Snapshots from Little Italy’s Summer Street Party

A glittering, 7-story shrine towers over a crowd on a hot July day in Brooklyn. At its base sits a brass band, and below them, 112 men who’ve been entrusted with one seemingly impossible task: to lift that shrine, and its musicians, with their own bare hands into the heart of the madness of the “Giglio…

We Just Walked into America’s Strangest Egyptian-UFO Cult

Not long ago in Georgia, black and gold pyramids stood proudly on the 476-acre compound of Tama-Rey. It was the holy “Land of the Sun,” a place where the self-declared God, Dr. Malachi Z. York, manipulated thousands of nationwide followers in the “Nuwaubian Nation of Moors” to believe they were cosmic purveyors of an extraterrestrial…

Whatever You Do, Don’t Tell the French About Tarrare

(A word of caution: this is not an article to read on your lunchbreak). He could wrap his empty stomach around his waist like a belt, and began eating his bodyweight in meat every day as a child. His lips were nearly non-existent, and his mouth was so wide, it could hold 12 eggs at…

Princess Bonaparte’s Orgasmic Quest

Every family has its black sheep. For the Bonaparte clan, it was Napoleon’s great grandniece, Princess Marie (1882-1962). She was not only a pioneer of psychoanalysis who actually saved Freud from the Nazis, but a staunch advocate for women’s sex research on some pretty taboo topics. You see, she was on a war path —…

French Art Deco Dream Girls

Pochoir was a damn delicate practice, and it was inextricably bound to the star of Paris’ Golden Age of Illustration, André E. Marty. The Frenchman and his stencil-centric drawing or pochoir method defined the aesthetics of a generation, especially for the high fashion set. There was “an outpouring of luxury fashion publications that used pochoir” at the…

Before Björk, There Was the Last Incan Princess

She claimed to be the final descendant of the last Incan Emperor, Atahualpa — a claim the Peruvian government backed in 1946 — and she allegedly learned to sing from “the creatures of the forest.” Yma Sumac didn’t just hit octaves. She knocked them out of the park with a growl, and took them for…

A Rock Band’s Vintage Closet on the Run

Starling and Rein Irving are on the run. In a good way, mind you, and in extremely stylish fashion. You see, the 20-year-old-ish sisters have been making pilgrimages across the United States, with a collection of vintage treasures in tow. Their vessel? A 1959 green Chevrolet Viking bus they found abandoned in a field. Their…

Forget Route 66: Get Your Road Trip Kicks on Route 62

Sun-bleached buildings, a hot convertible, and the smell of a dusty roadside town. There’s nothing more American than a stretch of quiet highway, and photographer Ashley Noelle has been on a quest to capture its old haunts before time and decay beat her to it. “I started at the beginning of route 62 and the…

The Vault

Your Dream Fairytale Library is Hiding in Midtown Manhattan

A miniature palace of rare books is hiding in one of the busiest parts of Manhattan. All you have to do to enter is walk past the foyer of 225 Madison Ave and push a button deep in the back right corner. A door will swing open into a space that feels like it rolled right out…

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A Day in the Life of Mrs. Grim Reaper

She only comes around once in a lifetime. Travel to any small village in Sardinia, and you may still hear hushed tales of the accabadora; “angel of death”; the women chosen by their community to live out their days veiled in black, and charged with the task of ending the lives of others at the mercy of their cudgel.…