September 2004

It’s back again, and six years of experience has taught me that it’s going to make some readers angry. Others will tell us it’s their favorite feature. Save for a now-distant cover story about Jane Fonda, nothing we’ve published has elicited such vehement responses as “Overrated & Underrated.” This is not because it is controversial, in the usual sense of the word, although it may touch on subjects close to people. For instance, in the category of Regional Food, Danny Meyer—who owns a clutch of the best restaurants in Manhattan—boldly addresses the subject of barbecue (on which even people raised in the Yankee fastness of inland Maine have strong opinions) and then disses ramps, which not so long ago were featured on the menu of one of his celebrated chefs, Kerry Heffernan, in his splendid establishment Eleven Madison Park. This is certainly food for discussion but not the kind of thing that ordinarily draws cancel-my-subscription letters.

Cruising the briefly embattled San Juan Islands 

From a cab hurtling down the West Side Highway en route to Newark Airport from New York City, I spied the looming superstructures of three giant ships. They were waiting to take on their complements of 2,000 or more passengers heading for weeklong Bermuda cruises. I was traveling to the other side of the country to join the 138-passenger Yorktown Clipper and sail along the isolated, rugged coast stretching north from Seattle to Vancouver, a journey of about 219 nautical miles. I felt privileged. In today’s world of ever-larger passenger ships, some now at 150,000 tons and carrying as many as 3,000 travelers, the 2,354-ton Yorktown Clipper and its like threaten to become an endangered species. Not, of course, if fans of small-ship travel have anything to say about it.