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      Reckoning With Memories of Budapest

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      In early April, when my flight arrived at Ferenc Liszt International Airport, László Borsos was waiting for me at the arrivals gate. I hadn’t seen the man in 28 years. I scanned the crowd and found him standing there with a wild grin on his face, his glasses dangling elegantly over a white collared shirt.After a quick hug, and with a wave of his hand, he gestured for me to hurry along; he was parked just beyond the sliding glass doors. And so, feeling myself slip back into an old habit, I threw my duffel bag over my shoulder, shook my head in disbelief and did what for four years as a child had been part of my daily routine: I followed him outside for a ride through Budapest.Budapest’s Castle District, in the distance, framed through a stained-glass window in the Parliament building.A university student peruses the selection at a small bookshop near the Metropolitan Ervin Szabó Library.St. Stephen’s Basilica, named after the first King of Hungary.It would be nearly impossible to overstate how dramatically the course of my life changed when my family moved to Hungary in the early 1990s. Both of my parents grew up in Ohio — my mother in a poor corner of Youngstown, and my father in a middle-class neighborhood in the sleepy town of Dover. When I was born in 1985, the last of three children, we lived in a small split-level house in Austintown, a suburb of Youngstown. My dad, one of the few people in my extended family with a college degree, was 11 years into a promising but as-yet unexceptional career as a finance manager at General Electric. Neither of my parents had ventured far from their childhood circumstances.In 1989, though, as political reforms swept through Central and Eastern Europe, General Electric strode into Hungary and purchased a light-bulb manufacturer, Tungsram, then one of the country’s largest and most iconic brands. The acquisition, orchestrated by Jack Welch, made for front-page news — and my dad, riding the wave of a stunning historical moment, accepted an overseas assignment to help introduce capitalist practices to a business with a long-running communist past.My dad, Karl, on the right, with Ferenc Musits, the chief accountant at the Tungsram factory in the city of Nagykanizsa, in the early ’90s.Seated in between my elder siblings, Nicholas and Emelia, in 1994. My mom, Sophia, ever busy behind the scenes (and as a result rarely in front of the camera), took the photo.We arrived in Budapest in the summer of 1990 — with my grandmother improbably in tow — to find our reality entirely transformed. My brother, sister and I were enrolled in an international school, where, unlike in suburban Ohio, our classmates’ nationalities spanned the globe. My parents, who until then had barely left the United States, were soon shepherding us on trips to Krakow, Madrid, Rome. We bought a brand-new Volvo station wagon. And perhaps most lavish of all, which to my parents must have been a comically unfathomable luxury: General Electric hired us a driver — a man named László, who arrived each morning in his impeccably clean Opel Kadett to ferry my siblings and me across the city to our school.László Borsos in April. Hired by General Electric as our private driver in 1990, he now owns and operates his own taxi business. When he learned from my mom that I was traveling to Budapest, he insisted on picking me up at the airport.In the 32 years since then, Hungary has undergone its own dramatic transformation. Once considered the most entrepreneurial and Western-friendly of the former Eastern Bloc nations, it has, of late, become a poster child of nationalism, illiberalism and the erosion of democratic values, offering a political vision that has been emulated in Poland and admired by populist figures in France, Italy and the United States.Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, now the longest serving elected leader in Europe, has steadily consolidated power by rewriting the Constitution, overhauling election laws to favor his Fidesz party, undermining the independence of the courts and bringing most of the country’s media under the control of his political allies. The influence of his autocratic tendencies has also seeped into the country’s civic and cultural life, leading to the expulsion of a liberal university and affecting the leadership and offerings at theaters and museums.I sensed some of the troubling undercurrents within minutes of my arrival, when László, on our drive from the airport, began echoing Kremlin-friendly conspiracies about the war in Ukraine, which have been widely disseminated via the state-owned media and pro-government news outlets.A pro-Ukraine rally, held in late April near the Parliament, drew many hundreds of supporters.A nearby pro-Russia rally, held the same day in Szabadság tér, or Liberty Square, a few hundred feet away, drew a much smaller and less lively crowd — and an unexpected array of flags.Supporters of Mi Hazánk Mozgalom, or Our Homeland Movement, a far-right political party that campaigns on conspiracy theories, homophobia and anti-Roma racism, gathered outside the Ukrainian Embassy in early June. Once a fringe group, the party won parliamentary representation in the national elections held in April.Despite its modest size and economic output (its population, under 10 million, is roughly that of Michigan, and its G.D.P. roughly that of Kansas), Hungary has garnered outsize media attention in recent years because of Mr. Orbán’s self-described illiberal agenda. A number of Western journalists have descended on its capital and returned either with ominous reports about the country’s lurch toward autocracy or with obsequious interviews extolling Mr. Orbán’s conservative values. Meanwhile, amid the steady stream of polarized dispatches, I felt as though my increasingly distant memories and personal impressions of the place were being supplanted by a series of politicized caricatures.And so, earlier this year, after spending much of the pandemic traveling around the United States, I opted to push the limits of remote work and settle for a while in the city where I formed my earliest lasting memories. My hope was that I could retrace certain elements of my childhood, dust off my long-dormant language skills, reconnect with old family friends, assess the city’s political reality and, perhaps most important, get to know the place — learn its rhythms, appreciate its culture, observe the life of everyday Hungarians — from the loftier perch of adulthood.Tram 49 passes in front of the Great Market Hall. Like many of Budapest’s well-known buildings, the hall was built around the time of the country’s millennial celebration in 1896.Inside, customers line up in front of a meat vendor.The market’s airy interior.If Hungary has become the European Union’s most defiant state, then Budapest has become Hungary’s most defiantly liberal enclave — to the extent that short-term visitors to the city might easily miss the signs of a tense political environment.The opposition parties are noisy. Protests are commonplace. In part as a response to the passage of recent anti-L.G.B.T.Q. legislation, the Budapest Pride march has drawn huge crowds in recent years, and L.G.B.T.Q.-friendly venues are on the rise. Even the existence of progressive community centers — like Auróra, a social hub that offers a bar and a concert venue and has rented office space to N.G.O.s that focus on marginalized groups — suggests a kind of political and intellectual tolerance.And yet behind many of the organizations that are out of step with the ruling party’s politics is a story of instability — regarding funding, legal protection, reputation. According to a 2022 report by the Artistic Freedom Initiative, Hungarian artists and institutions that oppose Fidesz “find it increasingly difficult — and some speculate even futile — to earn state support without yielding to governmental demands and thus compromising their artistic or personal integrity.”Mikszáth Kálmán Square, in District 8, is often crowded with university students in the afternoons and evenings.Kolibri Kávézó, a small artisanal cafe. Famous for its fin-de-siècle coffee houses, Budapest is now home to dozens of trendy third-wave shops.The underground concert venue at Auróra, a social hub that has rented office space to N.G.O.s that focus on marginalized groups.No contemporary portrait of Budapest could overlook its grandeur: its opulent architecture, its stirring public spaces, its many richly appointed interiors. The bathhouses — Gellért in particular, with its Art Nouveau ornamentation and stunningly beautiful tiles — are among the city’s most treasured attractions. (Hungary is rich with thermal water springs; there are 123 in Budapest alone.)Other highlights include the Hungarian State Opera House, which reopened this year after an extensive restoration, and the newly minted Museum of Ethnography, part of an ambitious development project — opposed by local politicians — to transform Budapest’s main park into a must-visit cultural hub for tourists and locals.Two of the thermal pools at Gellért. To the right, just through the archway, is a cold plunge pool and a steam room.The main hall of the opera house during a performance of “Mefistofele” in late April. The chandelier, which weighs more than three tons, illuminates a fresco by the German-Hungarian painter Károly Lotz.Concertgoers during an intermission.The swooping lines of the new Museum of Ethnography, which opened in May. (The museum was previously housed in a building opposite the Parliament.)Working New York hours in Central Europe meant that my days were largely free until 3 p.m. (after which I worked until around 11 p.m.), leaving me with an abundance of time in the mornings and early afternoons to explore the city.Some days I spent in single-minded pursuit of specific artists: the architectural splendors of Ödön Lechner, whose work has come to define the Hungarian Secession movement, a localized expression of Art Nouveau; or the mosaics and stained-glass art of Miksa Róth, whose legacy is scattered throughout the city.The Royal Postal Savings Bank, which opened in the early 1900s, is one of Ödön Lechner’s masterworks. Now home to the Hungarian State Treasury, the building showcases a range of Hungarian folk motifs — though the striking details on the roof are largely hidden from view at street level. (When a contemporary pointed this out, Lechner is rumored to have said, “The birds will see them.”)The Hungarian Institute of Geology, another of Lechner’s designs.Inside the Institute of Geology. The mosaics and fossil-like sculptural forms were designed to evoke the interior of a cave.Other days I spent roaming more freely, poking my head into the charming courtyards of unassuming residential buildings or visiting with former teachers and old family friends.Exploring America’s National ParksThe glories of the U.S. national park system draw hundreds of millions of visitors each year.Hidden Gems: These days, serenity in nature can be elusive. But even the most popular parks have overlooked treasures.The Less-Traveled Road: When it comes to America’s national parks, it’s not all about Yosemite and the Grand Canyon. Try these lesser-known options.Ready for an Adventure: Not sure what to bring with you on your trip to a national park? Here is a list of essential gear, and these are the best apps to download.National Park Booking App: Traveler and travel industry frustration is growing with Recreation.gov, the online portal to book federal land accommodations and access.On rambles through familiar places, I felt the nostalgic potency of long-ago memories bubbling up to the surface: Here was the apartment building where Balázs Szokolay, our beloved piano teacher, lived with his mother, a sculptor. Here was our school, where, during the Persian Gulf war, the Hungarian police stationed armed guards at the gate. Here was the park where, when curiosity got the best of him, my brother ignited his shoelace with a match.In the afternoons, my feet sore from walking, I often settled in to work at a cafe or at one of the city’s many publicly accessible (and unexpectedly resplendent) libraries.Two neighbors chat in the interior of a residential building in District 8.The interior courtyard of a residential building in District 5, near Szabadság tér, or Liberty Square.A study room inside the Metropolitan Ervin Szabó Library.The library inside the Hungarian Parliament building.My favorite pastime, though, was meandering through Budapest’s grand cemeteries: Kerepesi in District 8, Farkasréti in District 12, Kozma Street in District 10. All three lie outside the popular tourist zones, which meant that, coming and going, I came to appreciate a broader swath of the city.I found that the cemeteries, filled with gorgeous statues from a range of eras, some exhibiting elements of Socialist Realism and others classically suggestive of the life’s work of the people buried beneath them, were microcosms of Budapest itself: trimmed and stately in their well-trafficked stretches, and unkempt at their fringes.The grave of Lujza Blaha, a Hungarian actress known as “the nation’s nightingale,” at Kerepesi Cemetery, the burial grounds for some of Hungary’s most famous figures — from sculptors and scientists to poets and politicians.An ill-kept grave in the far reaches of Kerepesi. The cemetery is a microcosm of Budapest: trimmed and stately in its well-trafficked stretches, and unkempt at its fringes.The Schmidl Mausoleum, built in the early 1900s for Sándor and Róza Schmidl, is a magnificent example of Hungary’s Jewish funerary art.It was the small, quiet moments that I savored the most: at first strolling past, then waving at, then eventually stopping to meet Erika Bajkó, who ran a small dog-grooming business around the corner from my apartment near Rákóczi Square; glancing up at the domed ceiling inside the entranceway to Széchenyi Baths; making an emotionally charged pilgrimage to my old home in Törökvész, a neighborhood in the Buda hills; joining the evening crowds at the middle of the Szabadság híd, or Liberty Bridge, where the heavy winds over the Danube helped wash away the late-spring and early-summer heat; studying the poetry of Miklós Radnóti, a celebrated Hungarian writer who was murdered in the Holocaust, as I wandered through the neighborhood where he lived.A woman walks two dogs past a groomer, Dog Diva, near Rákóczi Square.The dome in the entrance hall at Széchenyi Baths.An evening crowd gathers at the middle of the Szabadság híd, or Liberty Bridge.