The Paris Off-Beat Winter 2022 Guide

Despite inflation and skyrocketing energy prices, The City of Lights isn’t going dark during the holidays, but instead is relying on LED lights and shorter hours (ie turning off all of the lights before midnight) to maintain the usual festive mood throughout the city. Let’s start planning your winter in Paris… Eating & Drinking your…

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

1. Living Paintings By Thierry Mandon 2. Joan Didion’s belongings from her NY apartment are up for auction See the catalogue here. 3. The New Yorker’s List of Best Books of 2022 so far If this list doesn’t get you back into reading, I don’t know what will. 4. This Instagram account is “a Love…

An Off-the-Curriculum Introduction to BDSM & Fetish Art History

A little slap and tickle – kinky or otherwise – has been good medicine for us down the ages. Public consumption of the practice of BDSM (Bondage and Discipline, Dominance and Submission, Sadochism and Masochism) really came into its own during a ‘golden age’ of fetish art in the mid 20th century. Fetish art has…

100 Rooms and 70 Secret Doors: Washington DC’s Quirkiest Secret

When most people think of secrecy in Washington, DC, they probably think of the FBI, the CIA or the Pentagon. But just south of Embassy Row, nestled behind the façades of five row houses, there stands an icon of kitsch, African American history, and rock and roll: the Mansion on O Street. Is it a…

Meet the Mama of Dada

We need to talk about Beatrice Wood. The last surviving member of the American Dada movement, the ceramicist, the artist, the writer, the actress, the lover, and let’s not leave out, the inspiration behind the headstrong character of “Rose” in the movie Titanic. Beatrice was born at the end of the 19th century, and died…

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

1. A Parisian Apartment For Sale in the Iconic Art Nouveau Hector Guimard Building The 4th floor apartment is asking 840,000 euros, found on Architecture de Collection. 2. These Incredible Miniatures by Aida Pravia Found on Etsy. 3. Virtual Reality from the Year 1830 4. Cool Stuff they Used to Paint on Bass Drum Heads in…

The Enduring Urban Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles

Imagine literally stumbling across a colorful tile in the road with some version of the bizarre inscription “Toynbee idea in movie 2001 resurrect dead on planet Jupiter.” This seemingly incomprehensible mambo-jumbo has flummoxed lovers of urban legends for decades, since they first started appearing in the late 1980s in Philadelphia, spreading to other North American…

In 1920s Berlin She Was the Pioneer of Punk

Thought punk was an invention of the 70s? Think again. A diminutive ravenette bombshell with animated eye-brows, brash blue eyeshadow, chalk-white skin and red lips was eons ahead of the curve and had laid the foundations of the punk movement w-a-y back in the 1920s already. Dance performance artist, cabaret queen, pantomimist, big & small…

A German Toulouse Lautrec, his Dancers and the Darkness

You’ve probably never heard of Walter Schnackenberg, a draughtsman, and illustrator of the early 20th century who could conjure up nightmarish images as easily as he could convey the decadent and jovial bourgeois Berlin of pre-war Europe. From his flowing effervescent studies of costumed dancers to his dark ethereal post-war illustrations, he would mix a…

What’s Up With Death Valley’s Bespoke Coffin Workshop?

The Nevada desert is arguably home to some of the strangest attractions in North America. From Clown Motels and Ghost Towns to haunted dolls and Area 51 there is no shortage of places to satisfy your taste for weird America, but none like Coffinwood, a custom coffin factory, wedding chapel, hearse garage and pet cemetery…