Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle

Beaches in Half Moon Bay are expected to be hit with 20-foot waves Wednesday, forecasters said. This photo shows a group of surfers take off on a wave at the Mavericks break in Half Moon Bay, California, on Friday November 4, 2016

Beaches in Half Moon Bay are expected to be hit with 20-foot waves Wednesday, forecasters said. This photo shows a group of surfers take off on a wave at the Mavericks break in Half Moon Bay, California, on

Beaches along the coast will see waves reaching nine to 11 feet, with some areas that are inaccessible to beachgoers hit with waves reaching 20 feet, forecasters said. This photo shows a surfer taking off on a wave at the Mavericks break in Half Moon Bay, California on Friday November 4, 2016

Beaches along the coast will see waves reaching nine to 11 feet, with some areas that are inaccessible to beachgoers hit with waves reaching 20 feet, forecasters said. This photo shows a surfer taking off on a

“Now is not the time to frolic in the waves,” said Steve Anderson, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. He said waves as high at 20 feet will hit the Mavericks break (pictured here) in Half Moon Bay, California, this week.

“Now is not the time to frolic in the waves,” said Steve Anderson, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. He said waves as high at 20 feet will hit the Mavericks break (pictured here) in Half

Nic Lamb rides a wave in the semi-finals of the Titans of Mavericks surf contest in Half Moon Bay, CA on Friday, February 12, 2016.

Nic Lamb rides a wave in the semi-finals of the Titans of Mavericks surf contest in Half Moon Bay, CA on Friday, February 12, 2016.

Nic Lamb gets rescued in the semi-finals of the Titans of Mavericks surf contest in Half Moon Bay, CA on Friday, February 12, 2016.

Nic Lamb gets rescued in the semi-finals of the Titans of Mavericks surf contest in Half Moon Bay, CA on Friday, February 12, 2016.

Travis Payne, green, and Nic Lamb, orange, ride a wave in the semi-finals of the Titans of Mavericks surf contest in Half Moon Bay, CA on Friday, February 12, 2016.

Travis Payne, green, and Nic Lamb, orange, ride a wave in the semi-finals of the Titans of Mavericks surf contest in Half Moon Bay, CA on Friday, February 12, 2016.

Travis Payne, green, rides a wave as Nic Lamb takes a breath before getting hit by white water in the semi-finals of the Titans of Mavericks surf contest in Half Moon Bay, CA on Friday, February 12, 2016.

Travis Payne, green, rides a wave as Nic Lamb takes a breath before getting hit by white water in the semi-finals of the Titans of Mavericks surf contest in Half Moon Bay, CA on Friday, February 12, 2016.

Alex Martins takes off on a wave in semi-finals of the Titans of Mavericks surf contest in Half Moon Bay, CA on Friday, February 12, 2016.

Alex Martins takes off on a wave in semi-finals of the Titans of Mavericks surf contest in Half Moon Bay, CA on Friday, February 12, 2016.

Ben Wilkinson rides a wave in heat number three in the first round of the Titans of Mavericks competition in Half Moon Bay , Calif., on Friday, February 12, 2016.

Ben Wilkinson rides a wave in heat number three in the first round of the Titans of Mavericks competition in Half Moon Bay , Calif., on Friday, February 12, 2016.

Carlos Burle rides a wive in heat number onein the first round of the Titans of Mavericks competition in Half Moon Bay , Calif., on Friday, February 12, 2016.

Carlos Burle rides a wive in heat number onein the first round of the Titans of Mavericks competition in Half Moon Bay , Calif., on Friday, February 12, 2016.

Jamie Mitchell, red, and Mark Healey, green, ride a wave at the Titans of Mavericks surf contest in Half Moon Bay, CA on Friday, February 12, 2016.

Jamie Mitchell, red, and Mark Healey, green, ride a wave at the Titans of Mavericks surf contest in Half Moon Bay, CA on Friday, February 12, 2016.

Ken Collins (red) and Chris Bertish (blue) try to get on a wave in heat number two in the first round of the Titans of Mavericks competition in Half Moon Bay , Calif., on Friday, February 12, 2016.

Ken Collins (red) and Chris Bertish (blue) try to get on a wave in heat number two in the first round of the Titans of Mavericks competition in Half Moon Bay , Calif., on Friday, February 12, 2016.

Carlos Burle rides a wive in heat number onein the first round of the Titans of Mavericks competition in Half Moon Bay , Calif., on Friday, February 12, 2016.

Carlos Burle rides a wive in heat number onein the first round of the Titans of Mavericks competition in Half Moon Bay , Calif., on Friday, February 12, 2016.

Anthony Tashnik rides a wave in heat number one in the first round of the Titans of Mavericks competition in Half Moon Bay , Calif., on Friday, February 12, 2016.

Anthony Tashnik rides a wave in heat number one in the first round of the Titans of Mavericks competition in Half Moon Bay , Calif., on Friday, February 12, 2016.

Patrick Knobloch of Madera (left) talks with Half Moon Bay Mayor Rick Kowalczyk (right) as they watch the Titans of Mavericks from along Capistrano Road on Friday, February 12, 2016 in Half Moon Bay, Calif.

Patrick Knobloch of Madera (left) talks with Half Moon Bay Mayor Rick Kowalczyk (right) as they watch the Titans of Mavericks from along Capistrano Road on Friday, February 12, 2016 in Half Moon Bay, Calif.

Jeanne Trim (center) of San Clemente and others view the Titans of Mavericks on a large screen in front of the Mavericks Surf Shop where Red Bull was showing a live stream of the contest on Friday, February 12, 2016 in Half Moon Bay, Calif.

Jeanne Trim (center) of San Clemente and others view the Titans of Mavericks on a large screen in front of the Mavericks Surf Shop where Red Bull was showing a live stream of the contest on Friday, February

Steve Goodrick (center) of Sacramento and others view the Titans of Mavericks on a large screen in front of the Mavericks Surf Shop where Red Bull was showing a live stream of the contest on Friday, February 12, 2016 in Half Moon Bay, Calif.

Steve Goodrick (center) of Sacramento and others view the Titans of Mavericks on a large screen in front of the Mavericks Surf Shop where Red Bull was showing a live stream of the contest on Friday, February

A boat operator wears a skeleton mask at the Titans of Mavericks surf contest in Half Moon Bay, CA on Friday, February 12, 2016.

A boat operator wears a skeleton mask at the Titans of Mavericks surf contest in Half Moon Bay, CA on Friday, February 12, 2016.

Sean Riola of Aptos watches the Titans of Mavericks on a screen in front of the Mavericks Surf Shop where Red Bull was showing a live stream of the contest on Friday, February 12, 2016 in Half Moon Bay, Calif.

Sean Riola of Aptos watches the Titans of Mavericks on a screen in front of the Mavericks Surf Shop where Red Bull was showing a live stream of the contest on Friday, February 12, 2016 in Half Moon Bay,

Molly Fogarty (l to r) of New York and Danielle Sycks of Seattle make make bagel sandwiches as they view the Titans of Mavericks on a large screen in front of the Mavericks Surf Shop where Red Bull was showing a live stream of the contest on Friday, February 12, 2016 in Half Moon Bay, Calif.

Molly Fogarty (l to r) of New York and Danielle Sycks of Seattle make make bagel sandwiches as they view the Titans of Mavericks on a large screen in front of the Mavericks Surf Shop where Red Bull was showing

People watch the Titans of Mavericks along Capistrano Road on Friday, February 12, 2016 in Half Moon Bay, Calif.

People watch the Titans of Mavericks along Capistrano Road on Friday, February 12, 2016 in Half Moon Bay, Calif.

Carlos Burle rides a wive in heat number onein the first round of the Titans of Mavericks competition in Half Moon Bay , Calif., on Friday, February 12, 2016.

Carlos Burle rides a wive in heat number onein the first round of the Titans of Mavericks competition in Half Moon Bay , Calif., on Friday, February 12, 2016.

Anthony Tashnik rides a wave in heat number one in the first round of the Titans of Mavericks competition in Half Moon Bay , Calif., on Friday, February 12, 2016.

Anthony Tashnik rides a wave in heat number one in the first round of the Titans of Mavericks competition in Half Moon Bay , Calif., on Friday, February 12, 2016.

Ben Wilkinson rides a wave in heat number three in the first round of the Titans of Mavericks competition in Half Moon Bay , Calif., on Friday, February 12, 2016.

Ben Wilkinson rides a wave in heat number three in the first round of the Titans of Mavericks competition in Half Moon Bay , Calif., on Friday, February 12, 2016.

Ben Wilkinson rides a wave in heat number three in the first round of the Titans of Mavericks competition in Half Moon Bay , Calif., on Friday, February 12, 2016.

Ben Wilkinson rides a wave in heat number three in the first round of the Titans of Mavericks competition in Half Moon Bay , Calif., on Friday, February 12, 2016.

Ken Collins (red) and Chris Bertish (blue) try to get on a wave in heat number two in the first round of the Titans of Mavericks competition in Half Moon Bay , Calif., on Friday, February 12, 2016.

Ken Collins (red) and Chris Bertish (blue) try to get on a wave in heat number two in the first round of the Titans of Mavericks competition in Half Moon Bay , Calif., on Friday, February 12, 2016.

Competitors try to get up on a wave in heat number one in the first round of the Titans of Mavericks competition in Half Moon Bay , Calif., on Friday, February 12, 2016.

Competitors try to get up on a wave in heat number one in the first round of the Titans of Mavericks competition in Half Moon Bay , Calif., on Friday, February 12, 2016.

Carlos Burle rides a wive in heat number onein the first round of the Titans of Mavericks competition in Half Moon Bay , Calif., on Friday, February 12, 2016.

Carlos Burle rides a wive in heat number onein the first round of the Titans of Mavericks competition in Half Moon Bay , Calif., on Friday, February 12, 2016.

Ben Wilkinson rides a wave in heat number three in the first round of the Titans of Mavericks competition in Half Moon Bay , Calif., on Friday, February 12, 2016.

Ben Wilkinson rides a wave in heat number three in the first round of the Titans of Mavericks competition in Half Moon Bay , Calif., on Friday, February 12, 2016.

