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Cabinet of Chic Curiosities

Category / Don’t Be A Tourist

January 18, 2019

Oh, just an Utterly Insane Ghost City of Fake French Chateaux

This is not Photoshop. I repeat, this is not Photohop. Ever heard of “duplitecture”? It’s the term that’s been coined to describe replica architecture which has been popping up all over China since the 1990s (and let’s not forget Las Vegas either), where iconic landmarks and entire towns are constructed using lower-quality building materials to clone centuries…

January 18, 2019

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…

January 17, 2019

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…

January 11, 2019

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…

January 9, 2019

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…

January 8, 2019

Can We Talk about the New “Las Vegas”?

Imagine wrapping up all of Las Vegas in a neon-lit bow, and tossing it onto 29 square kilometres of land overlooking the South China Sea. Stir in a few Komodo Dragons and European-inspired skyscrapers, and you’ve got Macau, the gambling capital of the world across the way from Hong Kong. It’s been called “the Monte…

January 8, 2019

A Little Lady with a Giant Prop House

This is embarrassing to admit now, but when we first saw Suri Bieler pop her head out from behind a doorway as we called out “anybody here?” in the entryway of a 95,000 sq. foot warehouse in Queens, we assumed she might be an office assistant; maybe a weekend volunteer. Because there was no way…

December 28, 2018

A Tale of Two Cities & Beyond with MessyNessyChic in 2018

In 2018, MessyNessyChic became a tale of two cities. We’ll always have Paris, but now we have New York too. In preparation for Don’t Be a Tourist in New York, book number 2 (touching down in 2019), this year our rabbit hole led us across the pond in search of a sleepless city’s secrets. Armed with a…

December 26, 2018

Downton Abbey in the Bronx

Bartow-Pell mansion is the last of her kind. Tucked down a narrow drive in the far reaches of Pelham Bay in the Bronx, the 348-year-old estate was once one of many retreats built for affluent New Yorkers to hang up their top hats, and relax in Downton Abbey-level splendour. As with many old American mansions,…

December 24, 2018

12 Places in Paris to Celebrate New Year’s Eve like a Local

When it comes to celebrating New Year’s Eve, I’m usually torn between staying in with friends and a bottle of wine and, oh, I don’t know — jumping on tables at one of Hemingway’s favourite bars? Ordering cocktails by a pirate ship? Sounds about accurate. You see, when it comes to offering up an eclectic…

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