope this is helpful. We have more information on our writing philosophy here:

Writing Guide
Anatomy of a Trip

Keep writing!

--Megan

July Newsletter--#NYCGO Summer Contest

Hello Trazzlers--

It's been a while... We've been busy putting together a big contest for summer--and coming up with a dream job for the winner, who will be Trazzler's very first "writer-in-residence."

#NYCGO Summer Writing Contest and Theme

Oasis
1. n. a fertile or green area in an arid region (as a desert).
2. n. something that provides refuge, relief, or pleasant contrast.
(Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. 2009.)

Modern life can often feel like a trek through the desert. For this contest, we want you to write about a place that not only satisfies your thirst for a change of scenery, but goes beyond this, breaking the spell of everyday existence and providing the "refuge and relief" that we all crave, especially in the summer. Your oasis might be an urban park, a meal in a restaurant that you'll replay for years, a swimming hole on a hot summer day, a romantic hideaway that you return to again and again, a museum where you lose yourself for hours... really any place of extreme beauty, culture, flavor, respite, or relaxation. » Read more

We're Awarding 14 Writing Contracts:

• 1 Grand Prize: $10,000 contract to be a two-week writer-in-residence in New York City and write 30 Trazzler trips covering the five boroughs of NYC. Hotel accommodations (14 nights) provided by AKA luxury hotel residences. Round-trip airfare provided by JetBlue.
  
• 9 Runners Up: $250 contracts to write 10 Trazzler trips.
  
• 4 Editors' Choice: $500 contracts to write 15 Trazzler trips.
  

About this contest:
Trazzler is a site for dreamers, so when we wanted to find a dream assignment for our first two-week travel writer-in-residence, we knew it had to be New York City. For generations, writers from around the world have flocked to New York to drink from the fountain of inspiration--where better to write a series of trips with the theme "oasis?"

Our summer contest is going to be bit different from our past contests. For one thing, it's bigger, a lot bigger:

New York City's official marketing, tourism and partnership organization--has generously sponsored the grand prize: a $10,000 contract to write 30 Trazzler trips.

Our grand prize winner will stay in the heart of New York City's own urban oasis, in the lap of luxury at the AKA luxury hotel residences one block off 5th Avenue and Central Park with swanky in-suite spa services.

The flight will be provided by JetBlue. JetBlue offers flights to more than 50 destinations, with free TV, snacks, award winning service, and the most legroom in coach.


» See rules and more contest information

May Contest Winners--Work of Art
Prizes awarded: Ten $250 contracts to write 10 trips

Kendra Hoover, Julie Hammonds, David Chachere, Kimberly Wadsworth, Anne-Sophie Redisch, Sami Esfahani, Hrvoje Karalic, Gladys Glover, Yoshi Salaverry, and Beth Green.

We also awarded 22 freelance contracts. You can read about them in the blog entry below this one.

Welcome Twitterers
Thanks for following--today we topped 760,000 followers. You
can always contact us with feedback and questions @trazzler. You can also now send a tweet about any trip by clicking the "share" button on the trip page. During Round Two of our contest, sending tweets about your favorite contest entries can help them win.

Don't Stay Home!
I'm in Mexico at the moment and, like so many places weathering the past year's economic downturn, the little guys here need your business. Whether you can swing a big adventure or want to explore your own corner of the world more, this is a great time to seek out travel deals and help others keep their businesses afloat.

Happy Trazzling...


Megan Cytron
Executive Editor
http://www.trazzler.com


P.S. If you have any questions or feedback, you can find us @trazzler on Twitter or on Get Satisfaction.