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Category / How to start a subculture

Stitching the History of West African Flags

To understand recent Ghanaian history, flags are not a bad place to start. Ghana was under colonial rule by Britain until 1957, but the Portuguese first arrived on the Gold Coast in the 15th century, starting a centuries-long trade industry in goods, arms and slaves. Fabric was a common manufactured material that Europeans brought to…

Happy Bunny-filled Easter! Meanwhile in Spain …

While the rest of us are sitting here with our sparkly cream-filled easter eggs and cute pastel bunnies, spare a thought for the Spanish. It’s Holy Week in Spain and that means no one gets to have an Easter egg until the traditional religious processions are out of the way. In the week running up…

Here’s What Japanese Art Looked Like in the Aftermath of the Atomic Bombs

The cultural shift between pre and post-WWII world Japan was complicated and often divisive, but if you were photographer Eikoh Hosoe, that tension became fuel for creative expression that turned into a surrealist dreamworld – or nightmare, depending on who you asked. The Japanese artist’s works mirrored the state of a shell-shocked country in the…

Who Is the Dandy Man? The Congo Subculture Uncovered

Modern Man is Afraid of Dandyism. Except for a few… When you think of silk handkerchiefs, pink corduroys, tweed and double-breasted tailoring, would you associate such a style of dress with some of the poorest slums of Africa? What you’re looking at is the phenomenon of Sapeurs, a subculture of extraordinarily dressed dandies from the Congo. In…

Inside the Annual Ernest Hemingway Look-Alike Competition

If you’d gone for a walk around Key West in the 1930s, chances are you might have bumped into Ernest Hemingway. Whether making the short stroll from his house on Whitehead Street to the bars on Duval, one block over and several up, or perhaps on his way to the nearby marina where he moored…

Before the Internet, there was the 1960s Dial-a-Poem Hotline

On any given night in 1970, a teen somewhere in rural America could dial a number and hear the radical wisdom of Patti Smith, John Cage, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Bourroughs – the list of poets was long, and painfully hip. One needed only the ten sacred digits of “Dial-a-Poem,” a revolutionary hotline that connected…

This Guy (Almost) Convinces us to Go Freight Train Hopping Around America

Freighthopping or trainhopping, the (usually illegal) act surreptitiously boarding and riding a freight railroad car became a common means of transportation following the American Civil War and continued to be widely used by those unable to afford other transportation, particularly during the Great Depression when the jobless took to the rails to find work. The practice is less common today, but a…

Manhattan’s Long Lost Era of Loft Jazz

Once upon a time, before Manhattan priced out its young talent, you had to be an artist to live in SoHo. And in the late 1960s and 70s, a cultural phenomenon known as “Loft Jazz” came into existence in downtown Manhattan’s abandoned industrial spaces. Eclectic, edgy and often Black musicians turned Soho’s neglected lofts into…

Were an Ancient Christian Sect of Nudists the World’s First Hippies?

Today we’re taking a brief look at some hippie heretics of yore known as the Adamites. The 2nd century Christian sect, claimed that its members were re-established in Adam and Eve’s state of original innocence, called their church “Paradise”, practised “holy nudism”, rejected marriage and pretty much claimed they could do whatever the heck they…

When Big Brands were Getting High in the Seventies

In the late 1960s and 70s, America’s big corporations could see the psychedelic writing on the wall and they knew they had to do something. A wave of psychedelia was taking over pop culture and the LSD-infused hippie aesthetic was huge. The influence of drug culture on some of the most iconic brands saw everyone…

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