There Was Nowhere to Go But Everywhere
America by Hostel
Suddenly you find yourself amid it all, with booze and maps and the dizzying flurry of who-knows-what languages humming all around. You’ve got one more night to do this city, and an endless surge of new faces are coming and going, each sharing that same mission. Slavic dudes arrive and unpack nothing but a bottle of vodka before hitting the town. A French girl rolls a cigarette and bids you bon voyage. Hugs work where lack of common language fails.
It’s a halcyon atmosphere, and the aroma is of gourmet instant ramen and sweat-soaked backpacks. The night’s abuzz, the city’s alive; you’re young and in America. You’re willing to drop cash on the wayward experiences you weave, not on high thread count sheets. You’ve set out to connect this massive land’s myriad dots one hostel at a time.
You sat down with San Francisco in mind; planning to somehow get from the left coast to Vegas to Austin to Nashville and then to New England, and the thought of hostels may not have even occurred to you. But why not? You know the inexpensive, dorm-style accommodations are ubiquitous throughout the world. They’re the quintessential catalyst for meeting other nomads on far-flung itineraries ranging from Patagonian treks and Eurotrips to excursions in Southeast Asia. They’ve been the staple for capricious adventures for more than a century. What started as a movement in Germany to get teenagers away from the smog-saturated city for fresh air and cultural enrichment caught on and quickly became the boon for students seeking cheap jaunts across Europe.
But for whatever reasons, the hostel scene hasn’t always realized the same magnetism across the Atlantic. Maybe “hostel” sounds too much like “hostile” in American English. Maybe the thought of cramming strangers from around the globe into small communal bunkrooms conjures up manifestations of that similar word. Or maybe Americans have just been too finicky about maintaining personal space.
But it’s 2013, and accommodation centered on affordability and intercultural interaction in the U.S. is slowly but surely catching up. It’s possible that the U.S. now has some of the finest hostels in the world. Take Freehand Miami, for example.
The Miami Beach hostel redefines the word. The self-proclaimed chic hostel has guests eternally poolside sipping both craft cocktails and $3 Miller Lites beneath the shade of its lush garden. The 236-bed, 63-room community pairs the relaxed atmosphere of Old Havana with the bespoke luxury decor of Roman and Williams, the New York firm that designed the building and its interior. Its social spirit is not enlivened only by its bar, The Broken Shaker, but also by on-site art and yoga classes, beach cruiser bike rentals, and vivacious communal rooms. And beds start at around just $30 USD a night. It’s quite a step up from the infirmary-style bunkhouse featuring erratic lighting and snoring vagrants that granted you some restless nights in Istanbul…
And it’s just one of many exceptional and affordable lodgings in the country that yields 67 million tourists a year—the second most in the world, according to the United Nations World Tourism Barometer. While most of those visitors are still booking humdrum cradles at the Marriott and mucky off-highway motels, hostels are becoming more compelling every day.
It took decades to catch on, but the industry is thriving, says Hostelling International USA, a nonprofit that offers membership discounts and marks its seal of approval on over 50 affordable hostels across the country. The organization has found that more and more travelers are realizing that hostels offer a better portal to both an authentic American experience and an intercultural microcosm than hotels do.
“A hotel is a place to sleep, whereas a hostel is part of the overall experience,” said Netanya Trimboli, HI-USA’s communications manager. “With shared dorms, a self-serve kitchen, and common areas, hostels are designed to foster interaction among guests.”
And if you find yourself looking for a pit stop along the southeastern coast, and you’re craving a wetland expedition, you’ll certainly interact with interesting travelers at The Hostel in the Forest—a warm and welcoming oasis in the remote peninsula of Brunswick, Georgia. The cozy rooms are up in tree houses perched away from the marsh, above canoes drifting down the lake and the sweat lodge where a serendipitous Native American ritual goes down every full moon.
Like many American hostels, Hostel in the Forest is cheap, it’s stimulating, and it’s different. It pays in to the old homage of focusing on the journey, not the destination. “Whether travelling solo or with friends, hostels enrich the traveling experience by introducing guests to people they would have never met otherwise, making the trip more fun and memorable,” Trimboli said.
