Where I Go: Becoming a Pokémon Champion

For the Last 15 Years, These Cute Digital Creatures Have Helped Remind Me That I Can Overcome Any Challenge That May Come My Way

Most kids are obsessed with things—fantasies, foods, films—that they eventually outgrow.

It’s only natural. Our taste ages as we do.

But for me, it’s been 15 years since my parents got me my very first video game, Pokémon Platinum. I’m 22 years old now, and I’m as obsessed as I’ve ever been with the elemental creatures that I first met on a Nintendo DS screen in second grade.

Since then, the franchise has provided me with a place to go to find stability when my life has felt most chaotic—whether that happened to …

by Rithwik Kalale | August 10, 2023

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Where I Go: My Teacher, the Tomato

How This Beautiful Plant and Its Magic Fruit Guides a Professional Chef in the Kitchen, and in Life

by Evan Rilling | July 17, 2023

Food can connect us to the earth, our community, and ourselves. But first, we need to open a space to listen to and be in exchange with the ingredients.

As a …

Where I Go: The Playground That Helped Make Prague Feel Like Home

On the Plastic Benches of Výtoň’s Park, I Watched Our Sons Play and Let My Imagination Roam

by Chad Bryant | April 27, 2023

In 2013, my wife and I rented an apartment in Výtoň, a classic urban neighborhood south of the tourist-packed city center of Prague. This wasn’t my first move to the …

Where I Go: The Candy Wrapper Museum

Your Trash Is My Treasure—And a Sweet Reminder of the Past

by Darlene Lacey | April 6, 2023

In 2019, an unassuming package arrived at my front door.

Inside was a sooty 2-by-4-foot scrapbook filled with candy wrappers over 70 years old. On the surface, a piece of trash—one …

Where I Go: Praying to the Pickleball Gods

Making the Pilgrimage to Bainbridge Island Connects Fans to the Sport’s Origins and to One Another

by Terry Shoemaker | November 10, 2022

Pickleball—an addictive mashup of tennis, badminton, and ping pong—is seemingly everywhere these days, and played by seemingly everyone.

There are now a whopping 4.8 million players in the U.S. (a number …

Where I Go: Hunting Queer Ghosts in Chicago

Why Being Gay and Being Haunted Go Together in Fundamental Ways

by Bruce Owens Grimm | October 24, 2022

We think the ghosts will come to us as we sit in Kaitlyn’s car, once our car, on top of the man-made hill that houses the only mausoleum in Woodlawn …

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