All Aboard Tito’s Train: A Dictator’s Time Capsule of Luxury Travel

In today’s internet rabbit hole adventure, I ventured far from home and ended up on a Serbian website for filming locations. To my surprise, one of the locations for hire just so happened to be an ex-dictator’s private luxury train. Sitting in a rather rundown warehouse in Belgrade, the luxurious Blue train was custom-designed in…

The Stylehunters of Soviet Russia

In communist Russia of the 1950s, members of a provocative subculture put their own original twist on street style. Labeled “Stilyaga” or “Stilyagi” (plural) by disapproving outsiders – a name that literally translates to stylehunter – a group of dandy youngsters dressed up in colorful American-inspired get ups to meet on Leningrad and Moscow’s main…

Cape Town’s Lost District, through the Eyes of its Transgender Darling

Once upon a time, at the southernmost tip of Africa, nestled in a hollow between the shores of the Atlantic Ocean and slopes of Table Mountain lived an awesome bourgeoning community of thespians. District Six was home to bohemians, artists, merchants, preachers, students, business people, gangsters and everyone in between. Think New York’s Greenwich Village…

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The “Unknown” Photographer who Documented the Cool Kats of Mid-Century Mali

At a New York art exhibition in the early 90s, three black & white photographs hung on the white walls, credited to a photographer “Unknown“. The portraits of fashionably dressed people and families taken between 1940 and the early sixties were actually the work of a nationally renowned photographer in Mali. Outside of his country however, Seydou Keita…

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The Town that Hemingway Watched Die

In the most arid part of Aragon, a northeast state of Spain, a ghost town with an unusual history waits to be explored. In a country full of vibrant traditions and an active monarchy, a small ruined city may seem unworthy of a place on the itinerary, but Belchite’s history is more than meets the…

The Hippie Caves of Matala that housed Joni Mitchell

In a sleepy fishing village on the island of Crete, where Joni Mitchell had found herself a nomadic home inside manmade Neolithic caves carved into the sandstone cliff, she sang her folk songs, “under a starry dome…beneath the Matala Moon.” It was the 1960s and a community of backpacking hippies had settled in Matala, a remote corner of…

The Lost Victorian Mansions of Downtown LA

This is a picture of a Los Angeles that no longer exists. Affectionately knick-named “the Castle”, this elegant Victorian house was one of many in the once prestigious neighbourhood of Los Angeles, known as Bunker Hill. Downtown LA does have history, it’s just buried under gleaming high-rise office blocks and strip malls… Despite once attracting…

When Cats, Peaches, Lunch (and Letters) were Mailed Beneath the Streets of NYC

For over 50 years, a 27-mile network of pneumatic tubes provided upwards of a third of New York City’s mail. Nowadays, speed is the name of the game, whether its technology constantly increasing the speed of digital communication or Amazon delivering goods at record rates. But 100 years ago, pneumatic tubes, basically 19th-century physical internets,…

The Party Castle Forgotten in the Jungle for Half a Century

There are some places in the world that make you weak at the knees with nostalgia and Paronella Castle is one of them. It was the impossible dream of an ambitious Spanish immigrant who sailed to Australia in 1913 to make a life for himself and his fiancé waiting back home. José Paronella worked for…

But Have you Drank Wine from a Volcanic Vineyard?

I’ll see your Vintage Bordeaux and raise you a glass from a volcanic vineyard. If aliens are out there somewhere and they happen to enjoy the occasional bottle of wine, this could be what their vineyards would look like. But alas, this is just plain ol’ planet earth being totally and completely awesome again. We’re…