General Stories

Destination. Culture.

Have you ever gone out early in the morning with your camera and taken pictures of things you never noticed before and thought "maybe I'm the only one who's ever noticed this". Perhaps it's just a fire hydrant casting a shadow, or a pink bicycle against black asphalt… the things you see every day but never noticed until today. People call it stopping to smell the roses.

Slow down and look around. `Round Magazine looks around the corners that are often passed by, sometimes finding shady characters and other times glorious hidden gardens.

Certain places have a sense of place and some don't. It's that essential character that puts the there in there, with apologies to Gertrude Stein. We love places like that because so many of us live in placeless places. We embrace Key West and Waikiki because the names hold a certain magic and, for a while, we feel more real. Outsiders are suddenly insiders and, if we're lucky, the sense of place returns home with us.

Not everyone returns home. Places with a strong sense of place not only attract tourists, their siren song pulls in artists and musicians, photographers and models, writers, architects and designers. The influx of creative thinkers was the actual salvation of South Beach. However, some serious artists learn that being too close to the fire might get you burned. Being labeled a "Hawaiian artist" can be a curse if you're not painting beach scenes. We've made it our mission to seek out genuine creativity in popular destinations and bring it to the front. If you want to know why places have a sense of place, you need to get `Round.