Anthony Tashnik rides a wave in heat number one in the first round of the Titans of Mavericks competition in Half Moon Bay , Calif., on Friday, February 12, 2016.

Anthony Tashnik rides a wave in heat number one in the first round of the Titans of Mavericks competition in Half Moon Bay , Calif., on Friday, February 12, 2016.

Anthony Tashnik rides a wave in heat number one in the first round of the Titans of Mavericks competition in Half Moon Bay , Calif., on Friday, February 12, 2016.

Anthony Tashnik rides a wave in heat number one in the first round of the Titans of Mavericks competition in Half Moon Bay , Calif., on Friday, February 12, 2016.

Carlos Burle rides a wive in heat number onein the first round of the Titans of Mavericks competition in Half Moon Bay , Calif., on Friday, February 12, 2016.

Carlos Burle rides a wive in heat number onein the first round of the Titans of Mavericks competition in Half Moon Bay , Calif., on Friday, February 12, 2016.

Support personnel paddle out to the breaks before heat number one in the first round of the Titans of Mavericks competition in Half Moon Bay , Calif., on Friday, February 12, 2016.

Support personnel paddle out to the breaks before heat number one in the first round of the Titans of Mavericks competition in Half Moon Bay , Calif., on Friday, February 12, 2016.

Shane Desmond drop into a wave at the Titans of Mavericks surf contest in Half Moon Bay, CA on Friday, February 12, 2016.

Shane Desmond drop into a wave at the Titans of Mavericks surf contest in Half Moon Bay, CA on Friday, February 12, 2016.

Shane Desmond drop into a wave at the Titans of Mavericks surf contest in Half Moon Bay, CA on Friday, February 12, 2016.

Shane Desmond drop into a wave at the Titans of Mavericks surf contest in Half Moon Bay, CA on Friday, February 12, 2016.

Shane Desmond drop into a wave at the Titans of Mavericks surf contest in Half Moon Bay, CA on Friday, February 12, 2016.

Shane Desmond drop into a wave at the Titans of Mavericks surf contest in Half Moon Bay, CA on Friday, February 12, 2016.

Carlos Burle rides a wive in heat number onein the first round of the Titans of Mavericks competition in Half Moon Bay , Calif., on Friday, February 12, 2016.

Carlos Burle rides a wive in heat number onein the first round of the Titans of Mavericks competition in Half Moon Bay , Calif., on Friday, February 12, 2016.

Shane Desmond drop into a wave at the Titans of Mavericks surf contest in Half Moon Bay, CA on Friday, February 12, 2016.

Shane Desmond drop into a wave at the Titans of Mavericks surf contest in Half Moon Bay, CA on Friday, February 12, 2016.

Zach Wormhoudt drop into a wave at the Titans of Mavericks surf contest in Half Moon Bay, CA on Friday, February 12, 2016.

Zach Wormhoudt drop into a wave at the Titans of Mavericks surf contest in Half Moon Bay, CA on Friday, February 12, 2016.

Ken Collins, left, and Chris Bertish surf a giant wave during the second heat of the Mavericks surfing contest Friday, Feb. 12, 2016, in Half Moon Bay, Calif. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)

Ken Collins, left, and Chris Bertish surf a giant wave during the second heat of the Mavericks surfing contest Friday, Feb. 12, 2016, in Half Moon Bay, Calif. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)

Mark Healey drops off a giant wave during the second heat of the Mavericks surfing contest Friday, Feb. 12, 2016, in Half Moon Bay, Calif. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)

Mark Healey drops off a giant wave during the second heat of the Mavericks surfing contest Friday, Feb. 12, 2016, in Half Moon Bay, Calif. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)

Ken Collins, left, and Tyler Fox surf a giant wave during the second heat of the Mavericks surfing contest Friday, Feb. 12, 2016, in Half Moon Bay, Calif. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)

Ken Collins, left, and Tyler Fox surf a giant wave during the second heat of the Mavericks surfing contest Friday, Feb. 12, 2016, in Half Moon Bay, Calif. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)

Drake Stanley, a 32-year-old personal water craft rescue operator, heads out toward the break ahead of the Titans of Mavericks surf competition in Half Moon Bay on Friday, Feb. 12, 2015.

Drake Stanley, a 32-year-old personal water craft rescue operator, heads out toward the break ahead of the Titans of Mavericks surf competition in Half Moon Bay on Friday, Feb. 12, 2015.

Drake Stanley, a 32-year-old personal watercraft rescue operator, checks in with his team on his radio before heading out to the break at the Titans of Mavericks surf competition in Half Moon Bay Friday, Feb. 12, 2015.

Drake Stanley, a 32-year-old personal watercraft rescue operator, checks in with his team on his radio before heading out to the break at the Titans of Mavericks surf competition in Half Moon Bay Friday, Feb.

Drake Stanley, a 32-year-old personal watercraft rescue operator, descends a ladder at Pillar Point Harbor in Half Moon Bay toward his jet ski ahead of the Titans of Mavericks surf competition on Friday, Feb. 12, 2015.

Drake Stanley, a 32-year-old personal watercraft rescue operator, descends a ladder at Pillar Point Harbor in Half Moon Bay toward his jet ski ahead of the Titans of Mavericks surf competition on Friday, Feb.

Drake Stanley, a 32-year-old personal watercraft rescue operator, prepares his equipment ahead of the Titans of Mavericks surf competition near at the Pillar Point Harbor in Half Moon Bay on Friday, Feb. 12, 2015.

Drake Stanley, a 32-year-old personal watercraft rescue operator, prepares his equipment ahead of the Titans of Mavericks surf competition near at the Pillar Point Harbor in Half Moon Bay on Friday, Feb. 12,

Steve Goodrich, 52, and 9-year-old son, Mattox, exchange a high-five in front of the Mavericks Surf Shop in Half Moon Bay the morning of Friday, Feb. 12, 2015, ahead of the Titans of Mavericks surf competition.

Steve Goodrich, 52, and 9-year-old son, Mattox, exchange a high-five in front of the Mavericks Surf Shop in Half Moon Bay the morning of Friday, Feb. 12, 2015, ahead of the Titans of Mavericks surf competition.

Fans gather in front of the Mavericks Surf Shop to watch the live stream of the Titans of Mavericks surf contest on Friday, Feb. 12, 2015.

Fans gather in front of the Mavericks Surf Shop to watch the live stream of the Titans of Mavericks surf contest on Friday, Feb. 12, 2015.

Fans gather in front of the Mavericks Surf Shop to watch the live stream of the Titans of Mavericks surf contest on Friday, Feb. 12, 2015.

Fans gather in front of the Mavericks Surf Shop to watch the live stream of the Titans of Mavericks surf contest on Friday, Feb. 12, 2015.

Travis Payne, green, rides a wave in the semi-finals of the Titans of Mavericks surf contest in Half Moon Bay, CA on Friday, February 12, 2016.

Travis Payne, green, rides a wave in the semi-finals of the Titans of Mavericks surf contest in Half Moon Bay, CA on Friday, February 12, 2016.

Nic Lamb surfs a giant wave during the finals of the Mavericks surfing contest Friday, Feb. 12, 2016, in Half Moon Bay, Calif. Lamb won the event. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)

Nic Lamb surfs a giant wave during the finals of the Mavericks surfing contest Friday, Feb. 12, 2016, in Half Moon Bay, Calif. Lamb won the event. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)

Ken Collins (red) and Chris Bertish (blue) try to get on a wave in heat number two in the first round of the Titans of Mavericks competition in Half Moon Bay , Calif., on Friday, February 12, 2016.

Ken Collins (red) and Chris Bertish (blue) try to get on a wave in heat number two in the first round of the Titans of Mavericks competition in Half Moon Bay , Calif., on Friday, February 12, 2016.

Ryan Lemersal of San Francisco points to a large screen as she watches the Titans of Mavericks on a large screen at the Half Moon Bay Brewing Company on Friday, February 12, 2016 in Half Moon Bay, Calif.

Ryan Lemersal of San Francisco points to a large screen as she watches the Titans of Mavericks on a large screen at the Half Moon Bay Brewing Company on Friday, February 12, 2016 in Half Moon Bay, Calif.

Greg Long rides a wave in the finals of the Titans of Mavericks surf contest in Half Moon Bay, CA on Friday, February 12, 2016.

Greg Long rides a wave in the finals of the Titans of Mavericks surf contest in Half Moon Bay, CA on Friday, February 12, 2016.

Carlos Burle rides a wive in heat number onein the first round of the Titans of Mavericks competition in Half Moon Bay , Calif., on Friday, February 12, 2016.

Carlos Burle rides a wive in heat number onein the first round of the Titans of Mavericks competition in Half Moon Bay , Calif., on Friday, February 12, 2016.

Sean Riola of Aptos watches the Titans of Mavericks on a screen in front of the Mavericks Surf Shop where Red Bull was showing a live stream of the contest on Friday, February 12, 2016 in Half Moon Bay, Calif.

Sean Riola of Aptos watches the Titans of Mavericks on a screen in front of the Mavericks Surf Shop where Red Bull was showing a live stream of the contest on Friday, February 12, 2016 in Half Moon Bay,

Rick Maziarz and Lisa Tinnirella (l to r) of Sausalito watch the Titans of Mavericks on a large screen at the Half Moon Bay Brewing Company on Friday, February 12, 2016 in Half Moon Bay, Calif.

Rick Maziarz and Lisa Tinnirella (l to r) of Sausalito watch the Titans of Mavericks on a large screen at the Half Moon Bay Brewing Company on Friday, February 12, 2016 in Half Moon Bay, Calif.

Heidi Bolen (left) blocks the sun from her eyes to watch the Titans of Mavericks on a large screen at the Half Moon Bay Brewing Company on Friday, February 12, 2016 in Half Moon Bay, Calif.

Heidi Bolen (left) blocks the sun from her eyes to watch the Titans of Mavericks on a large screen at the Half Moon Bay Brewing Company on Friday, February 12, 2016 in Half Moon Bay, Calif.

