Posts tagged contest winners

We just posted the winners of our Winter Parks and Weekly Worldwide writing and photography contests. Thanks so much to everyone who entered, we really enjoyed seeing and reading about your cold-weather explorations (even the hardcore snow kiting and ice climbing—brr). If our furry oracle is correct, we’ll be looking forward to at least six more weeks of the underappreciated, ethereal quiet beauty of parks in the winter.

• Winter Parks: 1st Prize Photography: Alex Eriksen 
• Winter Parks: 1st Prize Writing: René Jasper
• Weekly Worldwide: 1st Prize Photography: Rachel Chang 
• Weekly Worldwide: 1st Prize Writing: Stephen Drum 

• Writing 1st Place: $50 Contract
• Photography 1st Place: $50 Contract

• Deadline: February 8, 2012

In the meantime, we’re busily judging the California Wine Contest and last week’s Weekly Worldwide and will make an announcement by 2/8/12.  Thanks so much for the great turnout!

Congratulations to all of the winners of our On the Road Writing Contest and a big thanks to our sponsor, Fairmont Hotels, and all who took the time to enter and vote.

The final editorial prize winners are:
Editors’ Choice Grand Prize: Susan Offer Szafir
Editors’ Choice Runners-Up Prizes: Peter Herring and Alexis Bohan Peschiera

The editorial prize semifinalists are listed here. Great job to all—we loved reading about your roadside finds—please keep writing!

The People’s Choice winners are:
Indrani Ghose, Christine Medina, David Joshua Jennings, Carolyn Turner, Sandra Dee Carr, Carly Mary Cady, Daniel Scharch, Nicole Bigelow, Kate Baggott, Dejon Flow Simons.

We can’t wait to hear all about our winners’ stays at Fairmont’s beautiful hotels and read about their adventures on Trazzler.

Our Smart Travel Writing Contest is well underway—get your entry in now.

Editors’ Choice Grand Prize Winners
A riverside love nest, a neighborhood of books, a dusty subtropical sweet spot, a place where jazz hands can roam free, and a gallery where tiny taxidermy is a medium for angst-y artistic expression… each of our winners grasped the idea of what a Trazzler Trip is all about—and transported us to these wildly different corners of the world (in less than 160 words, no less).

Foodie Temples: Sarah Barker
Cutting the Dust With Sugar Cane Juice in Homestead, Florida

Love: Tess Link
Shacking Up on the Banks of a River in Ojai, California

LGBT Icons: James Mulcahy
Rocking Out to Rodgers and Hammerstein in New York, NY

Neighborhood Spots: Nick Rowlands
Rummaging Around Nooks and Crannies in Azbakiya Book Market, Cairo

Only in SF: Traci Hui
Feeling Nihilistic With Dead Mouse Hamlet in San Francisco, CA

The writers of our Grand-Prize trips win a free trip to San Francisco: five nights at a Joie de Vivre Hotel, free round-trip airfare within the continental US, and a $700 contract to write 15 trips about their Only-in-San-Francisco experience.

It’s always agonizing to choose just one winner per theme, so we awarded 15 Editors’ Choice Runners-Up prizes (15 $250 contracts to write ten short Trazzler trips):

Lisa Michele Burns, Maureen Duncan, Joanna Eng, GladysG, Lily Grace, Megan Kung, Apryl Lundsten, Doug Mack, Gail Nelson-Bonebrake, Mag Ritt, Diana Springfield, Ben Shattuck, Sam Sherman, Tuatara, and Laura Woodman.

People’s Choice Grand-Prize Winners
Foodie Temples: Mary Bonomo
LGBT Icons: Kayla Albert
Neighborhood Spots: Edna Zhou
Only in SF: Rebecca Feinberg
Love in the City: Kim Repp

Our People’s Choice winners win a free trip for two to San Francisco including round-trip airfare for two (within the continental US), 5 nights at a Joie de Vivre Hotel, and $700 in spending money to make a bit of Only-in-San-Francisco magic.

