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Category / Off-Beat & Little Known

The Hidden Feast in a Barcelona Factory After Dark

We left the Barcelona night behind us, disappearing through a graffiti-covered door on a bustling back street of locals going about their downtown nocturnal hustle. All we have is this calling card with an address on the back as we wander down the austerely-lit corridor and take the first staircase, not entirely sure where it will…

And now, a Catalogue of Crazy Customized Coffins

Someone is selling this Airstream coffin on eBay for $4,500. It comes from Ghana where it was made in a workshop in 1995 by Nii Anum, a disciple of Kane Kwei, a carpenter born in the 1920s who made a name for himself making custom fantasy casket in his hometown of Accra. Kwei first began…

The Reindeer Riders

If the descendants of ancient legends truly exist among us today, these are they. Despite the odds, the nomads of Outer Mongolia are a people seemingly immune from degeneration, still living in such proximity to wild animals with a certain spiritual wisdom, sense of healing and well-being lost to our notions of time and laws…

The Secret Seventies Bar Hidden inside a Retro Laundromat Café

I‘m guessing every keyword in that title had you at hello. Secret, seventies, hidden, retro, laundromat café– yep, I like to think I’m starting to get a feel for the sort of things that float your boat. So let’s get straight to it and hop over to London for a moment to check out this spot I’ve been eyeballing every since it…

Disappear inside the Secret “Sinners” Cave Temple

If you’re in need of the perfect spiritual hideaway, I think I might have found it. Like something out of a legend, nestled inside an ancient grotto carved out of steep limestone cliffs in a remote region of Italy, the clandestine Temple of Valadier is thought to symbolize the Virgin Mary’s Roman Catholic title, “Refugium eccatorum”, meaning “refuge of sinners“… (c) Luca…

This Abandoned Gas Station is a Portal into a Wes Anderson Wonderland

By the road in the small town of Ojai, California, a peculiar old mid-century gas station awaits your discovery. Converted from a sorry-looking roadside relic to something rather dreamy… Pull over at the old pumping station, but you won’t be filling up the tank here– more likely, you’ll be filling up your trunk with a hoard of…

The Little Bookshop that Takes in Homeless Cats

Cats and books. They just go hand in hand, don’t they? Like jam and toast. And at a small bookstore in Hong Kong, they only know it too well. The SAM KEE Book Company has become known as an unofficial sanctuary for stray cats after its owners began offering their cozy bookshelves and reading nooks as a home…

China’s First Stock Exchange is a now a Forgotten Dusty Apartment Building

Tucked away in an inconspicuous alley of one of the last functioning old-town neighborhoods in Beijing, hiding in the shadows of the historic city gate that once guarded the direct entry into the imperial city, lies the dusty forgotten shell of the first Beijing Stock Exchange. For a country that has one of the world’s largest stock markets, I couldn’t…

The Godfather Bar, Still Open.

Once upon a time, Michael Corleone sat on the shady terrace of a local Sicilian bar after a day of hunting with his bodyguards in the mountains. He began to enquire with the bar owner about a beautiful girl he had seen by the roadside. The man quickly realised that Michael was describing his own daughter and…

Saving Pie Town: The Last Pie-O-Neers of the American Dessert

As the legend goes, PieTown, New Mexico was founded in the early 1920s by a man called Norman, who had filed a mining claim in the area and opened a general store at the desert crossroads where he liked to bake pies made from scratch and serve them to his family or passing travellers. Word spread about…

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