Cubic Routes

Ordinary cars are for ordinary road trips. Any four wheels can get you to the same-old, same-old places. The cube ® demands more imaginative destinations. Where to point your cube ® the next time you’re itching for some liberating time on wide-open highways? Moving across North America from east to west, here’s our guide to seven spots that are genuinely cube ®-worthy, plus a trio of global treks for the truly adventurous.

New York City
Where better (outside of France) to learn everything there is to know about the Cubist art movement than Manhattan’s Museum of Modern Art? If you drop by on November 22, world expert Christina Hunter is presenting “Cubism and Twentieth-Century Art.” Take her outside, show her your curbside cube ® and ask her the one vital question: Is it art? (You know it is). While you’re at MOMA, check out Cubist masterpieces by Picasso, Georges Braque and Juan Gris. But if you want to see Braque’s 1913 magnum opus “Woman With A Guitar,” you and your cube ® will have to hop a freighter and head for Paris, where it’s hanging at the Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris.

Knoxville, Tennessee
Even if you missed the 1982 Knoxville World’s Fair, you can still drop by and visit the World’s Largest Rubik’s Cube. Why was it a centerpiece of the 1982 fair? It was a gift from the Hungarian government. Why such a wildly impractical gift? Hey, everybody knows the Rubik’s Cube was invented by Hungarian architecture professor Ernö Rubik. He came up with the handheld version in 1974. Apparently, it took eight years to build the giant one. Oh, and the big one, conveniently located just steps from the Holiday Inn (‘cause you’re surely gonna want to lay down after so invigorating an experience) is fully motorized. There’s no indication, though, if the oversized toy has ever solved itself.

Ottawa
In Ottawa’s west end, at 1285 Wellington Street West, you’ll find the über-cool Cube Gallery, founded by local artist and curator Don Monet. The exhibits change every month, but there’s one cube ®-friendly element that’s always on display: the walls in the main salon are painted a custom colour that resembles raw canvas. Available from Colorlux, it’s actually called ‘cube.” Which means you could, if you wanted to, actually paint your cube ® cube. Maybe better, though, to start with your living room.

Kitchener
How do you find Kitchener’s city centre? Just head for The Cube, an enormous metal box positioned atop Kitchener City Hall. Digital media, art and videos relating to local events and culture are displayed on all four sides, and you can see it from miles away. The show starts daily at dusk and continues to 11pm. By the way, earlier this year university student Kristina Foster and high school student James Sinanan were the winners of the inaugural Student Video Competition for The Cube.

Toronto
In 2009, Cube shops, the art gallery / design store chain that has the Asian and European cognoscenti abuzz, finally landed in Canada, in the heart of Toronto’s Kensington Market at 11 Baldwin Street. The focus is on doodads and googaws from Japan, ranging from funky art pieces to hip kitchen accessories.

Freeport, Texas
Ever heard of cubera? It’s a kind of fish – snapper, to be precise. You can find them all over the Caribbean and along the coast of South America. But the biggest single cubera on record weighed in at 151 pounds (that’s around 68 kilos) and was caught by David Fotorny off the coast of Freeport on June 23, 1984. Not sure if cubera is edible. Best way to find out is, while you’re in Freeport, drop into one of the coastal fish shacks and order one up. Impress the locals by using cubera’s Latin name: lutjanus cyanopterus.

Vancouver
Outside of Seattle, Vancouver surely has more coffee shops per square metre than any other place on earth. But in all of Vancouver there’s only one Coffee Cube. You’ll find it at 3500 West 41st Avenue.

And if you want to venture even further afield, figure out how to transport your cube ® to China and check out…

Beijing
For the 2008 Summer Olympics, the National Aquatics Center was built alongside the Beijing National Stadium and immediately earned the nickname Water Cube. It took five years to build. After the Olympics, a massive renovation transformed half of the Water Cube into a water park. Mathematical purists will tell you that, name notwithstanding, it’s not actually a cube. It’s a cuboid (a rectangular box.) But, who cares, as long as there’s a slide.

Since you’re already wheels-down in China, cross Asia and Europe, ferry across the English Channel and head to the U.K.’s southwestern tip, where you’ll find…

Cubert
When you get to Newquay, slow down, you’ve got just three uphill miles to go to the village of Cubert. Sorry to disappoint, but this quaint little dot on the Cornwall map was not named for the cloned Futurama character Cubert Farnsworth. It was actually called St. Cubert (a Welsh missionary) until the 1600s, when the “St.” was mysteriously jettisoned. Sneeze and you might miss Cubert, but there is a beach (at least right after low tide). Sadly, though, the waters are cubera-free.

The South Pole
That’s where you’ll find the world’s largest ice cube. And, no, it isn’t sitting there waiting for the world’s biggest tumbler of scotch. It’s actually a subterranean telescope dubbed the IceCube. To quote directly from “Ice Stories: Dispatches from Polar Scientists” (just in case your copy hasn’t arrived in your in-box yet), it “consists of an array of ultrasensitive light detectors buried roughly a mile deep into the Antarctic ice sheet. To build it, researchers drill into the ice sheet with a hot water drill, then sink a vertical string of light detectors—think of an oversized string of Christmas lights—into the water-filled hole before it freezes over again.” So what’s it for? Again, we quote, “it is designed to detect high-energy neutrinos, particles created by the most violent events in the universe: black holes, gamma ray bursts, and supernovas.” Now that’s cool.

And if none of our cube ®-friendly suggestions ignites your wanderlust, there’s always Cuba.