Would appreciate a shout-out if you saw it and were inspired, otherwise it's nice to see others converging independently on the same thing.
Either way, I updated both the git and the webpage to shout-out the week-before-this findings! I linked directly to your website, lmk if that's how you prefer it.
Cheers!
Please enjoy—there is nobody like Tony.
According to the article, we are still missing one: "David Bowie Related" 1/14/2016
> 1. SIBERIA in any of its iterations. The one on the subway being the best.
Timely, as the latest reincarnation of SIBERIA just re-opened in 59th Street/Columbus Circle station
The page does not have light grey text for me. Checked on desktop and mobile.
The #2B2B2B color should not look like "light grey" or be hard to read on a white background unless your display setup has a severely broken color calibration or gamma curve.
Site looks fine, in my opinion. The HN comments complaining about site design are probably best ignored.
You could run something like https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ but contrast doesn't mean to run with black/white, http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/ is better on the eyes.
If it's bothering the eyes, like many more of other websites would, feel free to pull up your favorite browser's reader mode with your preferences. Cheers!
My most memorable moment from the show was when Bourdain visited some poor farmer to see how they were harvesting yuca (or maybe yams, I forgot) and he went into the typical (I am paraphrasing) "oh look, this is the life, so perfect being one with nature, etc...". And the farmer shut him up pretty quickly with something like "How about a trade: you stay here and farm yams in the rain, in the perfect unity with the nature, and I go to live in your apartment in New York?"
The funniest part is trying to present some dish as "traditional" that everyone here eats, while it's some super niche thing only one region does, occasionally, if you have grandma that remembers how to make it
give us a real location or else we should assume you're spouting BS
for the record I believe Bourdaine could get roped in by scammy local fixers, but "could" doesn't mean "did"
Yeah, he was struggling with mental health problems.
What a way to publicly slander a dead guy that didn't commit any crimes that we know of.
Obviously he has better food taste than I do, so those too. I will shit like a mink and love it.
I highly doubt he couldn't afford a $2,500 knife https://kramerknives.com/product-category/latest-creations/
https://www.antiquesandthearts.com/anthony-bourdains-bob-kra...
See also, some current mid-line Kramer pricing: https://eatingtools.com/collections/pre-owned
> Anthony Bourdain paid a $380,000 settlement to actor Jimmy Bennett in 2018 to silence allegations that Asia Argento had sexually assaulted him in 2013, when Bennett was 17 and Argento was 37
Great role model. People see a guy that looks cool and says edgy shit and that's it, he is now a great person, lol.
I imagine they exist in an AWS or GCP rack somewhere, too bad
His struggles and imperfections also evoked sympathy. He spoke about how he used to have a drug problem. His death by suicide was sad. He certainly would have had lots of interesting things to say in the last 9 years, had he been around.
Very mixed bag of a guy imo but the internet loves him because he came across genuine.
MY BOURDAIN LI.ST:
1) Masculinity without cringe: Tough, profane, credentialed through actual kitchen labor (not culinary school pedigree), but also emotionally literate, openly vulnerable, willing to cry on camera. He modeled a masculinity that wasn't apologetic but also wasn't performative.
2) Articulate outsider: Self-educated. Could reference Conrad, punk rock, and Apocalypse Now while maintaining blue-collar credibility. His book Kitchen Confidential read like a war memoir/crime novel.
3) Permission: He made it acceptable for men to care deeply about food, travel, culture -- interests traditionally female coded. The guy had done heroin and worked the line and was 'allowed' to opine about pho. This was before the internet or at least before the internet got ultra stupid.
4) Wanderer: Not tourism, not expat pretension, something closer to seeking, now dead thanks to social media influencers, and he was curious not escapist.
5) Recovery: Open about addiction, chaos, bad decisions. A redemption narrative for men who've made mistakes.
6) Tragic: Suicide landed hard because many recognized something in him of themselves in him.
P.S. He's more elder millennial/genx coded for a lot of reasons so don't feel bad about not getting it but definitely read his book and watch his show, it's different than the slop you're probably used to.
I would like to put it out there that his depression or whatever mental illness he had was on full display the whole time, and this probably resonated with people as well.