And picking a hostel based on past visitors’ memories via online reviews can be a judicious way to chose where to stay. Of course you’ll hear stories about the exasperating quirks—bed bugs and petty theft, or broken water pipes and shoddy service, and it’d be wise to avoid the true dives. But at the same time, what may seem like a run-of-the-mill joint in a good location can turn out to be a valuable accommodation that has also granted some of the best travel memories of peoples’ lives. And you’d never know if you hadn’t done a bit of research.
Of course, if quality is of the utmost importance, then you can’t go wrong picking a HI-USA-approved hostel. The organization focuses on standards without standardization, and strives to maintain the authentic, local vibe of each of its locations. It’s list includes restored lighthouses along the coast outside of San Francisco, island getaways off Cape Cod, a ranch in Austin, Texas, a loft in downtown Chicago, an oasis garden and balcony-laden manor in the Upper West Side of New York City, and more, all which can be found and booked on their website.
But if that doesn’t provide you enough selection, Hostel World and Hostel Bookers also boast hundreds of other U.S. hostels to choose from. Whether you’re arriving for the first time in Los Angeles from an 18-hour flight or hunkering down for the night on the other side of your own city, you can almost definitely find an interesting and inexpensive hostel nearby.
Who needs room service, bellboys, and a mint on your pillow when you’ve got drunken board games with Australian surfers, collaborative epic meal times, and an artistic melting pot from which the budding of lifelong connections overflows? Not that your hostel stay is guaranteed to be a life-changing experience — its biggest draw is still that it’s an affordable alternative for moving about the globe, and in this case, the U.S.
But hostels offer an international ecosystem in which to mix with a mottled canvas of cultures and to break the ice for stimulating experiences. The “s” in hostel is what differs the word from hotel—and that differentiating s might as well stand for social. Each hostel has its idiosyncrasies, but each bids the potential for community, culture, and adventure. Join others on that quest, and get out there.
Suddenly you find yourself amid it all, with booze and maps and the dizzying flurry of who-knows-what languages humming all around. You’ve got one more night to do this city, and an endless surge of new faces are coming and going, each sharing that same mission. Slavic dudes arrive and unpack nothing but a bottle of vodka before hitting the town. A French girl rolls a cigarette and bids you bon voyage. Hugs work where lack of common language fails.
It’s a halcyon atmosphere, and the aroma is of gourmet instant ramen and sweat-soaked backpacks. The night’s abuzz, the city’s alive; you’re young and in America. You’re willing to drop cash on the wayward experiences you weave, not on high thread count sheets. You’ve set out to connect this massive land’s myriad dots one hostel at a time.
You sat down with San Francisco in mind; planning to somehow get from the left coast to Vegas to Austin to Nashville and then to New England, and the thought of hostels may not have even occurred to you. But why not? You know the inexpensive, dorm-style accommodations are ubiquitous throughout the world. They’re the quintessential catalyst for meeting other nomads on far-flung itineraries ranging from Patagonian treks and Eurotrips to excursions in Southeast Asia. They’ve been the staple for capricious adventures for more than a century. What started as a movement in Germany to get teenagers away from the smog-saturated city for fresh air and cultural enrichment caught on and quickly became the boon for students seeking cheap jaunts across Europe.
But for whatever reasons, the hostel scene hasn’t always realized the same magnetism across the Atlantic. Maybe “hostel” sounds too much like “hostile” in American English. Maybe the thought of cramming strangers from around the globe into small communal bunkrooms conjures up manifestations of that similar word. Or maybe Americans have just been too finicky about maintaining personal space.
But it’s 2013, and accommodation centered on affordability and intercultural interaction in the U.S. is slowly but surely catching up. It’s possible that the U.S. now has some of the finest hostels in the world. Take Freehand Miami, for example.