Summary: Steve Anderson, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, said the large waves might be seen at the famed Mavericks surfing location off Half Moon Bay, but otherwise won’t affect many of the beaches along the coast and will be confined to areas that aren’t accessible to beachgoers.  The period between waves are expected to drag out to 18 seconds causing strong currents that will run up further than usual on the shore, Anderson added.  With the holiday weekend coming up, we expect a lot more people to be visiting the area that aren’t familiar with the ocean.  The water will be a frigid 50 degrees, or similar to the air temperature, Anderson added.


Throughout his presidential campaign, Donald Trump has promoted his namesake business, holding events at Trump-branded hotels and golf courses from Scotland to Florida. As the race approaches its conclusion amid a torrent of controversy, his company is launching a new brand that won't carry his name.

Scion, a line of hotels that will target younger clients, was unveiled last month in a press release that quoted three different Trump Organization executives, but not the candidate.

Since entering the race last year, Trump has offended groups including Mexicans, Muslims, the disabled and veterans. A video from 2005 that showed him bragging about making lewd advances on women prompted almost a dozen to say he'd harassed them -- claims that he strongly denies.

Those associations will make corporate clients less likely to book Trump-branded properties, said Bruce Himelstein, a former chief marketing officer for Loews and Ritz-Carlton hotels.

"He's now a polarizing figure. When he was putting his hotels together, he wasn't," said Himelstein, now a consultant. "There's definitely an impact."

His campaign has already reeled. A candidate that as recently as three weeks ago was in a close race is now waging an uphill battle to close a gap that's grown to 5.9 percentage points nationally, according to a RealClearPolitics poll average.

Enter Scion. The new brand is planned for use at city and resort locations, Trump Hotels said when Scion was announced Sept. 28. The new hotels are intended to appeal "to a new and different type of guest in more locations around the globe," Trump Hotels said. The first Scion location is scheduled to open in 2017.

The Scion flag won't replace the Trump brand, according to Trump Hotels. It was announced more than a week before the Washington Post published a 2005 video of Trump bragging about grabbing and kissing women.

"We chose this name as a nod to the Trump family and their tremendous business successes, including Trump Hotels," Eric Danziger, chief executive officer of Trump Hotels, said in an email. "We want to acknowledge the association with Trump in a genuine way, while allowing the new lifestyle brand to stand on its own."

Scattered evidence suggests travelers are choosing to check in elsewhere. It's hard to measure the impact on Trump Hotels of his most inflammatory comments or the allegations of unwelcome sexual advances. The Trump Organization doesn't disclose occupancy rates.

Bookings at Trump hotels through luxury-travel specialist Ovation Vacations tumbled 29 percent in the past six months, said Jack Ezon, president of the firm. While corporate reservations at Trump Hotels through Altour International Inc. fell 10 percent this year through Oct. 15, leisure bookings rose so much they provided a 16 percent lift overall, said Martin Rapp, senior vice president at the corporate and leisure travel agency, which has a large number of entertainment clients. After all, more than 13 million Americans voted for Trump in the primaries.

Trump Hotels is hardly the first lodging company to introduce a new brand aimed at younger customers who may be turned off by older names that can be seen as stodgy. Marriott International started Moxy, Hilton Worldwide Holdings has Canopy, and Starwood, acquired by Marriott last month, added the Aloft brand. The hotel operators are dealing with competition from travel alternatives such as the home-sharing company Airbnb Inc.

In fact, competition from new hotels may be a problem for Scion, said Piers Schmidt, founder of London-based consulting firm Luxury Branding. The new brand diffuses the very things that draw customers to Trump: the image of a billionaire full of brashness and bling, he said.

Trump's "track record is build it tall, build it loud, promote it hard, fill it with people and create this kind of lifestyle -- the jets, the towers, the hotels," Schmidt said. "There is a litany of new lifestyle brands that are chasing after the millennials."

The Trump Organization has eight hotels in the U.S. and seven in other countries. Its U.S. properties include the Trump International Hotel Washington, D.C. -- housed in the 1899 Romanesque Revival-style Old Post Office on Pennsylvania Avenue, five blocks from the White House -- and its foreign properties include the Trump International Hotel & Tower Vancouver, which is under construction.

During his run for the White House, Trump gave reporters an April tour of the then-unfinished Washington hotel, held a post-Brexit event at Trump Turnberry in Scotland, and in September returned to the D.C. property to renounce previous claims that President Barack Obama wasn't born in the U.S. -- after first boasting about his new hotel.

Last week in Las Vegas, where Trump went up against Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in their third and final debate, Rita Solon, who volunteered for her first Republican campaign in 1980 and came from Washington, D.C., to watch the event and make fundraising calls on Trump's behalf, said she thinks that his candidacy is hurting his businesses.

"His brand was very valuable," said Solon, wearing a Trump-Pence pin in the lobby of the Trump International Hotel Las Vegas. "The family is making a tremendous sacrifice with his brand. He's hated and reviled."

Trump's new Washington hotel has been hit with graffiti and protests. "All of my friends refuse to come here," said Peter Gebre, a resident of suburban Maryland who was dining with his wife and son at the hotel's restaurant to celebrate his 21st wedding anniversary earlier this month. "It does have an impact."

The Washington hotel also is offering discounts from its pre-opening minimum prices, with rooms advertised for later this month as low as $404, compared with the starting rate of $625 initially set by Trump. October is typically one of the busiest months for Washington hotels.

"It's really disappointing to see they're charging such low prices for all they said how good they are and how they would come in and crush everybody," said David Bernand, general manager of the Four Seasons in Georgetown. "You only harvest what you plant."

Trump Hotels said rates fluctuate for several reasons including market conditions and the $404 rate doesn't provide an accurate picture of the property's success since its Sept. 12 soft opening. The opening "has been the most successful in terms of opening bookings, interest from groups and large events" in his 10 years with Trump Hotels, Mickael Damelincourt, managing director of the new Washington hotel, said in a statement.

Other hotels have been hurt by politics or their owners' behavior. The Sultan of Brunei had a similar problem in 2014, when his swank Beverly Hills Hotel was boycotted after the kingdom implemented Islamic criminal laws that call for death by stoning for gay people. Among the events moved from the Sunset Boulevard property was the Feminist Majority Foundation's Global Women's Rights Awards, and Richard Branson and Ellen DeGeneres said they wouldn't stay there.

Then, slowly and rather quietly, the elite began to return -- because they like the place. But the Beverly Hills Hotel is a one-of-a-kind trophy with a decades-long history before the Sultan of Brunei bought it in 1987. The property doesn't bear the sultan's name, and the controversy wasn't followed as closely as Trump has been during his presidential campaign.

Still, some believe that for Trump, who has been putting his name on everything from steaks to neckties and cologne for more than 30 years, any blow to his business could also be fleeting. The candidate has thrived through multiple bankruptcies, the flop of his Trump Shuttle airline and the demise -- in a swirl of litigation alleging illegal business practices, denied by Trump -- of his eponymous for-profit university.

"Six months after the election, everyone will forget it," said Jason Awad, a venue planner in suburban Washington. "He's very resilient."

Even if the Trump name does suffer long-term, there's no guarantee that Scion, which means "descendant of a notable family" -- Donald Trump's children, Donald Jr., Ivanka and Eric, are all Trump Hotels executives -- will prove a worthy alternative. After all, it's not the first time the name's been used for a youth-oriented brand. With sales falling, Toyota ended its use of the Scion brand two months ago.

Bloomberg's Sarah Ponczek Jonathan Levin Katia Dmitrieva Oshrat Carmiel Brian Louis Gerrit De Vynck and Anne Reifenberg contributed.


That was the central--and somewhat unsettling--observation hammered home by Barry Schwartz yesterday at Shop.org's online-retailing conference in New York City. The retailing association's three-day networking event features a bevy of speakers--from specialists at Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people ), Home Depot (nyse: HD - news - people ), Borders (nyse: BGP - news - people ) and Best Buy (nyse: BBY - news - people ), as well as analysts from Goldman Sachs (nyse: GS - news - people ) and Forrester Research (nasdaq: FORR - news - people ).

Schwartz's spiel came straight from the pages of his 2004 book, The Paradox Of Choice, and its message has big consequences for all sellers of stuff online.

The breezy, well-researched text takes a dear notion--that greater freedom translates into greater welfare--and turns it on its head. Schwartz cites a slew of studies showing that, while consumers have more choices than ever, the angst of having to cull through all those options tarnishes their shopping experience--and eventually takes a bite out of retailers' revenues.

"There is no area of commerce where this problem isn't present," says Schwartz, who has taught various psychology courses at Swarthmore College since 1971.

To be sure, offering a vast menu of options attracts customers initially. We like the idea of going to the grocery store and finding, say, 175 kinds of salad dressing.

But separating shoppers from their money requires a bit of savvy. In a world of infinite choices, the standard for choosing a product or service becomes nothing less than perfection, says Schwartz. And that's the problem: When customers eventually do pull the trigger on that one salad dressing, they inevitably regret their decision because surely (they think) there was another dressing tastier, healthier and less expensive; worse, the unpleasant experience dissuades them from making a repeat purchase. Still other consumers become so paralyzed that they don't choose at all.

The key for retailers, says Schwartz, is to find the "sweet spot" that balances the level of choice with what customers can adequately process, appreciate and act on. That's what Google did back in 1998 when it introduced its elegantly simple homepage, vaulting it ahead of established (and comparatively cluttered) players Excite and Yahoo! (nasdaq: YHOO - news - people ). More recently, clothier Ann Taylor (nyse: ANN - news - people ) and Staples (nasdaq: SPLS - news - people ) have spurred sales by reducing the number choices in each of their product categories.

Another trick, courtesy of the restaurant industry: Present people with an overwhelming number of options but offer an easy, tangible solution right alongside it. This is precisely what the archetypal Greek diner does by clipping a brief list of "specials" to the inside of its phone-book-sized menu.

A third tactic, geared mainly toward online retailers, is to "change the defaults," says Schwartz. This means engineering the buying process such that shoppers automatically "select" a product or service, but still have plenty of options for customizing their purchase.

