Although it was a real need to get from point “a” to “b” that made him a pilot at 10 years old (he grew up in a remote and roadless part of Alaska), Ty Frisbee refuses to see airplanes as transportation. In fact, 99% of his flights take off and land at the same place.
As one of the country’s top aerobatics competitors and lead aerobatics instructor for Sunrise Aviation at John Wayne Airport – without a doubt the country’s top aerobatics school – Frisbee doesn’t have time to putter around up there in a straight line. Instead, he flies four times a day, taking on as many as 10Gs as he barrels straight up into the sky, and then perfects his loops, rolls and spins.
When people meet Gregory Wilson of Costa Mesa, they don’t know whether to fear him or love him. Usually, they do both – then pay him for the pleasure. The one-time professional con man has given up the life of a pool hustler and card sharp, and now spends his days deceiving and stealing from his clients as one of the world’s most popular magicians.
For as long as she can remember, 89-year-old Huntington Beach resident Vi Cowden has wanted to fly. At six years old, before she’d even heard of an airplane, she dreamed of soaring over her neighborhood like the hawks. At 24, this then first grade teacher (an “appropriate” career for a woman in 1941) visited a small airfield near her home in South Dakota “just to watch.” Inspired, she marched over to the airport’s manager to inquire about lessons. He, in turn, marched her over to an airplane. “Within an hour, I’d had my first half hour lesson and was hooked forever,” she says.
Ever fallen in love with a mannequin? Darrin Rowland has, and he’s made a thriving career out of his affection as the visual manager for Neiman Marcus Fashion Island. “Mannequins are so much fun. I love them,” he says as he fixes the hair and touches up the makeup of an eight-foot-tall leggy super doll named Jade. “We have hundreds of mannequins, the abstract Pucci dolls, the Lucies, and all the realistics. Their makeup, their wigs, their shoes – it all has to go together just right. I use real lipstick to change the color of their lips to coordinate with the look.”
By the time he’d logged 34 years as a fashion illustrator working for the most glamorous names in the business (Vogue, Seventeen, Ladies Home Journal, Cosmopolitan), Donald Hendricks of Laguna Woods faced a problem. Boredom. His search for a new challenge left him floundering for years until he finally stumbled upon his calling in the last place a grown man would look – a paper doll convention.
Primate Unknown
Most people think Matt Moneymaker, the head of the San Juan Capistrano based Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization, is insane. Some people would even call him a fraud, but a growing number of scientists think he’s on to something.
“People have trouble accepting Bigfoot’s existence until they really look into it. Their perception is that we know all about Earth, and the idea of anything unknown isn’t typical,” says Moneymaker who admits he wasn’t always a believer. “I got interested in Bigfoot the way most sane people do, by watching documentaries. Then in the mid-80s, by chance I stumbled across some witnesses. I went up to the mountains in Ventura count and found tracks. It was a breathtaking experience.”
Celebrate your marriage in one of the most romantic honeymoon spots on the planet.
By Tiffany Hawk
The post-wedding bliss may be a phase, or it may last forever, but one thing is for certain, it is the perfect time to nurture your love whether it’s star-crossed, whirlwind, shotgun or true. We’ve chosen a few of the best places to take your post-nuptial trip no matter what your personalities.
The Adventurers
Ulusaba Private Game Reserve
Kruger National Park, South Africa
http://www.coastmagazine.com/travel/jan06_travel03.html
TEFAF, Holland’s famous art and antique fair, offers a chance to fantasize about spies, shaken martinis, and having the means to buy some of the most prestigious art on the planet.
By Tiffany Hawk
FADE IN:
EXT: SCHIPHOL AIRPORT, AMSTERDAM – WINTER
The 747 door cracks open, letting out the stale air and pent-up frustration of 300 people just released from 11 hours of aluminum confinement. Through the glass-enclosed jet bridge, we see the quietly falling snow of a storm that will soon wreak havoc on the Netherlands. It’s freezing. The roads are treacherous. God knows how long we might be snowed in, but anyone who is anyone in the art world is here.
When it comes to five-star accommodations, today’s must-have amenity is a share
in the real estate.
By Tiffany Hawk
When someone suggests buying a hotel condo, what’s the first thing that comes to mind? Florida? Time share? Aunt Edna? Never-ending sales pitches over watered-down coffee and stale cookies reminiscent of an AA meeting? Well, that was then. This is now: private chefs, soaring high-rises, personal butlers, European estates, Ian Schrager designs, rooftop pools, Michelin three-star restaurants, and perhaps most importantly, a genuine opportunity to build equity in some of the world’s most happening urban centers and most sought after vacation destinations.
http://www.coastmagazine.com/travel/feb07_cabo.html
At Las Ventanas al Paraiso, you don’t need a lover (though one wouldn’t hurt) to indulge in one of the most sensual experiences on earth.
You don’t need 10 days or $5,000 to see Alaska – in fact, a quick jaunt can offer a more intimate experience
Coast Magazine original article
Hotelier Gordon Campbell Gray is a master at transforming popular – in the positive and negative senses of the word – tourist haunts into the hippest, most sought after destinations around. With his sister hotels, London’s One Aldwych and Antigua’s Carlisle Bay, Gray is two for two in the race to redefine the luxury vacation.
By TIFFANY HAWK and VICTORIA NAMKUNG
Buy the book at Amazon!
