Every Day Since 1964, this Outsider Artist Made a Collage of Found Objects

New Yorkers have a special relationship with trash, which is as much a fixture of the cityscape as the Manhattan skyline. Not to wax romantic about littering, but some of that, shall we say, “street ephemera” – the lost tickets, photos, business cards – can give us the most honest, intimate window into the city’s…

There’s an Iconic Art Deco Department Store Frozen in Time inside an LA Law School

It’s a spring afternoon in 1936, as you pull up to the doorstep of 3050 Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles, California. The valet takes your car, the doorman tips his cap, and suddenly you find yourself in the belly of a 230,000-square-foot mecca of West Coast fashion. Known as “Bullocks Wilshire,” this storied California department store was…

Why Not Tattoo Your Walls like the French?

At this very moment, a drunken Dionysus naps in the doorway of a villa overlooking the French Riviera. In another room, the head of Apollo keeps guard of a marble fireplace, and Diana the Huntress rounds up her nymphs in scenes of cosmic mischief dreamt up by the artist Jean Cocteau, and immortalised – tattooed,…

When the Phallus Was Fashion

A day in the life of Ancient Rome wasn’t a cake walk. If you were going to make a decent life for yourself, you had to be tough. You didn’t wear your heart on your sleeve – you wore a penis fascinus ’round your neck, prayed to the gods, and hoped for the best. A…

Men in Tights and Tutus: The Decadence of the Sun King’s Male Ballets

The cool thing about being royalty, is you get to go all out on your hobbies. Enjoy miniatures? Not as much as Queen Elizabeth II, whose miniatures collection is truly eye-watering. Into beauty and self-care? Not as much as 17th century France’s King Louis XIV, aka the Sun King, who took his baths in a…

10 Enchanting NYC Bookstores to Support During These Surreal Times

Books aren’t fair weather friends. No matter what, we can always rely on the words of the authors we love to taste life twice (so says Anaïs Nin, who sure lived a spicy life). Now, more than ever, it’s our turn to help support the guardians of these words: our cities’ independent booksellers. We’re talking…

A Brief Compendium, or an Ode, if you will, to Celebrate Balconies

As the world stays home, we would like to opt for a new euphemism for life in quarantine: Nesting. Last week, we dove into the plushy world of retro conversation pits. Today, we’re pivoting to the glory of the balconies – which have become the world’s incidental stages at this strange time. They’re teaching us…

We Could all Use a Good Conversation Pit Right About Now

It’s 1976. You kick off your platform clogs, pour a brandy, and snuggle up with your moustached companion in the cutting edge of groovy hangouts: the conversation pit. Arguably one of the most divisive home design features of our time, the conversation pit holds a very special place in our kitsch little hearts. If you’re…

From Frida to Shakespeare, the Amazing Things They Did whilst “Social Distancing”

In around 1603, a poet had a decision to make. With a plague underway in England, he could choose to answer to fear, or answer to the muse. Luckily for us, the writer – one Mr. William Shakespeare – decided to put pen to paper (quill to parchment?) and turn out one of his greatest…

20 Questions with the Real Woman Who Voiced Siri

Today, we meet Messy Nessy’s most unusual muse du jour: Susan Bennett, AKA the real Siri. In the early 2000s she did a hefty chunk of voice work for an intermediate company – unbeknownst that, years later, it would be used to create the personality of the iPhone assistant technology that dotes on roughly 500…