Tommy Edison, the self-described “Blind Film Critic” loves to travel. Airports, on the other hand, make him crazy. But that hasn’t stopped Edison, who has been blind since birth, due to an underdeveloped optic nerve, from experiencing earth’s greatest places and pleasures.
The Connecticut-born humorist, who has more than a quarter of a million followers on his YouTube channel, is often on the road for months at a time attending film festivals and entertaining audiences with his funny, poignant, and insightful spin on living in a world he cannot see.
It took awhile for Edison to warm up to the idea of traveling. As a kid, he spent most vacations driving with his family from Connecticut to the beaches of Long Island’s east end, a wide-open space where he could safely play in the waves and run on the soft sand beaches. Unlike most travelers, “sightseeing” was a concept Edison couldn’t understand.
“My dad always wanted to do a trip to Ireland with me because he wanted to go ‘see’ things,” says Edison. “I told him I didn’t think it would be too much fun to just go look at stuff. But if I were to go to Ireland on my own today, I’d sit in a pub and hear peoples’ stories. That’s the fun of traveling to me,” he says.
It goes without saying that traveling blind has its challenges. For example, navigating the airport can be harrowing for anyone, but imagine doing it with your eyes closed. Edison hates dealing with the hassle of security. “When I go to an airport alone, here’s what happens,” he says. “I walk in and try to listen for where the activity is. If it’s a busy airport, people give me a hand to get through security. I won’t go through the scanner. There are no naked pictures of me that exist and I don’t want the federal government to have the first one.”
On the flipside, however he also has come to rely on the generosity of strangers who help him along the way—whether that takes the form of a guiding hand or a drink on the house.
“Sometimes the blind thing has its perks,” says Edison. “I was on a flight from Toronto to New York and the flight attendants didn’t make me pay for a thing! They were like, ‘Can I buy you anything?’ I said, ‘Sure, I’ll have a beer.’ That beer was literally bottomless. I was catching a buzz.”
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Though Edison is best known as a film critic, he enjoys spiraling off into rich territories, describing the best and worst aspects of being blind. Over a span of six months in 2015, Edison traveled throughout Australia, Asia, Europe, and North America. Navigating the globe while relying on his other keen senses in lieu of visual cues can be an experience that ranges from transcendental to terrifying, but Edison takes it all in stride.
One of the most sensual travel experiences he had was on a trip to Australia. “When I landed in Melbourne, I walked out of the airport and went ‘Oh my God!’ My eyes and ears blew my mind,” he says. “There were birds chirping everywhere. The smell was a different kind of fragrance I had ever experienced before. It was the eucalyptus. It was lovely and beautiful.”
Illustration by Alby Letoy who interpreted Tommy Edison’s perspective on travel for TravelSupermarket.com.
That memory sits in stark contrast to his experience trying to navigate Hong Kong. “I went to Hong Kong to film a reality show called ‘Could I Live There?’ No. I couldn’t live there. Hong Kong was really scary for me,” he says. “It’s a mountain on an island and it’s very hilly and there are steps everywhere. There are no hand rails and, all of the sudden, down you go.”
Still, while there he discovered a surprising taste for foods typically outside of his usual culinary preferences. “I’m not a terribly experimental person when it comes to food, but I had duck in Hong Kong. It was a little greasy, but hell, it was great.” One thing Edison says he would not eat in Hong Kong is durian, that spikey-shelled fruit that, he says, smells like dirty baby diapers. “It’s pretty nasty,” he laughs. “It takes over your taste buds. I also don’t eat noodles, anything from a pig, or cheese of any kind, unless it’s on a pizza.”
Edison is clearly an adventure seeker, but he admits that he has his limits. “I had an opportunity to go on safari in Africa for three weeks and I turned it down,” Edison says. “I was a little freaked out by it, actually. You have to sleep in tents and hear lions and hyenas at night. I was like, ‘Whoa, man.’ I probably should have gone, but if I’m in a tent, anything can happen. Mr. Elephant could come along and, boom, it’s over.”
He often uses AirBnB, which he loves. But he says it’s “ probably not the best idea to use them without a mobility instructor.” Mobility instructors are people who teach a blind person how to get around a particular neighborhood. “One might have showed me the tree on 19th Street in Santa Monica so I wouldn’t have hit it,” he jokes. “But I’ve been doing it on my own, using mobility instructions on my iPhone.”
The run-in with the tree in Los Angeles is hardly the first time he has gotten a bump or bruise on the road. “I get injuries all the time. I’ve cracked my head a few times and am always bumping into things—my legs are all banged up with bruises and nicks. But that’s part of the reality of my life.”
Edison documents his trips on Instagram, where he has 28,000 followers. Capturing his experience on the visual medium requires equal parts luck and the instincts of a seasoned traveler. “I took a picture of a drink in Australia and people were like, ‘How the hell did you get that shot?’ I was like ‘I have no idea. I just put the camera up and hit the button.’ I love it. My favorite it taking pictures out of airplane windows.”
What’s next on his itinerary? “On the top of my fantasy list is Hawaii,” he says. “The sand on those beaches is supposed to be different. I love the beach and I love the waves. I’m a Cancer, the water sign.”
You can read more about Tommy Edison and his experiences traveling here.
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