I'm building a list of the best boutique hotels under 15 rooms—chosen entirely by you, the people who read Hotels Above Par—and publishing the whole thing next week. Comment with yours, or restack this with the name.

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Welcome to today’s edition of Hotel Espresso, with HAP. I’m on a plane—surprise—somewhere over the middle of the country, headed to San Diego for a few days. After that: Ixtapa for a new opening, Porto to review a handful of hotels, then Paris for the World’s 50 Best Hotels ceremony. A lot of airports for one month.

If you missed it, I sat down on Substack Live with Courtney Wittich of S.P.A., one of my favorite wellness writers on this platform. Twenty minutes on bathing culture, what hospitality actually owes you, and the hotel spas she’d fly for. I’ll send it to y’all tomorrow in a separate email.

It’s been a while since we did a roundup, so here’s one I’ve been sitting on: the smallest hotels I want to stay in this year. Each has fewer than eleven rooms. A few have four.

So, you ask, why have tiny hotels ruined me? With nine rooms, the person at the desk remembers what you told them yesterday. And at places like The Chanler at Cliff Walk in Newport, no two rooms are alike—different themes, different furniture, a different idea of what a room can be. Being remembered, and staying somewhere that couldn’t be anywhere else, makes an enormous impression. Call it being a big fish in a very small pond.

Happy reading. ⬇️

Herdade dos Abegões (Salvaterra do Extremo, Portugal) // A sheepfold turned into a design-centric, stone-clad stay. 11 rooms.

Riad Number 37 (Marrakech, Morocco) // An unseemly design aesthetic here that swings more Scandinavian (don’t get me wrong, there are still a few Moroccan accents). But in regard to the former, that Nordic look comes from its cool neutrals and warm browns. 8 rooms.

Souki Lodges & Spa (Cabrières, France) // A stilted, countryside stay constructed with French wood on its exterior. The interior features contemporary art, Japanese fixtures, freestanding tubs, and rainfall showers. 2 rooms.

Hotel Puntagrande (El Hierro, Spain) // The Guinness Book of World Records named this historic Canary Islands outpost as the world’s smallest hotel at one point. It’s placed at the end of a strip of lava rock bifurcating the sea on each side. The hotel resembles a nautical museum, with an interior equipping antique compasses, storied cartography, and bronze-framed boat records from years ago. 5 rooms.

Nadi Nature Resort (Bali, Indonesia) // A permaculture farm with four tents and private waterfalls. It doesn’t break the bank either. 4 rooms.

Nimmo Bay Wilderness Resort (British Columbia, Canada) // Only accessible by seaplane or boat, this ultra-luxe, remote hotel sits on the Pacific in British Columbia’s Mackenzie Sound. Thick forest surrounds the property: floating saunas, cedarwood tubs by the nearby waterfall, and your choice of waterfront or forest-front cabins. 9 rooms.

The Beckford Arms (Wiltshire, England) // Stone, wood, and sisal make up the natural materials used to build this hotel. The leaf-lathered façade adds to its bucolic British charm. 8 rooms.

Thanks for subscribing to Hotel Espresso, with HAP. To follow me, Brandon Berkson, Editor-in-Chief of Hotels Above Par, you can check out my Instagram via this link. You can visit the Hotels Above Par website here, and follow the magazine’s Instagram here.

Also, I co-lead Mexzine, a Substack newsletter about boutique Mexico travel, published twice a week.

Have a story you want to pitch or a hotel you think I should write about? Shoot me an email at BrandonBerkson@HotelsAbovePar.com.

This reflection comes from my bellboy days at the Mystic Hotel in San Francisco, where I was a 19-year-old workhorse carrying people’s belongings up a semi-dysfunctional elevator. You take a job like that assuming it’ll be one-dimensional. It isn’t, at all. It’s more than eight-hour shifts and a cart that, in my case, kept bumping into walls and leaving tiny marks—my lack of coordination, entirely.

What it actually is is a front-row seat. So here’s a bit of a reveal on people’s luggage, at least from what I gathered.

The hard-shell on wheels, in a shade of some color that wasn’t selling well. Someone’s first real trip in a long time, so they did their research, watching countless YouTube videos about the destination prior to arrival. Almost always overly polite, adorably cautious about everything throughout the trip.

The single carry-on for a nine-night stay. Consulting firm, probably, or something adjacent—McKinsey, Deloitte, one of those. Too consumed by the job to ask me for anything all week. But they always wanted a wake-up call, as if a phone alarm couldn’t be trusted with something that mattered. I forgot one, once. A tech CEO—I won’t say who—who needed to be up at 5 a.m. He was pissed, and he had every right to be.

The matching set with the tags still on. The NICEST person in the world, probably from the Midwest. If they came as a couple, it was usually because they’d just gotten married and thought matching would be cute.

The bag with the tag from the last hotel still on the handle. They meant to take it off. They’re spacey, and they avoid unpacking. Just like me—my ADD means I’m forever traveling with tags and vestiges of former flights plus hotels. I kind of unofficially collect baggage tags at this point—my July suitcase being the proof.

That said, I want to let you in on a secret: it was never about the luggage itself. It was the handoff.

There’s a tiny window when someone decides whether you’ll carry their things. Some release the handle before your hand has even closed around it. Others guard it a beat too long. And the ones who say Oh, I’ll take it, no worries are normally the people you can expect to be full of kindness all week.

I’ve stayed at hundreds of hotels since. Probably thousands at this point. Ten years—ok, maybe 12 years later now—I stopped being the bellboy and became the one stepping out of the car, watching my own suitcase hit the sidewalk.

Which means someone is reading me now. A bellboy in Mexico City, a doorman in Milan, a 19-year-old somewhere with a cart and bad coordination—all of them running the same analysis I ran, and getting it right. That first minute and a half, give or take. It’s still the handoff. It always was.

Thanks for subscribing to Hotel Espresso by HAP. To follow me, Brandon Berkson, Editor-in-Chief of Hotels Above Par, you can check out my Instagram via this link. You can visit the Hotels Above Par website here, and follow the magazine’s Instagram here.

Also, I co-lead Mexzine, a Substack newsletter about boutique Mexico travel, published twice a week.

Last month, I was all over the map.

It kicked off with my birthday at Boqueria with a bunch of friends. I could eat pan con tomate every day of my life and never tire of it. The next morning, my significant other and I jetted off to Crete, where we checked into Tierra’s Villas, from the same band of people behind Acro Suites just down the road. Total pinch-me moment: of the handful of villas—five, I think?—we had one entirely to ourselves for two nights. Azure sea views a ten-minute walk down the hill. A rocky interior wall with a swinging chair. An infinity pool built for sunset swims. And a floor-to-ceiling bedroom window that turned every morning into my best guess at what heaven looks like.

From there, Momi Slow Living Hotel, a beige-toned oasis in Hersonissos, fifteen minutes on foot from the shore. Our room came with a private plunge pool. The hotel surprised us with a chef’s dinner cooked right in front of us in an enclosed courtyard of rustic walls and olive trees—the steak so fresh it barely needed seasoning. There’s something so magical about olive trees, isn’t there?

Funny enough, Crete and I have history. One of my first solo trips while living in Paris was to Agios Nikolaos on a $37 Ryanair flight I still can’t believe existed. I left my phone behind—this was back when I didn’t care much about checking my email—and went skinny-dipping on a desolate beach where not one soul appeared. Liberating, to say the least. Then the trip humbled me: the tiny bed-and-breakfast I’d booked gave me bed bugs. There’s a first for everything.

Back in New York, I chilled for a few days, popped down to San Diego, and then came the best part of the month. I took my mom to Mexico City.

She’d long been iffy about Mexico. There are two types of Californians: people who swear by Hawaii and people who swear by Mexico. My mom was firmly the former. I’ve been a through-and-through Mexico fan since before I could spell Oaxaca.

But the tide turned. I took her to San Miguel de Allende, and she adored it—Fábrica La Aurora, Casa Hoyos, and Hotel Matilda, where there’s a Diego Rivera in the lobby that one doesn’t forget. Then she went to Oaxaca for a cooking excursion with friends and fell even harder. And voilà: now she wants to see the whole country. So when a hotel invited me to review it, I was adamant that she join me. Let me tell you, Marsha is now OBSESSED with CDMX and already plotting her return.

My love language is when people take my hotel recs. Nothing gives me greater joy than you heeding my advice, staying somewhere, and raving about it afterward. Yes, the validation is fabulous, but more importantly, I got to play a small part in a trip you loved.

We stayed at Colima 71 - Casa de Arte in Roma Norte, right on Calle Colima—the best street in the neighborhood, if you ask me. An earthy green lathers the walls, contemporary art populates the premises, and I claimed the little open-sky backyard inlet as my office for the week. The service was superb; Mexican hospitality has always ranked high for me. They took us on an art tour, which included a pit stop at contemporary wonderland, Museo Tomayo. Walking-wise, Colima 71’s address puts you steps from the neighborhood’s hippest restaurants and shops. My favorites: Madre Cafe, set in an erstwhile mansion (go for brunch, order the Huevos Rancheros); Cursi, bedecked in street art and illustrations and truly one of the most creative dining rooms I’ve ever sat in; and La Once Mil, a much-hyped taqueria that’s hard to snag a table at.

The highlight, though, was a day spent touring the city’s independent boutiques—vintage shops, perfumeries, the whole circuit—with Barbara Teran, Editor-in-Chief of Stylehunter and Designhunter. She was also the former Deputy Editor of Vogue Mexico (Mexzine Managing Editor Cristina Alonso put me in touch). Two top-of-mind highlights included Escopica for glasses and Goodbye Folk for thrifting. Basically, I have far too many favorites to cram in here, so I’m publishing the full shopping itinerary via Mexzine. Look out for it soon.

Then I went for a night to Amomoxtli, a boutique hotel in Tepoztlán—a town under two hours from CDMX, known as a spiritual hub, with the Aztec pyramid El Tepozteco tucked into the surrounding mountains. Amomoxtli is an upscale wellness refuge. It’s the type of place Mexzine was built to suggest.

My mom and I chose a temazcal session with an on-site shaman named Maria José. For those who don’t know: a temazcal is a sweat lodge—ancient, Mesoamerican, and nothing like the steam room at your hotel spa. The name comes from the Nahuatl temāzcalli, house of heat. You crawl into a low dome built to mimic the womb of Mother Earth (clay, I think, in this case). Volcanic rocks come in glowing from the fire, water hits them, herbs go up in steam, and the sweating starts. It’s purification—body, mind, and whatever else you dragged in with you.

Not to sound dramatic, but it was one of the most rejuvenating practices I’ve ever endured in the spa and wellness world.

There was a part where we honored our parents, and amid all that heat, it was a magnificent thing to do beside my mother—someone I love deeply and admire so much. Then came the part where we honored our ancestors. I leaned into it fully. Amidst a flurry of chanting with Maria José, for a few minutes, I could picture them in the smoke coming off the fire: my grandma, my grandpa, all of them. I know how sensationalist that sounds. I don’t care. More than an hour in complete darkness, chanting, rattling maracas, sitting next to the person who birthed you and conjuring the grandmother you loved so much—it was unforgettable.

