Editorial: Goodbye, Hemispheres magazine and little bottles of shampoo

If you have a little bottle of fancy shampoo in your bathroom drawer, the perfume of which reminds you of a long ago trip to the Caribbean or some swanky joint you could not afford, you might want to put it away for safekeeping. Those are soon to be illicit items in Illinois.

Gov. JB Pritzker quietly (and we can see why) has signed the so-called Small Single-Use Plastic Bottle Act, which declares that shampoo, hair conditioner and shower gel cannot be provided by hotels in the Land of Lincoln in bottles under 6 ounces and “not intended for re-use.” The law goes into effect July 1, 2025, for hotels with 50 rooms or more and Jan. 1, 2026, for smaller hotels.

We’re not sure what the little bottles did to merit this specific legal prohibition from Springfield. Compared to, say, private planes, plastic bottles of soft drinks and plastic containers of marijuana-laced edibles, their environmental impact seems limited, especially since those of us who are frugally minded do indeed take them and reuse them, lining them up in the shower or using them as free decor laden with memories. Moreover, their big-bottle replacements use time, energy and other products to refill after every guest and, more importantly, to keep clean. This was not a law that would have passed during COVID, that’s for sure.

How to explain illegal hotel shampoo but legal personal sized toiletries at Walgreens and a weirdly persistent, dubiously sourced ongoing prohibition against taking your tube of toothpaste on a plane? Beyond us. But we do know the horror of standing naked in a shower to find the opaque, locked-down dispenser empty; little bottles were not so duplicitous.

But go they apparently must, even at the Ritz-Carlton. Wild times in Illinois; legal pot, illegal conditioner.

And if that were not enough to harsh your September mellow, we’re also bidding adieu to the in-flight magazine.

United Airlines has said that the September issue of Hemispheres will be the last you’ll find in the seat pocket in front of you. The final issue has the usual “leadership letter,” aka propagandistic corporate blather, as its introduction, hacking on about “exciting new formats” and “innovative new ways to personalize your travel experience” and the other common lies told when something you long have treasured and can hold in your hand is taken away.

Sure, they weigh a little bit. But so do people and planes. And phones.

The writing and photography in Hemispheres was often top drawer, virtues of their glossy paper stock, their paying freelancers well and having the joy of travel as their dominant subject. The articles were the epitome of vicarious second person: typically, “you” dip “your” toes into an azure-blue ocean after waking up to fresh-brewed coffee under some palm tree, gently swaying to an island breeze. On a February business trip from O’Hare to Akron, the magazine was an oasis.

Alas, it’s farewell to the little diagrams of planes (is yours the largest?), the fold-out maps of the world, the pictures of beverages, the airport diagrams, the literary evocations of somewhere you presently are not.

The magazine’s editors, though, ended their decadeslong run with a nice touch. The final “Three Perfect Days” feature, long a well-read Hemispheres hallmark, is set in … Chicago.

We’ll take that as further confirmation United has no plans to move its headquarters to Denver.

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