An Ode to Floating Lighthouses

Sure, we’ve all admired picturesque lighthouses on rocky shores, or with waves crashing over them at the edge of a harbor, but…what about floating lighthouses? Like something out of a Wes Anderson movie, these fascinating vessels did exactly what their name suggests: they were lighthouses, guiding ships around obstacles and into safety. They were also…

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

1. Shell Glasses By Centa, Lisbon. 2. Inside Jeremy Irons’ Incredible Rescued & Restored a 15th-Century Irish Castle In the midst of a creative crisis, the British actor impulsively purchased Kilcoe Castle, a long-abandoned fortress near the water. David Kamp learns how a magical retreat came to be. Read the full article on Vanity Fair.…

Secret Tourism: Travelling with Europe’s Nomadic Shepherds

It will probably sound out of character if we told you that to discover Europe’s most secret corners, you should follow the herd and keep to the beaten path, quite literally. But hear us out and grab your hiking boots because today we’re taking notes from a very small group of folks who actually plan…

A Brief History of Skinny Eyebrows

Our eyebrows are arguably our most expressive, and some would even go as far as to say, dominant, facial features: they frame our faces, their expressions speak louder than words and what these non-identical twins say about the windows to our soul can be, well, rather telling, without us having to utter a word. How…

History’s Quietest Icon: The Many Faces Pierrot

“I’m Pierrot,” once said the late, great David Bowie: “I’m Everyman”. We all know his face: white like the moon, his only friend, with sad black lines drawn around the eyes, smudged by a teardrop or two. He’s dressed in an oversized white shirt with ruffles and pompoms and a little white pointed hat. Pierrot…

Atlanta’s Phantom of the Fox and His Secret Theatre Apartment

Theatres are inherently haunted places. By night, actors tread the boards, conjuring the spirits of those who lived and those who never were. We can hardly expect all those shades to simply evaporate into the ether after the final curtain. Instead they seep into dark and secluded backstage corners – an underground lake, perhaps –…

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

1. Crow Native Americans watching the rodeo at Crow fair in Montana, 1941 Colorisation by Sanna Dullaway. 2. The first kiss captured on camera was between two women in 1887 (contrary to Edison’s “The Kiss” film, widely accredited to being the first, 9 years later) “The First Naked Kiss On Camera: Eadweard Muybridge, Sex And…

The Wholesome Lost World of Competitive Barrel Jumping

Whilst exploring the abandoned Grossinger’s holiday resort in New York’s Catskill mountains one last time before it was torn down, something caught our eye in the crumbling ruins of what had once been the ice skate house. Propped up against the wall was a large wooden sign that had been left behind. Dusty like a…

Digging Up Egypt’s Not So Ancient WWII Surrealist Movement

Cairo, 1938. Around 140,000 British troops occupied the city, and World War II was ready to burst. Thirty-seven artists and writers gathered to fight against a rising Fascist ideology, British colonial rule, and the local conservative art scene. The first inklings of Surrealism already simmered under Egypt’s troubled surface, as artists and writers corresponded with…

An Ode to the Lonely Bandstand

‘A bandstand is, merely an empty shell unless music is played upon it,’ so laments Pavilions for Music, a website dedicated to the humble bandstand. Indeed, these empty shells with their elaborate ironwork and faded glamour, rushed past by commuters, utilised as climbing frames by children, smoked upon by teens and generally taken for granted…