Old Las Vegas Motel Transformed into Beacon for Homeless
After months of preparation, the former Safari Motel in downtown Las Vegas is ready to welcome its first residents for its new bridge housing program on Thursday, April 6, 2023. (KSNV)
From News3LV: Las Vegas (KSNV) — An old motel has been transformed into a new bridge housing program to help people experiencing homelessness recover.
What was once the Safari Motel is now the new location of the BETterment Community program.
The program will provide housing to nearly 200 of our unhoused neighbors.
Women Who Travel Podcast: The Weird and Wonderful World of Road Tripping
From Condé Nast Traveler: With summer only a few months away, now is the time to start planning that road trip—especially if you’re based in the U.S., where one of the best ways to see the country is by car (there are so many iconic American road trip movies for a reason). Enter, our guest this week: Kristen Meinzer, an author and podcast host who has spent much of her travels road tripping around the Midwest and staying at kitschy motels. Lale chats with Meinzer about her favorite roadside attractions across the country (hello, Corn Palace), how she sniffs out a quality motel, Dolly Parton, and more.
Ribbon-cutting marks the official reopening of the revamped Georgian Hotel
Photograph: Scott Snowden
From the Santa Monica Daily Press: A sizable crowd gathered on Ocean Avenue yesterday morning for the ribbon-cutting ceremony that marked the official reopening of the refurbished Georgian Hotel.
Arguably the city’s most notable architectural contribution to Santa Monica’s ocean-facing skyline, the Georgian Hotel had only been partially open since February and before that it had been completely closed for renovations and construction work since October 2022.
World’s Largest Catsup Bottle Festival To Return To Herald Square This Summer
From Riverbender.com: COLLINSVILLE – The World’s Largest Catsup Bottle Festival is back and coming to Uptown Collinsville on Saturday, July 8, 2023. The new location is Herald Square Collinsville at 119 East Clay Street.
After a five-year hiatus, organizers decided to start pouring it on again. “We were presented with an opportunity to partner with the team at Old Herald,” said chairman Mike “The Big Tomato” Gassmann. “It’s a great new community gathering space right here in our historic business district.”
Virginia Takes Novel Approach to Preserving Historic ‘Green Book’ Locations
A rusted sign of the old Colbrook Motel in Chester, Virginia, one of the locations featured in “The Negro Motorist Green Book.” Photographer: Susan Hellman
From Bloomberg: In Tappahannock, Virginia, celebrity chef Rahman “Rock” Harper has roots that run deep. It’s where he spent summers growing up learning to cook and entertain, and the town in which his mother spent her entire childhood. It’s also where his grandparents ran Harris’ Grill – the only safe restaurant for miles for Black travelers in the thick of Jim Crow.
It was one of hundreds of locations featured in The Negro Motorist Green Book, a guide for travelers that charted a working list of hotels, restaurants and other establishments that accepted Black patrons in a racially segregated South.
“Harris’ Grill was like a safe haven for Black people passing through the neighborhood when it was still in business,” Harper said.
The building that housed grill is still standing decades later, but this is rare – many of the other locations have decayed or no longer exist. Now, Virginia legislators and activists are moving forward with a plan to preserve what’s left of them.