Maybe it was because I was insanely hot and sweaty; I don’t know. But stepping out of that darkness sparked a whole stint of pure mindfulness. The trees looked greener. The sky looked bluer. I could feel the sweat running off me, and the first hit of fresh air after so long in the hut birthed a refreshed appreciation for the outside world.

Maria José said she was proud I gave it my all, which tracks—my thinking has always been very all-or-nothing. Marsha and I debriefed after: glowing reviews, ten out of ten for Maria José and Amomoxtli’s spa program. We went back to our room, which had a breathtaking view of the mountains, and I took a shower. Then I looked at my phone, saw the unread count, and was immediately out of wellness mode.

We headed back to Mexico City. She left; I stayed a few more days, posting up at Campos Polanco—Polanco being CDMX’s Beverly Hills. I really like Parque Lincoln, with one side lined with cafes and their expansive patios. I posted up at affordable and adorable Casa Ofelia for a night, then Volga. Volga sits near Reforma in a busier stretch, but it’s brutalist as hell, and I’m a sucker for exposed concrete. I took a business meeting on the rooftop deck and the views were awe-inspiring, to say the least.

My return flight was on Volaris. If major Mexican airlines were meat, Volaris and Viva Aerobus would be fast-food hamburgers and Aeromexico a steak. I’m only 5’9, and my kneecaps still press into the seat in front of me.

Anyway. I adored my time in Mexico. It continues to be the place I come back to most, and most profoundly. We’re launching something new with Hotels Above Par this week—it’s going to make finding hotels with us SO MUCH EASIER. Stay tuned.

Thanks for subscribing to Hotel Espresso by HAP. To follow me, Brandon Berkson, Editor-in-Chief of Hotels Above Par, you can check out my Instagram via this link. You can visit the Hotels Above Par website here, and follow the magazine’s Instagram here.

Also, I co-lead Mexzine, a Substack newsletter about boutique Mexico travel, published twice a week.

For anonymity purposes, let’s call my therapist Dr. Smith. I don’t know if she’s on Substack? At least she says she’s not. I tried requesting her on LinkedIn once, but she declined. Whatever, her loss.

Anyway, we’ve been seeing each other for six years now—she taught me comparison is the thief of joy, how to “drop the rope” when combating anxious thoughts, and that I won’t get anything done if my phone is in the same room as where I’m working. You do not want to know my screen time. It’s vicious.

When I started, we had weekly sessions. I’ve come a long way. I now see her once a month.

Since I work in travel, she knows I’m happiest in Mexico, most relaxed at Casa Angelina in Italy, and most nostalgic in my former stomping grounds of Paris.

She's ten years older than me, I think. She's also frustratingly vague when I ask about her life—understandable, since she's my therapist, not my friend.

So when she told me she’d be away next month, on our usual second Tuesday, I decided to ask: “Where are you going?”

“On my very-late honeymoon.”

I laughed and cutely said, “Where? I’m a travel journalist. I want to know! You should’ve asked me for suggestions! Not in a stalker kind of way, but this is my trade, and I’d love to hear what your taste in hotels is like.”

“Florida.”

“Ok, where in Florida? Great beaches and a thriving hotel scene there. I just can’t do the humidity—but you know that, LOL.” I almost always complain about the humidity at the beginning of every summertime session.

“My husband and I love this one resort there.”

“Ok, what resort??”

Dr. Smith is not only one of the most emotionally intelligent figures in my life, but also chic as hell. She often dons an exquisite pearl necklace, and that red blouse she’s wearing today looks like Sandro or something French-chic.

“You probably wouldn’t stay there. It’s not boutique.”

I ponder: She definitely is a Ritz-Carlton or Four Seasons type of woman. I’m into that for her. Some people aren’t into boutique, and I’m okay with that—I respect all hotel tastes. I might not be into mega-resorts, but that doesn’t mean those in my close orbit can’t be.

“I know every resort,” I say confidently. “I might have taken Algebra three times, but hotels are my best subject.”

She smiles and softly asks, “Have you heard of Margaritaville?”

My heart stopped. I didn’t ask which location. I walked into the Times Square one a few months ago, out of curiosity, and decided within a minute it would never be my vibe—thinking to myself, not my ish, but some people worship it, and I love that for them. I gave the Hollywood Beach one a fair shot, too, when my Aunt Mindy stayed there while we were visiting my Dad. Also not for me.

This wasn't just anyone, though. I couldn't get past the fact that a Jimmy Buffett shrine—a faux-island-themed mega-resort extravaganza—was where she, my anchor, chose to celebrate the biggest milestone of her life. Dr. Smith, or should I say Angela, had leveled me.

I thought this woman understood me. She says she’s just my therapist, but I’d like to think we’re friends. I poured my heart out to her numerous times. We’ve gone through furlough together, a breakup, a coupling, imposter syndrome, panic attacks, post-panic attacks, my perennial procrastination, and how to be better at focusing, all of it.

Here’s the part I’m still sitting with: I’ve spent six years telling this woman everything, and my first instinct when she finally told me one small true thing about herself was to judge it. She taught me that comparison is the thief of joy. I guess I’ve been stealing.

You think you have a connection with your shrink. But you don’t. You don’t know them until they tell you their favorite hotel.

Thanks for subscribing to Hotel Espresso by HAP. To follow me, Brandon Berkson, Editor-in-Chief of Hotels Above Par, you can check out my Instagram via this link. You can visit the Hotels Above Par website here, and follow the magazine’s Instagram here.

Also, I co-lead Mexzine, a Substack newsletter about boutique Mexico travel, published twice a week.

Quick context for anyone new: I’m Brandon, founder of Hotels Above Par (+Hotel Espresso) and publisher of Mexzine, our twice-weekly dispatch on Mexican hotels, design, and the people running them. Mexzine is co-led by Cristina Alonso, our Managing Editor, who lives and reports in Mexico City.

This week, a story landed that was evocative to the max. Aman opened its first property in Mexico on August 1. Seventy-two hours later, an independent hotel reviewer with 136,000 subscribers posted a video called “Amanvari Called the Police on Me.”

I’ve been a bellboy. I know exactly how a front-of-house failure is supposed to be handled, and it isn’t that. But this one happened in Cabo, to a brand Cristina and I both admire, in a country she covers every week.

Cristina, take it away.

- Brandon Berkson

Amanvari Called the Police on Him

We’ve been dreaming of the Amanvari opening for months now. To anyone who loves the hospitality industry – or just loves a damn good hotel– this is a huge deal. It represents Aman’s grand debut in Mexico, and the brand’s expansion in North America, joining properties in New York, Utah, and the upcoming Beverly Hills and Texas. The day finally came on August 1, the grand opening all over our social media feeds.

The shock came just three days later, when Ryan Walker of The Walker Index, whose YouTube channel has 136k subscribers, posted a video titled Amanvari Called the Police on Me. A quick summary: Ryan, who does independent luxury hotel reviews, filmed himself excitedly arriving at the property, only to be told they didn’t have his reservation and asked to make a U-turn back to San José. The way it happened, though, was especially unsettling. The people who he talked to (unclear whether they are all Amanvari employees or work for the complex where it is located) were quite harsh and unwelcoming. They didn’t seem apologetic or embarrassed; all the opposite –t hey treated Ryan like an intruder, taking photos of his car and threatening to call the police.

Most of us have had stuff like this happen to us at some point, usually at a much smaller scale. You may get to a restaurant or a hotel, just to learn your reservation isn’t there or maybe it’s for a different date. And good hospitality is showcased in a simple response: “Hey, we know this is frustrating –what can we do to make it better?”

​This is what makes this scene absolutely insane. No hotel should treat a guest like that, period. But the fact that it is Aman, the epitome of luxury, makes it even more shocking. And people are responding. The resort’s Google reviews are currently at 1.8, courtesy of 130 users, most of whom –if not all– haven’t stayed in its 18 casitas during its first week of life, but are nonetheless making themselves heard. As of this moment, there hasn’t been an official response from Amanvari or Aman, but we’re eagerly waiting to see how this plays out. For our love of Cabo and Mexico, and our deep admiration for Aman, we sure hope they turn this around. -CA

Thanks for reading today’s special edition newsletter, a cross-post between Hotel Espresso and Mexzine—the latter is our new curated newsletter about Mexico travel.

We want to hear from you. Let us know what your reaction to this story is?

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I’m not one to stick my nose up often, and people are going to come after me for this, so let me get something straight: I love my laptop, my phone, and Wi-Fi. HAP and Mexzine are the work I want to be doing, and I’d rather put my effort into productivity and efficiency than anything else. But that might just be me. If you want to pick herbs, collect eggs from a pen, and make breakfast out of what you pluck, I love that for you.

For the record, I do get the appeal. A farm stay puts you up on working land—a converted barn, a restored masseria, a farmhouse with a handful of rooms plus a kitchen garden out back—and the whole proposition is that everything on your plate came from somewhere you can walk to. That’s the draw: space, provenance, and a pace set by the property rather than by you. Guests get to spend a weekend in a life that runs on what’s in season rather than calendar invites, and for many people, that’s the closest thing to a reset there is, especially if you’re an urbanite like me.

It also helps that these places photograph beautifully—farm stays are some of the most photogenic hospitality products of the decade. There are a few creators out there, and this is a nod to niche media, who pull gargantuan engagement every time they post about their specialty, and "farm-to-table" now populates just about every hotel plus restaurant marketing team's outbound press releases. The scene is dreamy by design: a rustic barn that screams harvest-girl summer, light linens spotted with golden sunlight, the on-property tractor (often suspiciously spotless), and bucolic-leaning overalls. The demand is real (Vogue published an informative article about a year ago about how the “modern agritourism market is in full bloom, growing 12% yearly and poised to reach $14.5 billion by 2029.”). So, rest assured, we will continue to cover them at HAP through our network of diverse-thinking travel journalists.

Of course, it would be incomplete to say farm stays are all or nothing. There are different degrees of them, and how much one wants to participate, whether that be in a single activity or the whole damn time.

Look, for some people, the chores are the point, and I mean that—there’s a real romance to earning your breakfast. It’s just not my romance. If I’m going to be hard at work on vacation, I want it to be my work, the stuff I actually chose. In the rare case that I actually stop working on my businesses for 48 hours and attempt to master the art of respite while on a countryside vacation, give me the soaking tub overlooking the meadow or the restorative Swiss-branded facial experience. I just don’t want to milk Sally the cow.

- Brandon Berkson, founder of Hotels Above Par and Mexzine

Let me know in the comments:

• Why or why not would you want to spend a week working at a farm while on PTO?

  Leave a comment

Thanks for subscribing to Hotel Espresso by HAP. To follow me, Brandon Berkson, Editor-in-Chief of Hotels Above Par, you can check out my Instagram via this link. You can visit the Hotels Above Par website here, and follow the magazine’s Instagram here.

