Dan Eldridge's New Column, Marriage without Monogamy, for Tango Magazine
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Pioneer Content Clients & ServicesWelcome to the online home of Dan Eldridge, a Moon Handbooks and Lonely Planet guidebook writer who is based in Philadelphia. Dan's work has appeared in the Houston Chronicle, Miami Herald, Toronto Sun, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Paste, Punk Planet, Seattle Magazine, and on lonelyplanet.com and msn.com. Dan is also the founder of Young Pioneers Media, a publishing and multimedia company, and he is the editor of Young Pioneers, a quarterly magazine about creative entrepreneurs and unusual small businesses. Young Pioneers was nominated for an Independent Press Award by the Utne Reader during its brief run as a travel publication.


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Announcements & Press

MARRIAGE WITHOUT MONOGAMY ~ PART 4

The fourth entry in Tango's "Marriage Without Monogamy" series has just gone live; click here to read the essay. And here's a bit of interesting news: My editors tell me they've got in-house designers working on a column-style banner for the MWM series, and if I remember correctly, that will be going live on TangoMag.com this coming Monday, April 28. The idea, they tell me, is to collect all the "Marriage Without Monogamy" essays in one central location on the site, so that if a new reader should so choose, they can easily find every story in the series without having to search through all the other content on the site. Very exciting stuff. I'll post a short notice here when the column banner goes live. And as always, anyone with specific suggestions about topics they'd like to see covered in the column is encouraged to contact me via email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it


WELCOME CURTIS SLIWA FANS! INTERESTED IN OUR MARRIAGE WITHOUT MONOGAMY?


For anyone who hasn't already heard the news, Carrie and I were interviewed by Curtis Sliwa this morning on NewsTalkRadio WABC 77AM in New York City. According to his assistant, Sliwa has been devoting a decent amount of air time to the topic of monogamy over the past week or so. The news hook, of course, is the Eliot Spitzer scandal and the recent news surrounding the former New Jersey Governor James McGreevey. Apparently Sliwa was interested in talking with a relatively more proletariat couple involved in an open relationship, and thanks to my Marriage Without Monogamy column, which is published every two weeks at TangoMag.com, they managed to track me down. And by the way, anyone who's interested in learning more about our situation should go ahead and bookmark MarriageWithoutMonogamy.com. Carrie and I registered the site last night, and we'll be turning it into a blog-style site with daily updates very soon. We may even manage to go live sometime later on tonight. In the meantime, click here for my first Marriage Without Monogamy column, click here for the second, and click here for the third (and most recent) entry. Part Four will be published in about a week, so make sure you check TangoMag.com often.


In bookstores now! Lonely Planet's Southeast Asia on a Shoestring, 14th edition


This one's a really big deal for me: Southeast Asia on a Shoestring is the second Lonely Planet guide I've worked on (the first was Turkey's 10th edition), and the book seems to be available in most major bookstores by now. My contribution was the guide's entire Thailand chapter; I spent ten weeks traveling the country while verifying and updating the previous edition's content. Unfortunately, my package of complimentary author copies hasn't arrived quite yet, so I haven't actually had a chance to read anything other than the author bios in the front of the book. But I can say that the design is beautiful and the cover looks fantastic, and that I'm certainly looking forward to seeing actual travelers using the guide when I visit the Philippines for Lonely Planet later on this summer. Click here to see my Lonely Planet author bio. And click here to purchase the guide direct from the LP website.


On newsstands now! Heartschallenger article in the current issue of Paste


My article about the punk-rock ice cream truck business known as Heartschallenger can be found on page 16 of the April 2008 issue of Paste; look for Gnarls Barkley on the cover. The company's founder, a rather comely young woman by the name of Leyla Safai, is a Young Pioneer in the truest sense of the word. She commands a fleet of four or five ice cream trucks these days, and she has incredibly ambitious plans in place for the company's future, including brick-and-mortar stores in New York and L.A. Click here to read the story yourself.


Travels with Lonely Planet column published in the Houston Chronicle, Toronto Sun, Salt Lake Tribune, Eureka Reporter, and others


