• What's ticked?
• Accolades
• Contact us

c o l u m n s

• Cheap Charlie
• ChrisCrossings
• Err Travel
• Leocha
• Travel Notes
• Archives

A Home for Men?
Kirby's Korner · August 13, 1999

I really thought I was joking.

You may recall that last week I applauded Web sites dedicated to women, and especially their travel sections, for the sense of community they try to build. I went on to joke about how no Web site dedicated to men and travel would include the same type of community-building efforts. We don't have the same interest in bonding, and the discussions we would have would be on too narrow a range of topics, I said.

I was properly challenged on this assertion. Don't assume this to be the case, a correspondent said. See what's out there. What I learned was fascinating.

In it's "Society and Culture" section, Yahoo! has 200-plus listings of Web sites under "Men" and 1200-plus listings under "Women." That's not a typo. So much for the geek-based stereotype of men dominating the Internet.

Looking through the listings, you'll find a few sites dedicated to men that have some travel content. SharpMan.com, a high-tech online magazine, has two travel articles, one on Bali and one on San Francisco.

MassiveEdge.com has an article on city airports in its "... and now you know!" section and an article, once again, on San Francisco. As Dave Barry would say, "I'm not making this up" -- the thrust of the MassiveEdge S.F. article is that the night life is great because the city has two women for every straight man.

More typical of the men's sites is Maxim, dedicated, as best I can tell, to parties attended by scantily clad actresses.

I turned to some of the more traditional men's outlets. Playboy has a few articles on several cities, including -- yes -- San Francisco.

Esquire doesn't have a site for its American publication, except for one aimed at its advertisers. The obvious domain name was registered in 1994 by an Orangevale, Calif., firm.

At none of these sites is there the opportunity to interact with one another in the same way the women's sites offer. Visitors can contact the sites themselves, but they can't reach other visitors.

It is as if the sites' producers concluded, as I only joked, that we men simply wouldn't have much of interest to share with one another.

To follow up on another column, there is a discussion going on as this column is posted in one of my favorite newsgroups that shows the promise and peril of turning to Usenet for travel advice.

The group alt.fan.cecil-adams is dedicated to discussing questions of the type answered each week by Cecil Adams in his column, "The Straight Dope," which is available online and appears in alternative weeklies around the United States. Because of the type of column "The Straigt Dope" is, little is off-topic in the newsgroup, and travel issues arise on occasion.

A current thread entitled "bizare airline ticketing/pricing" started with a question about why it costs less to fly from Kansas City to Alaska with a layover in St. Louis than it does to fly from St. Louis straight to Alaska. The obvious answer is that St. Louis is a Trans World Airlines hub, and that carrier has near-monopoly pricing power there.

The thread got to the correct answer eventually, but along the way participants gave very poor advice, including a suggestion to buy the Kansas City-Alaska ticket and show up at the airport in St. Louis. Others pointed out that the airline may well not seat anyone who tries this.

Reading the thread is an education for people who use Usenet for travel advice. It is clear from the tone and style of writing which participants know what they are talking about and which do not. This is a lesson we all need to learn as we turn more and more to the free-flowing, often unedited Internet for information.

Hey, even political pundit Matt Drudge says 80 percent of his reporting is correct!

David Kirby is the editor of the Interactive Travel Report. His column appears on Sunday. You can reach him at dbkirby@pressroom.com.