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Cabinet of Chic Curiosities
Category / New York

I See a Road Trip to New York’s Village of Psychics in Your Future

When the forests of Upstate New York are blanketed in orange and brown hues during the fall of Autumn leaves, there are few places more bewitching to escape for the weekend. But there is certainly no place quite like the enchanting hamlet of Lily Dale, NY, population: 275, where over 50 registered spiritual mediums are in residence…

When Americans Dined (and Dated) in Cemeteries

When it comes to green spaces, we’re a bit spoilt in New York City. There are over 1,700 parks (even if it doesn’t always feel that way) for our picnics, parties, and general frolicking to unfold. But 150 years ago, parks were still a privilege for the upper-class in America, if they even existed at…

A Forgotten Kitsch Supper Club is Reborn in New York

A few months ago, a man woke up to a disorientating view outside the window of his apartment in industrial Bushwick, New York. He suddenly found himself face-to-face with a tender childhood memory and the exact glowing neon sign of the storied “Turk’s Inn” supper club from Hayward, Wisconsin, 1,250 miles away. That the recently…

Don’t Be a Tourist in New York: The Soundtrack

Of course Don’t be a Tourist in New York comes with its own soundtrack! It’s less about the Franck Sinatra clichés, and more about the sounds of gritty New York in seventies and the folk singers that flocked to the East Village in the 1960s. You’ll also find plenty of talent born and bred in…

Better than Broadway: Inside NYC’s Theatre with Soul

In 1961, New York City was sizzling. Musicians, comics, artists – anyone selling a song or a run-on sentence made their way to Manhattan’s East Village to make it big, or have a hell of a lot of fun trying. There, the streets were electric, and for the the theatre crowd they led to one…

Meet Me at the Wigstock Festival: Remembering NYC Summers in Drag

It was the drag world’s biggest block party. From the heat of 1980s New York, equal parts glitter and grime, the “Wigstock” festival exploded onto the streets as a place for queens to hold court when no one else would have them. Today, watching jaw-dropping drag is as easy as going online or turning on…

And what if they’d built New York like this?

You might have noticed that for the cover of our second book, Don’t be a Tourist in New York, I chose to feature uptown’s Little Red Lighthouse. It’s the only one left on the island of Manhattan, but serves as a reminder that New York was first a port before anything else. “A city of…

The Book NYC has been Missing: Don’t be a Tourist in New York

I remember the moment I knew we had to write this book. I was fumbling around in the dark for a light switch in the attic of a salvage depot in Harlem. I was completely alone up there when those lights flickered on to reveal a room full of cobwebbed forgotten treasures, and in that…

Brooklyn’s Revolutionary Social Club

On a quiet street in Brooklyn, lies a very peculiar treasure chest. It safeguards the boots of  Mexican revolutionaries, and the sound bites of rebels; it collects buttons, posters, and anything upon which one could scrawl a grassroots manifesto. It’s New York City’s “Interference Archive,” and it’s the volunteer-based library, gallery, and archive for tools…

The Secret NYC Gallery that brought Picasso & the Avant-garde to America

Did they ever tell you about the nice Jersey boy who brought Modern Art to America’s shores? It wasn’t a Rockefeller, or a Guggenheim – just a kid from Hoboken, New Jersey with an eye for talent. Behind the doors of a little 5th floor attic-level apartment on 291 Fifth Avenue, he displayed raunchy Rodins,…
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