This is Part Three of my Headliners of the LA Times Travel & Adventure Show posts.
Part One was “Arthur Frommer: Travel Royalty“. Part Two was “Andrew McCarthy: Reluctant Celebrity“.
I wasn’t sure how to write this post. I didn’t want to come off as a dick, but a lot of stuff around Rick Steves rubbed me the wrong way.
Every other speaker had stuff that felt like it applied to everyone, but Steves’ talk was for people that hadn’t been to Europe before, people nervous about travel. And the more I’ve thought about Steves’ speech, the more I’ve gotten annoyed. I really think he has value for a specific subset of people. But I don’t like the mindset of the people that he’s talking to. They’re scared of things because the news makes them scared. They’re scared because America is an island. I guess Steves is trying to get them out of that box, but the fact that that box exists to begin with pisses me off to no end.
Here’s more of what I didn’t like:
- He threw a lot of politics into the speech.
As a general overview talk, it felt unnatural when he started laying into American gun control. Frommer mentioned how your government shouldn’t tell you you can’t go somewhere, but at least that’s travel-related. But perhaps this related to another thing that annoyed me…
- How much he shilled for his products during the show.
No one else did so in their talks. They mentioned things they’ve done, but it wasn’t a constant sales pitch. When you’re citing specific pages in your book that relate to what you’re talking about, you’ve hit infomercial status.
- He said that he doesn’t speak any other languages.
Really? With over 30 years of travel to Europe, he didn’t bother learning anything? I just don’t get that. Actually, I do. I see two possibilities:
- He is minimizing his abilities to try to come across as an American everyman. I couldn’t believe how bad his pronunciation on some words were. Literally couldn’t believe it.
- He deliberately went out of his way to not let languages sink in so he could maintain his status as the every American.
Either way, from what I hear, it was the same speech every time. And the guy definitely smacks of celebrity, in a way that the others didn’t. While I know it’s annoying to deal with people who are bothering you when setting up or taking stuff down, you just have to suck it up. He would half-respond to them without giving eye contact. Didn’t come off that well. Contrast that with Sam Brown, who put her hand out and said “I’m Sam.”, vs. Steves’ speech that you can see in my Part Two vid.
To be fair, the audience loved him. Packed house eating out of his hand. And a lot of die-hard fans, including some of the travel bloggers I was hanging out with. If you’ve never been to Europe, it’s useful. If you’ve solo traveled at all, meh.
Continue on to Part Four, “Sam Brown: Genuinely Layered“.
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