The bottom line: An ounce of strategy will take you farther than a ton of inventory. Quips Schwartz: "The substitute for thinking is to offer a lot of options."

Summary: Customers love choice, but offering lots of options may actually hurt sales.


WASHINGTON, Aug. 19— In three years, President Reagan has achieved much of what he promised: curbing inflation, stimulating economic growth, reducing the role of the Government, limiting access to social welfare programs.

In his inaugural address, Mr. Reagan promised to end what he called ''an economic affliction of great proportions.'' The economy is now growing faster, with less inflation, than at any time since the early 1960's. Its vigor has surprised forecasters.

But the improvements have left many individuals untouched. For some, the importance of macroeconomic gains are outweighed by dissatisfaction with specific aspects of Mr. Reagan's domestic policies. He has challenged a bipartisan consensus on civil rights developed over 20 years. He tried to shift the emphasis of environmental policy from the protection to the development of natural resources. His Administration, acting under a Congressional mandate to review the Social Security disability rolls, has cut off benefits for thousands who were later found to be disabled and qualified.

Far Short of Balanced Budget

Another line from Mr. Reagan's inaugural address recalls a goal that remains unfulfilled. ''For decades,'' he said, ''we have piled deficit upon deficit, mortgaging our future . . . for the temporary convenience of the present.'' Far from reducing the deficit, Mr. Reagan's policies, especially a three-stage tax cut, contributed to an increase. The deficit hit a record of $195 billion in the fiscal year 1983, up from $59.6 billion in 1980.

However, Republicans say the economy is in better shape than it was four years ago.

Inflation is down. The Consumer Price Index, which rose 12.4 percent in the last year of the Carter Administration, rose just 3.8 percent last year, and it rose at an annual rate of 4.1 percent in the first half of this year.

In the process, the nation went through a deep 16-month recession. The unemployment rate reached a 40- year high, 10.6 percent, in the final months of 1982, when nearly 12 million people were out of work, but it has now declined to 7.4 percent, about the same level as when Mr. Reagan took office.

Median family income rose slightly last year, even after adjustment to account for inflation. But the purchasing power of such income was 3 percent less than the purchasing power of the median family income in 1975 or 1980. And in 1983 the national poverty rate reached its highest level in 18 years.

What follows is a summary of Mr. Reagan's record in key areas.

Mr. Reagan has reduced the rate of growth in social spending and sharply increased military spending. He has, moreover, altered the terms of public debate. The usual question now is not whether to cut back social programs but how much.

Mr. Reagan's last budget said there had been a ''dramatic halt in domestic spending growth.'' While this is true, both Administration officials and their opponents tend to overstate the changes. Mr. Reagan wants to magnify his success in gaining control of the budget, while his critics want to persuade voters that the changes have caused suffering.

The effects might have been more dramatic if Congress had approved all of Mr. Reagan's proposals. Administration officials say they got slightly more than half the budget reductions they sought.

Mr. Reagan has repeatedly said that he reduced only the rate of growth in social spending, not the actual level. For some programs, including Medicaid and Social Security, this is true. But it is not true with respect to housing or job training; in these programs and others, actual spending authority was reduced.

Mr. Reagan attributes the vibrancy of the economy, in part, to the 1981 tax cut, a cornerstone of his program. Less than half the revenue lost as a result of the tax cut has been made up through savings in social programs. Over the last three years the increase in interest payments on the Federal debt exceeds all the savings Mr. Reagan has achieved in health, education, welfare and social service programs.


As we watch the economy do what economies do – have growing pains and adjust to challenges – it becomes ever more apparent that doing things the old way just won’t work anymore. That is true of many of the old ways, especially when it comes to how companies advertise and grow their business.

It is my opinion that the return on investment (ROI) for traditional advertising will continue to shrink, even as companies using traditional advertising methods continue to throw money at ads in hopes that their company will survive these choppy financial seas. Instead of panicking and clinging to the deflating lifeboat of old ideas, now is the time to stand firm and innovate.

Before a company can find success in branding and marketing through non-traditional means like social media, companies and entrepreneurs need to reevaluate how they define ROI. Sure, there is always investment, but instead of thinking of this investment solely as monetary, also consider the investment you can make in time, staff, creativity, participation, and other less tangible resources. In this economy “investment” could be replaced by innovation, inspiration, involvement, or interaction for a different and fresh form of ROI.

Social media is often accused of taking a “touchy feely” approach to advertising, marketing and brand management. In a sense this is true. The ways of measuring ROI in a social media campaign are much more indirect than a cost based traditional model. In part this is because the cost of social media to grow your company is relatively low and consists mainly of intangible things like proper use of your time.

If the company is large enough, it may entail the cost of hiring someone to manage your social media efforts. If the company is a small to medium business or an entrepreneur or sole proprietor, most will find that after an initial training session with a good social media guide they can use existing staff to manage social media campaigns. This is a huge cost saver that can be carried over into a reduction in traditional advertising expenses as well.

One of the most tangible ways to measure ROI is site analytics. If you have a site that is starting a social media campaign, make sure to get a good analytics program installed, like Google Analytics. As you start each campaign, make sure to associate it with tags and key words you can track in your analytics program.

You can do the same for on-site CPM advertising, like the ever popular Google Adsense. By associating each ad block with key words and campaigns, it makes it easier to measure where the money and visitors are coming in from. Coupled with a great stats program like Mint or similar, there is no reason you can’t develop your own in-house ROI study as you embark on your first social media campaign.

One of the many ways to enhance your ROI from social media campaigns is to consider transparency. Since it is very hard to hide behind an image these days (go ahead and Google your company name plus the word “sucks” or “stinks” or other negative connotations and see if anything comes back), the more transparent a company and its top level staff can be without giving away company secrets, the better.

A fantastic example of transparency helping a company’s numbers is that of BuzzAgent. They were so invested in the idea of changing how they approached their brand they did a 90 day experiment that showed measurable gains (and other interesting data) through openness and interaction.

If you aren’t sold on the idea of fully embracing social advertising, consider the intangible benefits of a brand campaign as well, including how social media can save you money indirectly. By becoming more involved with your brand and embracing both the negative and the positive (realize you no longer control the conversation about your company) you can stop problems before they start.

By giving your customers access to you through social media and using it to channel everything from customer support to sales and hiring, you will find that you are gaining income and stopping some tradition areas of corporate monetary hemorrhaging. All without spending vast amounts of extra money on ads no one stops to watch, listen to or read anyway outside of Superbowl Sunday. I’d say that’s pretty good indirect ROI, wouldn’t you?

Summary: As the economy declines it becomes more apparent that doing things the old way won\'t work anymore. Is social advertising a safe haven for marketing budgets?


Six days after an extended outage left its network inaccessible to many users for nearly 24 hours, Skype CIO Lars Rabbe has published a post-mortem write-up of the situation.

Essentially, a server overload set into motion a chain of events that led to a perfect storm of problems and issues that impacted the very core of the P2P network that keeps Skype running. As a result, the service was down for many users for up to 24 hours.

In his blog post, Rabbe describes the sequence of circumstances that led to the outage. The main point of breakdown — aside from the initial overload of a cluster of support servers — centered around the Skype for Windows client. Instead of correctly processing the delayed response from the overloaded servers, Skype for Windows version 5.0.0.152 would instead crash.

The latest version of Skype for Windows, version 5.0.0.156, the 4.0 versions of Skype for Windows, Skype for Mac, Skype for iPhone, Skype on your TV and Skype Connect/Skype Manager were not impacted by this first wave of issues.

The problem, unfortunately, was that approximately 50% of all Skype users across the globe were using the 5.0.0.152 version of Skype for Windows. This was the first stable release of Skype 5, released in October. The updated version of Skype for Windows was released on December 14, but unless a user happened to manually check for the update or download the latest version, chances are, he or she was running the crashtastic Windows client. Rabbe says that program crashes caused approximately 40% of clients running the buggy version of Skype for Windows to fail — in other words, 20% of Skype clients in use failed because of this issue with the older version of the software.

This is where the perfect storm elements start to come together. Those failed clients represented 25 to 30% of the publicly available “supernodes.” In essence, a supernode is a connection point that can also help funnel traffic for other users. The way that peer-to-peer VoIP networks like Skype work is that a client must connect to a supernode in order to make a connection, send voice or video data or exchange instant messages. By default, every Skype client can be a supernode, depending on your firewall settings and bandwidth capacity. If your Skype client crashed and you were a supernode, the number of available connection points for other users just dropped.

Rabbe writes, “The failure of 25—30% of supernodes in the P2P network resulted in an increased load on the remaining supernodes. While we expect this kind of increase in the instance of a failure, a significant proportion of users were also restarting crashed Windows clients at this time. This massively increased the load as they reconnected to the peer-to-peer cloud.”

As luck would have it, all of this occurred just before the usual daily peak in usage. That meant that traffic to the remaining supernodes “was about 100 times what would normally be expected at that time of day.” To further complicate matters, this additional load triggered built-in-protection mechanisms, that under ordinary circumstances, could indicate something beyond just a sudden drop in available supernodes. These triggers created what amounted to a positive feedback loop, where overloaded sueprnodes shut themselves off, which in turn overloaded other supernodes, causing them to shut themselves off and so-on. This was the event that basically took down Skype for the majority of users — whether you were using Windows or not.

This Skype outage and Rabbe’s detailed explanation are interesting in that they highlight what — for all intents and purposes — was a fluke. Had the Windows client not had the propensity to crash and had the time of the outage not occurred during peak usage and just ahead of a major holiday, the situation likely would have been much different.

The big takeaway, at least from our perspective, is that Skype needs to look at providing better auto-update mechanisms for its desktop clients. While it’s true that auto-updating can be considered user-hostile, for minor (relatively speaking) revisions like the latest Skype update, it would probably be better to push those updates to clients automatically and set that as the default. This is what Google does with its Google Chrome browser to great success. Skype wouldn’t even have to go as far as Google — it could still require users to approve an upgrade to a major version (provided the old version was still supported) and only auto-update smaller hot fixes.

This outage was also an interesting look at how the Skype ecosystem operates. Skype continues to be unique amongst VOiP providers in part because of its P2P roots. This system is an implicit part of why Skype works so well, but under the right circumstances, it can also provide its own unique set of problems.