A couple years back I started re-watching all of his shows, start to finish, after watching Roadrunner. Especially the early seasons, there was rarely an episode he didn't joke about dying, being killed, or killing himself. (In the film, there was a quote from Tony about how an acquaintance observed they'd never met someone who wanted to die so much)
I think a lot of people picked up on that, and it made the whole the whole thing work. The grit, the machismo, the empathy for the plight of your fellow man. A lot of people who worked with him said he was an asshole, too. This is also not surprising that he would be at times when the cameras were off.
I enjoyed Bourdain, but this level of hero worship is really excessive. Not to mention antithetical to much of what Bourdain stood for.
He was enjoyable to read and watch, but claiming he "made it acceptable" for men to care about food, travel or culture is weird.
He was an entertainer. An interesting guy. A great storyteller who lived an interesting life. Charismatic and fun to watch. But he was not the "last cultured dude" or some demarcation point between the past and present.
Holding a celebrity and television personality up as the realest, most genuine person feels like missing the point. Everything you saw of this man was carefully crafted and curated. Even the "unfiltered" takes were designed to sell you on some story. You didn't know this man as a person or a friend.
An interesting question is whether any of this is good and worthy of emulation. I've been treating Bourdain as an cautionary tale and a reminder to check one's own priorities rigorously.
I asked google if he was religious, and got this: "He grew up in a home where God, sin, or damnation were never mentioned, leading to a lack of religious upbringing and belief, focusing instead on food, travel, and human connection."
And I think that's kinda the issue. The elevation of food and travel to the status anywhere on the same plain as deep religion (which I do think was the case here) is not going to lead one to good places.
That doesn't seem right. Tons of travel content existed before he got popular. Endless summer wasn't for women
I would recommend reading Kitchen Confidential. Alternatively watch any of his travel shows although I think understanding the man through the book first makes it easier to appreciate the shows.
Regarding this specific find I don't see anything particularly special but for many it's one final glimpse into the life of someone they admire.
His really early ones were kind of rough. Like you could see he was still figuring it out. There was one episode where he just narrated a lonely planet guide.
This combination allowed him to make people feel like they were getting let in a little secret and were now part of a club that was better than everyone else.
Essentially, he seemed to me to be a bit of a &*$% and people liked that, confusing it for something admirable and for authenticity. He's till celebrated, especially by CNN, who paid a fortune for his show and then lost out on the chance for future episodes... now they peddle his old content on their landing page. Probably to try to recoup their probable losses.
You're not missing anything.
Which makes it all the more interesting
Anthony Bourdain being a major one
He played a significant role in popularizing a now-familiar posture among affluent Americans: the earnest declaration that "travel is my passion", followed by carefully curated excursions to economically disadvantaged countries, enthusiastic consumption of the local cuisine, and a subsequent return home marked by self-congratulatory reflections on how much they have supposedly "learned" about other cultures.
The phenomenon is difficult to admire. It resembles a kind of cultural primitivism - an unintentional revival of archaic rituals in which consuming the body of the enemy was believed to confer insight, power, or spiritual essence. In this modern iteration, wealth functions as the enabling mechanism: privileged travelers fly abroad to ingest cuisines, aesthetics, and experiences, mistaking consumption for understanding and appetite for empathy.
One returns, enriched - spiritually, one assumes - having eaten well.
> popularizing a now-familiar posture among affluent Americans
So would it be preferable if they stayed at home, didn't share any of their wealth with less developed countries, and marinated in completely ignorant bliss of the world outside the USA instead?
There’s no equivalent for this feeling in the U.S. We had Japanese tourists in the late twentieth century that were known for taking pictures of everything, but they were respectful and were localized to tourist destinations. Migrants from Mexico and Central America that have moved here but haven’t assimilated are not the same either, as they moved here for opportunity and don’t have the time or resources to learn English, so it’s quite understandable that many stick to themselves.
As an American that has travelled overseas years ago, I understand that others in the world could do without us visiting. They just want to have their normal day to day without an American speaking American English and commenting on things like an American and tipping wait staff, asking for ice, expecting things that aren’t provided, generally acting more entitled, etc.
When I visited, I just didn’t fit in, even though I wanted to. I was taught only a little bit (over multiple years) of a few other languages in school, but primarily Spanish, without any real immersion, which was useless. I didn’t grow up traveling and interacting with people from other countries in Europe, and without that experience or ability to speak in the country’s language, I wasn’t prepared.
After the impression American tourists gave me during my visit to Pisa last summer: Yes, please.
