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Category / Nostalgia

We’re Soon to be Dining in an Abandoned Metro Station in Paris

It’s finally happening. A sleeping ghost station in Paris’ revered 6eme arrondissement; just a few steps from iconic French cafés and the world’s first luxury department store; a forgotten metro stop is finally going to be transformed, slated to become the city’s hottest new underground restaurant. If this all kinda rings a bell, it’s because in 2013,…

Botany and the Forgotten Sexual Revolution

Sex and botany– two words rarely found in the same sentence, but there was a time when the study of botany was considered so obscene that books on the subject were censored for women; branded dangerous and unsuitable for her delicate sensibilities. Gardens and greenhouses became an enlightened woman’s secret haven of discovery, expression and temptation. While today’s scientific…

Before Disneyland Paris, there was Human Roulette and Drag Balls at the Lost “Magic City”

Dragons curled up under the bridge. Toboggans splashed Parisians in to the Seine, benches twirled, and wine flowed freely. It was a Saturday afternoon like any other at the “Magic City” of Paris, the long lost fun fair that was the nation’s very first parc d’attractions. As such, it was quite literally the gateway to…

The Great African American Escape to Soviet Russia

In pursuit of the African American story abroad, we often look to 1920s Paris, where jazz was first introduced to the French and Black culture was embraced with open arms. It’s a more familiar story than the one about Soviet Russia opening its doors to thousands of Black Americans in the 20th century, where they…

Phone Home from London’s Original Red Phone Booth

They’re bright red kryptonite for tourists who can rarely resist a photo opportunity with London’s iconic phone booth, but few take their admiration further to find out just how they came about. The first London telephone boxes, or kiosks, were known as K1s. Introduced by the UK’s Post Office in 1921, they were considered to…

A Hidden Suffragists Portrait Studio Discovered in a New York Attic

In a forgotten attic, sealed up for decades, the life’s work of a photographer for the Suffragist movement has been found, and it all started with the changing of a lightbulb. David J. Whitcomb, 43 year-old lawyer bought a building in Geneva, New York for his practice and was doing some electrical maintenance when he…

This Dark Age of Disco and the Brave New World of Nightlife

Did Covid really kill the disco? Or was it just the nail in the nightclub’s coffin? Some would argue the clubbing era officially died near the end of the 00’s, and that it was the age of social media that pulled the trigger. It’s a nostalgia-driven debate that can be found thriving in the comments…

But Where are the Women of Wall Street?

If you logged onto the internet this week, you probably heard about the GameStop saga involving a group of amateur investors that took on Wall Street by pushing the stock of a few underdog companies (like GameStop) to become the most highly traded assets in the United States. And if like me, your grasp on…

Who Wants to Buy a 1950s Doo-Wop Motel?

The Jersey Shore earned a certain kind of reputation when MTV cameras infamously descended on its coast in the naughties, but “guidos” aside, in the 1950s, it was Hollywood royalty like Marilyn Monroe and Grace Kelly who had claimed it as their summer vacation spot. In post-war America, the shore hosted some of the biggest…

Here’s Prince, Holding Court in his First Filmed Interview

Prince rarely gave live interviews, but when he did, he had a way of mesmerising the audience. We dug up this rare clip from 1985 when the artist agreed to talk in front of cameras for the first time ever. It’s a rather peculiar conversation in which his then-manager Steve Fargnoli (who later sued the singer…

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