The Enchanted Cities Hiding Inside Theatres

For some lucky theatregoers, a trip to see the latest B-Movie at their local picture house also means a trip across space and time. It’s all thanks to the atmospheric movie palaces and theatres of the early 20th century, whose construction brought veritable mini-cities, from old Spanish streets to lost temples of Ancient Egypt, into…

Georgia O’Keeffe: She Lived Deliciously Alone in the Wild, Wild West

In 1934, Georgia O’Keeffe gutted the passenger seats from her A-Model Ford. It was time to make way for the only companion she needed, and wanted, out west: her art. There, in the dry heat of New Mexico, the pioneering female artist drove, hiked, and schlepped her canvases to the farthest corners of its blackened…

Now That Is How You Fall in Love with LA

There’s nothing more LA than trying to be a million things at once. In one afternoon, Angelinos can go from a kitsch “Casablanca” to Canter’s Deli; grab a Cuban cocktail at “Versailles” and end up at a dentist’s office that would be much better as a discotheque. It’s a wonderful, borderline perverse eclecticism that has…

How to Celebrate Native Americans this Thanksgiving

It’s 2020, which means it’s as good a time as any to recalibrate Thanksgiving. Not just by taking precautions to socially distance ourselves with loved ones at risk during these Strange and Uncertain Times, but also, by giving more thought about what we’re celebrating – and more importantly, who we’re giving thanks to. In lieu…

The Art of Destroying Money

For the past few decades, the American artist Mark Wagner has been snipping up US dollars to make intricate collages that comment on Capitalism, greed, and materialism; elaborate allegorical pieces that prompt us to reconsider our relationship with such a powerful, albeit banal object. You’d be hard pressed to find an artist who so boldly,…

Every Day Since 1964, this Outsider Artist Made a Collage of Found Objects

New Yorkers have a special relationship with trash, which is as much a fixture of the cityscape as the Manhattan skyline. Not to wax romantic about littering, but some of that, shall we say, “street ephemera” – the lost tickets, photos, business cards – can give us the most honest, intimate window into the city’s…

Vacationing at the West’s Smallest Ghost Town

Is luck just another word for good timing? It is for the town of Gold Point. Under the endless stretch of sky in Esmerelda County, Nevada, at the gateway of Death Valley, the little ghost town sleeps with dreams of bygone glory. Of chattering saloon life and gold dusted guns. Once upon a time –…

Disco Cowboys, Rejoice: The Dive Motel Is Here

A little birdy down south just let us in on a sizzling tip: the retro motel of our dreams just opened in Nashville, Tennessee, inviting travellers far and wide to teleport back to a time when mustard orange was a primary colour, and disco balls outnumbered people. So feather your hair, bedazzle your bell bottoms,…

B&B of the Month: The Wander Inn

They’re the Renaissance women of the wild, wild west, and today Amie and Jolie Sikes are giving Messy Nessy a taste of their little haven in Round Top, Texas: The Wander Inn. It’s the stuff of southern fairytales, a bed & breakfast where the longhorns graze and the fireflies glow, where folks “can see the…

The Vault

The Picasso of Circus Art

History didn’t know what to do with Fred G. Johnson. On the one hand, he was just another hard-working Chicago teen in the signage business, and far from a classically trained portrait artist. Yet, there weren’t many in the sign painting game making banners for “Bearded Brenda” or “Huey the Pretzel Man”; “Josephine the Electric Girl”…

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