French Vintage Carnival Rides Come To NYC

by Meg Nesterov on

If you are a fan of carnival rides, history, or just good old-fashioned summer fun, take a ferry out to NYC’s Governor’s Island this summer for a festival of vintage Parisian rides and carousels. Billed as a museum meets amusement park, Fete Paradiso will open on July 13 and run until September 29, and feature 19th- and 20th-century attractions such as a pipe organ, flying swings and a bicycle carousel like the one featured in “Midnight in Paris.” To add to the vintage French feel, there will be food from bistro Le Gamin and a beer hall and event space converted from a 1900 bumper car pavilion, along with special events opening weekend for Bastille Day.

Admission to Fete Paradiso is free and rides are $3 a pop. The free ferry to Governor’s Island from Manhattan‘s Battery Maritime building or Brooklyn‘s Pier 6 runs half-hourly until 7 p.m. every Saturday and Sunday. Learn more about Governor’s Island on their website, and follow the carnival set up on Instagram here.

Vintage Nude Photos On Display In Berlin’s Photography Museum

by Sean McLachlan on


The Museum of Photography in Berlin has just opened an exhibition of nude photos from the turn of the last century.

“The Naked Truth and More Besides Nude Photography around 1900” brings together hundreds of nude photos from an era we normally associate with old-fashioned prudery. In fact, nude photos were incredibly popular at that time. They had existed since the earliest days of the medium, and by the 1880s it was getting much cheaper to reproduce photographs. This led to a boom in the distribution of all photos, nudes included.

Soon nudity could be seen in magazines, advertising, postcards, collectible cards found in cigarette packs and large-format posters. The exhibition looks at a range of different styles and purposes of nudes, ranging from artistic studies to the blatantly pornographic. Rural images and scenes from Classical myths were also popular, as were photos of the nudist movement, which was seeing its first wave of popularity at this time.

%Gallery-187444%The explosion in nudes led to society questioning their traditional assumptions. The marks that corsets left on the flesh made some question whether they should be worn. Homoerotica became more widespread and the first homoerotic magazine, Der Eigene, started in 1896 and published many male nudes.

People who wanted to buy or sell nude photos had to skirt the law. By dubbing the images “for artistic purposes only,” they could claim their interest wasn’t prurient, a bit like how head shops nowadays label bongs “for tobacco use only.” The police did make frequent busts, and one of the largest collections of nude photos from this era is housed at the Police Museum of Lower Saxony, which supplied many of the more risqué photos for this exhibition.

Then as now, there was a continuous debate over what was or was not obscene. Simple nudes were generally considered acceptable, especially if they were artistic studies or images of “primitive” peoples. Surprisingly, images of nude children were also more acceptable than today since they were considered images of innocence. While some child nudes are on display at the museum, none appear in this article.

“The Naked Truth and More Besides Nude Photography around 1900” runs until August 25.

[Photo copyright Heinrich Kühn, copyright Estate of the Artist / Galerie Kicken Berlin]

Teufelsberg: A Photo Tour Inside Berlin’s Secret Abandoned Spy Station

by Jeremy Kressmann on

Berlin is a city that harbors its share of ghosts. As Germany’s premier city marches ever further into the future, shiny new government buildings and designer lofts rising on vacant lots across the capital, vestiges of Berlin’s infamous role in two World Wars and a Cold War can still be found if you know where to look. A prime example of this 20th-century legacy is Teufelsberg, an artificial hill just west of Berlin that harbors an amazing connection to Second World War military history and a now abandoned Cold War-era spy station.

The history of Teufelsberg is a fascinating mix of World War II and Cold War intrigue. During the Third Reich, Teufelsberg was to be the site of a proposed Nazi military technical college that was never completed. After the war, German authorities began hiding the unfinished buildings by burying them under more than 75 Million cubic meters of rubble created by Allied bombing campaigns. As the Cold War kicked into high gear, American military personnel began using the artificial hill’s excellent height to improve their efforts to spy on Soviet and East German communications, eventually building the radar domes and buildings in evidence to this day.

Touring the Teufelsberg site today is possible through an organized tour, though there is a bit of an ongoing debate amongst Berlin locals as to who should be allowed access. Once inside, the sight is a beautifully creepy mixture of colorful graffiti and decaying radar towers. Theme park this is not – broken glass, dark staircases and a lack of railings make the tour rather treacherous – but for a one of a kind chance to step inside Berlin history, it can’t be beat. Check out the photos below from Gadling’s recent visit.

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Gadling Guide Review: Bradshaw’s 1862 Guide To London

by Pam Mandel on

George Bradshaw was responsible for the development of a series of railway timetables that were an icon of British Victorian travel – they’re mentioned by Sherlock Holmes, Phileas Fogg and there was a 1876 music hall song called “Bradshaw’s Guide.”

I reached my destination, and was going to alight
When she placed her hand upon my arm, and said with much affright
‘Oh Dear Sir, don’t leave me, all alone to ride
What shall I do without you and the Bradshaw’s Guide.’

If you’re fond of Baedeker’s Guides – the essential red, leather-bound book that’s also an icon of the Grand Tour years of travel – you may also find the Bradshaw appealing. You probably want a vintage one, sold for a pretty penny on eBay, perhaps, but for a mere tenner, you can pick up a reissue of “Bradshaw’s Illustrated Hand Book to London and its Environs.”

A new version of this isn’t going to have the magical ticket stubs or marked pages that one that’s been used in the late 1800s would have, but it does have the pretty little engravings of London’s monuments. It’s got the cramped, hard to read type of 1800s guidebooks, exhaustive details and information that has zero value for today’s traveler – though it would be an amusing exercise to travel with this book as a guide.

What I love about it, though, is what I love about all old guidebooks – the practical information for travelers of another time. Current guidebooks put this stuff at the front; in the Bradshaw’s London guide, it’s all in the back.

There’s an entire section devoted to London churches, complete with the names of their ministers. There are several pages of postal regulations. The table of money for all nations does not include all nations by a long shot, but it does include Prussian, a nation, which no longer exists. There’s a list of “Dissenting Chapels,” begging the question: what is a dissenting chapel? The “Places Worth Seeing” section is alphabetical and lacks description, but opens with cemetery Abney Park. (I looked it up elsewhere; it does indeed seem to be worth seeing, still.)

It’s fun to open the book at random, pick a location, and then, turn to the web to see if it’s still in existence today. This reissue of Bradshaw’s Guide to London is not going to help you if you’re walking around modern London – it neglects to include even one map – but if you’d like to take a virtual tour and do some time travel as well, it’s good fun.

“Bradshaw’s 1862 Guide to London” is available on Amazon for about $10.

[Image: Crystal Palace, London, 1851 via Wikimedia Commons]