Welcome back to Hotel Espresso, my personal Hotels Above Par newsletter. I just spent the week in San Diego and am now writing this from my balcony at Colima 71 in Mexico City (I brought my Mom with me and we’re having a ball). On the former location, everyone keeps asking me for San Diego recommendations (friendly reminder: it's my hometown, and if you’ve been here for a while, you know people liking my travel recs is my love language). So I thought it would be fun to write a super guide and map to the city, from the beaches to urban districts to taquerias to where I ditched school in the name of superlative sandwiches. (Yes, I said beaches, but I want you to know San Diego is MUCH MORE than the beach these days). Anyway, this edit is a long one—but I love every one of these places with my whole heart. Without further ado, let's get into it.

When it's time to plan your trip, here’s a link to a map I made with all my San Diego recommendations.

Lastly, let me know in the comments if there are any San Diego recs you think I should add to this guide? I’m open to suggestions so we can make this the best SD destination guide ever. 💬

- Brandon Berkson, Founder of Hotels Above Par & Mexzine

Where to Eat

• Communion // This new Mission Hills rooftop serves great global small plates—but the real draw is sipping a cocktail while watching the skyline glow at twilight. You can even see Tijuana in the distance. It’s in this vertical garden of a mid-century building that kind of looks a bit Floridian from the outside. But I assure you, once you go inside and take the elevator to the top, it’s NOTHING like Ft Lauderdale. Take your next date here—you’ll get major points.

• Liberty Station Public Market // What was once a historic naval training base has been brilliantly reimagined into a sprawling indoor-outdoor cultural playground. They have a food hall that satisfies a variety of cravings. Grab a coffee, an empanada, or a hot dog—they have it all. If you like reimagined spaces and urban planning, this place’s rebirth will be interesting for you to witness.

• Extraordinary Desserts (Downtown) // A vibey dessert-centric restaurant offering exquisite cakes that are their own edible art pieces (and very delicious). Despite everyone and their best friend going on a GLP-1, I’m confident this place’s San Diego stardom will never die.

• El Indio (Mission Hills) // If you need definitive proof that San Diego dominates the national Mexican food scene, this neighborhood legacy institution since 1940 is it. You can’t miss its iconic sign from the freeway as you venture north on Interstate 5. Carne Asada Burritos have been my go-to since childhood. I think if anything tastes like home in one bite, it’s that menu item.

  

• Tacos El Gordo (Downtown, Gaslamp District) // Some of San Diego’s best tacos, ask anyone.

• Leila (North Park) // CH Projects outdid themselves here—a transportive Middle Eastern dreamscape complete with an actual trickling stream and a ceiling rigged to mimic a starlit sky. On paper, this could’ve been tacky AF. Instead, it debuted as a masterclass in committing to a theme—and became an overnight success because of it, not in spite of it. The kebabs are fabulous.

• Harney Sushi (Old Town) // Old Town is a missed opportunity of a historic neighborhood—this is where the Spanish first set up shop in modern-day California centuries ago, and yet it’s mostly a parade of tourist-trappy Mexican restaurants. This spot defies all of it. It’s dark inside, the lounge soundtrack runs high-energy, and the kitchen turns out pristine sashimi and creative rolls that lean more fusion-innovative than authentic Japanese. The Flaming Lip and the Rolls-Royce Rolla are musts. I’ve had it in my head since my first visit in 2009—I was fourteen, there with my family—that this was where hot, cool people went on dates with other hot, cool people. I can’t confirm that’s still true. I can confirm it’s vibey and delicious.

• Stratford Court Cafe (Del Mar) // I’ve been coming here since before you were born—a charming cafe with a patio made for slow mornings. Very dog-friendly. Order an egg plate, sit outside, and understand why nobody in Del Mar is ever in a hurry.

• Board & Brew (Del Mar) // I used to ditch 3rd period in high school to come here with my friends for lunch, which should tell you everything. Get the Chicken Club or the Turkado. This location is an institution (Yes, there are a bunch of other locations now across SoCal I’ve learned, but this was the OG)—grab your sandwich to go and walk it over to Seagrove Park, which fringes the beach and is surrounded by Del Mar’s quaint cottage-lined streets.

• Blue Water Seafood (Mission Hills) // Fish sandwiches galore. So fresh, so tasty.

Coffee Shops

• Moniker // Part sophisticated espresso counter, part meticulously styled boutique, Moniker General truly defines modern Southern California living. It’s the ideal spot to nurse a specialty latte while eyeing custom surfboards and indie home goods.

• The Invigatorium // Located in San Diego’s Gaslamp District (an area I’m meh about), this spot feels akin to a science fiction movie. There are real-size dragons in there.

• Solana Coffee at The Granger Hotel // This beautiful boutique hotel features an elegant espresso bar in its lobby. Work-from-hotel is my favorite office. Fun fact, it’s San Diego’s first Design Hotels member.

Bars & Nightlife

• Starlite // This place is unassumingly right off the highway in Middletown, an insignificant area flattened to airport parking lots and a few diamond-in-the-rough gems such as this bar. You enter via an illuminated hexagonal entrance, which transports you into a dark, sunken geometric bar with a mirrored ceiling, then behind that, a space bedecked in a rocky, cavernous setting. They also have a sick disco cave. Might be San Diego’s most creative hospitality space—bold claim, I know.

  

• Born & Raised // Okay, so the main dining room is huge—5,000 square feet, seats up to 250—and it’s all oversized camel leather booths with green Italian marble tables trimmed in brass. The parquet floors are inlaid with terrazzo, and the ceiling is walnut, veneered from a single tree grown in Northern California. The cocktail bar is wrapped in green marble. It’s a design masterpiece—bravo, Basil Studios, for this one. The second-floor, indoor-outdoor bar makes for the perfect setting come golden hour (the best time of day in San Diego, if you ask me).

• Cloak & Petal // Sip Japanese whiskey beneath a massive, glowing canopy of faux cherry blossoms that dominates this striking Little Italy bar. The design pays homage to Tokyo’s underground street-art culture, giving the space a gritty yet polished edge.

• Polite Provisions (North Park) // A moody, exceedingly hip, apothecary-style, retro-tinged bar that serves creative cocktails aplenty.

My Favorite Neighborhoods

• Ocean Beach // This hippy-dippy beach town deserves more attention (to be honest, its denizens are probably pissed I’m recommending it). It’s hyper-local in the best sense. Newport Avenue is the main drag—record stores, coffee shops, and vintage institutions worth an afternoon of aimless wandering.

• La Jolla // So bougie, so head-to-toe gorgeous. Head to Prospect Street to shop at upscale boutiques, best done after brunch at The Cottage. Swing by Children’s Pool to see the seals lounging on the sand. I used to work at a kayak shop here—number one salesman for kayak tours, not to brag. George’s on the Cove is touristy, but the views of the Pacific Ocean are epic. La Jolla Cove offers hit-or-miss snorkeling. (Disclaimer: it’s nothing like The Great Barrier Reef or Hawaii, just setting your expectations.)

• North Park // Hit up 30th Street and University Avenue, and its wealth of hipster enclaves. The Mission serves a killer brunch.

• Coronado // Getting to this isle is half the event—the Coronado Bridge offers stunning views of Downtown’s skyline as you cross. You’ve heard of the Hotel del Coronado, of course. You don’t have to stay there, but you absolutely need to see it—it’s Victorian-era grandeur that’s been an architectural landmark since its inception in the 1800s. If you like wandering around like me, stroll Orange Avenue for its old-money mansions, nautical-styled shops, ice cream parlors, and varied restaurants. (For some reason, Coronado feels a bit more East Coast money to me? Just an observation!). The sand on the beach is pleasant, but not always the water—it can sometimes be a little too dirty to swim in due to its proximity to the Tijuana River Valley’s sewage outflow. The city is working on the issue, but the full progress isn’t there yet.

• Little Italy // Hands down the trendiest area in the city, main thoroughfare India Street features a wealth of restaurants with patios that spill out into the street. Cafe culture here is alive and well in this district. Grab a decadent plate of handmade pasta at Bencotto, sip an espresso at Pappalego, and finish with a gourmet fruit popsicle from Holy Paleta. The Crack Shack and Underbelly are tasty, too. Landini’s serves superlative pizzas. Waterfront Park in the area serves as an urban respite right across from the marina.

• Balboa Park // Enjoy an afternoon getting lost among botanical gardens, grand Spanish-Colonial architecture, dramatic reflection-pool vistas, and world-class museum facades—the Museum of Us is worth a pitstop. Built for the 1915 Panama-California Exposition, it’s an architectural marvel and one of my favorite places to simply walk. The zoo is here, too—yes, the world-famous San Diego Zoo, which I’ve visited exactly twice in my 31 years on this earth.

  

• Cedros Design District (Solana Beach) // North County San Diego is where you should gravitate if you want laid-back, local-laden, surf-centric towns that feel straight out of a 1960s Beach Boys song. Even without knowing it was North County, you’ve probably heard of Carlsbad—home to an uber-popular outlet mall, Legoland, and its hallmark flower fields, which micro-influencers invade every spring when they’re in bloom. Just north of the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club—known for its month-long summer county fair and horse racing—where Del Mar meets Solana Beach (again, I’m proudly from the former), sits a several-block, often-overlooked avenue that’s a goldmine for design people. The Cedros Design District is chock-full of upmarket galleries and furniture stores you simply won’t find elsewhere. Drop by Solo, an eclectic warehouse collective packed with art, literature, and home accents. Then there’s the Belly Up, where suburban parents in the area flock to for live music—think Train and Fleetwood Mac cover bands.

• Encinitas // Roughly 30 minutes north of downtown San Diego (still North County), this Highway 101 classic coastal strip is vintage California. In Downtown Encinitas, everyone goes to D Street Bar or Shelter to drink. The Encinitas Cafe has tasty omelets and other Sunday breakfast delights—it’s a local watering hole that’s older than the Milky Way. Moonlight Beach is where I used to surf (I was very average—perhaps below). Hansen’s is the shop generations of groms—California’s term for the surf-obsessed—have been buying their uber-casual, flip-flop-equipped attire at for decades. And just south of town, post up at Swami’s: a scenic beach that doubles as the best seat in the house for watching surfers who are considerably better than I ever was.

Cool Shops

• Warwick’s (La Jolla) // Operating as the country’s oldest family-owned independent bookstore, this coastal landmark is a true literary sanctuary. The shelves are intentional, flanked by high-end stationery and an impressive lineup of visiting authors.

• Verbatim Books (North Park) // This bookstore acts as the creative heartbeat of North Park’s indie community. Hipster vibes all around.

• Flashbacks (Encinitas) // A high-energy vintage treasure chest overflowing with hand-selected retro apparel and statement pieces.

• Grounded (Encinitas) // With its bright showroom filled with mid-century modern furniture and sustainable home goods, this is the ultimate stop for effortless Southern California style.

• Pigment (North Park) // Plants, cards, and other quirky trappings. Plant moms and succulent dads will love this spot.

Beach Recs

• Windansea Beach // This La Jolla shoreline is perfect for a sunset swim.

• Torrey Pines State Reserve & Torrey Pines State Beach // I grew up hiking these trails, which are between Del Mar and La Jolla. On a sunny weekend, follow the Guy Fleming Trail down to the beach, then get lunch at the Torrey Pines Lodge. If you’re lucky, when atop these cliffs looking at the Pacific, you might spot whales and dolphins.

