Finn-Olaf Jones, Freelance Journalist Profile

Articles

A Venezia con il poeta

Mar 20, 2025 | internazionale.it | Finn-Olaf Jones

Alle due del mattino eravamo di nuovo felicemente persi. Portici poco illuminati e portoni si riflettevano sulle acque verdi dei canali. Io e mia figlia Vivian, 16 anni, eravamo a caccia di leoni a Venezia, un appuntamento fisso ormai da sei anni.
A First Timer's Guide to Skiing in Japan

Feb 11, 2025 | nytimes.com | Finn-Olaf Jones

Unlike the high jinks and vibrant après-ski scene that permeate the Alps and Rockies, Japan offers a meditative experience on its slopes. Skiing here is an almost reverent affair. "It's not about lounging in the sun or partying between runs," said Sari Levy, 46, who lives in Telluride, Colo., and just returned from her second ski trip to Japan. "It's all about the snow and ski, ski, ski."There's hardly been a better time to follow that directive. Japan is currently enjoying a banner ski season.
Venice in Winter, With a Poet as Our Guide

Jan 27, 2025 | nytimes.com | Finn-Olaf Jones |Matteo de Mayda

By 2 a.m. we were happily lost again. Dimly illuminated arches and doorways reflected off the green canal waters. My daughter, Vivian, 16, and I were on a lion hunt in Venice, an annual occurrence for six years now.
In Los Angeles, Hotels Become a Refuge for Fire Evacuees

Jan 10, 2025 | nytimes.com | Ceylan Yeginsu |Danielle Pergament |Finn-Olaf Jones

The lobby of Shutters on the Beach, the luxury oceanfront hotel in Santa Monica that is usually abuzz with tourists and entertainment professionals, had by Thursday transformed into a refuge for Los Angeles residents displaced by the raging wildfires that have ripped through thousands of acres and leveled entire neighborhoods to ash. In the middle of one table sat something that has probably never been in the lobby of Shutters before: a portable plastic goldfish tank.
In Los Angeles, Hotels Become a Refuge for Fire Evacuees

Jan 10, 2025 | businessandamerica.com | Ceylan Yeginsu |Danielle Pergament |Finn-Olaf Jones

The lobby of Shutters on the Beach, the luxury oceanfront hotel in Santa Monica that is usually abuzz with tourists and entertainment professionals, had by Thursday transformed into a refuge for Los Angeles residents displaced by the raging wildfires that have ripped through thousands of acres and leveled entire neighborhoods to ash. In the middle of one table sat something that has probably never been in the lobby of Shutters before: a portable plastic goldfish tank.
Secrets of a Danish Castle

Mar 31, 2024 | nytimes.com | Finn-Olaf Jones

A writer returns to his grandparents' former castle-home in a seaside corner of Denmark known for its chalk cliffs, 'dancing elves' and haunting World War II past. Credit... My first conscious memory occurred on the lower landing of a staircase that spiraled up four floors of the 14th-century, moat-encircled Gjorslev castle in Denmark.
Las Vegas and Its Big, Big Ambitions

Sep 26, 2023 | nytimes.com | Finn-Olaf Jones

This shape-shifting desert city is in the middle of a reinvention that involves sports stadiums, Formula 1 and the Sphere: a 360-foot-tall, high-tech, traffic-stopping amphitheater clad in 1.2 million LED screens. Credit... It's just past dusk on the Las Vegas Strip and traffic has come to a standstill. That's usual for a weekend night, but this is Monday. Round-the-clock construction makes every excursion a dice roll with traffic, and these days everyone seems a loser.
Burning Man’s muddy aftermath: A desert full of ‘moop’

Sep 10, 2023 | seattletimes.com | Jack Healy |Finn-Olaf Jones

After days of rain and mud, blocked exits and postponed parties, the last of Burning Man’s crowds trudged out of the Nevada desert Wednesday morning. The “moop” remained. That is Burning Man argot for rubbish, short for “matter out of place”: a galaxy of jetsam scattered across the muddy alkali flats, after torrential rains temporarily stranded tens of thousands of people at the annual revelry of art and music. Orphaned tents lay caked in dried muck.
A Desert Full of 'Moop'

Sep 6, 2023 | nytimes.com | Finn-Olaf Jones |Jack Healy

Cleaning up after the festival is always a challenge, but this year the trash is soaked with mud and trapped in hardening sludge. A line of vehicles departing from Burning Man on Tuesday afternoon stretched across the Black Rock Desert in Nevada. Credit... Emily Najera for The New York Times Finn-Olaf Jones and After days of rain and mud, blocked exits and postponed parties, the last of Burning Man's crowds trudged out of the Nevada desert on Wednesday morning. The "moop" remained.
Burning Man attendees begin to leave soggy festival site

Sep 5, 2023 | sanjuandailystar.com | Finn-Olaf Jones |Jack Healy |Derrick Bryson Taylor

By Finn-Olaf Jones, Jack Healy and Derrick Bryson Taylor Thousands of people who had spent days stranded at the Burning Man festival in a rain-gorged stew of mud and slop began to pack up their camps Monday and stream away from the sprawling site in remote northwest Nevada. “Exodus operations have officially begun,” organizers wrote in a post on social media. But it was a mucky, uncertain trek.