I only dislike these people if they blog about it. None of them are nearly as insightful as they think they are, and most of them aren’t self-aware enough to realize that this whole shtick hasn’t been “cool” since 2010.
> mistaking consumption for understanding and appetite for empathy.
This disparaging attitude towards tourists is in vogue among Europeans right now; there’s a group of anarchists in Barcelona that have spent the last year or two scrawling: “TOURISTS GO HOME, REFUGEES WELCOME” on the sides of buildings.
The theory goes that tourists are a net negative to cities because they cause neighborhoods to gentrify and displace those who intend to actually live within the city. The money coming in is a negative because it causes the city to deploy resources intended to cater to tourists, the tourists fundamentally change the character of the neighborhood by their very presence (the cannibalism you are alluding to), the tourists are rude, the tourists look funny, etc.
Disdain for tourists is just a socially-acceptable way for progressives to practice the xenophobia that is now in vogue among reactionaries. They can’t blame all of their problems on foreigners writ large like the reactionaries do, so they “punch up” at the only sort of foreigner that is likely to make a positive contribution to their country.
Honestly I doubt they are punching up in many cases. Sure, the Americans who holiday in Sicily are probably pretty well off, because that's expensive. But a lot of the tourists who visit the large Spanish cities or coastal towns are working class people from northern Europe for whom it may actually be cheaper to get a Ryanair flight and an Airbnb for a couple of days than to take a trip within their own country. I don't know anything about the kind of person who sprawls this graffiti around Barcelona but I suspect there's a good chance they (or their families at least) are wealthier than the tourists they are raging against.
A core problem is that an influx of tourists hits the housing supply. Short-term tourism incentivises conversion of local housing to accommodate them (AirBnB, etc.) and long-term tourism results in foreigners buying local housing as their permanent or long-term holiday home.
The result is obviously a relative shortage of housing and rising prices, both of which make it harder for locals (who are often relatively poorer) to live where they need to. This pattern has been repeated from small villages in scenic areas, to big cities (e.g. Barcelona), to whole islands (e.g. Mallorca).
I’m probably one of the people that has contributed to this to some extent over time; and yet I fully understand the frustration of the locals.
It may result in apparent xenophobia in some, but its roots are rational and economic.
No, actually, I find it impossible to make sense of that.
A lot of it is people who like Bourdain's aesthetic and want to replicate it, but they don't know much about food, they've never worked in hospitality in their life and they're afraid to go to the sketchier parts of town.
Like with so many things travel- and tourist-related, it's okay for one person to do it and tell us about it, but when a million people all try to do the same thing it causes problems.
I can kind of relate to the GP, I went back and rewatched a lot of Bourdain’s shows recently and I felt a kind of revulsion I hadn’t previously. I don’t think it’s necessarily fairly aimed at Bourdain himself but at the kind of person that has since latched onto his vibe and meme’d it to death on social media. Yet another iteration of the mall goth in a Misfits t-shirt that doesn’t know who Glenn Danzig is, only this time Bourdain is a very clear icon behind the style to cringe at in hindsight.
Bourdains travels also weren’t the curated tourist jaunts you’re describing. They often showing the grim and lesser known sides of conflicts and situations while presenting genuine local cuisines. It’s what the unconcerned tourist aspire to, not what they do.
There's a point worth making about poverty tourism here but I'm not sure the tourist should be our major concern.
He also really didn’t spent much or any (?) time in the kinds of expensive places you’d need to be obscenely wealthy to afford.
There can certainly be a quite shallow "instagram" quality to some traveler's trips, but it's also clear an economically disadvantaged country benefits mutually from this, and if it wasn't they'd be restricting tourist visas, etc
Countries are not a monolithic entity. The people in control of the flow of tourists are a tiny minority, and whatever incentives they have to open or close the borders do not reflect what the people who deal with tourists on a daily basis want.
> Your body is not a temple, it's an amusement park. Enjoy the ride.
Then he died alone, in a hotel room in France, supposedly by his own hand, with the belt of his silk bathrobe as the implement--despite being a heroin addict most of his life and thus ever cognizant of the possibility of a fatal overdose, and having friends, like Mark Lanegan, who died (painlessly) from a fatal overdose. But no, instead of OD'ing, he supposedly chose to "unalive" himself with his bathrobe. And he left no note. And he tweeted this out a month earlier: https://x.com/Bourdain/status/998954845146177536