Boutique Hotels

• The Lafayette (North Park) // The coolest hotel to ever land in San Diego, full stop. It’s a maximalist wonderland with six restaurants and bars. Think animal-printed fabrics in the lobby and a splashy swim club where guests can buy day passes. The Lou Lou Room, below the hotel, offers a shell-like stage, preserved from half a century ago, where you can witness live music.

• La Valencia (La Jolla) // Having been there since 1926, it’s all pink and right in Downtown La Jolla. Five-star, for sure.

• Rancho Valencia (Rancho Santa Fe) // An upscale hideaway with a great spa, a serious tennis center, and an old-money-frequenting restaurant, The Pony Room. It’s in a super-affluent rural neighborhood sporting mansion after mansion.

• L’Auberge Del Mar (Del Mar) // Low-key upmarket, steps from the beach. It’s right in Downtown Del Mar, which is the coastal town’s main business district. The Del Mar Plaza is directly across the road—they have this sea-facing bar called Monarch that’s great for cocktails and people-watching following the horse races I talked about earlier (think cougars, tech executives, and socialites).

Thanks for subscribing to Hotel Espresso by HAP. To follow me, Brandon Berkson, Editor-in-Chief of Hotels Above Par, you can check out my Instagram via this link. You can visit the Hotels Above Par website here, and follow the magazine’s Instagram here.

Anyway, I thought it’d be fun to recap my June—where I went, what I’d recommend, you know the drill.

In June, I took my dad and his girlfriend to Tumbling River Ranch in Grant, Colorado, for Father’s Day. Nearly two hours from Denver, the ranch sits in a valley ringed by forested mountains. We slept in our own woodsy cabin—two rooms plus a common area—rode horseback, hiked a local trail, and ate farm-to-table meals from a private chef (the chicken fajitas were the standout). There are mineral jacuzzis alongside a resident stream, and I committed to the full circuit: jacuzzi, sauna, cold plunge into the creek. The dining room has uninterrupted views of the landscape, majestic at every hour of the day. Getting work done there was scenic, to say the least. Something special about this trip in particular is the way I was able to return the love to my Dad—he’s a big traveler and ignited a lot of wanderlust within me growing up. As a kid, we’d take a father-son getaway once a year, calling it my birthday trip: Seattle, San Francisco, Montreal, and Peru for my high school graduation, among other destinations (almost all in the USA or Canada).

Anyway, then, Breckenridge, which I was lukewarm on. The used bookstore, the farmer’s market, and the candy-colored Victorian buildings on Main Street were lovely. But the town felt like an alpine Disneyland, stocked with souvenir shops all selling the same thing: t-shirts stamped with the town name and racks of skiwear.

My dad lives in Boulder, so we ended up there—and I’ll say it: Colorado is one of the most livable places in America, and Boulder might be its high point in terms of quality of life. Everyone is pleasant. The resident university means people actually value education and the arts. Pearl Street gives you the walkable core I consider non-negotiable. Nature is at your doorstep, and if you need a big city or a well-connected airport, Denver is an hour away, give or take. My favorite stay is Hotel Boulderado, a historic landmark with a mountain-west interior that feels like the pioneers actually used it for something back in the wild west days.

One of my favorite meetings in June was with The James, who are building a new hotel in Miami Beach. Do I love Florida? It’s not my all-time favorite place in the world. But here’s the thing—my audience adores it. Our Sunshine State stories consistently outperform, so who am I to argue with the data? And humidity aside, even I can’t deny Miami’s design and hospitality scene, which is why I was also there for LE Miami, a hospitality conference that’s anything but frumpy. Inside the Miami Beach Convention Center: pink light displays, fashionable people, dashing hotels. It felt like a tasteful, Millennial-driven nightclub, and I mean that as a compliment. I’m already looking forward to next year.

A note on how these conferences work: you take a matchmaking assessment, ranking who you’d like to meet, then an algorithm weighs everyone’s picks and builds your schedule. Somehow, the machine was kind to me—my dance card was full of wonderful meetings. They also threw extravagant parties that oozed Miami-chic, from the bumping DJs spinning tropical deep house to dress codes where not a conservative suit was in sight, but rather button-down shirts slathered in floral patterns and flowy white pants.

The one meeting I keep thinking about was with Bvlgari Hotels. I find hotels helmed by fashion and jewelry houses fascinating: are guests loyal to the brand, and the hotel is incidental? Or do they genuinely love the property? Let me know what you think.

Some other fun happenings from the month: I moved to Midtown Manhattan (even though I’m now spending much more time in Mexico)—and moved in with my partner for the first time (big life moment!). Rosewood gifted me a limited-edition soccer jersey they designed with Christian Jeffery—and I have essentially not taken it off since. And my good friend Sara launched an app for her brand, Opulist—think of it as a highly-curated search platform for beautiful places. Oh, and of course, Mexzine—which I publish and co-edit with Cristina Alonso, who is based in Mexico City.

Thanks for subscribing to Hotel Espresso by HAP. To follow me, Brandon Berkson, Editor-in-Chief of Hotels Above Par, you can check out my Instagram via this link. You can visit the Hotels Above Par website here, and follow the magazine’s Instagram here.

Think about that. You walked in, a human looked up, and the transaction was between two people. Your key came in a little paper sleeve with the room number written in pen. The newspaper hit your door at 6 a.m. with a thud you could hear from bed. If you wanted to know where to eat, you asked the concierge, and they told you where they liked to eat—nobody based restaurant selections off what went viral on Instagram.

I’ve been thinking about this because I keep checking into hotels that feel like software with beds. Tablet check-in. QR code menus. A “digital compendium” where the room service card used to be. An app that controls the blinds, which means the blinds now require a login. Every one of these was sold to an owner as an upgrade. Every one of them made the stay worse.

So here’s my pitch to some of these tooooooo-tech-age hoteliers who need to remember the humanism element of hospitality:

Bring back the wake-up call // A real one. A person saying good morning at the hour you asked. It takes eleven seconds, and guests will talk about it for years, because nobody’s phone has ever wished them a good morning and meant it.

Print things // The breakfast menu. The neighborhood map with the front desk’s actual favorites circled in pen. The bill, slipped under the door on your last night like a love letter with taxes. The paper says someone prepared for your arrival. A QR code oozes "figure it out yourself" (don’t get me started on how finicky QR codes can be, either).

Answer the phone // In 2007, dialing zero got you a voice, not a chatbot pretending to be one. The properties I rave about in HAP are, without exception, the ones where a human picks up before the third ring. (Please call me “Mr. Berkson” when you pick up, so I can feel special? Sorry if I sound like a narcissist here.)

Kill the app // All of it. If your guest needs to create an account to turn off the lights, you haven’t built hospitality—you’ve built homework. And I don’t want to do homework when I’m on vacay (just saying).

Here’s what I learned carrying bags at The Mystic in San Francisco: guests don’t remember your technology. They remember whether anyone noticed them. 2007 was a time when hospitality didn’t hide behind a screen. Every “frictionless” tool since has removed the one friction that mattered—the human kind, the kind that turns a room into a stay.

Your move: next stay, dial zero and see what happens. Then tell me what you got—a person or a menu of options. I read every reply.

For the comments 💬

• What is one thing you miss about tech-free hospitality?

  Leave a comment

Thanks for subscribing to Hotel Espresso by HAP. To follow me, Brandon Berkson, Editor-in-Chief of Hotels Above Par, you can check out my Instagram via this link. You can visit the Hotels Above Par website here, and follow the magazine’s Instagram here.

Two birthdays this week. I turned 31 a few days ago, and America turns 250 today.

I’m celebrating patriotically—kidding, I’m in Greece for work, reviewing the new Tierra’s Villas property on Crete’s northern coast. As I write this, I’m looking through a floor-to-ceiling window at the island’s arid hills sliding into a cerulean sea. And you’d be proud of me: yesterday, I didn’t open my laptop once. On purpose. Between HAP and Mexzine, I’ve been online more than I’ve been offline lately, and I needed a day to unplug.

But in honor of the semiquincentennial—from sea to shining sea—I've spent years working my way through America's boutique hotel scene. I haven't checked into every corner of this country yet, but where I have, I've taken notes. Below is a list of some of my favorite stays across our nation. ⬇️

- Brandon Berkson, Editor-in-Chief of Hotels Above Par <3

For the comments 💬

What’s your favorite boutique hotel in the USA? Let me know below (and if you have a second, what impressed you most about it).

Leave a comment

My Favorite American Boutique Hotels 🇺🇸

Arizona

Mii amo (Sedona) A 23-casita destination spa tucked into Boynton Canyon, sited on one of Sedona’s famed energy vortexes.

California

Jacumba Hot Springs Hotel (Jacumba Hot Springs) // An hour east of San Diego, this revived desert outpost pairs 20 artisan rooms with heated mineral water pumped straight from an artesian well. Come for the soak, stay for the live music and the high-desert stillness—the only light show out here is the stars.

The Sands Hotel & Spa (Indian Wells) // Martyn Lawrence Bullard reimagined this late-1950s property into Indian Wells’ first designer boutique hotel—46 rooms of Moroccan textiles and midcentury bones. The Pink Cabana remains one of the desert’s most photographed dining rooms for good reason.

Cara Hotel (Los Angeles) // At the foothills of Griffith Park in Los Feliz, Cara—Gaelic for “friend”—wraps breezy, limestone-bathed rooms around a courtyard of century-old olive trees.

Post Ranch Inn (Big Sur) // Perched on the cliffs 1,200 feet above the Pacific, this is the benchmark for American coastal luxury—treehouses and ocean-facing rooms built to disappear into the landscape. Dinner at Sierra Mar, glass-walled over the water, remains one of the great meals-with-a-view anywhere.

La Valencia (La Jolla) // North of San Diego, the “Pink Lady” has presided over La Jolla’s coastline since 1926, its rosy Spanish-Mediterranean tower a Southern California landmark. Ocean-view terraces, tiled courtyards, and old-Hollywood pedigree keep it firmly in the icon category.

The Inn at Rancho Santa Fe (Rancho Santa Fe) // A century-old hideaway in San Diego’s eucalyptus-shaded horse country, freshly reimagined with vintage pieces that nod to its Silver Screen heritage. Between Lilian’s, Bing’s Bar, and the Mila Moursi Spa, it’s vintage California luxury without a whiff of corporate polish.

The Sea Ranch Lodge (Northern California) // The 1968 heart of Northern California’s most famous architectural community, reimagined with 17 intimate guest rooms on 53 acres of dramatic Sonoma coastline. Weathered-wood modernism, bluff trails to Black Point, and a live-lightly-on-the-land ethos that predates the term.

Colorado

Tumbling River Ranch (Grant) // Welcoming guests since 1946 at 9,200 feet in Pike National Forest, this 21-room dude ranch just emerged from an $8 million renovation and now runs year-round. It’s all-inclusive mountain living an hour from Denver—open-fire cooking, riverside wellness area, and cabins dating to the 1940s. I just stayed here and recommend it with flying colors.

The Maven Hotel at Dairy Block (Denver) // This 172-room independent anchors LoDo’s Dairy Block, the former Windsor Dairy turned micro-district of makers, bars, and Michelin-level dining. Loft-style rooms with big windows and handcrafted details put you steps from Union Station and Coors Field.