At 24, I impulsively threw away a respectable but boring life in suburban California for a stint as a London based flight attendant. A whirlwind of parties, clubs and pubs had me yearning for something real, and a down-to-earth connection proved ever harder to find in my fashionable fast lane crowd. Enter Jimmy, the owner of a new Chinese restaurant adjacent to my flat. He seemed to be flirting, as he more and more frequently forked over a free wonton here and a side of jasmine rice there. A few months into this valuable courtship, I agreed to go out with him.
San Francisco: This time last year
I’m only 5’2”, yet I tower over her. My wrists are the size of her biceps. As I take my shoes off at her doorstep, she offers me a pair of her slippers, but I can’t even fit my toes into the opening. I laugh, nervously, loudly. I’m loud, and I’m large, and I’m bumbling. I’m the uncivilized white girl her first-born Korean son has brought home for the holidays. She says nothing, and keeps her eyes focused on the floor demurely, submissively, but despite her constant deferrals to her husband and sons, I know she’s the heavy. Hers is the only opinion that matters.
A surrogate gift and a feigned smile prove it really is the thought that counts.
The tree looked as green as the day we put it up. It always would. Every year we pulled the box from the rafters and matched the color-coded branches to their correct positions on the metal trunk. Leftover tinsel from previous Christmases only made our job easier. I was eight that year, so it must have been our original tree, the one that looked more like a pile of pipe cleaners than a blue spruce. A few years later, my dad would go from staff accountant to chief financial officer and we’d pull together the money for a more real looking fake tree, its perfect symmetry and lack of aroma the only giveaways. Still, I knew I was missing out. Each year, my classmates would brag about pine scented living rooms, and I would nod along uncomfortably like the only one who doesn’t get a joke.
This is the opening chapter of my novel, Walking on Air
I’m a flight attendant. Sometimes on a trans-Atlantic night flight, when all the passengers are sleeping and the crew is in the galley sipping coffee to stay awake, I tell them what the fortune teller said. They may not like me, but they are alert. Besides, popularity doesn’t concern me. I’m only a reserve, which means I’m on call to fill in for absentees, and at an airline with 26,000 flight attendants, I rarely meet the same people twice.
SFO-DEN
London, Heathrow – San Francisco: September 18, 2001
There are more opportunities than ever to buy back your time and lifestyle by flying corporate.
There are more opportunities than ever to buy back your time and lifestyle by flying corporate.
Extreme travel doesn’t have to mean jumping out of airplanes or rafting down rapids. For some local adventurers, it means obsessively racking up the miles, peaks, or passport pages.
MILE HIGH
When John Nguyen of Irvine planned a trip to Dublin, it went like this – LAX to Miami to Washington Reagan to Chicago to Dublin. And the return – Dublin to Chicago to Indianapolis back to Chicago then to Raleigh Durham, Miami and finally LAX.
The route? To earn miles on American Airlines.
The trip to Dublin? To earn miles on American Airlines.
Extreme travel doesn’t have to mean jumping out of airplanes or rafting down rapids. For some local adventurers, it means obsessively racking up the miles, peaks, or passport pages.
MILE HIGH
When John Nguyen of Irvine planned a trip to Dublin, it went like this – LAX to Miami to Washington Reagan to Chicago to Dublin. And the return – Dublin to Chicago to Indianapolis back to Chicago then to Raleigh Durham, Miami and finally LAX.
The route? To earn miles on American Airlines.
The trip to Dublin? To earn miles on American Airlines.
What does it take for a luxury hotel to earn its four- or five-star rating? A lot more than you think.
“Good morning señoritas!” Fairmont Newport Beach Room Director Jerry Mong calls out with Richard-Simmons energy.
“Good morning,” the housekeeping staff chants in unison.
“How are you today?”
“Fabulous,” they reply laughing.
He’s teaching them how to respond in English when greeting a guest. With the help of a translator, Mong congratulates them on the most recent J.D. Power results for guestroom cleanliness. The women, from 18 to 60 years old, clap and cheer with pride. Then he cranks up the Bose stereo, Tina Turner’s “Proud Mary” blares forth and the entire department gets ready to boogie.
What does it take for a luxury hotel to earn its four- or five-star rating? A lot more than you think.
“Good morning señoritas!” Fairmont Newport Beach Room Director Jerry Mong calls out with Richard-Simmons energy.
“Good morning,” the housekeeping staff chants in unison.
“How are you today?”
“Fabulous,” they reply laughing.
He’s teaching them how to respond in English when greeting a guest. With the help of a translator, Mong congratulates them on the most recent J.D. Power results for guestroom cleanliness. The women, from 18 to 60 years old, clap and cheer with pride. Then he cranks up the Bose stereo, Tina Turner’s “Proud Mary” blares forth and the entire department gets ready to boogie.
Surrender to wanderlust in the anti-suburbs of Orange County.
As a recovering flight attendant, I am plagued with sudden and overwhelming cravings for the intoxicating places of my past. It seems that when I can least afford to succumb, my travel addiction reaches maddening intensity. At times, I fear a quick jaunt across state lines will trigger a relapse and send me begging for help from round-the- world-ticket dealers. Instead, I turn to local remedies, places where for an hour or two, I can escape to another world, even if I’m only a few blocks away.
Scientists and automobile manufacturers around the world are convinced that hydrogen fueled vehicles will transform the environment and our petroleum dependent lifestyle. Orange County is at the center of research and development.
Although it was a real need to get from point “a” to “b” that made him a pilot at 10 years old (he grew up in a remote and roadless part of Alaska), Ty Frisbee refuses to see airplanes as transportation. In fact, 99% of his flights take off and land at the same place. 
