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Category / How to start a subculture

Last Train to the Eiffel Tower: The Station that Paris Forgot

On the outskirts of Paris proper, at the back of a parking lot down a side street in a quiet residential neighbourhood of Clichy, there sits an old forgotten train station; crumbling at the edges, blackened in the corners and scarred on its facade. But it wasn’t always sitting here, hidden away and withering in an inconspicuous…

The Ethiopian Fashion Tribe that turns Nature into Haute Couture

Remember when you tried to get creative and bejewel your jean shorts or decorate your new tennis shoes with a Sharpie pen? Well this is not that. In the Omo Valley of southern Ethiopia, the Surma and Mursi people don’t have glue guns, sewing machines, sequins or Sharpies to accessorise with. Inspired by the tools and textiles…

Banksy’s Twisted Version of Disneyland Opens this Weekend

Step right up and discover the curious wonders of Dismaland, “the happiest place on Earth”, turned sinister freak show. In the British seaside town of Weston-Super-Mare, a place that’s been described as the most “depressing dump” you could ever spend a night in, world-famous street artist Banksy has taken up his latest residency behind the walls of an…

No Tickets to Burning Man? Try Amsterdam’s Deserted Island Campsite for Space Cadets

Tickets to the Burning Man Festival sold out in under an hour this year. So if you couldn’t get your tickets, couldn’t get the end-of-summer time off, or just couldn’t get yourself to travel half way across the world, here’s an alternative that might be of interest. It doesn’t require the huge commitment that Burning Man does,…

The Neighbourhood Hippie Squat that Seceded from the European Union

The story of Freetown Christiania does, in some ways, seem like a fairy tale… a druggy, twisted, modern-day fairy tale at that, but a fairy tale nonetheless. (c) Apolasos Upon entering Christiania, Denmark, situated right in the heart of Copenhagen, a carved sign reads: You Are Now Leaving the European Union. Free town Christiania is a…

This Empty Sicilian Town is Giving away Free Houses

There are records at Ellis Island in New York showing that between 1892 and 1924, the small Sicilian town of Gangi lost about 1,700 of its residents to the American dream. They abandoned their homes to board trans-Atlantic ocean liners, sold to the prospect of a better life by shipping agents pushing emigration in the region. Those…

Colombia’s Beloved Jeeps Loaded with Everything but the Kitchen Sink

In the Coffee Triangle of Columbia, the locals worship an unlikely icon– the Willys Jeep, America’s military vehicle of choice during World War II. Every year in the small towns of Quindío, there’s a big folkloric parade celebrating the utility vehicles, loaded with (literally) everything but the kitchen sink. They call them “Yipaos” (loaded Jeeps) and they have become…

What they Wore to the Vanderbilt Ball: Inside the Photo Album

Like they do at prom, the guests of the 1883 Vanderbilt fancy dress ball each had the opportunity to have their photo taken at the event of the year, or perhaps the century. All of New York’s elite society turned up at the Fifth Avenue mega mansion dressed as pirates, goths, animals, gypsies and other inventive…

Congo High, Class of ’72

I still cringe when I look back (usually against my will) at my high school yearbook pictures. It’s probably because I can see how utterly lost I was at that age, in every sense of the word. But these school portraits, taken at a Protestant secondary school in Mbandaka, Congo in 1972, are in another league from your…

One Village, 150 Street Artists: A Sleepy Tunisian Town turned Vibrant Open Air Museum

Everywhere you turn in Er-Riadh, there’s art. It’s everywhere. The ancient village on the Tunisian island of Djerba, has spent the last several months of high summer being slowly transformed from a sleepy, traditional little corner of North Africa that has never heard of street art, into a world stage for one of the most vibrant and ambitious…

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