One Guy spent the 1960s & 70s Collecting Paper Airplanes off the Streets of NYC

Harry Smith used to run out into the street to save a paper airplane he spotted from being run over by a yellow cab. One friend recalls him seeing one in the air and running after it, looking completely out of his mind. From 1961 to 1983, this eccentric collector found hundreds of airplanes that landed on the…

Chasing Ghosts in an East London Time Capsule

I gave three taps to the door with the ominous Egyptian door knob and timidly stepped inside number 18 Folgate Street in Spitalfields, London. Here, you can smell the past. You can see the dust that time has gathered, it bathes in the sunlight on the stairway. You can hear the age in the floorboards creaking above. The…

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…

13 Things I Found on the Internet Today (Vol. CXLVI)

1. Miniature Mom & Pop Facades of NYC Randy Hage’s has spent many years photographing the gradually disappearing street level Mom & Pop storefronts in SoHo and then recreating them in stunning three dimensional detail to preserve memories of their “hand painted signs, layers of architecture, wonderful patinas and intriguing history.” You can see all his sculptures vs…

Sneak a Peek at the Facebook of 400 Years Ago

Social media may be the poster child of the 21st century, but the ideas behind LinkedIn and Facebook go back a long, long way. Dutch PhD scholar Sophie Reinders is currently exploring how personal books from many centuries ago known as alba amicorum – Latin for “friend books” – functioned as a sort of pre-dated version of our modern social…

The Last Ballet Slipper Factory

I was a ballet school dropout. I was supposed to be a ballerina when I grew up. That was the plan. Madame thought I was special and kept me after class to train me for the Royal Ballet. My mother said it would take too much time away from school and promised me it was no…

An Epic Dinner at the Library

Make a toast to Tolstoy, order the chicken Kiev in honour Chekhov, let Stravinksy serenade you with every spoonful of caviar and Pushkin play host in his palatial library of gastronomic pleasures. For anyone who has a way with words or a weakness for a truly great story, it’s likely that the library is one of your…

The Crumbling Village of Temples Lost to the Myanmar Jungle

It’s a scene straight out of the Jungle Book, only accessible from the outside world by a narrow canal that weaves its way through a parting in the wild and tangled overgrowth, west of Myanmar’s Inle Lake… Lead image (c) James Charlick (c) PPana (c) J Charlick (c) Artano (c) A Thompson After an hour’s boat ride passing the bathing…

Down the Rabbit Hole into a Parisian Wonderland

Paris might already have its own Euro Disneyland, but I know a little place, away from the crowds that’s more like the real thing. If Alice had just chosen a bright yellow door at the end of the rabbit hole and if the Mad Hatter had in fact been a legendary clown from Soviet Russia (I’ll…

The Fashion Brand the Cool Kids would Rather Keep a Secret

It’s not very often that you’ll catch me dedicating an entire post to a fashion brand, but now and again, I tumble head over heels for something truly unique and just absolutely need to share it with you… It’s not often that you come across a shirt that doubles as a hand-painted piece of art, which could sound…