The Best List 2008: Travel

Best Travel

Best Dance Party
Tax Lo at Sonar, Baltimore
Every month, hundreds of kids from the mean streets of Baltimore—and the not-so-mean suburbs—pile into a vast downtown warehouse called Sonar for this raucous dance party. (Its name is short for Taxidermy Lodge, a nod to the site’s origins.) The crowd is multiracial and given to eye-popping fluorescent outfits, many of which invariably wind up piled in sweaty heaps along the wall by night’s end. The resident DJs serve up beats from Baltimore’s vibrant “gutter” scene, alongside populist ’80s and ’90s jams. Goddesses and gods of hip, including M.I.A. and Diplo, perform live when they come through town. What’s the vibe on an average night? “Kids go crazy, and I usually get thrown out,” says Baltimore raunch-rapper Spank Rock.

Best Jukebox
Beachland Ballroom & Tavern, Cleveland
The vintage 1966 Rock-Ola at Beachland is free, plays a handpicked mix of vinyl and has never once needed to go to the shop for repair. It holds 80 records, which means 160 sides, all lovingly chosen by Beachland’s crate-­cruising co-owner Mark Leddy. “It plays 45s, which any real jukebox should,” he says. “They are loud and meant to sound good on a jukebox.” The cache is heavy on ’50s rockabilly, ’60s soul and ’70s art-rock; Roxy Music’s “Love Is the Drug” might follow a George Jones tune recorded under the alias Thumper Jones. While the play list may be ultrahip, Beachland, a former Croatian social club turned bar and live-music joint, has the friendliness of a local dive. Make sure to try the deep-fried peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich, and wash it down with a Schlitz.

Best Place to Start a Band
Gainesville, Florida
Move over, Brooklyn: Rock’s new hot breeding ground is a backwater Florida burg the locals affectionately call Hogtown. Gainesville—best known as the birthplace of Gatorade and Tom  Petty—has a little over 50,000 ­University of Florida students (translation: coeds galore) and dirt-cheap rent that’s perfect for broke, slacker-musician types. “I used to live under a staircase for a hundred bucks a month,” says Tom ­Gabel, the frontman for Gainesville natives Against Me!, “and I sold my plasma for $200 a month.” Locally, the punk scene still rules—thanks to veteran acts such as Less Than Jake and the boosterish hometown label No Idea—but friendly venues (Common Grounds, the Atlantic) also make room for up-and-coming indie bands like Morningbell and Papercranes. Plus, February temperatures are in the 70s, and the beach is only an hour in either direction. Beat that, Portland!

Best Record Store
Primitive Records, Montreal
By A-Trak, Kanye West’s DJ and, at age 15, the youngest person ever to win the DMC World DJ Championship.

“When I was coming up as a hip-hop DJ I’d spend entire Sunday afternoons here, going through ’70s rock, prog and jazz-funk-soul records for samples. There are also a lot of French records, which are a sample gold mine. I haven’t taken Kanye yet, but a lot of producers and DJs come through here. The store’s not that big, but it’s incredibly thorough: I can show up and tell the guy I’m looking for ’80s new wave or whatever, and he’ll pull out a bunch of stuff you’ve never heard of. Montreal is on the water, and you tend to find really good records in cities like that—there’s a lot of trade that goes in and out. The prices are good here, too. I’ll usually drop about $300 and walk out with a stack of 40 LPs. For real diggers, they have special bins in the back of the store, but you have to be friends with them to get back there.”

Best Rock Club
The Southgate House, Newport, Kentucky
By Bob Pollard, ex–Guided by Voices frontman and indie-rock lifer.

“This place has history, man. It’s a beautiful old three-story mansion, built nearly 50 years before the Civil War. The inventor of the Tommy Gun was born there, and supposedly Lincoln visited once. But you walk in the door and it’s just this crazy house party. There’s no security, so you can wander all the secret passageways; our first time there we took a staircase up to the watchtower and smoked a joint. The crowd can get kind of wild—last year someone hit my drummer in the face with a bottle, and they love spitting beer. Also, there’s no backstage or band bathroom, so we usually just piss in a bucket. But I love it because there’s nowhere to hide. You’re basically forced to party.”

Best Fake-Rock Night
Hyperion Tavern, Los Angeles
Formerly the site of one of L.A.’s seediest gay bars (think: glory holes), the Hyperion Tavern now hosts a more innocent type of play. Every Wednesday night, the bar—in the hipster-filled Silver Lake neighborhood—puts on a raucous Guitar Hero/Rock Band night. Warning: If you suck at playing the plastic instruments (or singing in tune), you will get booed off stage. Then again, if you rock, you may just get showered with panties.