Greetings from Rabbi Shaul’s Sacred Taxidermy Museum, Brooklyn, NY

It’s a day like any other in Borough Park, Brooklyn. Yiddish-painted school buses go to-and-fro, and women tighten the tichels around their heads; every man is silhouetted by a pair of perfectly curled sideburns, and the local grocer has a two-for-one deal on blintzes. Tel-Aviv notwithstanding, the Big Apple is home to our planet’s largest Hasidic…

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Get Schooled by the World’s First Sexology Institute of 1920s Berlin

They called him “the Einstein of Sex”. The German doctor who went (quite literally) where no other had gone before in his research, founding the massive Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, or Sexology, just before the Nazis eclipsed bohemian Berlin and its costumed, sexually liberated splendour. His name was Magnus Hirschfeld (see the dude with the glasses…

Vacationing at the Edge of a Giant Hole in the Earth

You might have seen photographs around on the web of this giant hole that’s so big it can be seen from space (and very likely takes you straight to the devil’s basement). But have you ever wondered what actually exists around a godforsaken place like this? What’s daily life like? And can you find a decent…

Misadventures of the Psychedelic Rock Queen Who Tried to Spike Nixon’s Drink

Grace Slick is the the psychedelic queen who didn’t give a f**k– literally, she was the first to say the word on American television when she sang it in a song with her rock band, Jefferson Airplane. She was Janis Joplin’s drinking buddy, a talented songwriter with a wicked sense of humour, and the woman who plotted…

Catherine Deneuve Wants to Sell You Her Parisian Wardrobe

Spring cleaning came early for French cinema icon Catherine Deneuve, who says she’s just got no more room in her closet in Normandy (relatable!), so she’s auctioning off her perfectly Parisian, Yves Saint Laurent wardrobe. Now for fashion lovers, this is the Holy Grail of hauls. But even if you don’t care about clothes, you…

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

1. The ‘Hippiedilly’ Squat on Hyde Park Corner in 1969 Found on Flashbak. 2. The British Library has a collection of over 60 million newspapers stored in an airtight, low-oxygen room The latest, state-of-the-art facility featuring robotic cranes to retrieve newspapers from shelving that are 20 metres (65 feet) high. The newspapers are stored…

The Legend of the Sun King’s Perfume Bath at Versailles

We’ve taken a bath in front of the Eiffel Tower, in the middle of a desert, and even seen a bath tub on wheels. But for all our apparent interest in unconventional bathing, we’d never heard about Louis XIV’s luxurious perfume bath. In a ritual so over the top– even for the French Sun King– Louis…

The Wild Baroness of Greenwich Village Who Was the Real Artist Behind Duchamp’s Urinal

Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven had a life as rich as her name was long. She became the belle of New York’s bohemian scene in the early 1900s, donning feather crowns and bras made of tomato cans, making incredible art and befriending cutting-edge Dadaists like Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp. Then, she kind of faded into history…

The Man Who Lived in a Jewellery Box

He was the man with the thriftiest of Midas touches, and the only decorator who could spend $999 at a 99-cent store thanks to one mantra, seek “beauty, not luxury.” Tony Duquette was a Renaissance man of film, theatre, interior and jewellery design in Hollywood– if you name it, he probably built it and dipped…

One Woman’s Noble Mission to Document Madrid’s No-Frills Bars

Welcome to the greatest (and first) ever collection of no-frills bars. Picture an ‘old-man’ bar but frequented by elderly ladies and young things too. Now, add a sturdy base of uniformed waiters, a layer of mid-century modernist furnishings, and an uneven icing of clamour and chaos. To all of that, add a coating of fluorescent…