Hawaii

ESPACIO, the Jewel of Waikiki (Honolulu) // Nine suites, nine floors—each full-floor residence comes with a private elevator entrance, chef’s kitchen, and a balcony Jacuzzi over Kalakaua Avenue. Butler service and Mugen, the Forbes Five-Star restaurant downstairs, complete the case for Waikiki’s most private address.

Illinois

The Emily Hotel (Chicago) // An art-driven boutique in Fulton Market named for painter Emily Carr, with 159 modernist rooms and a rotating artist-in-residence program woven through the property.

Louisiana

Hotel Peter & Paul (New Orleans) // A deconsecrated 19th-century church, schoolhouse, rectory, and convent reborn as a 71-room stunner in the Marigny, layered with custom gingham and European antiques. The Elysian Bar anchors the property—and the Marigny Lido pool is the newest reason to linger.

Maine

The Longfellow Hotel (Portland) // Portland’s first independent full-service hotel in two decades, named for the hometown poet and designed by Post Company in the Victorian West End. Its 48 residential-style rooms come with a Nordic-inspired wellness anchor in Astraea Spa—infrared saunas included.

Massachusetts

The Newbury Boston (Boston) // The former Ritz-Carlton at the corner of Newbury and Arlington, reborn as Boston’s grande dame with rooms overlooking the Public Garden and working fireplaces tended by an actual fireplace butler. The Street Bar downstairs and Contessa on the roof bookend the city’s most polished stay.

Michigan

The Siren Hotel (Detroit) // Ash rescued the 1926 Wurlitzer Building and filled its Italian Renaissance bones with velvet, fringe, and the Midwest's pinkest cocktail bar.

New Mexico

Hotel Willa (Taos) // Casetta Group transformed a 1940s adobe motel at the gateway to Taos’ historic district into a 51-room ode to the town’s craftspeople, with art curated by The Paseo Project. The pool overlooks the Sangre de Cristos.

New York

The William Vale (Brooklyn) // Williamsburg’s skyline-defining tower gives every room a private outdoor terrace—still a rarity in New York—plus sweeping Manhattan views across the East River. Between Leuca downstairs and the seasonal rooftop scene at Westlight, you barely need to leave the building.

Shou Sugi Ban House (Water Mill) // The Hamptons’ first true destination spa spans five gated acres beside the Parrish Art Museum, with wabi-sabi guest studios wrapped in evergreens.

Piaule (Catskills—UPSTATE NY) // This Scandi-inspired hotel scatters 24 glass-fronted cabins across 50 forested acres, each one framing the Catskills like a living painting.

Texas

Carpenter Hotel (Austin) Set in the former Carpenters Union Hall just off Barton Springs, this 93-room property channels Austin’s laid-back, design-literate side with breeze-block bones and a leafy pool scene.

Willow House (Terlingua) Twelve minimalist concrete casitas on 250-plus private acres, every porch aimed squarely at the Chisos Mountains, six miles from the Big Bend entrance.

Washington, DC

Riggs Washington DC Lore Group turned the erstwhile Riggs National Bank—the “Bank of Presidents”—into 181 rooms styled like private safety deposit boxes in Penn Quarter. Lots of nods to its bank past, thanks to the design genius, Jacu Strauss (look at the lobby below, as it poses semblances to a teller’s desk). Head down to Silver Lyan, the Mr. Lyan cocktail bar tucked inside the original vault.

Thanks for subscribing to Hotel Espresso by HAP. To follow me, Brandon Berkson, Editor-in-Chief of Hotels Above Par, you can check out my Instagram via this link. You can visit the Hotels Above Par website here, and follow the magazine’s Instagram here.

Big news—I launched Mexzine: a twice-weekly newsletter on independent, design-led travel in Mexico, written for English-speaking readers who want the real version.

Here’s why it exists. ⬇️

Search “Mexico travel” and you land at the Cancún cruise port—Señor Frog’s, the Hard Rock Cafe, the all-inclusive mega-resort machine. Nothing wrong with franchise-on-franchise travel. It’s just not my vibe, and it’s nothing like the Mexico I fell for.

I wanted recommendations that weren’t commercialized or hyper-corporate. The independent, design-driven stays. The restaurants worth crossing the city for. The shops, the studios, the small places that make this country so quietly enchanting. For a taste of what’s coming, our first guide to Cabo is live here.

Mexzine is edited by Cristina Alonso, a Mexico City–based journalist who has spent her career covering this country from the inside. She’s the reason it reads like it’s written by someone who actually lives here—because it is. Mexico is my favorite country in the world, and I've been thousands of times (my hometown of San Diego is a 20-min drive to the crossing). I had a weekly Spanish-language travel segment on Tijuana and Ensenada's Radio Fórmula back in 2020—and some of you might remember the story I wrote about sneaking across the border at 17 to go clubbing. So yes, I'll still write about my own time down here. But the edit belongs to Cristina, whom I've named Managing Editor.

All of our content is FREE for the first month. But before the paywall goes up, you can lock in the founding rate—$6/month for the rest of the year. Right now, a paid subscription keeps a real journalist on the ground (no AI here), lets you ask our editors Mexico travel questions, and comes with Select Tier Status on Safara—5x points on every hotel you book—plus a monthly, editor-curated deal sheet of Mexico’s best boutique stays.

The rate rises 7/24, so if you’ve read this far, this is the moment.

Questions, or a story to pitch? Email Cristina@Mexzine.com or Brandon@Mexzine.com.

Subscribe to Mexzine Here

- Hotels Above Par & Mexzine Founder, Brandon Berkson <3

For the comments—we want your suggestions! 💬

• For Mexzine, which cities, hotels, or spots in Mexico do you want to see us write about?

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Thanks for subscribing to Hotel Espresso by HAP. To follow me, Brandon Berkson, Editor-in-Chief of Hotels Above Par, you can check out my Instagram via this link. You can visit the Hotels Above Par website here, and follow the magazine’s Instagram here.

I’m announcing my new media brand via Substack Live tomorrow at 12:00 pm EST. I’m so excited!!

It’s completely separate from Hotels Above Par and covers one of my favorite places in the world. Of course, travel-related. I don’t believe there’s anything in the media market like this new publication? Hope to see you there!

Here’s the link to join.

- Brandon <3

Before we get into it, a quick disclaimer: I’m not knocking travel influencing as a profession—there are loads of genuinely talented creators I respect deeply. I’m simply here to vent about the clueless few who operate in total oblivion.

There’s a specific flavor of ego-check that comes from people not knowing your brand. And look, I’ll be honest with you: it does not ruin my day when some civilian with no stake in travel media has never heard of HAP. Why would they? But let an actual travel media person draw a blank on Hotels Above Par and something primal activates in me. I know it’s unhinged. We’re just over half a decade old, not Condé Nast—of course, plenty of people don’t know us yet. We have around 500,000 total readers across our channels, but in the grand scheme of things, that’s a minuscule number in a space with many voices.

So let’s talk about the behavior of certain travel influencers (again, not all of them).

Call me a bitch, but every few weeks, a clueless one slides into my DMs with a collaboration request, and I go through the full emotional arc. First, flattery—they love HAP, be still my heart. Then I read more closely. And that’s when it lands: they have absolutely no idea what Hotels Above Par is. How do I know? Because they’re asking to stay at my hotel. My hotel. As in, they think I personally own and operate a physical hotel with rooms and a front desk and little soaps, and they would like to stay in it. For two nights. Complimentary, naturally.

In the early days, this genuinely rattled me. Now it’s one of the great recurring comedies of my life. Picture a level of due diligence so catastrophically absent that you’ve requested a free two-night stay at a hotel that does not exist, owned by a man who has never owned a hotel.

Anyway. In the spirit of comedy, I’ve pasted two recent ones.

That’s all for this week’s issue. Stay tuned this week for my new publication announcement.

Thanks for subscribing to Hotel Espresso by HAP. To follow me, Brandon Berkson, Editor-in-Chief of Hotels Above Par, you can check out my Instagram via this link. You can visit the Hotels Above Par website here, and follow the magazine’s Instagram here.

But back to y’all—there’s no form of media I love more than that gift in my inbox. I subscribe to a plethora of newsletters, mostly travel: Dossier, The Stanza, The Other HAFH, MindHoliday, and Happy Hoteling are among my favorites. I’m also a big believer that the newsletter is the most sustainable media company an individual can build without funding. Substack largely makes that possible—no website developer (our website’s maintenance is a huge financial drag, trust me), no subscription management headaches. I love Substack for this personal newsletter (Hotel Espresso by HAP), though Hotels Above Par’s official one now lives on Beehiiv, which offers more functionality for a media brand with multiple writers.

There are a lot of travel Substacks out there, and I couldn’t be more excited about it. Sure, a fair number sound the same, but heaps have carved out a niche and shine with uniqueness. I credit our nearly 100,000-subscriber list to ours: boutique hotels.

Which brings me to the question I get constantly: “Should I start a newsletter?” (Yes! Do it!) The pitches I hear are more general travel, sans a niche. And I always give the same slight advice: go smaller. Much smaller. Pick a place—a city, a valley, a coastline, a corner of a country—and own it. Think the Turndown Service by Megan Shelton, documenting what’s going on in NYC, or Camber, covering Los Angeles’s buzziest happenings.

I know. It doesn’t sound as glamorous as jetting off to different European capitals to stay at a bunch of hotels for your media brand. But hear me out, because I think the local and regional newsletter is quietly the most opportune niche in travel media right now, and almost nobody wants to admit it because it doesn’t sound like empire-building.

First, the obvious thing: other than some micro-influencers, local and regional outlets aren’t as prevalent as they used to be. National outlets parachute in twice a year for a trend piece. The local papers, where they still exist, stop at the county line. But people don’t live, eat, or travel by county line—they think in regions. The Hudson Valley. The Yucatán. The Cotswolds. Each one is a coherent world with its own openings, characters, fights, and seasons, and in most of them, there is no single publication stitching it all together. If you show up every week and connect the dots across that map, showing that you’re not only an arbiter of taste but also a resident/frequent visitor, that harnesses merit from the local community.

Second, a place gives you range without losing intimacy. A city or region hands you an endless beat: the new hotel in one neighborhood, the chef who decamped from the city to a village an hour away, the harvest, the festival, the ferry schedule. And yet it still reads as personal, because your readers either live there or love it from afar. I will skim a story about the economy, but I’ll read every word about a place I drive through, vacation in, or am quietly plotting to move to one day.

Third—and this is the part that surprises people—the money is real. A region gives you hotels, wineries, tourism boards, restaurant groups, festivals, regional airlines—the whole hospitality economy, full of businesses with actual marketing budgets. A newsletter read by 10,000 people obsessed with their exact corner of the world serves as the most concentrated, intentional, and attractive ad placement they can find; all these readers are within a tangible reach.

