Today I thought I would investigate the origin of one of the most famous billboards in America, the Hollywood sign. Tourists every year take pictures of the sign and consider it a must-see attraction, but I find myself pondering what the back-story is on this sign? How did a sign made of pipes, boards, and metal become so popular?

According to my findings, it all starts back in 1920. The town of Hollywood had just recently been named the film capital of California, and small studios began to open up which attracted actors, actresses, producers, and directors (much like tech start-ups in the Silicon Valley attract web designers and I.T. specialists). As the population grew, the Hollywoodland Real Estate Group saw this as an opportunity to sell, sell, sell. What better way to advertise land for sale then to erect an enormous eye-sore of a billboard with letters reaching 30 feet wide and 50 feet tall?

The real estate firm invested a total of $21,000 into this marketing ploy, which was originally slated to remain erect for a mere year and a half. The original sign read “Hollywoodland.”, and featured sparkling timed light sequences at night.

Fast-forward to 1973, and the sign is still standing; however it has lost a few letters over the years and now only reads “Hollywood.” The Cultural Heritage Board of the City of Los Angeles declared the sign a Historical Monument and saw a need to preserve the sign. Restorations would have to be made, which meant money needed to be raised. A fundraising party was held at the Playboy Mansion, where celebs purchased individual letters of the billboard for $28,000 a letter.

To this day, the sign remains in pristine condition due to frequent cleanings and structural remodeling.

Now, when you visit the famous billboard in Los Angeles, you will be armed with a tidbit of history while you are clicking your snapshot.

More proof that major carriers are far from finished with new airline fees. Today, United Airlines announced that it will double the fee to check a 2nd bag from $25 to $50, starting Nov. 10 for tickets purchased on or after Sept. 16.

For more details, including the exemptions (the airline estimates the fee will only apply to one in seven travelers), check out United Airlines U.S./Canada Checked Baggage or, as always, you can spy the latest airline fees associated with economy class travel on the airlines Kayakians use most with our regularly updated Airline Fees page.

Calling all parents!  Have you ever experienced the horror of catching your child drawing all over your freshly painted walls? To avoid this catastrophe, you may want to take a family field trip to the Crayola Factory in Easton, Pennsylvania.

At the factory, your child can feel free to explore their creative side.  Children will have access to thousands of Crayons, including colors they never knew existed.  In addition to all the artistic masterpieces they are bound to create, the trip will also teach your young one the mechanics of how a crayon is molded, labeled, and packed. 

The activities at the Factory change frequently to assure fun fresh experiences.  Some of these activities include:

Crayola Meltdown: Large quantities of crayons are melted down to form a liquid paint that can then be used to paint.

Super Sculptures:  Children enjoy creating 3-D sculptures with molding putty.

The Creative Studio:  Allow your children to go buck wild with Crayons on the wall because it’s not yours!  Children get to scribble on either side of a giant glass wall.

Chalk Walk : Feel free to outline your profile in chalk on the pavement or draw a hop-scotch board.

Before your day is over, be sure to visit the Crayola Factory gift shop. Pick up some fun memorabilia and also see the world’s largest crayon. Their famous blue crayon is over 15 feet long and weighs in excess of 1500 pounds! 

How can the average traveler end up slightly (albeit very slightly) richer just by bringing a video camera along on an overnight hotel visit? Before you get the wrong idea, let’s be clear. We’re not talking about that kind of video (we’ll leave those to Kim and Paris).

But back to the matter at hand. Last week saw the official launch of Tripr.tv, a web site that features short, user-generated videos of hotel rooms in properties around the world. Vacationers-turned-amateur filmmakers upload 30 to 120 seconds of footage, which in turn appears alongside hotels offered through partner sites Expedia and Booking.com. When a hotel room is booked after viewing one of Tripr,tv’s videos, the company receives a commission, one third of which goes to the person who submitted the film.

The average payout is $10 a booking, based on an average booking of $400. Not enough to cover the cost of your next vacation, but maybe enough to offset late-night mini-bar raiding fiascos or those pesky resort fees.

This weekend I discovered a hidden gem in Oakland, California. My college friend and I decided to investigate an old run down Movie Theater we had heard about. I am sure all of us have seen the kind of theater I am talking about, the ones that show month old movies and have about half the lights in the marquee/billboard burned out. 

After paying $7 for admission, we walked to the snack counter to see what we would fill up on during the show.  This is when we realized we had stumbled onto a gold mine. This particular theater served premium beer on tap, and you could order by the pitcher!  As for the food, no stale popcorn at this joint, but rather freshly baked pizzas and restaurant favorites. 