“I cannot know what this landscape means to others,” begins what is perhaps Mr. Radnóti’s most famous poem, completed less than a year before his death in 1944. Touching on themes of patriotism, foreign perception and national identity, it offers an instructive comparison of the appreciations of the land by the native-born poet and a passing enemy airman:Through his binoculars he sees the factory and the fields,but I see the worker who trembles for his toil,the forest, the whistling orchard, the grapes and graves,among the graves a grandma, weeping softly,and what from above is a railway or factory to be destroyedis just a watchman’s house; the watchman stands outsideholding a red flag, surrounded by several children,and in the courtyard of the factories a sheepdog frolics;and there’s the park with footprints of past loves …If you want to truly know this place, he seems to be telling us, then be attuned to its details, its people, the joy and suffering hidden in its everyday moments.A statue of Miklós Radnóti in Újlipótváros, or New Leopold Town.The Memorial of the Hungarian Jewish Martyrs, in the courtyard behind the the Dohány Street Synagogue. By the end of the Holocaust, some 565,000 Hungarian Jews had been murdered.A small crowd of tourists watches the sun set over the Danube River from an overlook on Gellért Hill.At Öcsi Étkezde, a small restaurant recommended to me by Tas Tobias, whose website, Offbeat Budapest, highlights the city from a local’s perspective, I earned my first Magyar nickname: Pityu, a diminutive of István, the Hungarian form of Stephen.Charmed by my attempts to order from a menu that lacked any hint of English, Erzsébet Varga, the chef, balked at my choice of two dishes containing pickled vegetables — they wouldn’t sit well in my stomach, one of the regulars explained with a laugh — and instead delivered the most delicious bowl of goulash I’d find anywhere on my trip.A group of regulars gathers for lunch at Öcsi Étkezde, a small restaurant in the outer part of District 8.A bowl of goulash sits beside a basket of bread and a handwritten menu, which changes daily.Ferenc Oláh, who runs the restaurant with Erzsébet Varga, his wife, holds up a picture of him and his father, who was also a restaurateur.Ferenc and Erzsébet in the restaurant’s kitchen. As with traditional diners in America, Budapest’s authentic étkezdes, once ubiquitous, are slowly vanishing, giving way to trendier cafes that cater to younger crowds.And yet, as the weeks went by, I found it increasingly difficult to overlook Hungary’s political backdrop. Nearly all of the young people I met in Budapest expressed a nagging malaise about their country’s future. A few, of course, supported the ruling party, but most were vehemently opposed. Many had friends who, noting the political headwinds and a relative lack of economic opportunity, had departed for Paris, London, Vienna. Others were sticking it out, though the landslide victory by Fidesz in the elections in April — despite an unlikely coalition made up of wildly divergent opposition parties — left them with a gnawing sense of hopelessness.Heroes’ Square, which serves as a gateway to Városliget, or City Park, seen before, during and after sunset. (I learned to roller-blade here in the early ’90s.)In mid-May I met András Török, a Budapest-born writer and city historian, at a colorful cafe in Lipótváros, or Leopold Town, a historic neighborhood in the center of the city. His guidebook, “Budapest: A Critical Guide,” updated regularly since it was first published in 1989, is as playful as it is insightful and had helped me reacquaint myself with the city. (Another project he manages, Fortepan, which was founded by Miklós Tamási, offers a staggeringly rich collection of old Hungarian photographs.)We spoke briefly about the optimism many locals had experienced in the late ’80s and early ’90s — “Suddenly the color of ink I used in my fountain pen, which I ceremoniously bought in Vienna every year, was available in the corner shop,” he said wistfully — before turning to present-day concerns.“The victory by Fidesz was so devastating that it’s obvious people want this system,” he said. “It’s an epoch in Hungarian history now,” he added, referring to Mr. Orbán’s tenure.As a response, he said, many of those disheartened by the ruling party have taken an inward turn. “I cultivate my own garden; I write my books,” Mr. Török, who is 68, said. “I talk to my grandchildren and to my friends — and I try to enjoy my life.”“And,” he added, “I accept that I will never in my lifetime see the Hungary I’d like to see.”András Török near a park in Lipótváros, or Leopold Town. His guidebook, “Budapest: A Critical Guide,” is a playful and insightful introduction to the city.Of course, supporters of Mr. Orbán’s, a minority in Budapest but a majority in Hungary overall, don’t express the same pessimism. At the Ecseri Piac, a flea market in the city’s Kispest district — where, during my childhood, I marveled at the overwhelming assemblage of Soviet memorabilia — I met Erika Román, who was selling a range of textiles. Declaring her ardent support for Mr. Orbán, she explained that “Hungary is a little country,” and that “Hungary is for Hungarians.”Behind that sentiment, which is widely popular throughout the country, lies the belief that true Hungarian identity — threatened by globalist progressives and immigrants from the Middle East and Africa, whom Mr. Orbán considers to be existential threats to the European way of life — is inextricably bound with race and religion.“There are more people living in New York City than in the entire country of Hungary,” the conservative writer Rod Dreher points out in a recent article, “which is partly why the Hungarians are so anxious about being assimilated out of existence.”A row of shops at Ecseri Piac, a flea market in the city’s Kispest district.Erika Román, a vendor at the market. “Hungary is a little country,” she told me after expressing her support for Viktor Orbán. “And Hungary is for Hungarians.”The more I reflected on Hungary’s autocratic turn, the more I was haunted by something Mr. Török mentioned during our digressive conversation in May.To experience Hungary’s transformation from totalitarianism to free democracy in the late ’80s and early ’90s, he said, was a wonderful thing. “Earlier I’d thought that I had been born at the wrong time,” he said. “But then I realized: Oh! I was born at the right time after all!”A home video taken in 1992 shows the condition of Mátyás-templom, or Matthias Church, in the heart of the Castle District.And yet he had “a sort of secret fear in the back of my mind,” he said, that the transformation had happened entirely too quickly — so quickly, as others have argued, that Hungarians, having lived for 40 years behind the Iron Curtain, weren’t given enough time to appreciate or internalize their rights and responsibilities as citizens of a democracy.“We seemed to have been given a free lunch by Gorbachev and Reagan,” he said. “And I think we are learning now, somehow, that there is no such thing as a free lunch.”Matthias Church in early May. Over the course of its eclectic history, the building has seen the crowning of Hungarian kings and served for 150 years — during the Ottoman occupation — as a mosque.A building project in the Castle District. Efforts to restore and reconstruct certain historic buildings are aimed at drawing more tourists and creating an expression of Mr. Orbán’s brand of nationalism.The roof of Matthias Church. The tiles were made by Hungary’s celebrated Zsolnay porcelain factory, which also supplied tiles for the Parliament building, the Gellért baths and several buildings designed by the renowned Hungarian architect Ödön Lechner — including the two buildings, the Royal Postal Savings Bank and the Hungarian Institute of Geology, shown earlier in this essay.How much, I began to wonder, had General Electric’s quick entry into Eastern Bloc markets — which, despite high hopes, quickly led to labor tensions and slashed payrolls and ultimately proved to be more fraught than expected — helped hasten Hungary’s too-rapid transformation? How much had the frenzied reach of American capitalism helped set the stage for Mr. Orbán’s rise?How much, I wondered, had that earlier tide of history helped shape today’s?The crumbling entrance to a Tungsram site in Budapest, photographed in late May. Tungsram, which was finally sold by General Electric in 2018, filed for bankruptcy protection earlier this year.In late May, I caught wind — through 444.hu, a self-consciously edgy news site, and, alongside Telex and HVG, one of Hungary’s few remaining independent outlets — that a sprawling field of poppies had bloomed in District 15, near the edge of the city. I hopped on a bus for the 40-minute ride, gazing out the window as we wended our way through timeworn residential areas and past Soviet-era panel housing estates.Exiting the bus near a discount grocery store, I looked out across its parking lot and saw a vast sea of brilliant red petals that stretched for half a mile toward the M3 motorway.A field of poppies that bloomed on the outskirts of Budapest, at the edge of in District 15, in May.The immense field, within city limits, sat just beside a set of residential towers.A bee drifts toward a flower to collect pollen.The flowers, of course, weren’t long for this world — merely a momentary splash of vibrancy in Budapest’s weary periphery. Nor was the field itself destined to last: It would soon be paved to make room for a housing development.How fitting, I thought, since transience, in the end, was one of Hungary’s abiding lessons. After my family moved back to Ohio, where the homogeneous suburban scene accentuated the richness of the culture we’d left behind, I learned that the only constant I could rely on was the promise of constant change. So much simply faded away. My parents divorced. My international-school friends scattered like seeds. My grandmother was withered by cancer. In time, Tungsram would decay, as would General Electric, as would the influence of Western liberalism.But Budapest, in my memory, stands like a land before time. No doubt that’s why I feel such a connection to the place. No doubt that’s why it feels like home.With my grandmother, Natalie Faunda, on Margaret Island — which sits in the middle of the Danube River, between Buda and Pest — in 1990.My family at an overlook on Gellért Hill in ’92 or ’93.Standing on the outskirts of Budapest, watching the poppies dance in the wind and contemplating the ephemerality of this age-old city, I was reminded of a quote from Péter Molnár Gál, a Hungarian critic, that I’d read in Mr. Török’s guidebook.“In Budapest,” he writes, “you can’t dunk your bread in the same sauce twice. The city is going through a time of transition. As it has been doing for five hundred years.”By then, I think, wrestling with the past and the present, I’d begun to see the central question about Hungary’s future as one that posits pessimism and optimism as equally naïve: If the historical tides of the last 30 years are anything of a guide, then how could we ever hope to know what the next tide will bring?The Buda Castle after nightfall.Stephen Hiltner is an editor and photojournalist on The New York Times’s Travel desk, where he edits and contributes to the weekly World Through a Lens column. His last essay was about a kayaking trip through Florida’s Everglades. You can follow his work on Instagram and Twitter.Got a question, comment or tip? Send him an email or drop a note in the comments section.Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. And sign up for our weekly Travel Dispatch newsletter to receive expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. Dreaming up a future getaway or just armchair traveling? Check out our 52 Places list for 2022. More

