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Category / Off-Beat & Little Known

Backstage at Versailles: A Handyman’s Tour of the Palace

Robert Polidori has the keys to the palace. But not the perfectly-polished, museum-ready palace we’re used to seeing from behind the velvet ropes. In the 1980s, the Canadian-born photographer won a contract to document the ongoing restoration of the historic French palace, giving him and his camera lense an all-access pass to backstage Versailles. When…

The Communist Chic Hotel, for all your Stasi Nostalgic Needs

There is a phenomenon that exists called ‘Eastalgia’ (or ostalgie), referring to a wistful longing for the Cold War era, Berlin Wall-separated, Stasi-policed German Democratic Republic of the 1970s and 80s. Seriously. The phenomenon has even spawned a bit of an industry catering to those with strangely fond memories of the short-lived communist state and its long…

I just took a Romantic Evening Stroll in Marseille … while sitting at my desk

Admittedly, I find Google Street View a little scary. It always jumps around on me, warping me all the way down the street when I just want to see the next door down. So when I got an email from an old Paris friend telling me to check out a newly launched Google Street View…

Homage to the Man behind the Mountain

If you’re a seeker of the off-beat and the off-grid, you’ve probably come across Salvation Mountain on your internet or real-life travels. This ravishing burst of colour, a monument to hope, love and joy in the Colorado desert outside Niland, California, was built by one man over three decades, piece by piece. That man was…

The NYC Pawnshop with a Hidden Surprise

I might be a little late to the party on this one, but I just came across the neat little concept of a restaurant hidden at the back of a pawn shop over in New York City. The Beauty & Essex Lounge opened in 2011 with a deceptive retro shop front acting as a facade…

The Giant Vintage Camera Café

All too often when I’m browsing Tumblr, I’ll find a photograph that I just have to know the story behind. Is it real? Can I go there? All that stuff. And then you look beneath the photo for some information and find a whole lot of nothing. No source, no name, no location, nada. But…

Snapshots of a Soviet Ghost Town

Within a disputed territory on the Eastern coast of the Black Sea, spread across a valley often hidden in fog, lies the industrial town of Tkvarcheli, where the Soviet era still lives on like an evil spirit that haunts the streets. Photography by V Mulder Tkvarcheli was built in the early 1940’s Stalinist period to supply coal…

Abandoned in Antarctica: The 1970s Airplane Buried in Snow

No one was injured when the Lockheed Constellation ‘Pegasus’ crash landed onto the icy fields of Antarctica on October 8, 1970. The ill-fated flight had run into a storm and was forced to crash land in impossible weather conditions. Where the aircraft dramatically slid to a halt nearly 35 years ago is the exact same position…

The Little Latino Brownstone Bookstore

Tucked under the stairs of a brownstone in Spanish Harlem, also known as El Barrio, is a place where locals and Frida Kahlo disciples alike can feel right at home. La Casa Azul Bookstore is the only independent literature hub of this vibrant Latin American neighbourhood, the first in New York with an emphasis on Latino…

Snaps from Somaliland

There aren’t many of us that would put a place called Somaliland at the top of our lists of places to voyage. Look up Somalia on your government consul’s website and you’ll find some big fat warning signs in red, telling you not to go there, at all, under any circumstances. But Somalia and Somaliland…

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