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Category / Nostalgia

Vintage Snapshots of Swedish Midsummer looking suspiciously like a Spooky Cult

While the annual holiday of Midsummer typically brings to mind flower crowns and smorgasbords of perfectly-arranged picnic food, we’ve dug up some archive photographs from the Midsummers of yore, where the grainy black & white filters and old fashioned 19th century dress suddenly bring a distinctly more ‘culty’ vibe to the whole affair…. The ancient holiday is deeply rooted…

And what if they’d built New York like this?

You might have noticed that for the cover of our second book, Don’t be a Tourist in New York, I chose to feature uptown’s Little Red Lighthouse. It’s the only one left on the island of Manhattan, but serves as a reminder that New York was first a port before anything else. “A city of…

New York’s First Subway was Pure Luxury

As far back as 1867, the streets of New York were always bustling with crowds of people. An ambitious engineer and businessman by the name of Alfred Ely Beach had a better idea. He wanted to transport the masses by subway. The radical idea was laughed at and initially Beach could only get a permit…

Meet the Winners of Drag Race 100 Years Ago

Hoist up your garters and fasten your wigs, because we’re voguing our way back in time to the origins of drag ball extravaganzas: those champagne and lipstick fuelled soirées where drag queens, cross-dressers, and everybody in-between gathered to unfurl their fabulousness in style – and just like on the main stage of the hit TV…

Lost Gardens of New York City

There are some places in our cities that we’ll never get to see and the secret garden is one of the most endangered species in a modern metropolis. Lost in time, replaced to make room for new development or kept hidden from public view, these rare green sanctuaries can almost hold a mythical status in our urban lives. Demonstration garden, Bryant Park,…

The Forgotten Treehouse Bars of Bygone Summers in Paris

There was once a place that drew crowds of Parisians away from their grand boulevards and sidewalk cafés to rediscover their inner child, wine & dine in chestnut tree houses and celebrate summer like Robinson Crusoe. Perhaps you’ve heard of a “guingette”, a sort of French equivalent to a summer hoedown, traditionally located next to the river and particularly…

13 Things I Found on the Internet Today (Vol. CCCLIII)

1. A dandelion wish-making facility in L.A. “The anonymous art collective simply known as the Art Department transformed a decommissioned building into “a secret wish-processing facility.” Find the article on HyperAllergic 2. Object, 1936 This Surrealist object was inspired by a conversation between Oppenheim and artists Pablo Picasso and Dora Maar at a Paris cafe.…

The Lost Romance of the Transylvanian Spa Town

We walked with ghosts through a crumbling spa town in the valley of the Cerna river, where Empresses and Kings of Bohemia once came to “take the waters”. An early morning mist rose from the sulphurs of the riverbed, crawling through the empty streets. Whistling through shattered windows and vast corridors, the wind seemed to…

That One Time Coca-Cola Made a Dystopian Soda

No one quite knew what to do with Generation X (born from the late 1960s to the early ’80s), but marketers were especially stumped at how they could appeal to this new, generation of globalisation that was disillusioned with the status quo. The heart of the matter was, and remains, incredibly subversive – a challenge…

The Secret NYC Gallery that brought Picasso & the Avant-garde to America

Did they ever tell you about the nice Jersey boy who brought Modern Art to America’s shores? It wasn’t a Rockefeller, or a Guggenheim – just a kid from Hoboken, New Jersey with an eye for talent. Behind the doors of a little 5th floor attic-level apartment on 291 Fifth Avenue, he displayed raunchy Rodins,…

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