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      What to See, Eat and Do in San Francisco

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      The city’s neighborhoods, from the Mission to Russian Hill and the Outer Sunset, are vibrant with packed restaurants and bars, and many are home to new parks and the return of in-person events.Lately, it seems like the news headlines from San Francisco have been negative, from the city’s homelessness crisis and highly publicized recall elections to the area’s astronomical cost-of-living and worsening fire seasons.But San Francisco is still San Francisco. The fog still rolls in from the Pacific to blanket the city’s jumbled hills, the sunset still flames crimson behind the Golden Gate Bridge and the smell of salt and eucalyptus still hits the moment you step outside of San Francisco International Airport. Always a city for lovers of the outdoors, pandemic restrictions led to the near-universal embrace of an indoor-outdoor city life. And at its core, the city’s spirit, a heady brew of creativity, progressivism and experimentation, remains unbreakable.San Francisco’s pandemic recovery has been slower than other major metropolitan areas in the United States; according to data from the San Francisco Travel Association, forecasts for 2022 estimate 80 percent of 2019’s visitor volume. While the Downtown and Union Square neighborhoods remain quieter than prepandemic times, the city’s singular neighborhoods, from the Mission to Russian Hill and the Outer Sunset, are vibrant with packed restaurants and bars, and many boast of new parks and in-person events. San Francisco no longer imposes a mask mandate, but some businesses will require or request masks; masks are recommended but not required on MUNI and BART, the city’s public transportation systems. Many indoor events, including concerts and theater productions, require proof of vaccination to enter.San Francisco has become more walkable and bikeable with the Slow Streets program, which limits or prohibits car traffic on streets and includes the Great Highway alongside Ocean Beach.Jason Henry for The New York TimesNew parks and slow streetsSan Francisco’s wealth of green spaces has increased thanks to a trio of new parks, including the Presidio Tunnel Tops, 14 acres of new national park land hugging the city’s north coast that opened this month. Boasting panoramic views of the Bay, the park was designed by the same group behind New York’s High Line and is home to a changing roster of food trucks, art installations and performances. For more views, check out Francisco Park in the city’s Russian Hill neighborhood, which opened in April on the site of San Francisco’s first reservoir. In the southeastern Mission Bay neighborhood, largely protected from the city’s frequent westerly winds, Crane Cove Park has become a warm, sunny destination for stand-up paddle-boarding, kayaking and lounging since it opened in 2020.Always a home for lovers of the outdoors, San Francisco during the pandemic saw a near-universal embrace of an indoor-outdoor city life. Francisco Park in the city’s Russian Hill neighborhood opened in April.Jason Henry for The New York TimesIn addition to new parks, San Francisco has become more walkable and bikeable with the pandemic-driven development of the Slow Streets program, which limits or prohibits car traffic on streets throughout the city. Destination-worthy ones include the Great Highway, which runs alongside Ocean Beach on the city’s western shore (it’s currently closed to car traffic on weekends and often, on windy days) and JFK Promenade in Golden Gate Park, which could be made permanently car-free in November. The one-and-a-half-mile stretch of JFK takes you past destinations like the Conservatory of Flowers and the Rose Garden, plus the Skatin’ Place, where you’ll often find a rocking roller disco.A return to in-person music eventsGolden Gate Park is also playing host to a number of major in-person events this year, including Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, a free, three-day music festival being held Sept. 30 to Oct. 2. This year’s lineup will feature Emmylou Harris, Steve Earle and Buddy Miller, with more artists to be announced next week. The Outside Lands Music Festival is taking place Aug. 5 to 7 with artists including Green Day, Post Malone and Lil Uzi Vert (single-day tickets from $195; three-day passes from $409). Find even more music in the Sunset District at the Stern Grove Festival, now in its 85th year. The series of free weekly concerts, happening on Sundays through Aug. 14, has acts ranging from the San Francisco Symphony to Phil Lesh.The Portola Music Festival (single-day tickets from $200, two-day passes from $400), a new music festival is coming to San Francisco from the team behind Coachella, takes place on Sept. 24 to 25 at Pier 80, and will showcase electronic acts including Flume, James Blake, The Avalanches and M.I.A.Jonathan Carver Moore, director of donor relations, partnerships and programming, at the Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco, which will opens this fall.Jason Henry for The New York TimesA new destination for contemporary artWith its opening in October, the Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco aims to provide a fresh approach to the ways in which contemporary art should be showcased and shared. Tied to its core tenets of equity and accessibility, ICASF will have free admission and plans to showcase local artists and artists of color in an environment that is welcoming to all. Opening programming includes a solo exhibition from Jeffrey Gibson, a Choctaw-Cherokee painter and sculptor, a group exhibit curated by Tahirah Rasheed and Autumn Breon, Oakland-based members of the collective See Black Womxn, and work from the local artists Liz Hernández and Ryan Whelan.Sharing plates at Shuggie’s, a pop-art explosion which features “trash pizza” made from repurposed food waste.Jason Henry for The New York TimesEat and drinkSan Francisco’s restaurants have struggled from pandemic restrictions, but also the high operational costs and high costs of living limiting the workforce. Many storefronts remain empty, and a number of legacy businesses closed, including Alioto’s, an Italian seafood restaurant that held court in Fisherman’s Wharf for 97 years, and the Cliff House, an iconic destination hugging the jagged shoreline over the Pacific (a new restaurant may open there by the end of the year).While undoubtedly challenging, the past two years have had a silver lining: Outdoor dining and drinking cropped up everywhere, from long-established restaurants like Nopa to brand-new spots like Casements, a modern Irish bar in the Mission that opened in January 2020. The bar had originally planned to be a cozy, indoor-only affair, but instead it now serves stellar cocktails (from $12) on one of the best patios in the city, complete with an outdoor semi-private space, live music, D.J.s and colorful murals of Irish rock musicians including Dolores O’Riordan of the Cranberries and Phil Lynott of Thin Lizzy.San Ho Won is a Korean barbecue spot with classic dishes and riffs on tradition.Jason Henry for The New York TimesWhile marquee openings are still a major part of the city’s food fabric — recent ones include the opulent Palm Court Restaurant in the new RH Gallery and a new Ghirardelli Chocolate Experience store — some of the most exciting developments center on low-key projects from high-end chefs. In the Mission, Corey Lee of three Michelin-starred Benu opened San Ho Won, a Korean barbecue spot with classic dishes and riffs on tradition, like a blood-sausage pancake and kimchi pozole (starters from $16, barbecue from $26). Matthew Kirk, a sous chef from Lazy Bear, opened Automat, a day-and-night destination in the Western Addition for baked goods, breakfast sandwiches and burgers (sandwiches from $9 to $16).Natural wine is nothing new in San Francisco, but low-intervention bottles — small-batch, often funky wines made utilizing organic ingredients, native yeast and usually, little to no sulfites — are dominating new restaurants and bars. Shuggie’s, a pop-art explosion with a lively bottle list from the West Coast and beyond, features two-dollar wine shots and a “trash pizza” made from repurposed food waste (wines from $15 for a glass or $51 for a bottle; pizzas from $19). Palm City Wines opened in the Outer Sunset in spring of 2020 as a takeaway-only natural wine bottle shop and deli; now, it also serves small plates, wines by the glass, Northern California beers and forearm-sized hoagies (starters from $8, sandwiches from $19). Upping the ante is Bar Part Time in the Mission, a natural wine-fueled disco with a rotating roster of D.J.s and wine producers.1 Hotel opened in San Francisco in June on the Embarcadero near the Ferry Building. The space features reclaimed wood and native greenery.Jason Henry for The New York TimesWhere to stay1 Hotel opened in San Francisco in June on the Embarcadero near the Ferry Building. The striking space features reclaimed wood and native greenery, recyclable key cards and hangers in the 186 guest rooms and 14 suites (from $500 per night), plus a rooftop spa, chef’s garden and beehives. Terrene, the hotel’s restaurant, features a farm-to-table inspired menu and a wide selection of mezcal and tequila.With 299 rooms and a rooftop lounge, LUMA is the first hotel development in the Mission Bay neighborhood. Jason Henry for The New York TimesLUMA, which also opened in June, is the first hotel development in the Mission Bay neighborhood. With 299 rooms (from $329 per night) and a rooftop lounge opening later this summer, the hotel is close to Oracle Park and the Chase Center. And on June 30, the longstanding Sir Francis Drake Hotel in Union Square reopened as Beacon Grand with 418 renovated guest rooms (from $249 per night), a lobby bar and in 2023, will reopen a redesign of the famed top-floor bar, the Starlite Room.Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. And sign up for our weekly Travel Dispatch newsletter to receive expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. More

