“The kids can’t read anymore, they’re a bunch of morons, so what are you gonna do?” And that pretty much sums up the legend that is Joe Leisner, the no-bullsh*t owner of Comic Book Heaven, formerly located in Sunnyside, Queens NY. Let’s meet him…
In Boerum Place, Brooklyn, New York lives a man in an apartment with many things. Chong Gon Byun is his name and he arrived in New York City from Korea 25 years ago. Your initial thoughts on Byun might be that he is an obsessive vintage gatherer, a flea market bargain hunter, a hoarder. But a closer…
The year was 1969 and The Doors were gearing up for the release of their fifth album, Morrison Hotel. Driving around Los Angeles in a VW van, as only Jim Morrison would, the band and their photographer were location scouting for the album’s cover shoot when they came upon the Morrison Hotel at 1246 South Hope Street…
In a small town called Otega in the state of New York, there is an independent used bookshop with something very special about it. For decades, the owner of Popeks bookstore, which was passed onto Michael Popek from his father, has been collecting and cataloguing the unusual and forgotten things he finds inside the pages…
We just love it when two utterly opposite worlds collide, which is precisely the case with the mysterious pyramids sitting smack in the middle of Quakertown, USA. That’s right, States-bound folks: you can now eschew a visit to Cairo and just head to rural Pennsylvania to get a taste of an esoteric society, the “Rosicrucian Order”,…
The truth is, surrealist art was a man’s world. Its founder, André Breton was an unrepentant misogynist who believed women could not hold a central position in art. Dali too, could be patronising of his fellow female surrealists. When asked about our favourite bohemian queen of Paris, Leonor Fini, he said of her work, “Better than most,…
We’ve seen it dressed up every which way; painted yellow, used as a giant advertising billboard; and we even peered inside its hidden apartment, but we’ve never seen the Eiffel Tower looking quite like this. Ladies and gents, you’re looking at the 1936 Eiffel Tower that never was, a mock-up to turn Paris’ Iron Lady into……
Debussy said music is all about “the silence between the notes.” But for Romain Thiery, it’s about making sure that silence doesn’t grow too loud. Since 2009, the pianist, photographer, and overall urbex Renaissance man has been spotlighting the world’s grandest pianos in their final hour, in equally stunning and crumbling abodes, to give them…
If you build it, they will come. That was the logic behind American real estate magnate James V. Lafferty when he embarked on the most Edwardian PR stunt ever: to build a gigantic elephant. (Apparently it was a thing). The idea was to catch folks’ interest with it, and then lure them inside to show…
sassy: adjective \ˈsa-sē\ impudent, lively, spirited, vigorous, distinctively smart and stylish, showing no respect for people in authority, saucy, pert, confident, chic. Greece, 1960s, submitted to Reddit. https://www.reddit.com/r/OldSchoolCool/comments/996n6h/my_dad_with_my_uncle_greece_late_60s/ And we’re back, with a new edition of cool kids of history, giving plenty of sass to the camera. Nothing more, nothing less… 1942 The Brooklyn high school pants protest…