15 49.0138 8.38624 both 0 bullet 0 4000 1 0 horizontal https://www.messynessychic.com 300 4000

Category / How to start a subculture

When Hollywood Movie Posters Can’t Be Imported: A Bootleg Retrospective

Far from the gleaming multiplex cinemas most of us are accustomed to, there are places that can’t afford the printers needed for making movie posters, let alone the legal rights to actually screen blockbuster Hollywood films. As a result, locals will try their hand at drawing the posters for their bootleg screenings… First let’s take…

That Time Walt Disney Bought His Own Autonomous Utopian City of the Future

And then, Walt Disney created utopia. Well, almost. Before his death in 1966, America’s greatest entrepreneur was planning his own city which would have almost total autonomy within its borders, where residents would live and work for Disney in some way, using the latest technology in their homes and experimenting with innovative community ideals. Walt called it E.P.C.O.T,…

Burning iPhones and Designer Bags on China’s Day of the Dead

It’s common belief in China that people still need money and material goods in the after-life and that ghosts can go hungry or homeless unless the living can give them a helping hand. The Qingming Festival or ‘Tomb Sweeping Day’ comes but once a year, and when it does, it calls for some serious damage to be…

The Photographers Who Documented the Birth of Street Style

And so ends the seasonal Olympics for street style photographers in Paris! Also known as Fashion Week, it’s the time of year when these professional people-watchers jump through hoops to capture the hottest outfits of the City of Light, taking their cues from legends such as the Sartorialist and Bill Cunningham. But the real three fathers…

The Lost French Castle That’s Taking 25 Years to Re-build

Let’s say a volunteer became involved in the early stages of building this castle at the age of twenty. By the time construction of the fortress is complete they would have doubled in age and already celebrated their 40th birthday. These days, that’s a heck of a long time to take building something, but that’s because this is no ordinary…

Documenting the Disappearing Record Stores of Paris

Record stores are a little bit like urban legends nowadays; the types of places you have to know people to get to the good stuff, through a door in the back and a ladder to the basement where you might find boxes of the owner’s dusty 45’s that have been there for years. And even those places are rare…

The Tiny Island on the Thames That Once Held The Rolling Stones, David Bowie, and the UK’s Largest Hippie Commune

Let’s take a walk along the towpath by the Thames, breathing in the heady scent of summer. See that island in the middle? That’s where we’re headed. And I’ve got a map, so I know it’s there! Past the gently bobbing riverboats moored at Twickenham, Until we reach a single footbridge. Here we go… And we’re…

The Fruit That Tastes Like Chocolate Pudding

It might seem like mankind has come up with most of the deliciously devilish flavours and midnight snacks for us to indulge in, but if you look a little harder, in many cases I think you’ll find that nature was there first, waiting to tempt us all along… Behold the Black Sapote, a.k.a “the Chocolate Pudding…

Meet the Nomadic Berber Rock Band Who Plays the Desert Blues

They’ve played at Glastonbury and Coachella and brought down the house at New Orleans’ legendary House of Blues. Bob Dylan, Coldplay and Carlos Santana are fans and in 2012, this nomadic group of Tuareg musicians from the Sahara Desert region of northern Mali went to Hollywood to pick up their first Grammy award for Best…

The Fantastic Folding Mini-Motel Caravan, 1959

You probably know by now that caravans are one of my favourite things and with summer holidays and road trip wanderlust in the air, I’d like to present my latest find, the (fantastic) folding Mini-Motel caravan. Somewhat forgotten in automobile history, I came across it in this terribly English promotional feature from 1959 through the archive of British Pathé… The Mini-Motel,…

NEWER POSTS 1 … 27 28 29 … 49 OLDER POSTS