Be my guide: Social media travel tips are valuable but limited by the crowd

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When it comes to collecting travel tips, there’s strength in numbers. For the last two weeks, I have been traveling across the country in my 1999 Pontiac Grand Am and using the collective knowledge of readers and online social-media wanderers to lead the way.

The response was overwhelming —literally, my e-mail in-box could barely hold it all. But the tips were invaluable and led me to hidden gems that AAA or most other travel agencies would never have listed. I’ve put a lot of them on the Google map above.

For many of the 14 cities I visited, locals whispered to me via the Web, pointing me to the underground hot spots. Some of the best suggestions popped up in Chicago, Nashville, Austin and Albuquerque. The pearls in those cities were mostly small, unassuming places outside the usual downtown bar scenes. They’re hidden from the public eye.

In Chicago, Mike and Chris tipped me off to Kingston Mines with comments on the Daily Travel & Deal Blog. You’d almost never know there was a bar there bustling with authentic blues music behind that small entrance and gruff doorman.

Readers James Robinson and Jenny Stueber pointed me to one of the greatest finds on my trip. The Bluebird Cafe in Nashville hosted three extremely talented singer-songwriters who performed folk-country songs to a packed audience of more than 100.

Janis Ian, who won a Grammy for her 1975 hit “At Seventeen,” was one of the performers at Bluebird. She humbly played an inspired cover of the Beatles’ “Love Me Do.” Later, she e-mailed me with her own travel tips for Memphis.

A bunch of readers urged me to stop in Memphis, the home of Elvis Presley’s Graceland. Bowing to the whims of the Web, I substituted Memphis for Montgomery, Ala. The Tennessee town certainly had a ton of history, but it somewhat lacked a progressive music scene.

Still, I acknowledged its necessity to the musical road trip, as pointed out by readers. “My hometown is arguably the most historically important city in the development of American music,” wrote Chris Ridenhour in an e-mail.

A couple of stops later, Austin’s downtown music scene was packed with loud rock of all types. Navigating the sea of bars can be quite difficult. Luckily, I had an abundance of suggestions for city favorites like Stubb’s Bar-B-Q, Maggie Mae’s, Lovejoys and Antone’s. If not for the myriad of options from readers, I probably would’ve spent all night at Emo’s listening to ear-bleeding punk songs.

Albuquerque yielded a few solid tips that hid on side streets, away from heavy metal bars, cheesy dance clubs and a shady strip joint. But as I noted in my blog post, sometimes the best acts can be found on the city streets. (Strangely enough, even the weirdest sidewalk bands have a MySpace.)

Not every tip was a golden nugget, however. Some spots were clearly plucked from memorable vacations and no longer exist— especially in New Orleans, parts of which are still in recovery from Hurricane Katrina. Others dove a little too far “underground.” I was evidently a fish out of water at Spitfire Saloon in Cleveland. Kathy the Great tipped me off on the blog to this punk dive bar on the edge of the city.

A few places just didn’t draw any concrete tips. In some cases, I was left empty-handed in cities where action wasn’t hard to find, like New York, Las Vegas and Los Angeles. Not a problem.

But in others, namely El Paso, I was left stranded with no clue as to where to go. My somewhat scathing blog post on the Southwest Texas city set off a couple of angry e-mails from a city council representative and its county commissioner. Though they felt my analysis was a bit unfair to their hometown, Susannah Byrd and Veronica Escobar both agreed that it is indeed hard for tourists to find the good stuff in their city.

“We probably need to do a much better job of marketing all the great things in our community,” wrote Escobar, the county commissioner. “Your piece will hopefully get us all moving on that.”

Even with my relatively large reach thanks to Daily Travel & Deal Blog visitors, readers of the Los Angeles Times newspaper and more than 1,000 Twitter followers, the suggestions weren’t 100% comprehensive. Among the gems was a lot of junk and some tips that weren’t even close to my route. (Seriously, Iowa? Come on guys.)

And, not surprisingly, the usual Web snark: “Dude, you’re going to some seriously lame cities,” wrote Bre on the blog. “You’re gonna have a really boring trip. Next time don’t have AAA map your route! Bummer for you!”

Needless to say, the trip was anything but boring. But I appreciate the feedback, Bre.

—Mark Milian, Los Angeles Times staff writer

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This entry was posted on Thursday, July 9, 2009 at 10:10 am by Mark Milian and is filed under Arts & Culture, Be My Guide, California, Celebrity, Chicago, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Midwestern States, New Orleans & Louisiana, New York, News, Tips & Advice, Southern States, Summer, Texas, Travel Technology, Washington D.C.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.