Hugh Ryan

Freelance writer

Pinball Museums Light Up Around the Country

First published in The New York Times on December 17, 2010. Read the original with comments here.
STEP inside the Shops at Georgetown Park, a shopping mall in Washington, D.C., and you’ll find two nine-foot-tall flippers and a giant floating silver ball. It’s not a piece of public art — it’s the entrance to [...]

4 Towns, 4 Tasty New Reasons to Visit

First published in The New York Times on November 17, 2010. Read the original with comments here.
Preston Hollow
Bees Knees Cafe
For nearly 200 years, the old farmhouse on Broome Center Road has been the heart of Heather Ridge, a working farm in the Catskills town of Preston Hollow. For the last year, it’s [...]

The Blind Pig

First published in The New York Times on August 8, 2010. Read the original here.
At the Blind Pig, Joseph Frase, the chef and an owner, smokes his own sausage in the backyard — appropriate for a restaurant in Louisville’s Butchertown neighborhood. His menu reflects the working-class history of the area, with upscale renditions of pan-European [...]

My Country, My Train, My K-Hole

First published in The Morning News on June 30, 2010. Read the original here.
The train from Chicago to New Orleans passes through Kankakee, Homewood, and Yazoo City; names that evoke images of wagon trains and episodes of Dr. Quinn. I don’t know most of this country.
Were I to draw a map, the Northeast would be [...]

In New Orleans, New Life by the River

First published in The New York Times on June 27, 2010. Read the original, with photos, here.
For residents of the blue-collar Bywater-Marigny area of New Orleans, access to the Mississippi River has been blocked for years by decaying industrial buildings. But it won’t be much longer, thanks in part to R. Allen Eskew, an architect [...]

New Booking Site for Down Under

Originally published in The New York Times on 3/29/2010. Read the original here.
Need to get from Alyangula to Wagga Wagga?   A new online travel site, Wotflight.com makes it easier to search for flights within Australia.
Started last month, Wotflight searches for flights among Australia’s 100 or so commercial airports, including domestic airlines like Aeropelican, Brindabella, Airnorth [...]

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