Summary: Six days after an extended outage left its network inaccessible to many users for nearly 24 hours, Skype CIO Lars Rabbe has published a post-mortem write-up.


NEW YORK — Stephen Adly Guirgis had written only 20 or so pages of “The [Expletive] With the Hat” when he was tempted to abandon the play.

Not because writing is a species of torment for him, though it is, or because he prefers acting “about a billion times more,” though he does. The problem looming in his path, shortly before his New York-based theater company gave a reading of the script for the first time, was that he had already spent so much of his playwriting career sketching similar terrain.

“I was like, I can’t do this. I can’t write another play where everybody’s screaming and cursing and, you know, they don’t have a job,” Guirgis (pronounced GEAR-gis) recalled recently. “I really felt like that: I gotta write a play about the Revolutionary War or something, or, like, French diplomats at tea. And then we had the reading, and it was pretty well received by everyone, including older board members who are, you know, discerning and even snobby about stuff.”

So, he decided, he’d do one more in that vein. The dark comedy it became was a Broadway hit with both audiences and critics in 2011. Starring Bobby Cannavale as Jackie, a newly paroled drug dealer struggling to live the 12-step life, and Chris Rock as his Big Book-spouting sponsor, “The [Expletive] With the Hat” was the Broadway debut of both Guirgis and LAByrinth Theater Company, the 20-year-old downtown ensemble where Guirgis is co-artistic director. SpeakEasy Stage Company’s production of the play opens Sunday at the Boston Center for the Arts.

It was a few minutes past 11 a.m. on a sunny, late summer day when Guirgis, 47, arrived for a breakfast interview at a restaurant a couple of blocks from his Upper West Side apartment. He glided up on a bike, a cigarette between his lips, wearing shorts, sneakers, and a button-down shirt the color of the sky. It was rumpled, he soon explained, because he’d picked it up off the floor when he’d woken a few minutes earlier after writing all night, briefly napping, and nearly oversleeping. The average person in a similar situation might try to pass as functioning, but Guirgis seemed to need to delineate precisely how far short he’d fallen. He was on time? Well, he almost hadn’t been. Did you think these clothes looked clean? Well, they’re not.

ERIK JACOBS FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE

Jaime Carrillo plays Jackie, an ex-con in recovery, and Evelyn Howe plays Veronica, his addict girlfriend, in a rehearsal for SpeakEasy Stage Company’s production of Guirgis’s “The [Expletive] With the Hat.’’

“I’m just in this pressure dome, and I want to — I want to flee,” Guirgis said, affably enough, ticking off the causes of his tension between bites of bacon and eggs at a table outdoors. Deadlines were closing in: a television pilot for America Ferrera and ABC, and an adaptation of “The [Expletive] With the Hat” for HBO and Scott Rudin, one of the play’s Broadway producers. Guirgis has also promised a new play to LAByrinth, which premiered the other works for which he’s known, including “Jesus Hopped the A Train,” “Our Lady of 121st Street,” and “The Last Days of Judas Iscariot.”

A native New Yorker, Guirgis grew up on Riverside Drive in the West 80s, but his family had little money; their four-bedroom apartment, which is now his, was rent-controlled. Neighborhood conveniences like buying groceries at Zabar’s were a luxury. So was educating Guirgis nearby. His mother sent him instead to a Catholic school in Harlem.

“The best thing she ever did for me was send me to school uptown,” said Guirgis, whose plays reflect the ethnic and racial multiplicity he’s known since childhood. His work teems with troubled characters living chaotic lives in the shabbier pockets of Manhattan, speaking the vivid language of the street. That’s true, too, of “The [Expletive] With the Hat.”

“This is a very New York play,” said Jaime Carrillo, the actor who plays Jackie at SpeakEasy. A recent transplant to Boston, Carrillo spent the last decade in New York, working at the Classical Theatre of Harlem and elsewhere. “It is a certain slice of life of New York, but it is New York: very real, very nonjudgmental, very philosophical at times, but also very blunt, very direct — just not wasting any time.”

Guirgis views the play as a romantic comedy, though the couple we’re meant to root for is a little unconventional: volatile ex-con Jackie and his addict girlfriend, Veronica, still in love even as he grasps at recovery, and as she seems to have cheated on him with some guy who left his hat behind.

However much Guirgis’s characters struggle to rein excess into moderation, the playwright himself seemed the other day to be a man trying to find a little serenity — to change the things he can, even if progress is slow.

Like a lot of artists, Guirgis confronts in his work the things that keep him up at night. Trouble is, writing also keeps him up. When he’s writing, a regular person’s schedule goes out the window. He works through the nights, sleeps through the days, isolates himself, procrastinates, smokes, smokes some more. If he doesn’t have someplace to be, hygiene slides off his list of priorities.

“My behaviors, or my actions, unconsciously begin to mirror symptoms of depression, even if I’m not depressed, and then I think, after a while, your body can’t really tell the difference,” he said. “It’s like, you go into a cave and you’re alone, and then when you come out, you’ve got a play, but then you look and feel and act like someone that’s been in a cave for months.”

A couple of years ago, he emerged from a different kind of sequestration. In 2006, when his mother died, he had moved from Hell’s Kitchen back into the apartment where he grew up, to be with his elderly father.

“Right in the beginning, almost as soon as I moved in to take care of him, it became like abundantly clear that at least I, myself, could not take care of him and me,” said Guirgis, whose 2008 play, “The Little Flower of East Orange,” explores similar themes using a fictional family with some parallels to his own, including a Riverside Drive address. “And the option of not taking care of him, to me, was not an option.”

So Guirgis didn’t take care of himself, and when his father died two years ago, that self-neglect was obvious, he said.

“It wouldn’t be melodramatic to say nobody would be shocked at that time if I had dropped dead of a heart attack. I was really overweight; I didn’t leave the house. I remember when I first moved in, I was afraid, like, if I left the house, he was gonna die. I was really not in good shape in any way. I was almost a hundred pounds heavier — yeah, I’ve lost like 85 pounds in a little less than two years. Everything was bad, and my head was bad, and my career was bad,” he said. “But I had written this play.”

The play was “The [Expletive] With the Hat,” and at first he thought it would be staged downtown like his others. Then it became apparent that producers wanted to bring it to Broadway.

“I was like, all right, I have to get it together,” Guirgis said, adding that, at the time, he couldn’t walk more than half a block without having to stop because of back trouble. And there were his nocturnal hours, which had to be reset if he wanted to attend rehearsals and stay awake through them. So he got a therapist, and he started working with a trainer who’d contacted him through Facebook. Guirgis used the opportunity of the Broadway production to reclaim some normalcy. Now the object is to keep that going.

“Because the play did well, it opened up some doors again in film and television that were closed,” he said. He’d messed up a lot of jobs in the past — as in, “take the job and just never write a word until they just have to fire you.” It wasn’t that he’d accepted the assignments intending to blow them, he explained, but that’s what he did. “Really lame,” he said. “I don’t know what the hell was going on in my head.”

There’s an essay Guirgis likes, written by his favorite playwright, Tennessee Williams, and published in The New York Times in 1947, three years after “The Glass Menagerie” catapulted Williams from obscurity to stardom. The essay is about the necessity of struggle in a healthy human life and the danger of having it too easy, feeling too secure. Williams writes of the “spiritual dislocation” that is a hazard of what he terms “the catastrophe of Success.”

The validity of Williams’s argument aside, an aspect of it does raise a question: Is Guirgis afraid of being too successful?

“I think there’s people that know me who would say yes,” he said. “But I don’t know, you know. I think I’m afraid of everything.” He laughed.

It took Guirgis a long time to accept the fact that he’s a writer, because it’s not something he sought, he said; it’s just an aptitude he has, and one he consequently feels he has a responsibility to use “to write things that hopefully have some substance or meaning.”

“If it ever goes away, OK, then I’m off the hook,” he said. “But while it’s there, I gotta use it. And given that that’s my belief system, it makes sense to me that the plays tend to be the things that I actually follow through with and do, and the projects that are more about money tend to be the ones that I mess up royally.”

Wait a second. Present tense?

“That I had messed up royally,” he amended, “and I’m trying to avoid messing up currently.”

These days, Guirgis’s life bears less resemblance to the lives of the people in his plays than it once did. He buys all his food at Zabar’s now. That rumpled shirt on his back is from L.L. Bean; the sneakers on his feet are Adidas. “But, like, that’s recent. I mean, it’s really recent. That I wear nicer clothes,” he said. “And a very short time ago, and on the wrong day, I don’t think people would have any problem identifying me with the socioeconomic background of those characters.”

When Guirgis was younger, he was a huge fan of Bronx-born playwright John Patrick Shanley, now a Pulitzer Prize winner for “Doubt” and a LAByrinth member. Guirgis was drawn to Shanley’s gritty, early plays like “Danny and the Deep Blue Sea” and “Savage in Limbo.” Then he read “Women of Manhattan.”

“I remember I was like, what the [expletive] is this [expletive]?” he laughed.

Now he knows what it was: “Shanley moved out of the Bronx. He moved to Manhattan. He started dating a lot of women. And so he wrote a play that reflected where he was at.”

Guirgis also knows his own work will have to reflect somehow his own evolution. And so he worries that, in a couple of years, young people who love his current plays will react to a new one the way he did to “Women of Manhattan.”

But when they’re older, he figures, they’ll understand.

Summary: Stephen Adly Guirgis had written only 20 or so pages of “The [Expletive] With the Hat” when he was tempted to abandon the play. Not because writing is a species of torment for him, though it is, or because he prefers acting “about a billion times more,” though he does. The problem was he had already spent so much of his playwriting career sketching similar terrain. “I was like, I can’t do this. I can’t write another play where everybody’s screaming and cursing and, you know, they don’t have a job,” Guirgis said. But the dark comedy was a Broadway hit in 2011. SpeakEasy Stage Company’s production of the play opens Sunday in Boston.