The atmosphere improved again once we walked into the screening room. There were no aisles of uncomfortable straight back chairs, but rather a huge room of comfortable couches and individual chairs and tables for dining.  The interior design of the screening room looked as if we had just taken a ride in the famous time-traveling DeLorean to the early 1900’s (according to their website the theater was built in 1926). The walls inside the theater were covered with wallpaper reminiscent of western saloons, which were juxtaposed with Egyptian themed architecture throughout.   Trimming the apex of the screen shot florescent pink and yellow lights symbolizing a setting sun.

As for the actual feature we saw that night, who cares!  The next time you walk by a run down theater, it may be worth your while to poke your head in.   For more information on this Oakland theater, visit www.speakeasytheaters.com. 

Similar Theaters across the U.S. Include:

Alamo Draft House – Austin, TX

Red Vic Movie House – San Francisco, CA

The Bridge – Los Angeles, CA

When planning your next mini-vacation, think outside the box. If you are a soccer (football everywhere else) lover, you might want to schedule something through SoccerResort.com.  This company plans 6 vs. 6 two-day soccer tournaments all over the world almost every weekend of the year.  They arrange reasonable hotels packages in vacation destinations such as Costa Rica, Las Vegas, Miami, Ireland, etc.  Play soccer for two days with other players just as fanatic about the sport as you, and see the sites for the remainder of your stay. I attended the Setanta Bay Area tournament last year, and it was a blast. Winning teams receive trophies and credit toward their next tournament.

If you’ve ordered one of the new U.S. Passport Cards (like I have) and have been patiently waiting for it over the last few months (the anticipation!), it’s time to exhale. The U.S. Department of State announced yesterday that the production of the new U.S. Passport Card has finally begun (is it Christmas for travel geeks in August?).

Why would you want to add this official document to your existing roster of official documents? Other than the fact that you’ll be able to trump any driver’s license comparison session (these usually happen about two beers into a happy hour with co-workers you only semi-know), as of next summer, travelers will be required to present official documentation when entering the U.S. through land and sea borders.

Although you’ll still need a traditional passport to get through customs at international airports, you can use the Passport Card when you’re returning to the United States from Mexico, Canada, the Caribbean and Bermuda and re-entering by boat or car. It works like a passport, but without all the pages and non-waterproofiness, which can be a problem when you’re sweating all over your passport at the Mexican border or dropping it in tranquil blue waters of the Caribbean. And oh yeah, it’s wallet-sized. Like a driver’s license. Only it’s a passport (the innovation!). And they’re pretty cheap: $20 for current passport holders and $45 for new registrants.

Air Canada’s regional Jazz service has announced an unusual step aimed at cutting fuel costs: removing life vests - and the weight they add to the aircraft - from its planes.

Emergency water landings are extremely rare (as Fear of Flying points out, your chances of being involved in an air accident of any kind, much less one in water, are about 1 in 11 million), and the airline will continue to offer seat cushions that double as emergency flotation devices. Nevertheless, the news has already raised plenty of Canadian eyebrows.

Whatever you think about the safety implications, the decision by an airline to remove a traditional safety device expressly for the purpose of flying lighter planes and reducing fuel costs is a sign of the times that’s hard, if not impossible, to ignore.

For someone who is fast becoming an uber geek about airline fees, the news that United Airlines plans to hike its in-flight dining prices this October to as much as $9 for a “fresh item” (i.e. a sandwich) and eliminate free “snacks” (i.e. packets of peanuts and pretzels) is exciting stuff. For travelers, on the other hand, the excitement level is, well…not so much.

But the hungry and airborne among us can take heart in the knowledge that United is not the first major U.S. carrier to raise the snack stakes to such a level. In fact, Northwest and Delta already offer items priced at $10 on their fresh in-flight menus. Midwest even has meals priced at $11. But those prices pale in comparison to those found on some international carriers.

Order a meal on EasyJet, and you could fork over (pun intended) €9.50 (about $14), while Iberia charges €10.50 (about $15.60) for a combo meal with sandwich, drink and chocolate.

It all makes me wonder whether there’s a point at which travelers will reduce their in-flight purchases to the point that the airlines would stand to make more with lower a la carte prices. But while airline fee geeks like me can afford to sit around and ponder great issues such as these, travelers would do better to spend their time perusing tools like Kayak.com’s Airline Fees page (shameless, I know, I know) and our other favorite airline fee resources for clues about the costs their rumbling stomachs may face when next they fly.

As of today, in-flight Internet from Aircell’s Gogo service is available on three American Airlines routes:

New York - Miami

New York - San Francisco

New York - Los Angeles

To surf from your seat, you’ll need to book one of these routes on American’s Boeing 767-200 airplanes, the only planes offering the service right now. The cost is $12.95.