Fourth, the influence compounds fast (ooof, if you create a referral program and spark natural word of mouth, you’re in an opportune spot). Write consistently about a place for a year, and you become its unofficial chamber of commerce, concierge, and gossip line in one. Hotels and restaurants email you before they open. Tourism boards want you on the press trip. Readers send tips, and that builds two-way conversations, a crucial element for anyone starting a media brand in 2026. And on that note of relationships with your subscribers, community events are in vogue, so host a happy hour or a meet-up with a local establishment. All that access makes the newsletter better and grows your list with engaged subscribers.

And fifth, the practical kicker: a region is still small enough to run alone. Your beat is drivable. Your reporting happens on weekend trips you’d take anyway. A focused list, a roster of regional sponsors, maybe a guide or two you sell on the side—that’s a real income built around a real asset.

Anyway, here’s my point—the whole industry chases scale: more subscribers, broader topics, bigger reach. The local or regional newsletter does something smarter: it picks a piece of the world and matters enormously to everyone who cares about it. The loyalty, the open rates, the ad money, the influence—all of it comes from depth, and a region is the perfect size for depth.

So yes. Pick your place and start the newsletter. It won’t sound impressive at dinner parties—until a year in, when you’re the person everyone there has to know.

(And in a couple of weeks, you’ll see I’m taking my own advice).

For the comments section:

• What should be the next travel newsletter I subscribe to?

• What is one travel newsletter niche you think is untapped?

  Leave a comment

Thanks for subscribing to Hotel Espresso by HAP. To follow me, Brandon Berkson, Editor-in-Chief of Hotels Above Par, you can check out my Instagram via this link. You can visit the Hotels Above Par website here, and follow the magazine’s Instagram here.

Let me walk you through my May. Our magazine launch party. Ten days in Italy. Three weeks in LA for our pop-up, working behind a newsstand six days a week. Asheville for a wedding. And now Miami for a conference. All of that in a single month. Thirty days.

I recently went on Monocle’s podcast (one of the best moments of my media junkie life) and talked about the return to analog—how we’re all craving a slower, more tactile way of living. The irony isn’t lost on me. My screen time regularly hits eight hours a day, and that’s before I’ve even opened my laptop. I’m rarely fully present, because some part of my brain is always turning over the next move for the business.

So my ADD coach, my mom, my dad, my partner, and my closest friends have all staged a quiet intervention: unplug, for at least four or five days, and do anything that isn’t work. And as much as I love New York, I want to get out—somewhere far enough away that I can actually disappear. No email. No phone, except calls to my parents and anything truly urgent. A real, full unplug. My partner can’t get out of work, so I guess it’ll just be moi.

Here’s where I’m thinking of going to recharge and remember what it feels like to do nothing. Every one of them is a hotel I’ve never been to. I also have an expiring Delta credit, so I need to use it before it’s no longer valid!

Moinho da Areia (São Miguel, Azores, Portugal) // I can’t stop thinking about Moinho da Areia, a beachfront B&B on São Miguel in the Azores, a remote archipelago west of mainland Portugal. This property comprises an old mill, beautifully restored, with just five rooms that look straight out onto the Atlantic. I’ve actually set foot on São Miguel once before, almost by accident: my Azores Airlines flight from Lisbon to NYC had a long layover on the island, enough for a single day on the ground. I kid you not, it was one of the most verdant, pristine, heaven-like places I’ve ever laid eyes on, from hydrangeas lining roadways to Atlantic-facing vistas. They’ve also got serious hot spring culture here, which alone shortlists it for me—I’m a sucker for a good soak in a mineral pool.

Osip (Somerset, England) // There's something deeply calming about Osip, tucked into the English countryside with just five farmhouse-style rooms—and a restaurant carrying two Michelin accolades to boot. I'm picturing a night in London first, catching up with old friends, before decamping to the rolling green quiet of bucolic Britain.

Sultan Cave Suites (Cappadocia, Turkey) // I once took a hot-air balloon ride and was completely entranced by it—so doing it in Cappadocia, the balloon capital of the world, feels like a proper bucket-list moment. Picture hundreds of balloons drifting up at sunrise over that otherworldly landscape. And I'd get to stay in an actual ancient cave at somewhere as enchanting as this.

L'EssenCiel - Château de Pères (Piré-Chancé, France) // This one pairs a futuristic pod-stacked tower with a centuries-old château—old and new sitting side by side, which I love. And I'm always happiest when I'm speaking French, so this is a real contender.

Cuixmala (Jalisco, Mexico) // Yeah, I know this part of Mexico is hot and rainy come summer. I really don’t care. I’m dying to get to Cuixmala on the country’s Pacific Coast. Picture 30,000+ acres of untamed, private-estate jungle, dotted with a few sun-yellow buildings (we all know yellow is my weak spot), roaming zebras, beaches to melt into—and it’s in Mexico, my happy place.

FOR THE COMMENTS:

• Which of these hotels should I choose for my digital detox?

• Is there a hotel you want to recommend for my digital detox? I’m all ears!

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I hauled luggage. I sized up tippers. I dispensed unsolicited recommendations about the city with the confidence of a sophomore who had a fake ID and a year of residency to his name. I had opinions—about where tourists should go, about what counted as a real American experience—and those opinions would, before long, get me into trouble.

One afternoon, two guests checked in from Italy. Call them Giuseppe and Clara, a mother and son on holiday. I brought their bags up. They asked where to go. Travel recommendations are my love language, so I unloaded the whole arsenal: the Mission, Dolores Park, Golden Gate Park (San Francisco’s unsung answer to Central Park), Twin Peaks for the view that makes you forgive the hills.

Thirty minutes later, we were still talking. I was learning Italian. They were patient with my mangled subjunctives.

Over the next few days, I showed them around the city myself. Giuseppe and I went to a nightclub—his first in America (I believe the place shut down recently?). And because they wanted an experience that was, in their words, *so American*, I took them to the Cheesecake Factory. I cannot defend this on culinary grounds. But the place is, undeniably, as American as it gets: faux Egyptian hieroglyphics, towering obelisks, decor that cannot decide if it is a temple or a casino, and a menu longer than the New and Old Testaments combined. (Call me tacky, but we all have our guilty pleasures?)

I don’t remember how, exactly, but the GM found out. I played dumb. They flew home. I went back to lifting suitcases.

I’ve thought about Giuseppe and Clara many times since. (We’re still Facebook friends, I think—though I haven’t logged in to that platform in seven years.) The question I pose for you is this: Is it really so wrong for hotel staff to become friends with their guests?

The industry says yes, and the industry has its reasons. Power asymmetries are real. A guest who feels owed extra warmth can weaponize a complaint into a job issue. Tips warp things. Liability looms. And there’s a long, ugly history of service workers being treated as accessories to a vacation rather than people, which makes managers, understandably, nervous about anything that blurs the line.

But the instinct is also a quiet betrayal of what hospitality is supposed to mean.

The word comes from the Latin *hospes*, guest and host, the same word for both sides of the encounter. The ancients understood hospitality as a relationship, not a service. Somewhere along the way, the hotel industry decided it meant the seamless, frictionless provision of comfort by people who would never trouble you with their own personality.

What I gave Giuseppe and Clara was the older thing. They got a local who actually wanted them to love the city. I got an afternoon of broken Italian and the small thrill of being trusted by strangers. Neither of us was performing a role. The transaction, briefly, fell away.

I understand why my boss was annoyed. I’m not arguing that every bellboy should be ushering guests around town on the clock. But I want to push back on the deeper assumption—that the moment a friendship forms across the front desk, something has gone wrong.

Something has, in fact, gone right.

The encounter did what travel is supposed to do: it put two strangers in a room and let them surprise each other.

The limit—and there should be one, even an unspoken one, when a staff member befriends a guest—is about coercion, not category. A guest should never feel that friendliness is owed. A worker should never feel it’s required beyond what the job asks. But within those guardrails, the idea that a bellboy and a tourist from Milan can’t simply like each other—can’t trade recommendations, practice each other’s languages, eat overpriced pasta in a fake palace together—seems a strange thing to enforce in an industry that sells, of all things, a grand welcome.

I never apologized to my boss, and I still recommend The Cheesecake Factory to people visiting the USA from abroad who want something EXTREMELY AMERICAN. And yes, if you’re going to cross the line, you set your own—quietly, and with some sense of where it lies.

But watching two people from Milan fall in love with a plate of fried macaroni and cheese remains one of the most sincerely American things I have ever witnessed.

For the comments section:

• Can there be a world where hotel staff and guests can hang out?

• What are your thoughts on the subject as a whole?

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May 13–29 at Palihouse West Hollywood, 9:30 to 4:30, closed Wednesdays. Some of my favorite titles will be on the rack—Yolo Journal, Dossier, Apartamento, and more—the kind of independent magazines that treat each issue like an object worth keeping. Our newspapers and brand-new annual magazine will be on the shelf, too. Because we love a merch moment, we’ll also have our butter yellow HAP tote bags and our brand-new silk robes making their quiet debut. (I’ve been waiting on these robes for months. I’m a little obsessed.)

Here’s why I’m doing this. There’s a magazine on my coffee table right now that I bought in 2022. I don’t even remember what made me pick it up, but it’s still there—still getting flipped through whenever someone new comes over. That’s the thing about print. You know that particular kind of pause that happens when you pick up a magazine off a rack—the slowing down that doesn’t exist when you’re scrolling. The cover catches your eye. You flip it over and feel its weight. The paper has a smell. You take it home, and it lives on your coffee table for months, getting picked up between meetings, dog-eared on a flight, eventually finding its way to a stack by your bed. A magazine takes up space in your life in a way a tab never does.

I’ve talked your ear off about boutique hotels, but I’ve been quieter about how much I love print. When we launched the newspaper subscription and our brand-new magazine, I felt inspired to do more—you can buy them or subscribe in our online store here. There’s something almost defiant about making something physical right now. Something that says: this matters enough to print.

There’s a small program of things happening while we’re open. On the 18th, a press preview of the West Coast edition of our magazine. On the 19th, a happy hour for our readers—honestly, the one I’m most looking forward to. Getting to put faces to readers is one of the real pleasures of this job. You can RSVP and buy a ticket here (make sure to do so by May 15)—it’s in tandem with our friends at Opulist, and the $15 gets you in plus a drink at the hotel’s bar.

Ohhhhh, and we are going to have a workshop that I can’t talk about until the end of this week—but more on that soon (I promise)!

Come by. Let me put a magazine in your hands. Stay a while. If you have any questions, shoot me an email at brandonberkson@hotelsabovepar.com.

Much love, (HAP)pers!!!

- Brandon Berkson, Editor-in-Chief & Founder of HAP

My Guide to Hotelmaxxing at Small Hotels

Book direct (& semi-direct) when it counts // Smaller hotels overwhelmingly prefer direct bookings—and a real human reads those emails. Reach out to the reservations team, mention that you’re a returning guest, celebrating something, or considering a longer stay, and you’ll often land a better rate, a room with a view, or a welcome amenity waiting at check-in. That said, if you want the convenience of a platform, I’m a huge fan of Safara. Built by the team behind Resy, it pairs boutique-first curation with book-anywhere flexibility. It’s also the only hotel booking app whose business model directly supports boutique properties by cutting (and sometimes eliminating) the brutal OTA commissions hotels hate. And every booking earns credit toward your next stay. A genuine win-win. <3

Treat the staff like the experts they are // At a 30-room hotel in Mexico City or a converted palazzo in Puglia, the front desk isn’t a transaction counter—it’s a concierge, a reservation line, and a local tastemaker in one. The trick is asking the right questions. Not “what’s good around here,” which gets you the printed list, but “where do you eat on your day off?” and “which room would you book?” Specificity unlocks specificity. I learned this while working the front desk myself: my favorite part of the shift was pulling out a map and marking up the spots I actually frequented—none of them on a commission agreement with the hotel. The honest recommendations are always there. Most guests never ask for them.