A few months ago, after wrapping up my ten-week reporting trip in Thailand, where I was doing research for the 14th edition of Lonely Planet's Southeast Asia on a Shoestring guide, I filed my very first article for LP's syndicated column service. Officially known as Travels with Lonely Planet, the column is edited at LP's Oakland office by Jay Cooke, who was very recently promoted to Commissioning Editor for all of Latin American and (I think) the Caribbean. (Congratulations Jay!) At any rate, after editing the essays, Jay then passes them off to King Features Syndicate, which is the very same organization responsible for distributing newspaper columns like "Hints from Heloise" and "Ask Dr Ruth", and comic strips like "Dennis the Menace" and "Beetle Bailey". As far as Travels with Lonely Planet is concerned, however, there are maybe three- or four-dozen daily papers that subscribe. And yet as is the case with dailies that subscribe to newswire services like the Associated Press and Reuters, not every subscribing paper runs every available Travels with LP column. According to Jay, my piece went out on the wire sometime today, although somehow the Salt Lake Tribune already managed to pick it up. My guess is that a handful of other dailies will pick the column up throughout the week, and that others will wait to run it in next Sunday's travel section. Keep your eye on this space, where I'll be adding the names of any newspapers that choose to run the article, which, by the way, is about the Southeast Asian New Year celebration known as Songkran. UPDATE! Along with the Salt Lake Tribune, the essay has now been published in the Houston Chronicle, Toronto Sun, Arizona Daily Star, and the Eureka Reporter. If anyone has seen the essay elsewhere, please let me know!

~ CLICK HERE TO READ THE ARTICLE ~
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Featured Excerpt

A New Column About an Unusual Relationship for Tango Magazine!



Marriage without Monogamy

One couple's alternative to traditional vows? A legally binding contract.

By Dan Eldridge


It’s just after midnight, and I’m huddled into a bar booth next to Ray, an old college friend who has lately become my very frequent drinking buddy. Ray and I went to the same state school in Pittsburgh, and although we both fled town almost as soon as we graduated -- Ray went to New York City and then L.A., while I lived in San Francisco and Seattle -- for various reasons, we’ve both moved back. Neither one of us is especially pleased with the way our adult lives are turning out. And that’s probably why we both end up at dive bars three or four times a week, bullshitting about college, and guessing at the fortunes of our old friends -- especially the ones we haven’t heard from in 10 years.


But tonight, Ray and I have company: Michael and Carrie, a couple I’ve been hearing about for ages now, and who supposedly have an open relationship. Michael and Ray were friends back in school as well, and for months now, Ray has been regaling me with stories about their college-day exploits. They were obsessed with hip-hop at the time, and on occasion they would dress up in hoodies and baggy jeans, and descend upon the city at night with stolen spray paint cans and giant Sharpie markers, prepared to carve their tags onto every blank surface in sight.


But that was ages ago, of course. Ten years. These days, Ray is much more into real estate and designer suits, which is probably why we get along so well. But lately, Ray has been dropping warnings to me about Michael, who apparently still fancies himself something of a thug -- the type of guy who doesn’t hesitate to throw a punch when someone looks at him sideways.


I have a bit of a reputation myself: I’m the type of guy who likes to hit on girls who already have boyfriends. I’ve never really understood why I do it. But ever since I first laid eyes on Carrie at a house party, I wanted nothing more than to devour her whole. She was beyond gorgeous, and by the way she confidently strutted her way through a room, she obviously knew it. And then when Ray told me about her long-term boyfriend -- six years! -- and about the fact that they both sometimes slept with other people, I could literally picture myself sinking my teeth into the back of her neck, and drawing blood.


* * *


I was probably on my fourth or fifth Dogfish Head when I felt the side of Carrie’s foot rubbing lightly against the side of mine, underneath the booth. At first, I wasn’t entirely sure it had actually happened. This was quite possibly the most stunningly sophisticated woman I had ever laid eyes on, after all. And she was sitting right next to her boyfriend. The thug.


I carefully rubbed right back, and when I saw Carrie’s eyes meet mine, and then her lips tighten into a conspiratorial smile, I lifted my foot just an inch or two and started rubbing it in small circles on the outside of her left leg. Eventually, I pried my fingers off my pint glass and slowly moved them underneath the table, where they brushed up against Carrie’s knee, and then her fingers, and then the underside of her wrist. At one point I went so far as to reach down for her ankle, and then the curved, smooth brown skin on the back of her leg.


The entire time this was going on, by the way, I was carrying on a conversation with Ray and with Carrie’s boyfriend, and when the realization of what I was actually doing finally hit me like a smack in the back of the head, my entire body started shaking involuntarily, as if I had the chills. I excused myself from the booth and went into the bathroom, and I looked at myself in the mirror and tried to take deep, slow breaths at the same time.


After a minute or two had passed, I came back to the booth, and Carrie and I started touching each other under the table again. Eventually she and Michael got up to leave, and I shook Michael’s hand, and told him how good it was to have finally met. I gave Carrie a friendly hug, and she simply smiled back at me, as if nothing unusual at all had just taken place.


“We should do this again sometime,” I blurted out. And Carrie just smiled again, and nodded. And then she and Michael walked through the bar’s door and went home.
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