The Miami Beach hostel redefines the word. The self-proclaimed chic hostel has guests eternally poolside sipping both craft cocktails and $3 Miller Lites beneath the shade of its lush garden. The 236-bed, 63-room community pairs the relaxed atmosphere of Old Havana with the bespoke luxury decor of Roman and Williams, the New York firm that designed the building and its interior. Its social spirit is not enlivened only by its bar, The Broken Shaker, but also by on-site art and yoga classes, beach cruiser bike rentals, and vivacious communal rooms. And beds start at around just $30 USD a night. It’s quite a step up from the infirmary-style bunkhouse featuring erratic lighting and snoring vagrants that granted you some restless nights in Istanbul…
And it’s just one of many exceptional and affordable lodgings in the country that yields 67 million tourists a year—the second most in the world, according to the United Nations World Tourism Barometer. While most of those visitors are still booking humdrum cradles at the Marriott and mucky off-highway motels, hostels are becoming more compelling every day.
It took decades to catch on, but the industry is thriving, says Hostelling International USA, a nonprofit that offers membership discounts and marks its seal of approval on over 50 affordable hostels across the country. The organization has found that more and more travelers are realizing that hostels offer a better portal to both an authentic American experience and an intercultural microcosm than hotels do.
“A hotel is a place to sleep, whereas a hostel is part of the overall experience,” said Netanya Trimboli, HI-USA’s communications manager. “With shared dorms, a self-serve kitchen, and common areas, hostels are designed to foster interaction among guests.”
And if you find yourself looking for a pit stop along the southeastern coast, and you’re craving a wetland expedition, you’ll certainly interact with interesting travelers at The Hostel in the Forest—a warm and welcoming oasis in the remote peninsula of Brunswick, Georgia. The cozy rooms are up in tree houses perched away from the marsh, above canoes drifting down the lake and the sweat lodge where a serendipitous Native American ritual goes down every full moon.
Like many American hostels, Hostel in the Forest is cheap, it’s stimulating, and it’s different. It pays in to the old homage of focusing on the journey, not the destination. “Whether travelling solo or with friends, hostels enrich the traveling experience by introducing guests to people they would have never met otherwise, making the trip more fun and memorable,” Trimboli said.
And picking a hostel based on past visitors’ memories via online reviews can be a judicious way to chose where to stay. Of course you’ll hear stories about the exasperating quirks—bed bugs and petty theft, or broken water pipes and shoddy service, and it’d be wise to avoid the true dives. But at the same time, what may seem like a run-of-the-mill joint in a good location can turn out to be a valuable accommodation that has also granted some of the best travel memories of peoples’ lives. And you’d never know if you hadn’t done a bit of research.
Of course, if quality is of the utmost importance, then you can’t go wrong picking a HI-USA-approved hostel. The organization focuses on standards without standardization, and strives to maintain the authentic, local vibe of each of its locations. It’s list includes restored lighthouses along the coast outside of San Francisco, island getaways off Cape Cod, a ranch in Austin, Texas, a loft in downtown Chicago, an oasis garden and balcony-laden manor in the Upper West Side of New York City, and more, all which can be found and booked on their website.
But if that doesn’t provide you enough selection, Hostel World and Hostel Bookers also boast hundreds of other U.S. hostels to choose from. Whether you’re arriving for the first time in Los Angeles from an 18-hour flight or hunkering down for the night on the other side of your own city, you can almost definitely find an interesting and inexpensive hostel nearby.
Who needs room service, bellboys, and a mint on your pillow when you’ve got drunken board games with Australian surfers, collaborative epic meal times, and an artistic melting pot from which the budding of lifelong connections overflows? Not that your hostel stay is guaranteed to be a life-changing experience — its biggest draw is still that it’s an affordable alternative for moving about the globe, and in this case, the U.S.
But hostels offer an international ecosystem in which to mix with a mottled canvas of cultures and to break the ice for stimulating experiences. The “s” in hostel is what differs the word from hotel—and that differentiating s might as well stand for social. Each hostel has its idiosyncrasies, but each bids the potential for community, culture, and adventure. Join others on that quest, and get out there.