We can’t wait to hear all about our winners’ trips. As I write, our Island Contest winners, Adrienne Wilson and Heather McNeill are exploring Hawaii—one beach and shave-ice shack at a time—we’ll be tweeting about their adventures next week.

—Megan

[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).

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.

Hello Trazzlers—
What a busy couple of months it has been!

We’ve been holding back on sending out our newsletter this month, because we have a big announcement to make about our next contest in mid-July… in the meantime, I wanted to announce our contest winners and July freelancers here.

Work of Art Contest Winners:

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

Work of Art Contest Entries

This month, we are returning to some of our favorite writers to get another batch of trips, hiring contest contenders who caught our eye, commissioning sponsored trips for specific destinations, and digging back many months to hire writers who have been on our list of potential freelancers for quite a while.

July freelancers:

Nicholas Rowlands | Shara Johnson | Troy Nahumko | Robert Ellsworth | Clair Whitmer | Fayette Fox | Mollie Day | Summer Whitford | Yiannis Ifantides | Irina Vodonos | Galen Leeds | Billy Gonzalez | Rich Carriero | Donald Mammoser | Angela Allan | Christopher Johnston | Annie B Shapero | Daniel Djang | Muon Van | Greg Thomas | Paul Koning | Ashwin Sodhi | Christine Cantera |

Trazzler’s user base is growing rapidly and our budget for freelancing will continue to increase in tandem with the site. We know that none of our growth would be possible without the contribution of our community team, freelance writers, and contributors. Trazzler is a lean—and decidedly uncorporate—operation. Although the last year has been a bit of a financial obstacle course, our commitment has always been to dedicate a high percentage of our budget (currently 26% compared to an average of 13% in traditional media) to hiring those writers who embrace the idea of Trazzler and have a one-of-a-kind contribution to make.

Writers: You can help us find the right assignment for you by updating your Trazzler bio (under settings) and adding your area of expertise and the countries, regions, states, or cities that you would like to write about. More and more, we hope to be able to offer contracts to write a block of trips about a specific regional or topical beat. We realize that many of you who submitted excellent samples might slip through the cracks if we don’t know all of the places you can write about. We will be offering many more contracts over the coming months and are always going back through all of the writers who submitted trips to find the best ones for each assignment, so please stick with us!

Also coming very soon: writers will be able to see when a trip has been read by an editor. We will also be using this blog to post details about specific writing gigs as they become available, so you can have a chance to let us know that you are interested (Twitter @trazzler is a good way to get our attention). We have really been overwhelmed (in the best of all possible ways) by the quality of the writing that we have received and we are determined to improve our responsiveness and communication.

—Megan

P.S. Check back in on July 14 for our big summer contest announcement.

As quite a few astute trazzlers have pointed out, we’re running woefully behind on sending out our mid-January newsletter, which means we haven’t been able to announce the winners of our December contest. Our excuse: we’ve been working furiously to launch some big improvements to the site. (You can try them now by going to Trazzler.com and clicking the “facebook connect” button. If you have an existing trazzler.com account, be sure to sync it. Let us know what you think.)

So, to keep the contest wheels in motion, we’ll announce last month’s winners and next month’s contest here on the blog. We’d like to make this a monthly blog post, so we get a chance to talk more in depth about our favorites—you can also check in any time @trazzler on Twitter).

New January/February Contest—On the Beaten Path
http://www.trazzler.com/trips/tags/on-the-beaten-path
End date: February 25, 12pm EST; 5pm GMT
Prize: a $250 contract to write 10 trips

This month, we’re offering the challenge of writing about places that are in the middle of the proverbial “beaten path.” Those attractions or places of touristic pilgrimage that may often be overrun with out-of-towners, but are still entirely worth the visit. We have a hunch that trazzlers will have a smart take on how best to experience these temples of tourism. Whether that means zooming in on a very specific aspect of the place, writing from a purely subjective slant, giving up local secrets, appealing to a particular audience’s interests, or delving deeper into the reason(s) why the place draws us to it like moths to the flame.

