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Category / Editor’s Picks

Vintage Hotel For Sale, straight out of a Wes Anderson Film Set

On the off chance that anyone out there reading might be considering getting into the hotel business, I thought this little piece of local real estate news was worth sharing. Sent to me by a reader, I was immediately enchanted by the Opinicon Resort on the shores of Rideau Canal at Chaffey’s Lock in Ontario,…

Documenting the Giants of Roadside America

California native, Debra Jane Seltzer, must have the most sizeable independently-run website I’ve ever come across– and that’s not just because it’s full of the roadside giants she documents. Roadside Architecture is literally huge, containing more than 2,300 pages and over 60,000 photos. Banging away at her website for nearly 15 years now, Debra has…

What Happens when You Discover 31 Rolls of Undeveloped Film from a WWII Soldier

“Lucky Strike Beach”, “Start of Train Trip”, “Roll of French funeral, 1947”; these are some of the labels found on 31 never-developed rolls of film taken over 70 years ago by an American World War II soldier. One film was wrapped in some kind of a letter that reads: “I’ve always had a lonesome life, dreaming…

The Vintage Menu Collector: 25,000 Restaurants by One Woman

I love reading menus. They are the shop windows of the kitchen and provide a playful sense of gambling for what might just be the best of worst meal of your life. Today I stumbled upon a rather mind-boggling collection on the NYPL Digital archives of thousands of restaurant menus dating as far back as 1851.…

Then & Now: The Rolling Stones’ French Villa of Debauchery

In the Spring of 1971, Keith Richards began renting a villa on the Côte d’Azur for $2,500 a month. The British government was threatening to confiscate the bands’ funds if they did not leave the country by April 5th of that year as part of the Labour government’s punitive 93% tax on high earners. The Rolling…

An Illustrated Guide to the Human Race circa. 1960s

The internet is a little bit like a maze of doors, some that lead to a spiralling descent of procrastination and some, though not many, can lead to forgotten treasure. Today I picked the winning door and found one of the most impressive online collections of vintage ephemera I’ve ever had the pleasure of stumbling across. Pages and…

13 Things I Found on the Internet Today (Vol. CV)

1. 500 years of walking up the marble stairs of The Leaning Tower of Pisa. Found on Reddit 2. Inside the Penn Station Lost & Found Tucked away in the labyrinth of Penn Station is a window you won’t notice until you need it. Behind it there are tequila bottles, laptops, electric guitars,…

13 Things I Found on the Internet Today (Vol. CIV)

1. Baghdad, Iraq, 1965 Not the South of France. Here’s a current photo of the bridge in the background… Found on Reddit. 2. The Isolator The Isolator is a bizarre helmet invented in 1925 that encourages focus and concentration by rendering the wearer deaf, piping them full of oxygen, and limiting their vision…

These 10 Quirky Paris Dream Homes are For Sale so let’s Snoop Around

Every now and again, I find myself wandering over to the Christie’s real estate website for a good snoop through their Paris files. It’s a completely delusional exercise, but I do it anyway, staring wide-eyed at the dream homes, all the while obliviously dropping croissant flakes over my keyboard. I find it helps to quench my curiosity for what lies behind…

For Sale: Burt Reynolds’ Rolodex and other Awkward Stuff He’s Selling

So here’s a unique Christmas gift– Burt Reynolds’ Rolodex! You could own BR’s very own “little black book” from his home office, including the (possibly/ very likely out-of-date) contact information for his groovy celebrity friends, restaurants, and business contacts. It’s basically priceless (but last time I checked it has a current bid of $900). Burt Reynolds was…

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