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      in Music

      A Perfect Weekend in Asbury Park, N.J.

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      An hourlong drive from Manhattan offers a seaside idyll for rockers, diners, surfers, art patrons and fans of just relaxing on the beach. Here’s how to make the most of a weekend there.To call Asbury Park a secret would betray its tumultuous and storied history: A wellspring of American music, tucked around the swamps of Jersey. A home to national icons. A vibrant L.G.B.T.Q. community. A city that bears the scars of the civil rights movement, blighted for decades by mismanagement and mistrust, that’s now in the midst of a soaring recovery fueled by the very soul that gave Asbury its reason for being: music.Now Asbury Park is called “the Coolest Small Town in America” by travel magazines and is regularly placed on “top beach destinations” lists.Yet just an hourlong drive from Manhattan without traffic, Asbury Park still feels like a discovery, a New Orleans-meets-Dogtown city by the sea that’s ignored by the bumper-to-bumper traffic of the Long Island Expressway out to the Hamptons, the overcrowded ferries shuttling day-trippers to Rockaway Beach or the snarled causeway lined with cars to Long Beach Island.Ignored, of course, at their own loss. Because as I’ve learned since my first trip to Asbury 25 years ago, to catch the Warped Tour with my dad in the lot behind the storied Stone Pony, Asbury Park offers a Jersey Shore idyll for all comers: the rockers, diners, surfers, art patrons and just fans of a simple relaxing day on the beach. I’ve been keeping a rotating and updated list of suggestions for friends and family for years now to help them have the perfect summer weekend. Now I’ll share it with Times readers, too.The beach scene in Asbury Park, which is regularly placed on lists of “top beach destinations.”Tony Cenicola/The New York TimesA beach weekendYou’re here for the beach, so let’s start with that. Most important: This is the Jersey Shore, home to paid beach access and draconian parking rules. Asbury Park, fortunately, has ample parking near the beach, and imposes no time limit on metered parking, though it will run you $3 an hour from 8 a.m. to 2 a.m. with no discounts on a full day rate. Then an all-day beach pass costs $6 per person on weekdays, and climbs to $9 on the weekend.OK, time to pick a jetty. Surfers, head north, as the only summertime surf beach during lifeguard hours is off Eighth Avenue and Deal Lake Drive (of course, no restrictions on dawn patrol or sunset sessions). Non-surfers eager to shred can book lessons at the surf beach through Summertime Surf. For the similarly active but terra firma crowd, make for the beaches near Sixth Avenue and look for the volleyball nets to join a pickup game or host your own.The northern beaches are also home to the “dog beach,” a necessity in a city where bars build puppy playgrounds, host dog-friendly “Yappy Hours” and the Mardi Gras parade centers on costumed pooches; it’s not uncommon to see dogs in party hats trotting along the boardwalk following a birthday shindig. So, in the early mornings and every night after 6:30 p.m., the beach near Deal Lake is open to dogs (and their owners).For those just looking to sit on the beach and relax, pick up a beach read at the Asbury Book Cooperative, a unique and locally owned bookstore that operates as a co-op, with members given voting power over decisions and discounts on new books.Bars, restaurants and a pinball museum are among the diversions on the Asbury Park boardwalk.Tony Cenicola/The New York TimesThe Asbury Park boardwalk, storied as it may be through its appearances in Springsteen songs and Sopranos scenes, is not the kind of amusement park-on-the-water that many other Shore towns claim; more restaurants and bars line the planks here. But there’s still some traditional beach fun, including the Asbury Splash Park, where sprinklers, hoses and other water-emitting devices line the lot for children. And the Silverball Pinball Museum, an arcade that doubles as a museum of historic pinball machines dating back to the 1950s, offers an opportunity to join the wizards down on Pinball Way.The Stone Pony has been a favorite spot for music since the 1970s.Tony Cenicola/The New York TimesA music weekendEvery September, Asbury Park is the site of SeaHearNow, a nationally recognized, two-day festival, but on any given weekend, it can feel like its own music festival, as anywhere from a brewery to a bookstore to a coffee shop to a hotel lobby sometimes plays host to live music.Start off in the afternoon at the Transparent Clinch Gallery, where local artists play on an intimate stage beneath the gaze of countless music legends photographed by the renowned photographer Danny Clinch. A Jersey Shore native, Mr. Clinch has photographed Bruce Springsteen, the Foo Fighters, Tupac and more, and his gallery on the eastern end of the Asbury Hotel is packed with portraits of iconic artists, including a (nearly) life-size Mr. Springsteen leaning against a muscle car that visitors can pose with for a picture. Mr. Clinch will often join the bands onstage with his harmonica, holding down a recent blues duet with the local Seaside band Johnny Nameless.The Saint — “packed into a sliver of a space that could easily double as a punky dive bar” — is another storied music venue in Asbury Park.Tony Cenicola/The New York TimesFrom there, walk downtown to the House of Independents, a large sunken venue that can pack 500 fans in for a Jersey punk showcase, a more reflective, indie marquee night or simply put a D.J. onstage and have a dance party. Close the night by heading a couple blocks down to the Saint, a venue that feels unchanged since it opened its doors in 1994, for a mix of local artists and nationally touring bands, that are packed into a sliver of a space that could easily double as a punky dive bar.R Bar, a New Jersey-meets-New-Orleans restaurant and bar on Main Street, hosts a brass brunch on Saturday and a blues brunch on Sunday in the backyard garden.Tony Cenicola/The New York TimesThe second day of our self-styled festival kicks off with brunch at R Bar, a new standout New Orleans-themed restaurant on Main Street that hosts a brass brunch on Saturday and a blues brunch on Sunday in the backyard garden. Grab a Kane Head High on draft and some blue crab beignets and settle in for a perfect Jersey-meets-New-Orleans combo.The main event is down Second Avenue, where the siren song from the legendary Stone Pony is still echoing down the boardwalk, 48 years since it first opened its doors, and Mr. Springsteen still shows up on occasion. The venue’s Summer Stage, housed in the back lot, hosts major national acts from Phil Lesh to Jason Isbell to the Bouncing Souls, while the aftershow might be inside the Pony, where local bands grace the same stage that Mr. Springsteen, Stevie Van Zandt and Southside Johnny regularly called home.If your ears aren’t ringing yet, head back on the boardwalk at the Asbury Park Yacht Club, which often has late night concerts going past midnight on the weekends, and sweaty dancers spilling out into the salt air.For a sit-down dinner, head to Pascal & Sabine for French-inspired fare.Tony Cenicola/The New York TimesA food tour, Jersey styleAsbury’s many music venues may only be eclipsed by the booming restaurant scene. There’s a lot to eat, so let’s start early.This is New Jersey, after all, so for breakfast, you’re going to eat that greasy, salty chopped pork shoulder product: Taylor Ham (or, as they call it in Asbury, Pork Roll). It’s available all over the city, but for the best experience, head to the Johnny Pork Roll truck in the North Eats Food Truck park and get the Sandwich, a traditional pork roll, egg and cheese with “saltpepperketchup,” a condiment accompaniment that must be uttered in a single breath.At the Johnny Pork Roll truck in the North Eats Food Truck park, try the locally traditional pork roll, egg and cheese sandwich.Tony Cenicola/The New York TimesIf experimenting with the state’s most precious and peculiar cuisine is not in the cards, head to Cardinal Provisions for a mix of traditional brunch standards and original takes, like the cacio e pepe eggs.You’ll want to walk off that breakfast, so stroll downtown toward Frank’s Deli and Restaurant for a classic, multi-page laminated menu and formica-topped booths. There’s nothing bad on this menu, but you’re here for jaw-locking Italian sandwiches. Order them like Anthony Bourdain used to: a heaping pile of ham, salami, pepperoni, provolone, tomatoes, onions, shredded lettuce and hot peppers, drenched in oil and vinegar.Frank’s Deli and Restaurant is a New Jersey institution, famous for its Italian sandwiches, a favorite of Anthony Bourdain.Tony Cenicola/The New York TimesNow, dinner can go in two directions. You could fashion a full pizza tour, sampling all the styles of New Jersey in the Asbury square mile. Start at Maruca’s on the boardwalk for a slice of “Tomato Pie” a Jersey original where the sauce swirls like a spiral out from the center, mingling with the cheese rather than being buried by it. Then Talula’s hawks some of the best Neapolitan pizzas in New Jersey or New York, sourcing all their ingredients from local farms identified on a blackboard above the bar. Or head to Killer Pies for a traditional slice and a custom, classic fountain soda.For more of a sit-down dinner, head to Heirloom at St. Laurent (where a $75 prix-fixe meal with a signature duck dish may be the finest dining in town), Pascal & Sabine for French-inspired fare, or Barrio Costero for elevated Mexican cooking and some of the best shrimp tacos on the shore. The boardwalk is home to Langosta Lounge and its famous Surf Curry, with fresh seafood floating in a house blend of yellow and green curry. Newcomer R Bar offers classic Big Easy dishes like gumbo, but also Jersey-inspired spins like a fried pork roll sandwich that is a homage to the famous fried bologna sandwich at Turkey and the Wolf in New Orleans. And since the fish are swimming so close by, there’s plenty of seafood at the Bonney Read.If you saved room for dessert, head to Confections of a Rockstar and order cupcakes and other treats like a Macaroon 5, S’more than a Feeling or a Oreo Speedwagon (I could keep going but I’ll save some surprises for the visit).The Asbury Ocean Club is one of the newest and most luxurious hotels in town.Tony Cenicola/The New York TimesWhere to stayUnlike many Jersey Shore towns, Asbury Park boasts multiple large hotels with full amenities and a range of prices. To experience the new, modern essence of Asbury, stay at the Asbury, a hotel fashioned out of the historic Salvation Army building that often has live music in the lobby, a rooftop bar and a pool out back (weekdays start at $395, weekends $660). Just across Bradley Park is the Berkeley Oceanfront Hotel, a long-running hotel that has been remodeled and upgraded (weekdays start at $295, weekends $459). At the other end of the beach is the Empress hotel (weekdays $229, weekends $339), a popular spot for L.G.B.T.Q. visitors, with views of the ocean.For those looking for luxury, the new Asbury Ocean Club (weekdays start at $585, weekends $905), housed in a shimmering glass tower at the center of the beach expanse, is like stepping out of Asbury and into a Hamptons or South Beach scene. The lobby, bar and pool is all on the second floor of the hotel, with the only street exposure a small vestibule with elevators. And the St. Laurent ($425 to $600 most nights), newly opened this summer in the historic Hotel Tides building, counts 20 individually styled rooms — each is decorated with a custom surfboard by a local artist and comes with complimentary beach passes — above an expansive restaurant, whiskey bar and backyard pool.52 Places for a Changed WorldThe 2022 list highlights places around the globe where travelers can be part of the solution.Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. And sign up for our weekly Travel Dispatch newsletter to receive expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. More