Use the whole property // Boutique hotels pour their personality into every corner: the rooftop, the library bar, the tiny pool nobody talks about, the in-house ceramics studio. Don’t just sleep there. Linger. Order the Negroni. Read in the courtyard. If there’s a spa with a sauna or steam room, maximize your time decompressing in one of these free-to-use spaces. If they have treatments available but not a spa per se, more of an in-room massage type deal, take advantage of those—a lot of small stays don’t have expansive spas, but often have a masseuse who can come to guests’ rooms with a massage table.

Build the relationship // A handwritten thank-you note to the GM after checkout costs nothing and gets remembered for years. An Instagram tag—five followers or five thousand, doesn’t matter—puts the property in front of people who weren’t going to find it otherwise. And a Google review, if you’re going to leave one, should be specific: name the room you stayed in, the dish you ordered, the staff member who made the stay. Generic praise is forgettable. A name attached to a small kindness is what convinces the next guest to book.

Now go forth and maxx.

For the comments section 💬

• What are your tips for hotelmaxxing at small hotels?

• What is one way you like to give back to the small hotel you stayed at?

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I outlined today’s edit on my flight out here. Delta usually does me right, but the Wi-Fi was not cooperating, so I pulled out the notes app on my phone and expanded on eight ideas, some new and some stored in my archive, that I’d implement if I ever opened a boutique hotel. Some are, as far as I know, genuinely unheard of. A few are riffs on things I’ve seen variations or semblances of, but not the exact idea per se. And a handful have no real logic behind them other than personal preference (like my undying devotion to butter yellow).

Which ones do you love, which ones do you hate, and what's the idea you'd bring to the table if someone handed you the keys to a boutique hotel tomorrow? Leave it in the comments rather than hitting reply. The good stuff happens when we can all see each other's takes, especially the hospitality and marketing folks in this community who tend to push these ideas further than I ever could alone. ⬇️

The Hotel Ideas in My Notes App

The In-Room Neighborhood Monopoly Board // A custom-branded Monopoly board mapped to the blocks around the hotel, where every square is a real local restaurant, natural wine bar, bookshop, park, or attraction within walking distance. Each property card gets a short description and a QR code to the spot’s site. I love the idea of guests learning a neighborhood by playing with it, and leaving with a list of places they’re actually excited to walk to.

The Declaration in the Drawer // In place of the Bible, I’d put the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the nightstand.

The Packing Butler With Bespoke Packing Methods // I hate packing with every fiber of my being. A few hours before your flight, a staff member shows up to fold, roll, and Tetris your things into your suitcase–toiletries double-bagged, shoes stuffed with socks, linen shirts flattened into neat squares. You leave for the airport having never zipped a thing. I’ve seen this done at a few hotels, so it’s not the most innovative idea here, but I would like to see it more, as well as a customized organization menu that helps demarcate the items in one’s suitcase to fit their exact preferences (think something like warm-colored clothes on one side, but cool-colored clothes on the other, or having certain accoutrements folded in a different way than everything else inside).

Soundtrack-in-Residence & Lana Del Rey Yoga // Most of us are loyal to some musician in a borderline-unhinged way—mine is Lana Del Rey (Lil Wayne is up there too, but I’ll admit he’s not exactly savasana material). Peloton has themed rides, SoulCycle has its disco hours—so why not a yoga flow scored entirely to one artist’s catalog, rotated seasonally and tied to the cultural calendar? A Lana Del Rey soundtrack on the 4th of July is my dream pitch—National Anthem practically wrote the marketing brief—with Enya in deep winter and Nina Simone in February. Open to guests and the surrounding neighborhood.

Butter Yellow, Everywhere // The keycards, the robes, the notepads, the awning, the matchbooks. That’s the whole pitch. I don’t feel the need to justify it further because y’all know my obsession with yellow.

Rooted Design, No Exceptions (Except Vegas) // One of my bigger hotel pet peeves is walking into a property in Cabo that's somehow Miami-themed, or a lodge in Aspen doing its best Parisian bistro impression. If a hotel is going to borrow from a place it isn't, I need the backstory—the owner's upbringing, the architect's fixation, the trip that rewired someone's worldview. Without that thread, it reads as a costume. Vegas gets a permanent exemption because Vegas is built for big-time themes.

The Analog Café // A device-free breakfast room and newsstand equipped with a wealth of magazines and newspapers. You can text from the rooftop, doomscroll in the lobby, FaceTime from the elevator—but this one room is reserved for broadsheets, eggs, and eye contact. Breakfast meetings, real conversations, the tactile pleasure of print. Plug out, tune in.

Perfumer-in-Residence // We’ve had writers-in-residence and artists-in-residence— I want a nose. A rotating independent perfumer would take over the hotel’s scent-scape for one month at a time: their signature fragrance diffused through the lobby, the hallways, and the rooms, and available to buy at the front desk. Twelve perfumers a year, twelve olfactory chapters. Scent is the memory sense—it hooks into us more fiercely than almost anything else—and the economics work too: independent houses get the kind of shelf space online retail genuinely can’t offer, because nobody buys a fragrance they haven’t smelled. You can make them seasonally inspired too—such as floral-tinged smells in May and cozy pine notes in December. Guests get to take their stay home in a bottle. While I'm still totally on board with a hotel having one signature scent (a reminder that two things can be true at the same time), this ever-changing fragrance idea creates buzz and sparks a sense of surprise that doesn’t completely alter the stay for a returning guest.

A Shaman-Cultivated Melatonin Menu // A shaman-curated, legal, and not at all sketchy list of herbal sleep remedies that people can choose from if they can’t sleep.

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Arthur Rimbaud wrote that (not the Tijuana part, of course—that was me). He was a poet, a provocateur, a boy who believed the world beyond the one you’re handed is always more interesting than the one you’re given. He was also, by most accounts, a complete disaster.

What follows is a story I’ve never written out in full. It is, in the most literal sense, a travel story—but not the kind with good recommendations and golden-hour photographs. It’s the kind that strips you down to your worst instincts and your best luck simultaneously. The kind that teaches you how you’re anything but invincible.

It requires admitting how thoroughly I embodied Rimbaud’s thesis, and how badly it went for me: a seventeen-year-old whose entire suburb briefly believed he’d been kidnapped, standing alone outside a foreign prison in the middle of the night, no passport, no phone, twenty dollars in his pocket, and absolutely no plan left.

No one is serious at seventeen.

I certainly wasn’t.

I grew up in San Diego, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. The best parents, always felt loved, the kind of childhood you look back on with uncomplicated warmth. One of my favorite things about growing up there was the proximity to Tijuana—thirty minutes south, another country, another world. Mexico has always been one of my happy places. I could truly go to Mexico twenty times a year and still not be over it.

I was seventeen. My parents had just separated, and in the particular chaos of that transition—the raw silences, the lack of synchronized communication—I discovered I could get away with things. I never stole alcohol or did drugs. My mischief was more innocent and more ridiculous: driving up to LA to see girls I’d met at sleepaway camp, TPing the houses of kids from school in the pitch-black dark of a suburban night, tearing through dirt roads in a friend’s beat-up Ford Bronco. Small rebellions. The kind that feels enormous at the time.

It was the summer before senior year. My mom was on a cruise in Turkey—literally an ocean and a time zone away—and my dad was home. We lived in a bubble of a beach town called Del Mar, fifteen minutes from downtown San Diego: surfers, little league tournaments, and a shopping center that served as the only alternative to loitering on the beach. Nothing ever really happened there. Which was exactly the problem.

My best friend—call him Joe—and I came up with a plan.

Tijuana. Saturday night. Avenida Revolución.

For those who don’t know, Avenida Revolución is Tijuana’s main artery of nightlife: a long, loud street flanked by rowdy bars and clubs pumping reggaeton at a volume that seems to vibrate the pavement. I think there’s a red-light district around there, too? Anyway, the drinking age there was eighteen, and that was more of a suggestion than a policy. For two seventeen-year-olds from a suburb where the most transgressive thing you could do was stay out past midnight, the idea of a real nightclub—the kind you see in movies, with a line out front and a bouncer and lights—was almost cosmically appealing.

We pitched it to our group of friends. Nobody bit. This was 2012, and there were rumors circulating about Tijuana, stating that the metropolis was full of muggings, kidnappings, and narco activity. The kind of stories that travel fast through the parent network and calcify into fact by the time they reach suburban teenagers. Looking back, while there were some unsafe parts, I don’t believe much of the instilled fear about Tijuana was merited. But when you’re seventeen, and you’ve never really left the bubble, you absorb the fears of your elders like they’re your own. You haven’t lived alone yet, haven’t worked a big boy job (fun fact: my first job was at Smashburger at sixteen), and haven’t seen enough of the world to distinguish between real danger and ambient myth. So you believe what you’re told. Most of our friends believed it.

Joe and I did not.

We needed a cover story. We landed on Ben Smith—a mutual friend whose parents our parents had never met, whose phone number neither of them had. The alibi was airtight in the way only a seventeen-year-old’s alibi can be, which is to say: barely, and with enormous confidence. My mom was asleep somewhere over the Aegean. My dad was the remaining variable.

The passport was the problem. My dad held mine, so I constructed a lie: I was signing up for a teen tour to Israel through our synagogue and needed it for the application. He looked at me the way fathers look at their sons when they know exactly what’s happening but are deciding how much rope to extend. He told me I had to return it in thirty minutes. So that didn’t work.

I turned to Reddit—which, in retrospect, may have been the most 2010s sentence I’ve ever written—and found a forum thread pointing out that, technically, until 2008, you didn’t need a passport to cross into Mexico by land. The plan became: we’d claim we didn’t know. Wide-eyed ignorance. Two kids, no passports, oops.

We drove twenty minutes south to the San Ysidro crossing, parked in the sprawling lot on the American side, and walked toward the border. Before leaving the car, I made a decision that I was convinced was clever and later understood to be the opposite of clever: I left my phone behind. My reasoning was that international calls sound different—a longer pause, a different ring—and if my parents called, they’d hear something off. Better to go dark entirely.

We crossed on foot over the concrete pedestrian bridge, sans passports, and hailed a cab. It was close to midnight.

“Coko Bongo,” I said. “Avenida Revolución.”

The driver nodded. We pulled into traffic. The city opened up around us.

I speak fluent Spanish, but for those reading this in English, I’ll translate as I go.

