THINGS
You never know
what you'll consider
buying in the next
Sky. And what would
a trip be without a
souvenir?

PEOPLE
You never know who you'll meet
in the next Sky.

PLACES
You never know where you'll nosh in the
next Sky.
How did we know this? Men aren’t normally given to shopping sprees, nor even to liking shopping much and certainly not to boasting about it. Men typically haven’t put shopping excursions in the category of, say, going to the World Series or to their 20th high school reunion or to Venice or Acapulco. And yet here was Executive Editor David Bailey, who proudly doubles as Sky’s barista (just look at the masthead), his eyes glowing as he recounted a shopping tour along Queen Street West in Toronto. Oddly, I’d just had a similar experience in the Hayes Valley of San Francisco. Both of us had been fascinated and delighted by multi-tiered outings that had easily taken the better part of an afternoon, after which there was nothing else to do but pile into an attractive local watering hole for a restorative pint.

Oh, did I say “pint”? What I meant was a glance at a three-page list of cocktails, each one more deliciously described than the last, each of them costing the best part of a 10-spot, to be sure, but supremely enticing. This was shopping? Why hadn’t women told us?

What it was was an immersion, as the best travel experiences are. Each of us had plunged into a new place and in a new way. Window-shopping, almost by accident, had given way to exploring stores, then falling into chatting with salespeople whose oral histories of their distinctive neighborhoods were like spoken monographs. There was a clear sense of the bazaar, with all of the continual surprises a bazaar will hold. A notorious tightwad, Bailey actually bought something as a memento. So did I (see “Le Shopping”).

And that’s in essence what we think of as “the next Sky”: a striking, contemporary bazaar of ideas and possibilities and destinations. Travel will always lead what we publish in this magazine, because it’s a sure way to more, to the new, to surprise. And it’s a path that always comes with the possibility of change.

 

 


Duncan Christy
Editorial Director
Delta Sky


Photos by (top and middle) Caren Alpert and (bottom) Susan Seubert.