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      in Television

      Baratunde Thurston Wants You to Be Part of Nature. Right Now.

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      The author of “How to Be Black” and host of the “How to Citizen with Baratunde” podcast wants you to experience the outdoors with a new PBS television series.In the midst of the pandemic, Baratunde Thurston decided to start a garden.It was a way for the author, podcaster and TV host to reconnect with his love of the outdoors, and process his feelings about the tumultuous state of the world.“Unfortunately, the squirrels thought I was gardening for them,” Mr. Thurston said. “In the beginning, I saw it as a battle — me versus the squirrels. Over time I realized, these squirrels are my neighbors, too. Maybe we can work something out.”Connecting with the environment, respecting wildlife and finding reverence in nature are all themes of Mr. Thurston’s new television series, “America Outdoors.” The six-part show follows him on a range of outdoor adventures, from running with ultramarathoners in Death Valley, Calif., to bird-watching in Minnesota and trekking through the Great Dismal Swamp in Virginia and North Carolina. Viewers learn that nature can be enjoyed by everyone.“Doing a show based in the outdoors was really the right move in terms of ways to experience this country,” Mr. Thurston said. “I got to hang out with true outdoor enthusiasts and was reminded that you don’t have to be obsessive, or particularly well-resourced, to enjoy the outdoors.”“America Outdoors” premieres July 5 on PBS. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.The show is as much about outdoor destinations as it is about people. How do you define an “outdoor enthusiast?”This show is about breaking expectations. When I hear “the outdoors,” I have an extreme landscape like El Capitan in mind. I have a white guy in mind, with a beard, and he’s looking off into the distance, having just conquered something. And we did spend some time with people like that, but we also spent time with the original people on this land. It was a beautiful privilege that I got to interview people from three different Indigenous nations.We spent time with folks who have disabilities, and I got to be guided down a river, white-water rafting and piloted by a man who’s paralyzed. In Idaho, I was hanging out with refugee kids, mostly from Africa and Southeast Asia — part of the “Welcome to America” in Boise is hiking and taking nature walks and getting familiar with all the Americans, all of our neighbors, including the trees and the butterflies. I also met people just in their backyards who maybe don’t have the gear, the car rack, or a subscription to an outdoor magazine, but they know the value of putting their hands in dirt and growing food.You do a lot of really physical outdoor activities in this show — hiking, surfing, rafting, flying a plane! Which was the most challenging?The most challenging by far: sand surfing. Walking in sand, first of all, it’s not fun. That’s a great challenge. I really toned my calves and my glutes and my thighs. So I’m kind of grateful. But trying to ride a board? I don’t do skiing and snowboarding. Trying to stand on frozen water, on an incline, it just feels like … Why would you do that? So then we’re doing it on sand, and there’s no fin on the board. So there’s nothing for it to grip, and so you’re just kind of fishtailing all around. We had so many takes and when you go down a sandy hill, you have to walk back up. There’s no shortcut. It was a lot!Which destinations disrupted your expectations the most?Death Valley was full of life. It was our first shoot and pretty quickly, I was as offended as the Indigenous people by the name because it just sounds barren. The people we spent time with there, they helped me see it differently. The author of “Hiking The Pacific Crest Trail: Southern California,” Shawnté Salabert, took me on this hike to Darwin Falls and it’s just beautiful. I also went running with Mosi Smith, this ultramarathoner, and saw Death Valley through his lens. Of course, being with the Timbisha Shoshone members, who say this place should be called Timbisha, not Death Valley just because some white dude got lost. That’s disrupted expectations just because of what it’s called.There was also a shock for me on Tangier Island, in the Chesapeake Bay, with James “Ooker” Eskridge, the mayor of the community. On paper, me and this guy don’t have that much to say to each other. He was in the Trump-iest voting district in America by some measures, and he’s very, very, very conservative. But I had the luxury of spending real time and feeling his energy and experiencing his hospitality. I learned that his home is disappearing due to rising sea levels, due to climate change. He won’t quite call it climate change, but he acknowledges the waters rising and wants to do something about it. He wants sea walls, he wants federal money to be spent to save his town. We were on the coast of his island and seeing tombstones in the water. You can show data about climate change and you could watch an Al Gore presentation and see the temperature going up. But then you can wade through a graveyard. Hearing him describe having to exhume his ancestor to his own backyard; he got emotional talking about it. It made it real. I didn’t expect to have that experience at all. I definitely didn’t expect to have it with someone who’s seemingly so different from me.Climate change comes up a lot in the show. Was that your intention?Making a show about the outdoors is making a show about climate change. We can’t avoid the topic. In every location, I was witness to the effects of climate change: the dryness and lack of water in Death Valley beyond what’s expected; the firefighter training for those wildland firefighters; in Idaho, the smoke from Western fires, and the low levels of the river and the high temperatures of the river. In Minnesota, the premise of one of our segments with the Abbas family, the farming family, was trying to breed climate-resilient trees that can bear higher temperatures, because the forest we were standing in is going to disappear. And so rather than just mourn that, what kind of new forest can we create in its place? They’re engineering just through basic biology to harden the forest so that their kids have trees, too. When we were in Duluth, Minne., we could hardly breathe. Minnesota is having mad fires now. We couldn’t see Lake Superior. I had to wear an N95 mask when we weren’t shooting, because it was burning inside.Everywhere we went, we had a climate story. Sometimes it was more of a focal point of who we were talking with and the story; other times, it just affected how we could make the show.What do you hope people may learn from this show?I want people to see the outdoors as a place where we can literally experience common ground among the wide range of differences that make up this nation. Pretty much everybody should be able to see themselves in the show — we’ve got different time zones, different ecologies, different ages and body shapes and abilities. I hope we’ve reflected the diversity of the nation both in its natural state and in its human state. I want this show to be a mirror for everybody.The Indigenous people I spoke to have a culture of being a part of nature, as opposed to apart from nature. We got to relearn that. That was a really big takeaway for me, especially as the climate gets more volatile in the next decades. We should all stay connected in that way. This is not just something to use. It’s something to belong to.52 Places for a Changed WorldThe 2022 list highlights places around the globe where travelers can be part of the solution.Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. And sign up for our weekly Travel Dispatch newsletter to receive expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. More

