And Now, in Overlooked Urban Adventures: The Pet Cemetery

Stephen King’s 1983 horror novel Pet Sematary was recently resurrected on the big screen for a second time, renewing our curiosity in the often forgotten resting places of our furry companions. There’s something about those miniature tombstones in a humble graveyard where the pure love given by pets is honoured with such unabashed sincerity. Since time immemorial,…

The Paris August Survival Guide

It’s that time of the year again. Parisians close up shop for August to chase the last rays of summer outside la capitale, turning the city into a veritable ghost town. Tourists and locals alike are left wondering where on earth they can find an open boulangerie, where they can shop, dine, and make merry…

There are Hundreds of Islands for Sale around the World Right now, so let’s go Window Shopping

There’s always that one friend who says they’re going to quit the world and live on their own island someday – and you can pass this on to them in a moment – but first, take a moment to do a little daydreaming of your own. You wouldn’t believe how many islands are up for…

So a Glamazon, a Snake Charmer, and a Calypso Queen Walk into a Bar

It took more than a pretty face to make it big in burlesque – it took fearlessness and a strong dose of je ne sais quoi to make America take notice during the golden age of showgirl entertainment. Five women in particular have caught our attention more than a century later, so put up your…

Hollywood’s Doom Book and other Tales of Blacklisting in American Cinema

Before we even knew it as “Hollywood”, the American film industry was a very different place, producing a surreal amount of extraordinarily liberal and raw movies that would give today’s rated-R movies a run for their money; featuring nudity, strong female characters, sex, drugs, violence, abortion and even homosexuality. But everything changed in the year…

The Questionable Business of Being Frida

As the 1930s, the Frida Kahlo gained international notoriety as “Diego Rivera’s wife”, gracing the cover of French Vogue. Then, she floored the avant-garde scene with artworks whose vulnerability spoke from the heart while their rawness punched you in the gut. The public ate it up, despite not always knowing how to digest it. Posthumously,…

The World’s First Solar Powered Train is a 70-Year-Old Vintage Charmer

You might have expected Japan’s next bullet train or even the Eurostar to have figured out solar-powered rail travel first, but instead, on a disused old railway track along the sandy coast of New South Wales, Australia, a little 1940s “engine that could” has become the world’s first solar-powered train. Chugging up and down Byron…

The Art of French Kitsch and its Eccentric Parisian Queen

As a decorator, the late Madeleine Castaing embodied over-the-top luxury and la vie bohème. As a patron, no – diva – of the arts, Castaing’s eye for excellence helped sponsor some of the greatest artists of all time, from Soutine to Modigliani. During the height of World War II, she opened an extravagant boutique behind…

House of a 1920s Lady Gaga

“Eccentricity exists particularly in the English, and partly, I think, because of that peculiar and satisfactory knowledge of infallibility that is the hallmark and birthright of the British nation.“. ― Dame Edith Sitwell of Renishaw Hall Renishaw Hall may look like a very traditional English estate, but for the last four centuries it has been the ancestral…

The Secret NYC Gallery that brought Picasso & the Avant-garde to America

Did they ever tell you about the nice Jersey boy who brought Modern Art to America’s shores? It wasn’t a Rockefeller, or a Guggenheim – just a kid from Hoboken, New Jersey with an eye for talent. Behind the doors of a little 5th floor attic-level apartment on 291 Fifth Avenue, he displayed raunchy Rodins,…