With just a bit of context and focus (be it historical, cultural, aesthetic, etc.), the meaning of these places can surge to the forefront, while the throngs retreat into the background. I’ll be writing about some of my favorite on-the-beaten-path (and quite misunderstood) attractions in Madrid—the Guernica painting by Picasso, the Retiro park, Goya’s Black Paintings at the Prado, the Palacio Real, Botín Restaurant, the Cava Baja tapas street, Plaza de Santa Ana, etc.).

Just put the tag “on the beaten path” in your trips and they will show up here:
http://www.trazzler.com/trips/tags/on-the-beaten-path

December Contest—Cold Recap
http://www.trazzler.com/trips/tags/cold
So how do trazzlers cope with the cold? Steamy baths, hot springs, warm beverages, hard alcohol, plenty of pints, semi-illicit drugs, woolly blankets, winter sports, long walks, copious body heat, physical exertion, migration, hibernation… we are happy to report that there wasn’t a snuggie in the bunch. (Viewed from across the Atlantic, I have to say that this slanket/snuggie thing is pretty incomprehensible…)

This month’s submissions ranged from laugh-out-loud funny to poetic to tragic (many cold places are melting away before our very eyes). Across the board, the quality of the writing was exceptional, which made choosing a winner quite difficult… So we ended up with four winners. Each of these writers gave us shivers in the physical and literary sense (and two strangely managed to do so on the Equator—no mean feat). The fact that all four happen to be in far-flung places is a coincidence… We love local trips just as much as exotic ones. We just felt that these particular trips best plotted a sensory map of exactly what it feels like to be in these cold, cold places (and still made us want to go).

December’s Winners:

Greg Thomas
#3864 Bellyflopping Into the Icy Songhua River in Harbin, China
#14441 Freezing Your Butt Off for Fun in Harbin, China
Sideshows are a tough genre, but Greg did a stellar job of sketching out the humor, humanity, and absurdity of this ice-diving extravaganza. Harbin looks like quite a nexus of interesting cultural phenomena.

Paul Koning
#10255 Bundling Up on the Equator in Kenya
This trip took us to a cold, tropical place in the hours just before sunrise. Paul lived in Kenya and has written a series of excellent trips about the natural and cultural beauty of this country.

Tai Kuncio
#8658 Scaling to the Highest Point From the Center of the Earth in Ecuador
We loved learning about this place, which is not only freezing cold and far above the clouds, but also the farthest point from the center of the earth.

Jeff Jenkins
http://jeffmapped.blogspot.com/
#8274 Wooling Away Cold, Willing Down Tea in Laguna Colorada, Bolivia
We don’t often publish trips written in the first person, but this one transported us straight to that barren landscape with its thin air, palette of reds, coca leaves, stinky wool blankets, and stark concrete-block walls.

Here are some of our other favorites:

#6072 Swimming in a Caldera in Deception Bay, Antarctica
#6474 Falling Downhill at Winter Park Ski Resort in Colorado
#10975 Flight-Seeing Around the Alaska Range in Talkeetna, Alaska
#11883 Sipping Hot Chocolate at Perito Moreno in El Calafate, Argentina
#3359 Plucking Cold, Flowing Noodles from a Bamboo Trough in Fukui, Japan
#13778 Shivering at a Magnificent Snow Festival in Hokkaido, Japan
#13675 Exploring Dizzying Heights From a Bird’s Eye View in New Zealand
#12200 Eskimo-Kissing at the Coolest Bar Around in Rome, Italy

And have a look at the trips that we commissioned from our previous contest winners:

Gareth Thornton (Urban Enigma Contest Winner)
Dublin, Ireland
http://www.trazzler.com/trips/users/gazthornton

Amanda Scotese (Urban Enigma Contest Winner)
Chicago, Illinois, USA
http://www.trazzler.com/trips/users/ascotese

Tina Jett (Mom and Pop Contest Winner)
Raleigh, North Carolina, USA
http://www.trazzler.com/trips/users/jett

That’s it for now. Look for an announcement very soon on the new features that are launching on the site. In the meantime, you can take a sneak peek and let us know what you think on twitter (@trazzler) or Get Satisfaction.


—Megan