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      in Music

      Nashvile 2022 Visitors’ Guide

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      With the opening of a big African American music museum, new retro bowling halls and a ramped-up food scene, Nashville just kept on growing over the last two years. A visitors’ guide.As the weather warms, travelers anxious to get back to honky-tonkin’ in Nashville can expect not only to find things much as they were prepandemic — Tootsies Orchid Lounge, Legends Corner and Robert’s Western World are still cranking out boisterous fun along Lower Broadway — but also a vertiginous number of new restaurants, hotels and music venues. They will also find one of the most impactful music museums to open anywhere in decades: the National Museum of African American Music.There were losses, of course, such as the closing of Douglas Corner, the well-known music venue, and Rotier’s Restaurant, but venerated country music draws like the Ryman Auditorium, the Grand Ole Opry House and the small-but-mighty singer/songwriter venue, The Bluebird Cafe, made it through, as did most Nashville restaurants.Indeed, according to the Nashville Convention and Visitors Corp. (NCVC) the city added a staggering 197 new restaurants, bars and coffee shops; a couple of jazzy retro bowling alleys; and 23 hotels in 2020 and 2021.“I think we are one of the very few destinations that kept building while everything was shut down,” said Deana Ivey, the president of the NCVC. “We have more music, more restaurants, more hotels and a growing arts and fashion scene. If the early numbers we’ve received for March are correct, then March will be the best month in the city’s history.” As an indicator, she said, the preliminary number for hotel rooms sold in March 2022 was 7.6 percent higher than March 2019.Currently, according to the NCVC, vaccination and masking requirements are being left up to businesses, and a number of music venues are requiring proof of a negative Covid-19 test, so visitors should contact those venues directly.From left, James Lee Jr., his sons Cy and Brooks, and Mr. Lee’s wife, Asha, listen to music at one of the hands-on exhibits at the National Museum of African American Music in Nashville.William DeShazer for The New York TimesCulture and revelryNashville’s newest cultural gem, the National Museum of African American Music (NMAAM), opened last year at the long-planned 5th + Broadway, a complex of restaurants, shops, offices and residential space across the street from the Ryman Auditorium. The museum aims to tell the comprehensive story of African American music’s influence on American culture. Museum designers have done a noteworthy job of laying out the intersectionality of varying genres in the 56,000-square-foot facility where videos of musicians are in constant rotation.Numerous artifacts on display include B.B. King’s guitar “Lucille,” George Clinton’s wig and robe, and a microphone used by Billie Holiday. Storytelling is partitioned into six main rooms, five dedicated to specific genres, including R&B, hip-hop, gospel, jazz and blues, with rock ’n’ roll mingled throughout. The main gallery, Rivers of Rhythm, ties it all together within the context of American history. The museum also informs visitors that Jimi Hendrix, Little Richard and Etta James all spent time singing and playing in Nashville.Nashville has two new venues — Brooklyn Bowl Nashville (above) and Eastside Bowl — that combine bowling with live music and a restaurant-bar scene.William DeShazer for The New York TimesIn the revelry lane, Nashville now has two venues with a common theme, Brooklyn Bowl Nashville, in the Germantown neighborhood, and Eastside Bowl, in Madison. Both claim a stylish 1970s décor and vibe that combine bowling with a restaurant/bar/music experience. The music venue at Brooklyn Bowl Nashville, based on the original Brooklyn Bowl in, well, Brooklyn, seats 1,200. Jimmy Fallon hopped onstage in February to join the local Grateful Dead cover band The Stolen Faces, and Grand Ole Opry’s new inductee, Lauren Alaina, recently played; Neko Case is scheduled for August.Over in Madison, Eastside Bowl, which seats 750, is also bringing in respected talent. The singer-songwriter Joshua Hedley performed in April, and the Steepwater Band rockers are scheduled for May. Eastside Bowl has regular bowling and “HyperBowling,” a cross between pinball and bowling with a reactive bumper used to navigate the ball. The food includes the much-missed shepherd’s pie from the Family Wash, an Eastside institution that closed in 2018.The French chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten developed the concept for the new restaurant Druisie & Darr at the recently renovated Hermitage Hotel.William DeShazer for The New York TimesEat and sleepNashville fans coming back to the city for the first time in two years will find a food scene still ramping up at breakneck speed with the chef and founder of Husk, Sean Brock, doing some heavy lifting. In 2020, he opened Joyland, a burgers and fried chicken joint, and, on the other end of the spectrum, the Continental, an old-school, fine-dining restaurant in the new Grand Hyatt Nashville. Recent dishes there included tilefish with crispy potatoes, leeks and watercress, and an unforgettable whipped rice pudding with lemon dulce de leche and rice cream enveloped in a sweet crisp. Last fall, Mr. Brock launched his flagship restaurant, Audrey, in East Nashville, which centers on his Appalachian roots; upstairs his high-concept restaurant, June, is where he hosts “The Nashville Sessions,” which highlight tasting menus created by notable chefs.Other renowned chefs are finding a place in Nashville. The French chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten developed the concept for the new restaurant Druisie & Darr at the recently renovated Hermitage Hotel, and the James Beard Award-winning chef Andrew Carmellini has brought in Music City outposts of New York’s The Dutch and Carne Mare, both at the newly installed hotel W Nashville in the Gulch neighborhood. Others are adding on; RJ Cooper, also a James Beard winner, launched Acqua, next door to his swanky Saint Stephen in Germantown last month.A Nashville favorite, the Elliston Place Soda Shop, is back on the scene after recently relocating.William DeShazer for The New York TimesA slice of coconut meringue pie at Elliston Place Soda Shop.William DeShazer for The New York TimesFor both locals and travelers, the opening of a second Pancake Pantry downtown is relieving fans of having to wait in line at the Hillsboro Village location for the shop’s made-from-scratch flapjacks (their heavenly sweet potato pancakes with cinnamon-cream syrup come to mind). Similarly, the much-applauded Arnold’s Country Kitchen on 8th Avenue South now has a night and weekend schedule to accommodate the usual crush of meat-and-three fans. Cheering things up on the West End Corridor is the historic and colorful Elliston Place Soda Shop, back after relocating to 2105 Elliston Place. The ice-cream shop had been in operation for over 80 years right next door, and now has a polished-up menu, a full bar and, you guessed it, a stage for live music.Certainly, there won’t be a dearth of accommodations for visitors any time soon. The city added 4,248 hotel rooms over the last two years. The 130-room, hipster-forward Moxy Nashville Vanderbilt is the first hotel ever to open in cozy Hillsboro Village, and the massive new luxury monolith, the Grand Hyatt Nashville, downtown has one of the highest rooftop bars in the city, along with seven restaurants.Travel Trends That Will Define 2022Card 1 of 7Looking ahead. More

