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Category / Nostalgia

Inside the Secret Parisian Warehouse where the French Presidents Go Furniture Shopping

Picture an IKEA warehouse – but make it chic – and add an inventory of priceless furniture, textiles and objects that date as far back as the reign of the Sun King, Louis XIV, who indisputably raised the bar on what we’ll call French ‘power decorating’ for centuries to come. A sprawling Art Deco reinforced…

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…

Inside Tokyo’s Decaying 1970s Capsule Tower

The Nagakin Capsule Tower is one of the most important buildings in postwar architectural history in Japan, once praised as the ‘future of housing’, a rare remaining example of the Japanese Metabolism movement and the world’s first examples of capsule architecture built for permanent and practical use. It’s also a miracle it’s still standing after 40…

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…

The Soundtrack To A Lost Country: Rock Music in the GDR

To the leaders of Communist East Germany, nothing was quite as dangerous and potentially subversive to their nation’s youth as Western rock and pop music. By 1965, Beatlemania may have been at its height with the band regularly attracting seventy million viewers on the Ed Sullivan show, but behind the Iron Curtain, the Party State…

Let’s Raise a Glass to America’s Black Wall Street

Something else they forgot to tell us about in history class: Black Wall Street. Why is it that our textbooks neglected to tell us about the African Americans who opened their own banks, did business with the Rockefellers and prospered as entrepreneurs decades before the Civil Rights Movement? Yes indeed, long before desegregation, America had…

Swimming with Ghosts at the Spectacular Sutro Baths

Water parks used to be a lot different before the days of chlorine pools, lifeguards, and road trips. Take, for example, San Francisco’s Sutro Baths… The Sutro Baths were built in Lands End in 1894 by wealthy San Franciscan Adolph Sutro, a German immigrant who had made a fortune by figuring out how to drain and…

What’s Up with all the Lady Parts in Medieval Prayer Books?

Let’s say you’re flipping through a medieval Christian prayer book (as you do), and suddenly you come across a curious illustration amongst the prayers and psalms of something that looks unmistakably like female genitalia. A scolding voice in your head tells you to get your mind out of the gutter. But you wouldn’t be alone.…

He made a Fortune in the 1920’s Transplanting Monkey Testicle Tissue into the Ballsacks of Millionaires

The poet E.E Cummings once wrote of a “famous doctor who inserts monkey glands in millionaires” and in a pre-code Hollywood musical starring the Marx Brothers, they sang the line, “If you’re too old for dancing / Get yourself a monkey gland” performing a number entitled “Monkey-Doodle-Doo”. There was a famous Chicago surgeon who wrote…

Dog Lover Restores Historic Mansion while her Labradors Live the Downton Abbey Dream

Is it normal to be envious of a dog’s life? Meet the youngest Lady of this soon-to-be-restored 17th century Georgian mansion near Bath in the English countryside. Her name is Dizzy and she’s a very lucky lady, because as you’re about to see, she is currently living the real-life “Downton Abbey” dream. Along with her older…

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