Your friends and ours at Thompson Hotels (6 Columbus, 60 Thompson, Thompson LES, Gild Hall, Smyth, Hollywood Roosevelt, Thompson Beverly Hills, Hotel Sax, and Donovan House) have launched a new blog called Inn-Sight. Spinning off the Room100 concept of yore, Inn-Sight posts about fashion, art, culture, and of course travel, plus interviews and cool stuff happening in and around the various Thompsons. Plus, it's overseen by our pal Steve Garbarino -- check out his Editor's Letter for the goods on what's going down over there.

Beloved BlackBook alumnus Steve Garbarino has a great piece in the New York Observer today: "The Cajun Expats," concerning New Orleans' post-Katrina revamp as an attractive new home for New Yorkers weary of the Big Apple's rat race and cancerous economy. Media mandarins, movie folk, artists, PR mavens, and others are profiled, such as Sean McCusker (formerly of Complex) pictured above in front of his new restaurant space. All their reasons for relocating sound pretty compelling actually. Especially the parts about beignets and coffee. And beer, and roast beef po-boys ...

On the subject of art, you’ve heard the skeptic standing in front of, say, an Alexander Liberman “Circle Painting,” ponder, “Well, I know what I like. But is it art?” Or is it just a circle that a Montessori geometry teacher may have rendered in oil on canvas with a protractor for a brush? When is a urinal a urinal, and not a Duchamp “readymade,” and so on?

The Waverly Inn may very well be the new Café Society, but we don’t see anyone lying around in settees there. Least of all its star chef John DeLucie, who likes a meal you can eat with one fork and has a story or two to tell in his upcoming memoir, The Hunger.

Peasants uprise by eating and drinking there a lot.

The fabled Chateau Marmont, on the cusp of its 80th year in business, has its ghosts, and they contribute to its distinct flavor. But it’s the colorful staff within Hollywood’s favorite country club that makes it one of the most magical hotels in the world. From the gatekeepers to the groundskeepers, here, a rare formal sit-down portrait that closed the grounds one spring day before the tiki torches flickered and the stars came out to play.

From Wilmington, Vermont to Topanga Canyon, California, test-driving the tiny two-seater.

Everyone has a place they travel to that is often more of a home than their actual one. No surprise to those who have heard me rave about it—some say, to extremes—that the Chateau Marmont is mine.

Actor Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman traversed the globe in Long Way Round. Their next mission—captured in this summer’s documentary Long Way Down—took them from the top to the bottom of South Africa by motorcycle. Here, an exclusive taste of the turf.

The shark was the showboat in Jaws, until it sank. But the circa 1975 clothes that Captain Quint, Matt Hooper, and Chief Brody wore aboard the Orca live on as rugged essentials for any real man.