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      in Television

      Why TV-Inspired Vacations Are on the Rise

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      TV-themed itineraries are on the rise, taking travelers on adventures with familiar shows during a time of uncertainty.With 70 percent of Americans watching more TV in 2021 than they did in 2020, binge-watching has skyrocketed during the pandemic. Now, as borders reopen, restrictions ease and travel restarts, tour advisers are fielding an increasingly popular request: immersive, TV-themed itineraries that allow travelers to live out their favorite shows’ story lines.In Britain, where all travel restrictions are now lifted, hotels in London have partnered with Netflix to offer Lady Whistledown-themed teas inspired by “Bridgerton” high society. In Yellowstone National Park, travelers are arriving in Wyoming not for a glimpse of Old Faithful, but for a chance to cosplay as John Dutton from the hit drama “Yellowstone.”And in South Korea, where vaccinated travelers can now enter without quarantine, street food vendors on Jeju Island are anticipating a run on dalgona candy, the honeycomb toffees that played a central role in “Squid Game.”“When you fall in love with a character, you can’t get it out of your mind,” said Antonina Pattiz, 30, a blogger who last year got hooked on “Outlander,” the steamy, time-traveling drama about Claire Beauchamp, a nurse transported 200 years back in history. Ms. Pattiz and her husband, William, binge-watched the Starz show together, and are now planning an “Outlander”-themed trip to Scotland in May to visit sites from the show, including Midhope Castle, which stands in as Lallybroch, the family home of another character, Jamie Fraser.Mr. Pattiz is part Scottish, Ms. Pattiz said, and their joint interest in the show kicked off a desire on his part to explore his roots. “You watch the show and you really start to connect with the characters and you just want to know more,” she said.The fifth season of “Outlander” was available in February 2020, and Starz’s 142 percent increase in new subscribers early in the pandemic has been largely attributed to a jump in locked-down viewers discovering the show. During the ensuing two-year hiatus before Season 6 recently hit screens — a period of time known by fans as “Droughtlander” — “Outlander”-related attractions in Scotland, like Glencoe, which appears in the show’s opening credits and the Palace of Holyroodhouse, saw more than 1.7 million visitors. “Outlander”-related content on Visit Scotland’s website generated more than 350,000 page views, ahead of content pegged to the filming there of Harry Potter and James Bond movies.The Pattizs, who live in New York City, will follow a 12-day self-driving sample itinerary provided by Visit Scotland, winding from Edinburgh to Fife to Glasgow as they visit castles and gardens where Claire fell in love and Jamie’s comrades died in battle. Private tour companies, including Nordic Visitor and Inverness Tours, have also unveiled customized tours.The ‘Sex and the City’ UniverseThe sprawling franchise revolutionized how women were portrayed on the screen. And the show isn’t over yet. A New Series: Carrie, Miranda and Charlotte return for another strut down the premium cable runway in “And Just Like That,” streaming on HBO. Off Broadway: Candace Bushnell, whose writing gave birth to the “Sex and the City” universe, stars in her one-woman show based on her life. In Carrie’s Footsteps: “Sex and the City” painted a seductive vision of Manhattan, inspiring many young women to move to the city. The Origins: For the show’s 20th anniversary in 2018, Bushnell shared how a collection of essays turned into a pathbreaking series.Enduring trend, new intensityScreen tourism, which encompasses not just pilgrimages to filming locations but also studio tours and visits to amusement parks like The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, is an enduring trend. Tourists flocked to Salzburg in the 1960s after the release of “The Sound of Music”; in recent decades, locations like New Zealand saw a huge bump in visits from “Lord of the Rings” fans and bus tours in New York City have offered tourists a chance to go on location of “Sex and the City” and “The Marvelous Ms. Maisel.”But in this pandemic moment, where travel has for months been synonymous with danger and tourists are navigating conflicting desires to safeguard their health while also making up for squandered time, screen tourism is taking on a new intensity, said Rachel Kazez, a Chicago-based mental health therapist. She has clients eager to travel — another major trend for 2022 is “going big” — but they are looking for ways to tamp down the anxiety that may accompany those supersized ambitions.She said her patients increasingly are saying “‘I was cooped up for a year and I just want to go nuts. Let’s do whatever fantasy we’ve been thinking about’.”“If we’ve been watching a TV show, we know everything about it, and we can go and have a totally immersive experience that’s also extremely predictable,” Ms. Kazez continued. Cyndi Lam, a pharmacist in Fairfax, Va., has longed to go to Morocco for years. But she didn’t feel confident pulling the trigger until last month, when “Inventing Anna,” the nine-episode drama about the sham heiress Anna Delvey, began streaming on Netflix.In episode six of “Inventing Anna,” the character flies to Marrakesh and stays at La Mamounia, a lavish five-star resort. Ms. Lam and her husband are now booked to stay there in September.“Everybody can kind of relate to Anna,” Ms. Lam said. “I found her character to be fascinating, and when she went to Morocco, I was like, ‘OK, we’re going to Morocco.’ It sealed the deal.”In December, Club Wyndham teamed up with Hallmark Channel to design three suites tied to the “Countdown to Christmas” holiday movie event. They sold out in seven hours.Courtesy of Club WyndhamSensing a new desire among guests to tap into the scripted universe, dozens of hotels over the past year have rolled out themed suites inspired by popular shows. Graduate Hotels has a “Stranger Things”-themed suite at its Bloomington, Ind., location, with areas designed like the living room and basement of central characters like the Byers. A blinking alphabet of Christmas lights and Eleven’s favorite Eggo waffles are included. And in December, Club Wyndham teamed up with the Hallmark Channel to design three “Countdown to Christmas”-themed suites where guests could check in and binge Christmas films. They sold out in seven hours.“It was the first time we’d done anything like this,” said Lara Richardson, chief marketing officer for Crown Media Family Networks, in an email. “One thing we hear over and over from viewers is that, as much they love our products, they want to step inside a ‘Countdown to Christmas’ movie.”Vacation homes are also going immersive. For families, Airbnb partnered with BBC to list the Heeler House, a real-world incarnation of the animated home on the beloved animated series “Bluey,” and Vrbo has 10 rental homes inspired by “Yes Day,” the 2021 Netflix film about parents who remove “no” from their vocabulary. Celebrities are jumping in, too: Issa Rae, creator and star of HBO’s “Insecure,” offered an exclusive look at her neighborhood in South Los Angeles in February with a special Airbnb listing, at a rock-bottom price of $56.Tea on TV, now in London (and Boston)“Bridgerton,” Netflix’s British period drama about family, love and savage gossip, was streamed by 82 million households in 2021. (For comparison, the finale of “Breaking Bad” in 2013 had 10.3 million viewers; more recent streaming hits, including “Tiger King” and “Maid,” had fewer than 70 million). When season two of “Bridgerton” premieres on March 25, Beaverbrook Town House, a hotel built across two Georgian townhouses in London’s Chelsea, will offer a “Bridgerton” experience that includes a day out in London and drinks in the British countryside; nearby at the Lanesborough, a Bridgerton-themed tea, cheekily dubbed “the social event of the season,” will kick off the same day. In Boston, the Fairmont Copley Plaza now has a “High Society Package” for fans with flowers and a private afternoon tea.Contiki, the group travel company for 18- to 35-year-olds, had a “Bridgerton”-themed itinerary set for September 2021 but had to scrap it when the Delta variant hit; they’ve now partnered with Amazon Prime on a Hawaiian Islands trip inspired by “I Know What You Did Last Summer” set for July.Both Netflix and Amazon Prime have brand partnership teams that handle collaborations of this nature.“As we come out of this pandemic, the desire for more immersive experiences is really stronger than ever,” said Adam Armstrong, Contiki’s chief executive. “It’s about getting under the skin of destinations, creating those Instagrammable moments that recreate stuff from films and movies. It’s really a strong focus for us.”The popularity of “Bridgerton” on Netflix was eclipsed by “Squid Game,” the high-stakes South Korean survival drama, and despite that show’s carnage, travelers are booking Squid Game vacations, too. Remote Lands, an Asia-focused travel agency, reported a 25 percent increase in interest in South Korean travel and created a Seoul guide for fans and a customized itinerary.Some travel advisers say that some clients don’t even want to explore the locations they’re traveling to. They just want to be there while they continue binge-watching.Emily Lutz, a travel adviser in Los Angeles, said that more than 20 percent of her total requests over the past few months have been for travel to Yellowstone National Park, a result of the popularity of “Yellowstone,” the western family drama starring Kevin Costner on the Paramount Network and other streaming services. And not all of her clients are interested in hiking.“I had a client who wrote me and said, ‘All we want to do is rent a lodge in the mountains, sit in front of the fireplace, and watch episodes of ‘Yellowstone’ — while we’re in Yellowstone’,” she said.52 Places for a Changed WorldThe 2022 list highlights places around the globe where travelers can be part of the solution.Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. And sign up for our weekly Travel Dispatch newsletter to receive expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. Dreaming up a future getaway or just armchair traveling? Check out our 52 Places for a Changed World for 2022. More

