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Category / Don’t Be A Tourist

The Paris Boutiques that transform into a Nocturnal Art Museum

If you try to go during the day, you’ll find the “museum” will be closed. In fact, during the day, the Rue Cavalotti in Montmartre is much like any other Parisian street in the quartier, going about it’s business with independent boutiques and small restaurants. It’s not until dusk that this narrow road hidden behind…

Paris’ Last Surviving Erotic Cinema

Still screening movies on 35 mm film, tucked away in the 2nd arrondissement of Paris is a 1960s cinematic time warp with a loyal appreciation for the forgotten vintage paragons of French erotica. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, I’ll admit, and you might be thinking that I’m really scraping the barrel here but hear…

The International Banana Museum (of the Salton City Ghost Town)

As bizarre, off-beat and kitsch as they come is the International Banana Museum, boasting the largest collection of banana paraphernalia in the world. Even more inexplicable than the museum itself (and Fred “Banana Mon” Garbutt’s obsession with bananas), is the location. Occupying a squat building along the toxic shores of the Salton Sea ‘riviera’, a…

America’s Last Drive-in Movie Theatres

Photograph by Thomas Wrede At their peak, in the late 1950s, there were almost 5000 drive-ins. Today, there are only 366 drive-ins operating in the United States. The outdoor theaters saw a dramatic decline in the 70s and 80s and many of their remains can still be found off highways, marked by rusting entrance marquees…

5 Places to host a Soirée in Paris

Illustration by Liudmila Kondakova “L‘Apèro”: probably one of the first words you learn socially in Paris. It is the staple of French night life, the icebreaker for the evening. But these days, I don’t feel like we do it justice. Most Parisians grab any bottle of cheap wine from the supermarket, and bring it to…

The Lost Treehouse Tribes of the Rainforest

Until 1970, they were unaware of the existence of any people on Earth besides themselves. Hard to believe with such extensive views from their 140 foot high tree dwellings, but when you’re living in one of the least explored jungles in the world, these things can happen. The indigenous Korowai tribe have been building their…

China’s Bizarre Marriage Market

Blind dates are bad enough but when your own parents take to the streets and advertise your eternal loneliness on public noticeboards, that’s when things probably start to get really bleak. In a sort of online dating nightmare come to life, every weekend in Shanghai at the north end of People’s Park, up to a…

The Ghostly Flintstones Amusement Park

The soundtrack of Flinstones cartoons broadcast continuously over the park’s tinny loudspeakers, echoing eerily between the dusty, dilapidating houses of Bedrock’s famous residents from a bygone era. Built over 40 years ago during the Route 66 roadside attraction craze, this lonely concrete replica of a cartoon town has seen better days. You can only wonder how…

Made in China: European Clone Towns

Taking counterfeiting to a whole new level… Paris in China In the outskirts of Shanghai stands a fake Eiffel Tower overlooking a replica of the Champ de Mars and rows of Parisian townhouses. This is not Disneyland in China, this is the gated community of Tianducheng, built in 2007 by real estate develepors Zhejiang Guangsha…

Blogging on a Chalkboard in Africa

This is Alfred J. Sirleaf, the founder and sole editor of a ‘blackboard newspaper’ in Monrovia, Liberia’s capital city. Everyday, Alfred updates his newspaper, The Daily Talk (I can’t even paste a link), neatly writing the latest headlines using sticks of chalk in his “newsroom”, a small wooden shack attached to the back of his…

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