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Category / How to start a subculture

The Sweet & Forgotten Charm of Vintage Sugar Cube Packaging

So I found this peculiar collection on Flickr by a guy in California called Frank Kelsey. He’s been collecting for 30+ years – he’s also got impressive collections of vintage ashtrays, matchbook covers and baseball cards – but it’s his sugar cube wrappers that had me really enamoured. My guess is there aren’t that many…

The Parisian Poison Panic and Versailles’ Secret Witch Hunt

This is a different kind of story about Versailles; one that they only dared whisper about in the palace’s gilded halls. It’s the little-known story of a witch hunt that unfolded in secrecy within the French royal court, eclipsed in history by a more famous witch hunt that took place a decade later, thousands of…

The Pagan Wild Men of Europe

Slightly terrifying, right? Not the sort of crowd you want to run into alone, in an empty field, with the sounds of chanting coming from the woods yonder. But don’t worry, they only come out at Christmastime to haunt the innocent souls of children. You see, while the rest of us are celebrating the most magical time…

America’s First Planetarium is Hoarding the Ultimate Cabinet of Curiosities

I’ve caught the collector’s bug again. What is it this time? Antique astronomy tools. And I’m blaming it on the Adler Planetarium, the first in America and home to one of the world’s largest collections of historic scientific instruments. It all began when I stumbled upon their online collections, a dangerous rabbit hole for those of us…

A Love Letter to the Lost World of the Parisian Pneumatic Post

Years before the Paris Métro opened, there was another subterranean transport system rattling away beneath the city streets. Instead of messages floating around in the internet ether of apps and social networks, if you wanted to send a note to someone in your city in the 19th century, you tube. A network of sealed lines…

An Educational Haven at Harlem’s Little Black Book Shop turned B&B

Kurt Thometz’s bookshop was not the norm. Harlem’s white-owned all-Black bookstore almost seemed like a glimpse into an alternate universe where blackness dictates the principle narrative of society. It was “provocative”, “dangerous” even, to be confronted by such an unfamiliar dynamic. Rare book collector, Kurt Thometz, opened Jumel Terrace Books on the lower ground floor…

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…

Mostly, this Secret Masonic Order Just Wants to Have Fun

We do love a good plunge into worlds apart – filled with secret society conspiracies and folks living off-grid or on the fringes of society. The latest curious collective to pique my interest is perhaps the quirkiest of masonic orders, called “The Shriners”, formally known as the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the…

Inside the Time Capsule Fencing Club of Paris

I had been curious about what was behind the door of No. 6 Rue Gît-le-Cœur in Saint Germain for quite a while before I decided to Google it, half expecting to be disappointed by news that it no longer existed. To my surprise, a kind voice picked up at the other end of the telephone line. “Yes…

Wet Hot Parisian Summer: A Lost 1930s Nudist Utopia

In Physiopolis, life was better in the buff. Or at least in a bikini, which was as close as one could legally get to public nudity in 1930s Paris. It was here, on an isolated sun-baked island on the Seine, that a titillating new naturiste-nudiste (naturalist and nude) movement sprang forth. Gone were the days…

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