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      in Music

      ‘Be Nice to Tourists’: New York’s Arts Scene Needs International Visitors

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      The United States now allows vaccinated international travelers into the country. It’s welcome news for arts institutions that lost revenue and cut jobs during the pandemic.When many readers in Toronto, London, Paris and Hong Kong open their newspapers on Monday, they will be greeted with a full-page advertisement from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.“We reopened in August 2020, but have been missing one critical thing — you, our international visitors,” the ad will say. “The Met is only The Met when it is being enjoyed daily by visitors from around the world.”The unusual display — museum officials say they do not believe they have ever run a global marketing campaign of this scope aimed at visitors so far from their Fifth Avenue home — is a signal of the thirst among New York arts institutions for foreign visitors to return. American borders reopened to international tourists this week for the first time since the early months of 2020. Their return represents another milestone in New York’s reopening, and few sectors of the city’s economy are more of a draw to foreign travelers — or lean more heavily on them for revenue — than the arts.“It’s crucial that we recover this segment,” said Chris Heywood, a vice president for global communications at the city’s tourism agency, NYC & Company. “Arts and culture are going to lead our recovery. That is the backbone.”Indeed, billions of dollars and many thousands of jobs are at stake. Employment in New York City’s arts, entertainment and recreation sector plummeted by 66 percent from December 2019 to December 2020, according to a state report. Even as things reopen, and workers are hired back, challenges remain: The tourism agency forecasts that visitor spending in 2021 will be about $24 billion, roughly half of what was spent in 2019.Few sectors of the city’s economy are more of a draw to foreign travelers — or lean more heavily on them for revenue — than the arts.Angela Weiss/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesInternational visitors typically make up about a fifth of the city’s visitors, but they tend to stay longer and spend more than domestic visitors: what they spend accounts for roughly half of all tourism dollars.On Broadway, tourists from outside the United States comprise about 15 percent of the audience during a traditional season, said Charlotte St. Martin, the president of the Broadway League. (There is a reason that the website of “The Lion King” is lined with flags indicating where to click for translations of its sales pitch in French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Chinese and Spanish.)The Metropolitan Opera said that international ticket sales have accounted for about 20 percent of total box office revenues during the last five seasons. And more than half of New York’s international visitors go visit an art gallery or museum during their trip, according to data from NYC & Company. One in four go to some kind of live performance when they are in the city — be it a concert, play, musical, a dance performance or opera.So New York has been missing them.“This is a big step forward,” said Victoria Bailey, the executive director of Theater Development Fund, the nonprofit organization that operates the TKTS booth, where about 70 percent of the tickets are bought by tourists and roughly half of those sales are to foreign travelers.Groups catering to tourists from overseas are gearing up. Broadway Inbound, a subsidiary of the Shubert Organization that is responsible for the wholesale distribution of show tickets, recently restarted a marketing program that helps highlight more than 20 partnering shows to group buyers, tour operators and the travel industry.The Metropolitan Museum of Art has moved some of its marketing dollars overseas in part because the it has hit something of a “ceiling” on attendance, Ken Weine, a spokesman for museum, said. Before the pandemic, international travelers accounted for about a third of the museum’s visitors; these days, the number of people who come to the museum daily is about half of what it was before March of 2020.The newspaper ad from the Metropolitan Museum of Art that will run in Toronto, London, Paris and Hong Kong. Museum officials say they do not believe they have ever run a marketing campaign of this scope aimed at visitors so far from their Fifth Avenue home.Metropolitan Museum of ArtMusicals like “The Phantom of the Opera,” which have leveraged the interest of tourists who want to see a long-running show that they are familiar with, have purposefully invested advertising dollars during this holiday season and placed their displays in high-traffic, touristy areas. That is why there is an imposing three-dimensional statue of the Phantom’s mask strategically plopped next to the TKTS booth and outdoor advertising for “Chicago” all over Times Square.Foreign travelers have not yet begun buying tickets to “Phantom” in material numbers, said Aaron Lustbader, the general manager of the show. But officials hope that will change soon.“Typically, January and February are two of the very weakest months of the year and this has certainly been true for ‘Phantom,’” he said. “Our hope is that due to pent-up demand of nearly two years and assuming it would take most people at least a few weeks to put together plans, that the city sees a far higher number of international tourists in these otherwise lean months.”Barry Weissler, a producer of “Chicago,” said the show typically partners with online travel sites to serve ads and try to spark the interest of inbound, foreign tourists ahead of their flights to New York.And for their part, tour operators and ticket vendors overseas say they have started to see their New York business bounce back — somewhat.Eric Lang, who runs an Amsterdam-based travel and information website that helps vacationers plan trips to New York, said his ticket sales in October were up to about 5 percent of normal. This month, sales are closer to 15 to 20 percent of what he had come to expect for this period, before the pandemic. “Growth from zero,” he said.Lee Burns, a product manager for AttractionTickets.com, which sells event tickets to people and travel agents in the United Kingdom, said he thought the timing of the American reopening might have come “a bit too late” to capitalize on the 2021 holiday season. So far, he said, his company’s New York sales are at only about 10 percent of what is normal for the holiday season.“People are booking now for next Thanksgiving and next Christmas,” he said. Nonetheless, he said he and his team are trying to figure out if there is any sort of deal they can offer for this Black Friday.Those who come to New York from overseas will need to navigate and adhere to the rules and vaccine requirements set by the state, the city and individual venues.They will find that many venues and presenters, including Broadway theaters, the Met Opera, the New York Philharmonic, Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall, will admit travelers who show proof of having received one of the vaccines approved by W.H.O. — a list that includes AstraZeneca, Sinopharm and Sinovac, vaccines that have not been authorized for use in the United States.To help theatergoers prepare for their visit to “Come From Away,” the show recently released a health and safety video outlining what patrons should expect when they show up at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater. An official with Broadway Inbound said it had touched base with the creators of the video to help ensure it would be educational to both domestic and foreign visitors.Heywood, meantime, had a plea for New Yorkers already here. “Be nice to tourists,” he said. “This is important.” More

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      in Theater

      Edinburgh Fringe Is Back. Is a Smaller Festival Better?

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      Locals long complained that the event had gotten too big. This year, because of the pandemic, their wish for a reduced Fringe has been granted.EDINBURGH — The drone of bagpipes drifted down the Royal Mile last Saturday, as members of a student theater troupe walked the cobblestones trying to drum up interest in their show.In a normal year at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, this central artery of the city’s Old Town district would have been packed tight with young performers and street acts, all competing loudly for the attention of passers-by. But late Saturday morning, there was only one group around.“We were the only ones here yesterday, too,” said Serena Birch, 22, a member of the Aireborne Theater Company, from the University of Leeds. “Usually, it’s like a fight.”Before the pandemic, the Edinburgh Fringe, which opened last Friday and runs through Aug. 30, was surpassed only by the Olympics and the soccer World Cup in terms of audience size. In 2019, the Fringe sold more than three million tickets for 3,841 shows at 323 venues — an increase of 31 percent in five years. Independent researchers estimated that the event generated around $1.4 billion for Scotland’s economy.During the Fringe, the Royal Mile, a central Edinburgh artery, is usually full of performers and street acts jostling for the attention of possible audience members.Iain Masterton/AlamyBut after the 2020 event was canceled, the Fringe was plunged into financial peril. A tentative comeback this year, buoyed by a $1.4 million government bailout, will see fewer than 850 shows presented — a third of them online. Uncertainty around the easing of coronavirus restrictions in Scotland, where limits on audience sizes were in place until Monday, seems to have kept performers and spectators away.This year’s slim, yet typically weird and wonderful, program features stand-up comics, like Daniel Sloss and Jason Byrne; a choral drama about migration staged on an out-of-town beach; and an educational walking tour, led by pelvic physiotherapist, titled, “Viva Your Vulva.”Established in 1947 as a free-spirited alternative to the highbrow Edinburgh International Festival, the Fringe is built on the principle of open access for performers, meaning any acts that pay a registration fee can present a show. It is one of several major festivals that take place in Edinburgh in August, but it is by far the largest.For some in a city with a population of only around 500,000, a break from the Fringe last year, followed by a much smaller festival this year — one that doesn’t clog up roads and sidewalks, or cause short-term rents to skyrocket — has been welcomed.Shulah Stewart, 35, a home care manager, said last year’s cancellation gave locals “an opportunity to just enjoy the city in summer, in a way that they can’t ordinarily.”And even the Fringe’s organizers say the event had become too big.In an interview, Shona McCarthy, the chief executive of the Fringe’s coordinating body, said it was time for a “serious conversation” in the coming months about how to build back in a smaller and more sustainable way. She said that “some kind of regulation” of the Fringe’s open-access policy could be considered for future editions.“Some kind of regulation” of the Fringe’s open-access policy could be considered for future editions, said Shona McCarthy, the chief executive of its coordinating body.Jane BarlowWhile theater and comedy make up most of its program, the Fringe has expanded over the years to embrace a broad range of acts. McCarthy said that some items on the schedule — like open-top bus tours and wine tastings — stretched the definition of performing arts. The Fringe needs to “be brave” and question why events like those have become such a huge part of the festival, she said.Yet the owners of Underbelly, an events producer that runs some of the Fringe’s busiest venues, said in a joint interview that a move away from the open-access policy would hamper the event’s fragile recovery. “As soon as the Fringe became closed access, then a new fringe would just start up alongside it,” said Charlie Wood, an Underbelly director.“No one can control the festival,” he said. “It’s organic.”Ed Bartlam, Wood’s business partner, said many locals’ criticism of the Fringe’s size was based on an “urban myth” that the event was primarily for people from outside Edinburgh and Scotland.According to a Fringe spokeswoman, people from Scotland made up more than half of the audience members at the 2019 event, and Edinburgh residents around 35 percent. About 7 percent came from outside Britain, she added.McCarthy said the digital hybrid model for this year’s festival, with a mix of online and in-person events, would remain for future editions so that audiences and performers could take part in the Fringe “without necessarily having to travel here.”Underbelly’s owners said they would not be presenting any online events in this year’s program. They “can sometimes work,” Wood said, “but you have to spend a lot of money on it, and therefore it doesn’t work for this festival.”Nerea Bello, left, Julia Taudevin and and Mairi Morrison. They are performing in “Move,” a choral drama about migration.Jeff J Mitchell/Getty ImagesOut and about in Edinburgh, the question of whether a bigger Fringe was better drew a range of responses.Claire Mackie, 41, an animator, said the event’s usual “noise and chaos” never used to bother her, even when she lived close to the Royal Mile. “I liked the buzz,” she said, adding that this year’s Fringe seemed “subdued.”Jackie Honisz, 70, a retiree, sitting in her garden beside the Pleasance Courtyard venue complex, said she didn’t miss the Fringe last year, and didn’t want it to return to its previous scale: “Because of Covid,” she said, and because festivalgoers would regularly leave trash in the streets around her home.The comedian Josie Long, 39, made her Fringe debut at 17 and has returned as a performer for 16 of the past 22 years, including this year with a work-in-progress show for limited, socially distanced audiences at the 100-capacity Monkey Barrel Comedy. In a phone interview, she said she felt like this year’s festival was “just about enough Fringe that people can handle psychologically.”But Long added that she hoped the festival would one day return to its sprawling prepandemic proportions. “Making fewer opportunities doesn’t tend to stop the arts being the preserve of privileged people,” she said.“I can’t wait until it’s in a position where I can say it’s annoying again,” she added. More