The Rooftop Pigeon Men: A New York Subculture

When I was about twelve or thirteen, I remember watching an episode of my favourite Nickelodeon cartoon, Hey Arnold, entitled “Pigeon Man”, about a mysterious hermit who lived on a New York rooftop with pigeons. Very few people had seen him and only rumours circulated amongst the neighbourhood kids about the ‘Legend of the Pigeon…

The Beatle that Got Fired

If you’re not a mega Beatles fan, or particularly well-versed in early Beatles history, that handsome chap on the drums there in a line up of teenage Greasers, might not look so familiar. That’s Pete Best, the original drummer for the iconic band, who was sacked under the direction of Lennon, McCartney and Harrison in 1962…

Mods vs Rockers in Brighton’s Battle of the Beach Chairs, 1964

One of my favourite things to come across when I’m researching is a snapshot from history that I’m completely unfamiliar with. A forgotten story to re-discover, another clue to the bigger picture or just a bizarre anecdote from the past; these are my little treasures hiding under rocks. And today, I found these baffling and beautiful photographs of what I can only…

The Mexican Subculture That Celebrates Bad Hair Days

We all have bad hair days, whether its uncooperative hairlines or one too many rounds with the hair curler, most of us would rather just stay the f**k indoors. But in the city of Monterrey in Mexico, an urban subculture known as the Cholombians have taken most people’s idea of a very, very bad hair…

The Male Beauty Contest of the Sahara Desert

The beauty standards and criteria aren’t all that different from your typical beauty pageant, except in the nomadic Wodaabe tribe of Niger, it’s the girls who get to judge the boys. That old cliché that only women are high maintenance? Well, meet the tribesmen who spend an incredible amount of time, energy, and money to get…

Freedom Riding on a Harley: The 1950s All-Black Biker Gang

“While Rosa Parks took her historic bus ride, and as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X and Huey P. Newton and the Black Panthers stood bravely for equal rights, the East Bay Dragons MC risked life and limb during days when a black man riding a Harley chopper was a revolutionary act.” The East Bay…

The Last Sworn Virgins of Albania

In small and remote villages of the Albanian Alps, there some who have a made a greater sacrifice than others; who hold a secret from outsiders behind their worn out faces and hard-worked frames. We are looking at portraits of women who have chosen to live their lives as men to help their families and…

The 1950s All-Girl Hot Rod Gang

When we think of women in the 1950s, we tend to picture some kind of Stepford housewife or a glamorous Marilyn Monroe type. Rarely does a character like bad girl Betty Rizzo come to mind and you’d be hard pressed to find a female Hollywood equivalent of James Dean’s “Rebel without a Cause”. Today, I think I found the real…

Lost Cowboys of the Congo

We’ve met the dapper dandies of the Congo, but today let’s discover yet another subculture from the same corner of Africa, forgotten in the folds of time. In the 1950s, when the Congo still belonged to the Belgium colonialists and the capital of Kinshasa was known as Léopoldville, it was a difficult place to be a kid to say the…

The Forgotten 1950s Girl Gang

You might have heard of the Teddy Boys, a 1950s rebel youth subculture in Britain characterized by an unlikely style of dress inspired by Edwardian dandies fused with American rock’n roll. They formed gangs from East London to North Kensington and became high profile rebels in the media. But an important sub-subculture of the Teddy…