A Brief Compendium of the First Girl Groups, Forgotten in Music History

Before the Spice Girs, before Destiny’s Child and TLC, even before the Supremes, there was a litany of female singing groups – often found in threes, often known for their harmonic prowess, and often found on the great vaudeville stages of the time. They laid the foundation for the girl group as we know it…

Vice Versa: America’s Gayest Magazine

Hollywood has a thing for origin stories at the moment, and one origin story in particular begins in Los Angeles, in an unassuming building on Gower Street, just off Melrose Avenue. This is not the origin story of a Marvel Comics character, or even of a Hollywood bigwig getting their own biopic. Now part of…

The Lost Art of the Miniature Golf Course

They go large in the States – even when it comes to the small stuff. And perhaps nowhere is that more true than with a particularly kitsch specimen of American vernacular architecture, the miniature golf course. A period of history defined by the automobile and the ease of travel it allowed, post-WW2 prosperity led to…

And Now, Let’s Raise a Teacup to Teetotalism

Before the advent of the speakeasy, the ramshackle bar that sprung up and vanished as was required during the Prohibition era (and now turned a trendy locale for your friendly neighbourhood hipster), there was another hangout fast becoming everyone’s new favourite local in the mid 19th century – the temperance tea party. Held in so-called…

And Now, the Rotel: A Rolling Hotel for the Brave Tourist

Is it a bus? Is it a hotel? Is it a mirage? Why, it’s the Rotel, of course! That’s a rolling hotel, to you and I. The brainchild of Georg Holtl, German entrepreneur and one-time actor, Rotel had its first passengers in 1945, taking them on the short journey from Tittling to Passau. Then, in…

In Turn of the Century Paris, They Tried to Get The World to Acknowledge African American Progress

These are the the face of stylish young African American women and men at the dawn of the 20th century. At the time, only 37 years after the end of slavery in the United States, Jim Crow was more than a series of rigid anti-Black laws, it was a way of life in America. But across…

A Brief Guide and History of Travelling Experimentally

When you next leave the house, turn right. Then turn left. Then right again, followed by another left. And by Jove, I think you’ve got it! Do this until you’re blocked by an obstacle, whether that’s a dead-end, a river, or a sheer drop. Congratulations, you’ve just completed your first act of travelling experimentally. Alternating…

Before There Was Emily in Paris, There Was Sally Jay Gorce

Throughout the latter half of the twentieth century and well into the beginning of the next, it’s easy to track our fascination with young women attempting to figure out life – they are witty, tenacious, and often keenly perceptive of the world in which they exist and their place within it. Their names have become…

How to Talk Like the Ton: A Guide to Regency Lingo

Just what the deuce do they mean with all their gadzooks and apoplexies, their barouches and barking irons? The language of the Regency – the period of time roughly earmarked as 1795 to 1820 in Britain when the reigning King George III was deemed unfit to rule and his son took over as Prince Regent…

The Woman Who Slept at the Top of the Eiffel Tower

It started out simply enough. At the age of 17, the artist Sophie Calle dropped out of university where one of her professors was Jean Baudrillard – yes, the philosopher – and spent the next seven years travelling through the French mountains, then Crete, China, the United States, and Mexico. When she returned to Paris,…