Botticelli’s Venus Was Real, and the Original Blonde Bombshell

The candles begin to flicker in a damp, baroque room, as cherubs emerge from a flower filled pond, hoisting a clam shell up from its depths. When it finally unhinges, the human incarnation of love itself takes form: “The birth of Venus.” It’s an iconic scene, and one that’s been told time and time again…

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

1. A picture worth well over 1000 words Let me start off by saying I’m terrified of open water. For some reason, I thought it would be a great idea to wake up at 4am, drive to the Dead Sea, and swim out to this salt island before sunrise. The distance from the beach was…

The Paris August Survival Guide

It’s that time of the year again. Parisians close up shop for August to chase the last rays of summer outside la capitale, turning the city into a veritable ghost town. Tourists and locals alike are left wondering where on earth they can find an open boulangerie, where they can shop, dine, and make merry…

A Forgotten Kitsch Supper Club is Reborn in New York

A few months ago, a man woke up to a disorientating view outside the window of his apartment in industrial Bushwick, New York. He suddenly found himself face-to-face with a tender childhood memory and the exact glowing neon sign of the storied “Turk’s Inn” supper club from Hayward, Wisconsin, 1,250 miles away. That the recently…

You Don’t Have to Bring your Own Boules to Play Pétanque in Paris – But it Helps

No matter how long you’ve been in France, there will be few other moments in your life that feel both as culturally significant and stressful as your first ever game of pétanque. The second the rain clouds clear over France in early spring, you can bet a boule will be thrown. There are a handful…

Georgia O’Keeffe: She Lived Deliciously Alone in the Wild, Wild West

In 1934, Georgia O’Keeffe gutted the passenger seats from her A-Model Ford. It was time to make way for the only companion she needed, and wanted, out west: her art. There, in the dry heat of New Mexico, the pioneering female artist drove, hiked, and schlepped her canvases to the farthest corners of its blackened…

Disco Cowboys, Rejoice: The Dive Motel Is Here

A little birdy down south just let us in on a sizzling tip: the retro motel of our dreams just opened in Nashville, Tennessee, inviting travellers far and wide to teleport back to a time when mustard orange was a primary colour, and disco balls outnumbered people. So feather your hair, bedazzle your bell bottoms,…

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

1. A 392 year old shark discovered in the Arctic Ocean (that means he was wandering the oceans back in 1627) Found on Reddit. 2. The tiny video store that survived Netflix In the wake of an algorithm-led video store apocalypse, Captain Video stays afloat by offering the human touch. “Where the hell have you…

The Vault

Don’t be a Tourist Mini Guide to Belgium

Belgium gave us Audrey Hepburn, great comic books and the Communist Manifesto. It’s barely the size of New Jersey but it produces more than 220,000 tons of chocolate per annum and it’s home to about 125 breweries. And those are just the fun facts. Cooler than you think, stranger than you think and more impressive…

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A Brief Compendium of Medical Quackery

The rise of accessibility to medicine in the 19th century was a beautiful thing, but it also opened the gates to a deluge of medical scams and quackery. If you were lucky, they were harmless scams. But more often than not, treatments included addictive and life threatening ingredients. Today, we’re diving into a brief compendium…