A panel of outside experts convened by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recommended on Thursday that the agency approve a new treatment that trains the immune system to battle prostate cancer. By Friday, shares in the therapy's maker, Dendreon of Seattle, were up more than 260%, to $18.90, in pre-market trading.

If the FDA follows through on the recommendation, it could signal a big shift in how the agency handles the approval of cancer drugs. Dendreon's (nasdaq: DNDN - news - people ) treatment, Provenge, failed in two clinical trials, but a second look at the data revealed a four-month survival benefit in one of them. Both advisory panels and the FDA have rejected cancer drugs in similar situations in the past. (See: " A Radical Attack On Prostate Cancer.")

The panel voted unanimously that Provenge was fairly safe. It rewrote a question regarding whether the treatment is effective, instead asking if there was "substantial evidence" of its efficacy. The panel voted "Yes" by a 13-to-4 margin.

The FDA does not have to follow the panel's recommendation. For instance, a panel voted that Vioxx should return to the market; it has not. The changed question and the fact that the FDA convened a panel on cell therapy, not cancer treatment, could also have an effect. (Whole immune-system cells are removed from the body, treated and replaced in Provenge treatment.)

Dendreon conducted two clinical trials of Provenge in men whose prostate cancer had spread to other parts of the body and was not responding to hormone therapy. Only Taxotere, from Sanofi-Aventis (nyse: SNY - news - people ), has been shown to improve survival in these men.

Both trials were designed to show that Provenge slowed the cancer's spread. Both failed. But the second, a 127-patient study, showed that the drug extended survival. The benefit was statistically significant, but the fact that the trial wasn't designed specifically to show it and the small size of the study (Taxotere was tested in 1,000 men) increase the risk that the result is a false positive.

A 500-patient study of the drug to prove it extends life is still going on and not due to finish until 2010. For the FDA, there is always the worry of a repeat of AstraZeneca's (nyse: AZN - news - people ) cancer pill Iressa: The drug was approved on early data but then pulled after a bigger trial failed to confirm it helped patients.

In the past, FDA advisory panels and the agency itself have shot down drugs that failed to meet their primary goals. Two years ago, a panel rejected Xinlay, a prostate cancer drug from Abbott Laboratories (nyse: ABT - news - people ), because the only evidence for its effectiveness came from after-the-fact analyses of two clinical trials. Genasense, a melanoma drug, was rejected by a panel in 2004 after its maker, Genta (nasdaq: GNTA - news - people ), argued that although the drug failed to improve survival, it shrank tumors.

Eric Whitman, director of the melanoma center of Mountainside Hospital in Montclair, N.J., remembers speaking at a disastrous panel for Maxim Pharmaceuticals regarding a melanoma drug for which he conducted the main clinical trials. Before the panel decision came in, he said he would be "shocked" if the FDA approved Provenge. He said the results "seem to be totally against the criteria the FDA uses."

Like the courts, the FDA is run partly by precedent. Allowing one drug through on a lighter standard will at the least cause more biotech companies to push forward with applications following failed trials.

Still, the FDA is under political pressure from two directions. The first, the increased push for drug safety, calls for an ever-increasing mountain of data before a new medicine is approved. Congressional hearings are hammering at whether the FDA does enough to keep medicines safe. New safety labels for anemia drugs from Amgen (nasdaq: AMGN - news - people ) and Johnson & Johnson (nyse: JNJ - news - people ) and most sleeping pills may be partly a result of this climate.

But the FDA also has always been under pressure to approve cancer drugs quickly. Provenge appears safe, with its main side effects being fever and chills. There may also be a slight risk of stroke. If a safe cancer drug probably works, should the FDA risk approving it?

All of biotech will be waiting for the answer.

Summary: Approving the cancer treatment would be a big change for the agency.  That doesn't mean it won't happen.


FALSE FRENZY It is still too early to tell what celebs will wear to the Academy Awards, but that hasn't stopped the fashion rumor mill from churning overtime. Reports of a Giorgio Armani frenzy are greatly exaggerated, say his reps. Scores of actresses have not requested dark suits and tuxedos, neither has the Italian designer supplied numerous "second dresses" (after the first ones were deemed inappropriate for wartime). In truth, the number of requests for outfits remains "about the same" as usual, the company said yesterday. Of course Armani, an Oscars favorite for his tasteful, modern outfits, is likely to dress at least a few actresses for this year's low-key celebration. As for those rumors of a French fashion boycott, a Chanel spokeswoman says the house has not been affected. "People are still loving Chanel," she insisted. Especially Nicole Kidman, who we've heard may wear one of their dresses. SUPPORT SYSTEM Nursing bras aren't always the most attractive undergarments, so new moms will cheer for Wacoal's first entry into the maternity market. The company's seamless wonder is made of soft, quick-drying fabric and fitted with a special strap for comfortable support. And since no mom ever has two hands free, a single hook makes easy work of detaching the cups discreetly. The shrink-proof bras are made of Supplex nylon and Lycra and come in sizes from 34C to 44DDD. Available in May at the Town Shop, 2267 Broadway, and Macy's Herald Square, 151 W. 34th St. OM OUTFITS Juicy Couture, the uber-popular makers of comfy and trendy loungewear, has launched a yoga line called Down Dog Couture. And as usual, Juicy keeps it trendy without sacrificing comfort - or the flexibility needed to pull off a plow pose. Tanks have a built-in bra, and everything's made of French terry cloth that's 5% spandex, so it hugs curves while allowing movement. There are drawstring, pintuck pants, snug Capris, shorts, tube tops, boat-neck raglans and hoodies in sky blue, light green, pink and oatmeal. They may not bring you instant serenity, but they'll sure help you look good trying. $40-$100 at Barneys New York, 660 Madison Ave., and Bergdorf Goodman, 754 Fifth Ave. HERBAL REMEDIES Now that the East Village's latest organic offering, Miss Lou's Herbs and Tings, has sprung up on E. Ninth St., celebrities and models are taking notice. Former model Jacqueline Gaussen (r.) has collected her favorite all-natural skin-care products from around the world for her boutique, which carries hard-to-find, all-natural products. "A lot of people say their store is natural and organic and they're not," says Gaussen. "They'll have all these other things and then two products that are actually natural. I wanted things that were 100%.

" The lines she carries include Jurlique, Astara, Lorenzo Villoresi Candles and Korres, which Britney Spears picked up recently at the store. Gaussen also will mix up herbal tea remedies from more than 120 varieties she scoops from jars. It could shake those winter blahs for good. At 436 E. Ninth St.; (212) 260-4085. PORTABLE PREDICTOR One easy ovulation option for couples trying to conceive is a saliva tester. The "Ovulation Scope" by Quest Products is a battery-operated kit that takes four steps and will predict where your are in your cycle in less than 10 minutes. Women can carry the small microscope - which picks up a unique saliva pattern before and during ovulation - anywhere and use it anytime. Available for $26.

99 at Kmart now and Target stores next month. Visit www.

Summary:
IN THE KNOW   BY AMY DILUNA

   FALSE FRENZY
   It is still too early to tell what celebs will wear to the Academy Awards, but that hasn't stopped the fashion rumor mill from churning overtime.
   Reports of a Giorgio Armani frenzy are greatly exaggerated, say his reps. Scores of actresses have not requested dark suits and tuxedos, neither has the Italian designer supplied numerous "second dresses" (after the first ones were deemed inappropriate for wartime). In


Howard Goodall in his west London studio. Photograph: Sarah Lee

Being a chorister at a school in Oxford from the age of six and a half. I thought all small boys must be singing Palestrina every day.

What was your big breakthrough?

Writing a musical based on John Masefield's The Midnight Folk for 120 11-year-olds to perform when I was 15. From then on, I was hooked.

Do you see any distinction between high and low art?

No. I grew up loving both classical and popular music - I've never seen the need to differentiate. I don't wake up and think: "Today I'm going to write something classical." I just write music.

Do you suffer for your art?

No. Getting a bad review isn't suffering. Suffering is being beaten up by the security police in apartheid South Africa, as happened to my friend, the composer Eugene Skeef.

What is your proudest achievement?

Adapting A Winter's Tale as a musical for young people at the Sage Gateshead in 2005. It's a manifesto of what I feel about the world: that it is a place in which young people make things better.

What advice would you give a young composer?

Don't be precious or diva-like; say yes to everything; be patient. After I left university, it was eight years before I was making a living from composing.

What one song would feature on the soundtrack to your life?

The Beatles' We Can Work It Out. I'm very proud of being British, and its sense of compromise and diplomacy makes it feels like a very British song.

What work of art would you most like to own?

Joshua Reynolds's Mrs Abington as 'Miss Prue'. The sitter is looking straight out at the viewer; her expression haunts me.

What's the best advice anyone ever gave you?

The late conductor Richard Hickox once went through a score I'd written and said: "You can still get all these effects, but make it simpler." It reminded me to stop trying to be clever.

What cultural tip would you give to a tourist about Britain's arts scene?

Appreciate that it's incredibly youth-driven. People over a certain age don't always think that's a good thing, but I love our anarchic, vibrant youth culture.

What's the biggest myth about composing?

That all composers suffer in a garret. Most, with the possible exception of Berlioz, were perfectly comfortable, middle-class craftsmen, working to commission - and that still holds true.

Is there anything about your career you regret?

When I was younger, I was impatient, impetuous and arrogant, which affected the way I wrote. I had too much swagger. Some people would say I still do.

Career: Has written themes for TV and films, including Blackadder and The Vicar of Dibley, plus musicals and choral works. Broadcasts for the BBC and Classic FM. Is supporting Sing Up! (singup.org), a national programme that promotes kids singing in schools.

High point: "Going on Desert Island Discs. It felt a bit like getting a knighthood."

Low point: "Getting bad reviews for my second musical, Girlfriends, in 1986."

Summary: 'When I was younger, I was impetuous and arrogant. I had too much swagger'


Rising up through the middle of Fiona Banner's two-storey studio is the upturned wing of a Tornado fighter plane. From the first floor, you can see its tip, slicing ominously through the floorboards like an oversized shark fin. If you lean in close, you can make out hundreds of words etched like hieroglyphics into the wing's smooth metal: "arse", "shadow", "light behind stark against dark skin".

