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Category / Nostalgia

The Ghost Trains sent to an Underwater Grave

“Seeing these massive mechanisms being tossed into the ocean like a toy in the bathtub is a ping in my heart.” Award-winning photographer Stephen Mallon captured these incredible pictures over three years as he documented the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s recycling program retire the remains of obsolete New York subway cars into the Atlantic ocean. Over…

Time Capsule Diner Hiding in a New Orleans Record Store

I‘m having a very ‘Americana nostalgia’ day here at MessyNessyChic HQ for some reason (see previous post on all things stuck in the 1950s), which segue-ways into today’s second time travelling discovery. I first spotted this retired mid-century diner in the archives of the instagram account American Squares. “A junk store built around an old…

The West Coast’s Dark Secret It’d Like To Keep Underground

Some underground histories are famous, but some have remained just that, underground. Even if you live on the West Coast, you might not have heard the urban legend of Portland’s infamous Shanghai Tunnels. Portland, a port city in Oregon near the Columbia River, has a gridlock of interconnected basements and passageways under many of it’s…

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…

Decline of the ‘Dirty Dancing’ Dream

We’ve made a few trips to explore the abandoned resorts of the Borscht Belt of New York. Once places like Grossinger’s, the Concord, Kutscher’s and the Pines, were the epitome of a swanky summer holiday for New Yorkers. All through the Catskills were dozens of all-inclusive resorts, glitzy enough to entice the mostly Jewish, upper-middle…

The Depraved Dance Marathons of the 1930s You Didn’t Know About

In a stifling gymnasium in Anywhere, America dozens of couples shuffle around the cramped space clinging on to each other for dear life. Spectators in stands cheer on their favourite couples, watching their aching legs barely hold up their exhausted bodies. Some have mastered the art of sleeping on their partners shoulders; as long as…

Overnight at Harry Potter University

If you ever find yourself in Oxford, England in search of a bed for the night, you might consider booking a room at the student dorm accommodation of Christ Church College, University of Oxford for a real-life Harry Potter experience. The university not only provides accommodation over the summer months, but your stay comes with an all…

The Monstrous Film Set That Jumpstarted Hollywood

If you build it, they will come. And if they don’t, you’re screwed. Such was the case for Mr. D.W. Griffith, the infamous movie mogul behind the best worst movie ever made: the silent epic Intolerance (1916). Griffith became the emperor Los Angeles for the picture, creating a veritable city of 300-ft-tall Judean walls and…

Streamliner Trains that Oozed the Elegance of Old World Travel

Say, can I get that train pamphlet in a framed poster? That’s not something you’re likely to wonder about any of the marketing coming out of today’s rail travel industry. I found this gorgeous vintage pamphlet design by Union Pacific Railroad and it sent me on a cyber hunt for more memorabilia from a glittering era in train travel between the 1930s to the…

The Haunting ‘Human Zoo’ of Paris

In the furthest corner of the Vincennes woods of Paris, lies the remains of what was once a public exhibition to promote French colonialism over 100 years ago and what we can only refer to today as the equivalent of a human zoo. In 1907, six different villages were built in the Jardin d’Agronomie Tropicale, representing all…

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