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Category / Nostalgia

Cruising with Agatha Christie on the Last Steamship of the Nile

The passage up the Blue Nile has always been both a physical experience and an allegorical tale. Thousands of years after pharaohs were ferried to the afterlife on golden barges, the steamboat began transporting mesmerised 19th century tourists past their temples in search of something otherworldly. This graceful journey up the river, passing ancient pyramids and…

Heartbreak Hides in the Walls of This Paris Mansion

Museums are usually a feast for the eyes, but rarely are they this much of a treat for the heart. Cozied up beside Paris’ Parc Monceau you’ll find just that: the opulent Musée Nissim de Camondo, a perfectly preserved mansion from 1911 that belonged to the affluent Camondo family. As stunning as the interiors and antiques are, it’s the…

Oh, Just a Decaying Soviet City in the Middle of the Sea

In the waters of the Caspian Sea, about 40 kilometers from the coast of Azerbaijan, lies an intricate network of bridges and man-made platforms which is currently home to around 2,000 people. Encompassing about 17 miles, this real-life water world is a veritable city called Neft Daşları (Neft Dashlari or Oily Rocks). It’s sole purpose…

The Eiffel Tower’s Lost Art Nouveau Restaurant

Meet us for dinner in Paris under the Iron Lady … circa 1900? Over the 135 years since the Eiffel Tower was built, there have been some surprising additions that have come and gone from the site of city’s most iconic landmark. In our archives, we’ve shared the tower’s various transformations and experimental uses, including…

In the back of a Taxi with John Lennon and Bob Dylan (on Drugs)

John Lennon would later tell a journalist for Rolling Stone magazine that he and Dylan had done heroin that day, recalling they were “both in shades, and both on f**king junk, and all these freaks around us […] But it was his scene, that was the problem for me. It was his movie. I was on his territory, that’s why I was…

Where the Harlem Renaissance Got Its Swing

On West 140th Street and Lenox Avenue today, a drab supermarket squats in front of a housing project. It’s hard to believe that in the 1930s, the most famous dance club in the world stood on this dreary spot. Back then, the block was dominated by a two-story building with an enormous marquee sprinkled gaily…

Almost in America: Portraits from Ellis Island

“Amidst crowds of anxious immigrants milling about, Hine had to locate his subject, isolate [them] from the crowd, and set the pose-almost always, because of the language barrier without words. He had to set up his simple 5 x 7 view camera on its rickety tripod, focus the camera, pull the slide, dust his flash…

A Crash-course in French Yé-Yé Pop Culture

While the Beatles were singing “She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah” in England, continental Europe was forming its own musical phenomenon. The French called it Yé-Yé, literally derived from the “yeah! yeah!” lyrics that had become the sound of British and American rock and roll. Inspired by the Anglophone craze, the Yé-Yé movement provided a…

Travel like Wes Anderson on the Real Darjeeling Limited Railway

It was arguably the tea that put Darjeeling on the world map, but for me, it was really Wes Anderson… The Darjeeling Himalayan Railway was the very first hill railway in India and its still in use today. By the tea and the gurkhas, the train has become a part of the identity of these…

Hitchcock’s Haunted House Party

Who better to kick off our Halloween weekend celebrations with than the master of horror and suspense himself, Mr. Alfred Hitchcock. In 1953, as he was about to embark on his next film, The Wrong Man, Hitchcock decided to throw a “Ghost-Haunted House Party” at his rented New York pad on East 18th St. Guest…

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