This is Tornado Nude, a work Banner made four years ago: a female life model stood naked in front of her while she painted a description on to the wing of a decommissioned jet. "The Tornado," Banner tells me as she shows me around this high-ceilinged east London space, in which her many works are propped against walls and arranged neatly on tables (a plant sits on a sun-terrace in an old aircraft propeller), "is a really, really important and very vicious airplane. And then I engraved this very delicate and traditional life drawing on to it, in words, and now that's become part of it. It's become this totem, this sculpture – possibly an object you might even worship."

Object of veneration or not, Tornado Nude embodies the preoccupations for which Banner is best known: sex, nudity and war. She has, variously, created a catalogue of every fighter plane currently in use by the British military; published a 1,000-page book containing frame-by-frame descriptions of Vietnam war movies (she calls these "wordscapes" or "still films"); and written a "striptease in words" of the actor Samantha Morton's naked body. In 2002, Banner was nominated for the Turner prize. Her exhibition for the nominees' show included Arsewoman in Wonderland, a no-holds-barred description in words of a porn film of the same name, screenprinted in pink ink on a white billboard and duly displayed at Tate Britain. There was a predictable flurry of outrage; the then culture minister Kim Howells, commenting on the exhibition as a whole, scrawled "conceptual bullshit" across a Tate comment card and pinned it to the visitors' wall.

Undeterred, Banner is returning to Tate Britain next week, where she will unveil a new work commissioned for the museum's two central neoclassical Duveen galleries. Previous artists who have stepped up to this challenge include Martin Creed, who in 2008 sent a series of runners sprinting through the crowds at 30-second intervals; and Anya Gallaccio, who in 2002 filled one gallery with oak trees, and the other with a carpet of sugar. Banner is not allowed to tell me what she'll be doing – all will be revealed next Monday – and can only point to her official statement, that she is looking forward to "working with the phallic pillars of this extraordinary grandiose space". But she can tell me what she won't be doing, which is "exhibit[ing] an entire Westland Lynx helicopter that saw service in the Falkands war", as her Wikipedia entry erroneously had it (it has since been corrected). "That's so weird!" she says in a stage whisper, blue eyes widening. "That's not my plan – though I did recently try to buy a Westland Lynx helicopter. But I bought a Tornado instead."

In person, Banner is not at all what you might expect of a sometime porn consumer, war-film aficionado and collector of military aircraft: dressed all in blue – blue shirt, blue jeans, blue jacket – she is wiry and casually elegant, with a direct, easy charm. Her work, too, is quieter, more delicate, intimate and many-layered, than its headline-grabbing subject matter might suggest.

On the ground floor of her studio, Banner shows me All the World's Fighter Planes, a work that was 10 years in the making, and which she completed last year. It's a glass case filled with pictures of aircraft cut haphazardly from newspapers, each one meticulously labelled like an animal specimen: Hawk, Harrier, Bear, Chinook. "I started making this years ago," she says. "I'd been cutting out pictures of fighter planes from newspapers for a while, and realised I'd started a collection. I became strangely excited by the idea that they all had these names from nature. On one level I find these planes incredibly beautiful, but on another level I'm horrified by them."

The ungainly Chinook (in nature, either a kind of wind or a Native American people) is a particular favourite. Banner has spent the last few months at airshows at RAF Odiham in Hampshire, filming pilots perform an unlikely "Chinook ballet" for a new work. "The Chinook is really bizarre," she says. "It's so inelegant, it looks like it shouldn't be able to fly. In the ballet, they've given the Chinooks certain movements – a turn, a sidestep, a double-twist. It's the most extraordinary thing."

From Rilke to Top Gun

Banner's fascination with aircraft may, she says, springs from the long walks she took as a child in the Welsh countryside with her father (she was born in Merseyside in 1966, later moving to London to study at Kingston University and Goldsmiths). "It was completely sublime and pastoral and beautiful," she says. "And then something like a Tornado would come out of nowhere, and the sound would be absolutely phenomenal. We'd be completely astounded, but somehow the beauty of the moment would surpass even the loveliness of where we were and what we were doing."

For one new work, called Tornado, Banner is taking this interest in aircraft even further: she is smelting down her newly acquired Tornado plane into aluminium ingots, and turning those into a huge bell that she plans to display later this summer, in Newcastle. She shows me her carefully shaded drawings for the bell, pinned to a wall. "From the outside," she says, "a bell is a clear object of communication. But in this case, coming from an aeroplane, it has quite a complex DNA."

Banner says that her work progresses more by accident than by design, although she clearly works hard, spending long days alone in her studio with her dog, Olive (a mongrel or "Hackney orgy dog" who recently took a tumble through the hole in the floorboards around Tornado Nude). She never made a conscious decision to be an artist; as a teenager, she read Robert Lowell, Emily Dickinson and Rilke, and dreamed of being a poet or a novelist. At art college, her fascination with words resurfaced, and she found herself writing the first of her wordscape descriptions, of the film Top Gun. "I struggled away with making pictures for years and years," Banner says, "and I found it incredibly complicated. The writing just started to come to the fore as a way through it." She remains obsessed with books – she had her own ISBN code tattooed on to her lower back last year, and runs a publishing imprint, Vanity Press – but her interest is more formal than literary. "I'm as interested in the object of a book as much as the content," she says.

Banner's preoccupation with traditionally masculine subject matter – war films, flying machines, the female nude – raises an obvious question: does she consider herself a feminist? "No," she replies, quickly and emphatically. "No. It's not that I'm radically unfeminist or anything" – she gives an awkward laugh – "it's because I think feminism belonged to a particular point and time. And I can't afford to be part of any 'ism' as an artist. That sounds lofty and possibly a bit pompous, but I just don't impose my political agenda on my work. I'm incredibly lucky to be at this point in history, where female artists are given space and visibility."

What about when that visibility leads to controversy, as happened with Arsewoman in Wonderland? Banner rolls her eyes. "That was one piece! And they're still calling me 'the porn artist'! I just think that sort of kneejerk, oo-er missus reaction is not helpful, really. Because art is layered and complex and requires reflection. And because I never set out to be controversial. On the whole, I actually make very quiet work."

She says she is not afraid of failure; in fact it is something she expects, even embraces. "I find art incredibly difficult," she says. "Most of the things that happen in here, in this studio, they're an investigation. An experiment. I'm with [Samuel] Beckett: 'Fail again. Fail better.'" And when success, in the form of a high-profile commission such as the Duveens, comes her way – what does that mean? She hesitates. "I want to say that it doesn't mean anything. It depends on whether what you do with it will still mean something to you in years to come. And whether it will still mean something to the people that come and see it."

Summary: She has filmed a helicopter ballet, melted a jet – and caused a storm by transcribing a porn epic. Will Fiona Banner's latest work go further? The artist talks to Laura Barnett


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Summary: Browse stories from Adam Shaw on FoxNews.com


Get ready for the biggest real estate boom in a decade. Only this time, it’s digital real estate in trendy new Internet neighborhoods, with names such as .art, .book, and .singles.

The Internet — until now largely confined to just a few domain names, most notably .com — will soon have hundreds of distinct new addresses that will more sharply define the websites in those neighborhoods, making it easier for Internet users to find exactly what they’re looking for.

The first of the new domains in the Latin alphabet will debut Wednesday, and include .bike, .clothing, .singles, and .plumbing.

“It introduces creativity back into the domain space,” said James Cole, a spokesman for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN.

With nearly every popular and easy-to-remember name taken in existing domains, such as .com and .org., the global organization, which manages Internet addresses, is authorizing so-called “generic top-level domain names,” or gTLDs, to allow businesses and individuals to create millions of memorable online addresses, such as thebible.book, picasso.art, or redsox.boston.

“These names are all very specific, and that was the point,” said Mason Cole, a spokesman for a Bellevue, Wash., company that has spent nearly $57 million applying for the rights to some 307 new domains. “They’re far more specific and relevant than the existing namespace.”

Many of the new names indicate the kind of content browsers would expect to find there, such as .art or .book. Some cover diverse interests with a simple name: .club, for example, could be for nightclubs and their night-owl patrons, or for fan clubs.

“It’s generic, but it means something,” said Colin Campbell, a Florida businessman who is applying for the rights to the .club domain. “It helps with the search itself. If you were actually trying to join a Billy Joel fan club . . . that might direct you to billyjoel.club.”

Campbell hopes to sell .club addresses to social groups around the world for around $20 each.

And for the first time, ICANN is authorizing domain names in alphabets other than the Latin letters used in most Western languages. It has already approved four domains, for example, in Arabic, Chinese, and Cyrillic.

But some critics warn that in a climate where cybercriminals are stealing the private data of millions of consumers, the proliferation of new domains could introduce a whole new arena for fraud.

Jon Leibowitz, a former Federal Trade Commission chairman, said online criminals could use the new domains to create countless fake websites designed to simulate the sites of legitimate businesses.

ICANN has set up safeguards to prevent the fraudulent use of trademarks in the new domains, but Leibowitz worried these protections are inadequate.

For instance, a crook could be prevented from setting up a site called bestbuy.mobile, because Best Buy is a trademark of the well-known electronics retailer. But changing the name to, say, bestbuyz.mobile might pass muster with ICANN’s trademark monitoring system.

“It could create enormous amounts of consumer confusion and lots of opportunities for fraud,” said Leibowitz, now an attorney at Davis Polk & Wardwell in Washington.

Others, though, said the new domains will make the Internet safer.

For example, many popular brands have applied for domains in their own names, which will assure consumers they have arrived at the authentic site of those companies. The German carmaker BMW, for example, has applied for .bmw, and Ford Motor Co. for .ford.

Kevin Murphy, publisher of DomainIncite, an online publication that tracks the industry, said the new domains, “in particular dot-brands, have the potential to eventually reduce fraud on the Internet,” because an Internet searcher who ends up at, say, mustang.ford can be certain he’s at the correct site.

Domain names were created because people hate to memorize numbers. Every computer on the Internet has an address that’s basically a collection of digits. The domain name system is a network of computers that links each numerical address to a memorable name, like bostonglobe.com.