Coko Bongo was everything we had imagined and then some. Women danced on top of the bar, moving to reggaeton while a DJ commanded an elevated stage above the crowd. Red light pulsed through the darkness. Groups of strangers clinked shots and shouted over the music. It was loud and hot and alive in a way that our suburb had never been, not once, not even close. Joe and I looked at each other with the particular giddiness of people who have gotten away with something. Ozuna was playing. We felt invincible. We had no idea what was coming.

It was sometime around 1:30 am when we decided to leave. Joe had been drinking; I hadn’t—I was too afraid I’d smell like alcohol crossing back through US Border Patrol, which in retrospect was the most responsible calculation I made all night. We stepped out onto Avenida Revolución looking for tacos. The street was still going, still loud, still lit up. I was so absorbed in the unreality of the whole night that I didn’t notice the Corona in Joe’s hand until we were already on the sidewalk.

That beer was the thread that unraveled everything.

“¡Ven conmigo!”—Come with me.

The voice came from behind us. Sharp, official. Not Joe’s. I turned around.

A police officer had Joe by the sleeve of his red Quicksilver shirt, already pulling him sideways off the curb. Joe—originally from Latin America, fluent in Spanish, and apparently convinced in that half-drunk, half-panicked moment that he was being targeted by a corrupt cop looking for a bribe—did not comply. He pulled back his fist and drove it straight into the officer’s face.

What happened next I can only describe in fragments, because that’s how trauma files things away.

The crack of the punch. The crowd formed instantly, the way crowds do when they smell chaos. The officer’s partner appeared from nowhere. Joe and the officer grappling on the sidewalk, trading blows in the red-lit dark while I stood there completely frozen—seventeen years old, no phone, no passport, no plan—watching my best friend fight a police officer on a street in a foreign country at 1 am.

I started having a panic attack. Not the kind you read about clinically—the kind that commandeers your entire body, that makes rational thought feel like something happening in another room. I was screaming into the crowd—someone help me, someone please help me—and the crowd responded by pulling out their phones to record. People filmed. Nobody moved.

The officer pinned Joe to the ground. His partner snapped on the handcuffs. I rushed forward and begged them in Spanish, frantic, stumbling over my words—he didn’t know he couldn’t drink on the street, please, he didn’t know—and they looked through me like I wasn’t there. They put Joe in the back of the patrol car and drove away.

And then there was silence. Or not silence—the street was still thumping, the clubs were still open, Avenida Revolución didn’t care—but a silence inside of it, a horrible stillness around me specifically. I was alone in a foreign city with twenty dollars, no phone, no passport, and no idea where they had taken my friend.

I don’t know how long I stood there. It could have been two minutes or twenty.

Then I felt a hand on my shoulder.

I turned around. A woman, maybe five or ten years older than me, was looking at me with an expression I can only describe as deliberately calm—the kind of calm that people perform specifically when they don’t want you to panic. She said she knew where my friend was. She said she could take me to him. She said to come with her.

Every suburban instinct I had—every don’t talk to strangers, don’t get in the car, don’t follow someone you don’t know around a corner—fired at once. And I followed her anyway. Because what else was there? She was the only option the night had given me.

She led me around the corner to a side-street parking lot, still talking in that measured, reassuring tone, telling me not to be afraid. A man was waiting by a car—Carola, I’d later learn her name was; his was Marcos. They gestured toward the back seat.

The duct tape. The smashed window. Carola’s carefully calibrated smile. Every synapse I had was firing the same message: do not get in that car.

I got in the car.

There’s a version of this moment where I tell you it was bravery, or instinct, or some deeper wisdom that seventeen years on earth had given me. But that would be a lie. The truth is simpler and more embarrassing: I wasn’t thinking. Not clearly, not at all. My mom and dad were on my shoulders—I could feel them there, the way you feel the people who raised you in the moments you’re about to disappoint them most—and I climbed in anyway. The door shut behind me.

The plan, such as it was, had the elegant simplicity of total delusion. I would go to the jail. I would explain to the officers, in my fluent Spanish, that Joe hadn’t known you couldn’t drink on the street—that it was an honest mistake, a cultural misunderstanding, a victimless thing. They would understand. They would release him. We would take a cab back to the San Ysidro crossing, cross back into America, drive home to our suburb, and our parents would never know. We’d wake up Sunday morning with a story and zero consequences.

That was the plan. I was seventeen.

Carola and Marcos said nothing as we pulled out of the lot. The city slid past the duct-taped window in streaks of neon and shadow. I sat in the back seat of a stranger’s broken car, in a foreign country, with no phone, no passport, and twenty dollars, trying to hold the plan together in my mind like it was something solid.

Minutes passed. Ten, maybe twenty—time had stopped behaving normally. My hands were shaking. I watched unfamiliar streets scroll past the duct-taped window, and somewhere around the third or fourth turn into darkness, a thought arrived that I hadn’t let myself think until that moment:

This might be where I die.

I considered opening the door. Just rolling out at a red light, running, figuring it out from there. Carola must have sensed it, because she turned around and said, quietly: “Tranquilo.” Be calm. I was not calm. But I stayed in the car.

Then—a building. Brutalist concrete, floodlit, unmistakably official. The prison. They had kept their word.

I barely had time to feel relief before I spotted him: the officer who had arrested Joe, walking toward a patrol car with an ice pack pressed firmly against his eye. A souvenir from the evening. I didn’t linger on the guilt—I was seventeen and running on adrenaline and delusion—so I did what any suburb-raised kid with an unearned sense of his own persuasiveness would do.

I walked straight up to him and asked him to let my friend go.

He stared at me for a long moment with his one good eye. Then he explained, slowly and without particular emotion, that my friend had punched him in the face. That Joe was going to be there for a while. No, he would not forgive the cultural misunderstanding.

I had one card left. Sam—whose dad was the cool dad, the one we could actually talk to, the one who told stories about his fratty college years that sounded impossibly glamorous at the time. Carola handed me her phone. I dialed Sam’s number from memory, somehow, and he picked up on the second ring.

“Brandon!!!! Are you okay?!”

Something in his voice made my stomach drop before he’d even said anything real.

“Sam—I need to talk to your dad. Joe’s in jail, we need to get him out before our parents find out—.”

“Brandon.” A pause. The kind of pause that precedes catastrophic news.

“Everyone thinks you were kidnapped. The whole suburb. Joe snuck his phone into the jail cell and posted on Facebook—Brandon, he tagged you. He said, and I’m reading this directly: ‘HELP! Me and @BrandonBerkson have been kidnapped in Tijuana. Please track our phones!’”

I stood outside a Tijuana prison at 2 am, holding a stranger’s phone, and felt the floor fall out from under me.

Oh no.

Not a small oh no. A total, catastrophic, life-altering, oh no.

Sam kept talking. My dad had seen the post. Joe’s parents had seen the post. Border Patrol had been contacted. The entire suburb—everyone who had been awake, everyone who knew us—had seen a Facebook status announcing our kidnapping, with our names attached, in real time.

I called my dad.

He picked up before it had even finished one ring.

“Brandon.” His voice was something I hadn’t heard before and hope to never hear again. Not angry—that would come later. This was the voice of a man who had genuinely believed his son was dead. “Are you okay? I tracked your phone. It said you were in the Tijuana River Valley.”

The parking lot. The lot where I’d left my car was adjacent to the Tijuana River Valley—a swampy, notorious stretch along the border fence that had, at various points in its history, been a smuggling route. It was 2012. Find My iPhone had just launched, and its GPS was, to put it charitably, approximate. So my phone had pinged not as parked car in a lot but as Tijuana River Valley, and my father had done the math: his son’s phone was in a swamp near the border fence, and his son was not answering it.

He had spent hours believing I was in that swamp.

I told him I was okay. I told him I was so sorry. He told me, with a steadiness that was somehow worse than yelling, that I was in an extraordinary amount of trouble—and honestly, standing outside that prison at 2 am with a stranger’s phone and twenty dollars and no passport, that was the best news I’d heard all night. Trouble meant home. Trouble meant it was over.

Joe’s parents arrived forty minutes later. They took one look at me and communicated everything they needed to without saying a word. Inside, something happened—a conversation, a negotiation, an envelope possibly changing hands—the details were never shared with us, and I never asked. All I know is that at some point close to 5 am, the prison’s concrete doors opened, and Joe walked out—his dad’s hand gripping the collar of that same Quicksilver shirt, the same gesture that had started all of this.

Before they left, I turned to Carola and Marcos. Two strangers who had found a panicking teenager on a loud street in the middle of the night and had, without any obligation whatsoever, taken him exactly where he needed to go. I thanked them. It felt insufficient. It still does.

The drive back to the border was silent in the way only profound collective shame can be. Joe and I said nothing. His parents said nothing except to occasionally tell us how stupid we were (rightfully so). The only sound was the car.

At the crossing, I was pulled into secondary—no passport, underage, crossing at dawn. They called my Dad. Then, in what felt like an act of mercy from the universe, they let me through—just this once, they said, because I didn’t know. I walked to my car in the neighboring lot.

I picked up my phone.

The screen lit up like a Christmas tree. Text after text after text—are you okay; we saw the Facebook post, Joe said you were kidnapped; we called your dad, please respond; Brandon, please respond—and beneath all of them, a cascade of missed calls from my dad, and then my mom, who had been woken up on a cruise ship somewhere in Turkey and informed that her son had been kidnapped in Mexico..

I would later learn that she said it ruined her trip. I believe her completely.

I was grounded for five months. Joe and I weren’t allowed to speak—though we saw each other every day at school.

But Carola and Marcos—I’ve thought about them more than they’ll ever know. Two strangers in a broken car, in the middle of the night, who chose to help. I’ve never been able to explain it except to say that sometimes the world extends a kindness you haven’t earned and couldn’t have predicted, and all you can do is be grateful that you got in the car.

You’d think, after all of that, I’d never want to set foot in Tijuana again.

You’d be wrong.

If anything, that night weirdly didn’t change my ravenous curiosity about Tijuana. Mexico remains one of my favorite places. In fact, I even had a five-minute radio segment on a major Mexican network every Friday back in 2020 & 2021.

Anyway, as I got older—coming back to San Diego on breaks from college, then later from my grown-up life in New York—I’d make a point to cross the border at least a few times a year. And every time, I remembered why. The culinary scene alone rivals anywhere in Mexico. From museums to taco trucks to newly-opened speakeasies, it’s fun if you go with a phone and a functioning prefrontal cortex, two things I was notably short on at seventeen. It’s like any big city; just be smart and cautious about where you go, as there are always good and bad parts. Tijuana is layered and alive and almost willfully misunderstood—reduced in the American imagination to a punchline or a cautionary tale that falsely implies it’s a 24/7 narco-trafficking dystopia.

Sneaking out to Tijuana and everything that followed that night taught me I wasn’t invincible. I grew up as a traveler. That night shaped every future trip—in its own way, it was a coming of age. It’s enlightening how travel has a way of removing every buffer between you and your own worst instincts—the overconfidence, the under-preparation, the seventeen-year-old certainty that the night will bend to your plan because it simply has to.

Rimbaud was right—“No One Is Serious at Seventeen.” But when things get serious for the unserious, it knocks you into shape.

This story is dedicated to my Mom and Dad. If you’re reading this, I’m so sorry for making your hair go grey and ruining your cruise to Turkey.

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