The Urban Trendster

The Urban Trendster wants a city in its present tense. Not the monuments that have looked the same for a century — the restaurant that opened last month, the neighborhood that's becoming something, the thing locals are actually talking about right now. They travel to plug into the current, to be where the energy is while it's still happening rather than after it's been written up.

The trips that satisfy this type are built on what's alive and moving: emerging neighborhoods over famous ones, the new and the just-opened, rooftop bars and pop-ups and galleries showing artists no one's heard of yet. They'd rather take a tip from someone who actually lives there than a guidebook printed two years ago. Being early — getting there before it's obvious — is a large part of the pleasure.

What's worth protecting is room to wander and pivot, because the best finds are the ones you could never have booked in advance. Lock an Urban Trendster into a rigid tour of the canonical sights and you strand them in the past tense. They'll know the trip worked when they came home with the places their friends haven't discovered yet.