Like the individualistic adventurer you like to immerse yourself in the local culture - except in your case, it will involve a lot more rock bands, art galleries, museums, retro stores and fashion boutiques - plus the faint hope you run into Chloe Sevigny or some a cool
punk band.
You're not surviving on five rupees a day, but you do have a budget in mind. For instance, when you visit New York you'll have a carefully planned itinerary that allows you to afford the important things and save on the not-so-important. As in, you might take a budget flight so you can have room service for four nights in the newest, grooviest boutique hotel.
Or you'll stay in scummy lodgings so you can spend all your savings on going to gigs, buying records, cocktails and unknown-in-New Zealand designer fashions.
This year
You went to New York, Berlin, Paris, London, Melbourne.
Next year
You'll be wanting to go to Shanghai, Barcelona, Moscow, Bangkok. But rather than just turning up there and trying to find the best nightspots and boutiques yourself, you will have been advised by what is best described as a kind of hip concierge service. After all this kind of thing is all about insider and local knowledge. So you'll refer to websites like: www.flavorpill.net, www.hiphotels.com, www.wallpaper.com or www.contempohotels.com (see links below). This way you'll find out how best to spend your cash as well as where the cool kids and art students who live in the cities you're visiting are hanging out.
Dream destination
A short stay at the brand new Gramercy Park Hotel in New York which opened in August 2006. This is the latest project by hotelier Ian Schrager, who once ran legendary NYC disco, Studio 54, but who is best known these days as being the guy who started the trend toward boutique, design-conscious hotels with places like the Philippe Starck-designed Royalton and the Paramount in New York. The 185-room Gramercy Park first opened in 1924 but had fallen into disrepair when Schrager bought it and asked artist Julian Schnabel to help redecorate. The result has been described by various international publications as haute-Bohemian, new old-world, evocative, eccentric, eclectic or "think Peggy Guggenheim in Venice, at home in her art-filled Palazzo Venier dei Leoni on the Grand Canal".
Sample prices: From around $700 a night.
