And the Award for Most Fashionable UFO Cult Goes to…

Ruth Norman, hands down. The gilded leader of “Unarius,” a UFO cult founded with her husband Ernest in 1954, Ruth was not only a figurehead for “interdimensional understanding” but a master at putting together looks fit for an intergalactic space queen. So let’s throw on our tiara and refuel our rocket to explore some of…

A New York City Misfit Museum, like No Other

Woody Allen pulls off one of Groucho Marx’s best lines in Annie Hall — you know, the one that goes, “I wouldn’t want belong to any sort of club that would have me as a member”. He’s kidding, of course, but the line perfectly reflects that charming New York brand of pessimism, and because it…

Johnny Cash’s White Witch of Montego Bay

Where’s your husband Annie? Where’s number two and three? Are they sleeping neath the palms beside the Caribbean Sea? At night I hear you ridin’ and I hear your lovers call And still can feel your presence round the great house at Rose Hall… –Johnny Cash Something unsettling sleeps in the walls of Jamaica’s seductive Rose…

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Meet the Neighbourhood Slot Car King & Queen of Brooklyn

They’re kind of Brooklyn’s Romeo and Juliet. He was made of slot car stock, and she was, well, not. At least, that’s what she’ll tell you — but it’s clear that Dolores, who’s one-half of the legendary couple behind Buzz-a-Rama, is a slot car queen. “Oh this whole thing?” she jokes, a boot propped up…

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The Kids Who Burned New York

The club kids burned bright and fast. They were the society misfits. The ‘freaks’. A sharp cocktail of young drag queens who built a community out of their craft, and a cast of constantly rotating nightlife characters with one common mantra: be whatever you want, but just don’t be boring. We’re headed back to a…

India’s Utopian “Star Wars” City

Her words rang out for 5,000 to hear, and in 16 languages, on a winter’s day in 1968. It was the inauguration of Auroville, the futuristic utopia in India led by guru Mirra Alfassa, who declared her mission to make “a universal town where men and women of all countries are able to live in peace…

Forget the World Cup, Let’s Play Motor-Ball!

Not to rag on the World Cup or anything, but why run after a football when you can just drive towards it on a motorbike? Well that’s the spirit of Motor-ball, which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. All you need to play is 1) a huge inflatable ball, 2) a bike of…

The Unexplained Dancing Plague & Other Epidemics of Yore

The human body is a miraculous piece of machinery. Try as they might, scientists can’t always seem to understand its power — and susceptibility — to the strangest situations throughout history. What happens when a meteorite causes a mental health calamity? Or a laughing epidemic? From ye old French dancing fits, to an entire village…

Brooklyn’s Best Kept Secret: A Wes Anderson Versailles

You know that great aunt who arrives early, and overdressed, to parties? The one who smells like powdered Shalimar, and guards every single family secret under layers of costume jewellery with her life? That’s Grand Prospect Hall personified. The four-story banquet hall is the last outpost of Victorian grandeur in New York, and for nearly…

Now That Is How You Fall in Love with LA

There’s nothing more LA than trying to be a million things at once. In one afternoon, Angelinos can go from a kitsch “Casablanca” to Canter’s Deli; grab a Cuban cocktail at “Versailles” and end up at a dentist’s office that would be much better as a discotheque. It’s a wonderful, borderline perverse eclecticism that has…