The existing top-level domain names effectively divide the Internet into very general digital neighborhoods, with .com and .net for businesses and general-purpose users, .org for nonprofits, and .gov for government agencies.

There are also unique domains for virtually every nation — .uk for British Net addresses and .cn for China.

About 250 million Internet addresses have been registered, including well over 100 million that end in .com. As a result, nearly every memorable or meaningful .com name has been taken.

In 2012, ICANN began accepting applications from businesses and other organizations that wanted to create new and specialized domains — .cars for automobile buffs, .save for bargain-hunters, .health for fitness fans.

Interested parties had to put up a hefty $185,000 in application fees, and some 1,900 organizations have applied so far. ICANN said it expects to approve about 1,400 of the applications.

Among them: the Vatican, which has applied for .catholic domains in the Latin, Chinese, Arabic, and Cyrillic alphabets.

Boston Globe Media Partners, with the blessing of the Boston city government, has applied for the right to operate the .boston domain.

Jeff Moriarty, the Globe’s vice president for digital products, said the .boston domain is “a way to help organize the local Internet,” by letting businesses and individuals establish a distinctly Bostonian online presence. “We think people have an affinity toward the city of Boston and would want to have domains on it,” said Moriarty, who foresees retailers, restaurants, and other locally based businesses scrambling to buy .boston addresses.

Many other applicants are investors simply looking to rent or sell valuable virtual real estate.

“As a domain investor I’m essentially speculating, so I hope to resell them for profit,” said Braden Pollock, owner of Legal Brand Marketing LLC in Los Angeles.

Pollock has preregistered two Web addresses on domains he expects to be approved soon: dui.lawyer and dui.attorney — addresses that might appeal to someone in need of legal advice.

He said creating Internet domains specifically for lawyers will make it easier for attorneys and clients to find each other.

“This will help bring structure back to the Internet,” said Pollock.

Elliot Silver, president of Top Notch Domains LLC in Wellesley, a company that buys and sells Internet addresses, argued the new domains will be slow to catch on with most Internet users, who have become conditioned to searching the .com galaxy.

“I prefer to own great assets on .com. People know .com,” Silver said.

Moreover, in an era when a search engine such as Google can produce a pretty good list for browsers within seconds, does the back end of a Web address matter all that much?

A Bostonian looking for a good Chinese meal probably won’t type chinesefood.boston into a browser; he’ll just ask Google for a list of the nearest Chinese restaurants, regardless of their Internet addresses.

But the organization going through all the trouble of introducing hundreds of new domains has no doubt they will not only be more convenient, but popular.

“We want consumers to have a larger bevy of options,” said ICANN’s Cole.

“People are going to adapt to it, and we think they’re going to respond to it pretty well.”

Summary: Get ready for the biggest real estate boom in a decade. Only this time, it’s digital real estate located in trendy new Internet neighborhoods with names such as  .art,  .book and .singles. Largely confined to just a few popular domain names, particularly .com, the Internet will soon have hundreds of distinct new addresses that will more sharply define the web sites in those neighborhoods, making it easier for Internet users to find  what they’re looking for. The first of the new domains in the Latin alphabet debuts Wednesday, and include .bike, .clothing, .singles.  and .plumbing. “These names are all very specific, and that was the point,” said Mason Cole, a spokeswoman for a Bellevue, Wash., company that has applied for some 307 new domains.


The polar vortex is back, and with it come blizzard conditions, ice on the roads and generally foul weather for driving.

It's times like this that your hour-long commute on the interstate can turn into an unexpected adventure, and a ski trip into the mountains can leave you stuck in a snowy ditch miles from help.

In most cases you can expect to be there for no more than a few hours, says Tony Nester, founder of the Ancient Pathways survival school in Flagstaff, Ariz., and author of the e-book A Vehicle Survival Kit You Can Live With.

“Statistically, you're more likely to encounter small scale episodes where there's a blizzard, you spin off the road and you’re there for maybe a day or overnight,” he said. (Nester is also an EMT.)

But in freezing temperatures even a few hours can lead to life-threatening hypothermia if you’re not prepared. "If you make a mistake out in the wild, out in the elements, in the summertime you might have a cool story to tell,” said Nester. “If you make that mistake in winter you might not have a story at all—or you might have one minus a few fingers or toes. There’s not whole lot of forgiveness in the winter."

And at the very least: "It's just not fun being stuck in your vehicle for a couple hours or overnight.”

The key to dealing with these scenarios, he says, is to be prepared before you leave your house. "Just a few minutes in your driveway can prevent hours or potentially a night of misery on the road." Check the pressure in your tires, he says, and observe the ‘quarter tank is empty’ rule -- meaning you should treat a quarter tank of gas as if it were an empty tank.

Make sure you have everything you need to change a tire -- a full-size spare, a can of Fix-a-Flat, an air compressor -- as well as a cell phone charger and a wool hat and insulated gloves.

And once you’re on the road, says Nester, be aware of what he calls 'shortcut syndrome': “It’s when you say, ‘I’m just going to take a shortcut. I’ll take some back roads or a secondary highway and it’ll be faster.’ Maybe that road’s even worse than the main road because it's not being salted and plowed, and it’s more likely you’ll get stuck out there.”

But even if you take every precaution, sometimes the weather can roll in more suddenly than you anticipated—and that’s where the next level of preparedness comes into play.

“Your vehicle should be looked upon as a rolling survival kit,” says Nester. “It’s a primary shelter system. You can sleep in there, you can melt slow on your engine block and hopefully you’ve got it loaded up with some rations you don’t have to cook”—as well as water and other supplies.

If you get stuck, Nester advises running the engine for 20 minutes every hour for heat and cracking the window to prevent carbon monoxide poisoning. “Periodically check the exhaust pipe to make sure it is not blocked by snow or ice,” he advised in a recent article.

In addition to the items above, Nester listed several more essentials to stash in your car for the winter. “Put them in a duffel bag and throw it in your trunk,” he says.

Whether you're just driving half an hour to work or road-tripping to the ski mountain, you should dress as if you'll be spending time outside -- or have the right clothes with you. "If I get stuck in the road, at least I have all this stuff,” says Nester. “A layering system is key. People who go cross-country skiing have it down to a science, but the key is you want to avoid having [your clothes] be 100-percent cotton.” Besides your T-shirt and sweatshirt that you may be wearing, he says “Throw in some quality wool pants, a wool sweater. Wool retains its insulation even when it’s wet." Nester also recommends carrying a winter coat, Sorel Pac boots, wool mittens and socks, polypro long underwear and sunglasses.

Wrapping up to conserve body heat can save your life: "If you're stuck in your vehicle and the heat's not working, [a sleeping bag] will allow you to take care of that critical priority of staying warm and fending off hypothermia," says Nester. “You can get ones these days that scrunch down to the size of a loaf of bread or smaller for $50 to $100.” He suggests taking the sleeping bag you use for camping and “throw[ing] it in your vehicle from October till May.” Marmot’s Trestles 15 (left) is an affordable cold-weather bag that insulates down to 15 degrees ($109-$119; marmot.com). Cheaper options include REI's Polar Pod (middle), rated to 31 degrees ($65-$80; rei.com), and the Siesta +25 (right), rated to 25 degrees ($50; rei.com). And if you don't have a sleeping bag, a wool blanket is better than nothing.

That high-output tactical flashlight may be useful in a pinch, but its batteries won't last long. Because you don't know how long you'll be stranded -- and might want to use your hands -- Nester suggests throwing an LED headlamp into your emergency kit. "LED ones will last a couple days," he says. "I go a step further and add lithium batteries -- they cost a little more but they're definitely worth it." Look for a headlamp with a strobe feature for signaling, he says. Black Diamond's new Spot headlamp lasts up to 200 hours on its lowest setting, includes a strobe feature and a red LED to preserve night vision ($40; blackdiamondequipment.com). Last year's model is still available for cheaper ($28), and you can also find plenty of budget options at your nearest Walmart or outdoor outfitter.

Glow sticks be a great passive lighting device for your vehicle's interior, a distress signal and also increase visibility "if you're changing a tire on a poorly lit section of highway," says Nester. He hastens to add that glow sticks typically have a shelf life of two years, so be sure to check expiration dates once a year. And because they're so cheap -- industrial grade Cyalume sticks sell at $9 for a pack of 10 (Amazon.com) -- you have no excuse not to have fresh ones at the ready.

A first aid kit is essential any time of year, but in bad weather, especially, the stakes are higher. "You're your own first responder," says Nester. He recommends Adventure Medical Kits (adventuremedicalkits.com) because they are designed for remote medical needs. "These are superior to the average Red Cross kit," he says. Compact and well organized with instructions for treatment, AMK's kits range from $12 for 1-2 person kits, to $60 Weekender kits for group adventure, up to professional medic-level kits.

Getting stranded in the snow without a way to dig your car out is not a pleasant situation to be in. “I have a Lifeline shovel, which is a collapsible telescoping shovel made from aircraft aluminum,” says Nester. Popular among snowboarders who ride in avalanche country, these lightweight shovels can help you get out of a ditch. $19; Amazon.

You can use carpet strips 12 inches wide and 4 feet long for traction if you get stuck in the snow, says Nester. "I find they work better than spreading cat litter," he says, referring to a common trick for getting unstuck. "[These are] what’s used in the Jeep community for when they go off-roading and get their wheel or axle stuck in the mud."

Leatherman’s top-selling multitool can help you MacGyver your way out of any number of situations. “For a vehicle they’re outstanding,” says Nester: "A snowmobile, an ATV -- anything with a lot of screws and wires where you need to make small-scale repairs and you have to improvise.” $60; Amazon.

For the complete list of items in the Winter Survival Kit for Your Car, go to TheActiveTimes.com.

More Stories from The Active Times: -- 32 Tropical Island Getaways -- 13 Survival Myths That Kill You -- The 50 Best Ski Resorts in North America -- Spotlight Slope of The Week: Snowbird, Utah

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Summary:
By Mark Lebetkin
TheActiveTimes.com
The polar vortex is back, and with it come blizzard conditions, ice on the roads and generally foul weather for dr...