Archive Category: Travel & Places

Tokyo, the Blade Runner City by Thomas Birke

Photo: Thomas Birke

Photographer Thomas Birke went to Japan in 2008 to take photos of "the future" - and he didn’t go away disappointed. Thomas’ large format photography reveals how much Tokyo resembles the dystopian future city in Blade Runner.

Dark Roasted Blend has the exclusive: Link

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The Money Floor (Alas, Only Pennies)

The Standard Grill in the Standard Hotel in New York has a very unusual floor: it’s made of pennies! I guess if you’re a couple of pennies short on tips, just pry them off the floor!

Link

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The Dark Side of Disney

Disney isn’t always the Happiest Place on Earth. The parks sometimes harbor deep, dark secrets – and we’re not talking the Haunted Mansion or the Tower of Terror. Below are a few sinister secrets Mickey doesn’t want you to know about.

Deaths

We’ve all heard the rumors that no one has ever died at a Disney park because Disney has paid officials to refrain from declaring injured or ill people dead until they hit a hospital outside of Disney property. But it’s not true. There are several incidents where the victims were reported to have died at the scene.

In 2007, a Spanish teenager died while she was riding the Rock ‘N’ Roller Coaster at Disneyland Paris. Her friends noticed she was unconscious when the ride stopped, according to the BBC, and park medics immediately rushed to the scene. There was nothing they could do, though, and she was pronounced dead by the time an ambulance could get there. Photo from DLPInfo.

In June of both 1973 and 1983, 18-year-old boys drowned in the Rivers of America. Both had stayed in the area when they weren’t supposed to - the incident in ‘73 occurred when a boy and his brother decided to stay in the park after closing and the ‘83 incident happened when a boy capsized a rubber emergency raft he had stolen from a cast-only section of the park.

In 1984, Dollie Young was riding the Matterhorn Bobsleds at Disneyland when her seatbelt became unbuckled. To this day, it’s not known how Dollie fell out of her car, but she did. She fell to the track and was hit by another car, then caught under its wheels and dragged for a bit before the ride came to a stop. She was pronounced dead at the scene due to massive head and chest injuries.

And, of course, there was the infamous “America Sings” death of 1974. An employee named Debbi Stone was working as the hostess to the show one evening when her fellow cast members were alerted to the fact that she was missing. Some reports say they noticed at some point during the evening; other reports say a guest heard Debbi’s screams and immediately told cast members. Either way, by the time she was found, Debbi had been crushed to death between a rotating theater wall and a permanent theater wall; she definitely didn’t make it to a hospital first. Photo from Yesterland.

Ashes

Even when people aren’t dying at Disney, they want their mortal remains to be forever interred at the Happiest Place on Earth. Disney doesn’t like to talk about it, obviously, but sometimes cast members spill the beans to inquiring reporters. David Koenig, author of Mouse Tales: A Behind-the-Ears Look at Disneyland, says that the Haunted Mansion has definitely been the site of a quickie memorial service at least once. A cast member told him that she had been working the ride when a group requested extra time on the ride to say a quick goodbye to a little boy who had died and loved the Haunted Mansion. She agreed, but then spotted one of the guests emptying grey ash out onto the ride. The ride was shut down so it could be cleaned up.

In 2007, a guest alerted cast members at the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction that she had seen another woman sprinkling some sort of a powdery substance into the water, and the Los Angeles Times reports that the ride was shut down the same year when a group of people managed to leave a pile of ashes in the Captain’s Quarters section of the ride.

Hidden Messages

I’ve done it, and I bet a lot of you have done it as well: pausing and rewinding and going frame-by-frame to catch hidden messages or images in certain Disney films. Some of them are really there and some of them are just products of our active imaginations. Here’s the lowdown:

Aladdin does not tell children to take off their clothes in Aladdin. It’s a scene where “Prince Ali” is trying to get up to Princess Jasmine’s room to talk to her when he comes across her tiger, Rajah. The tiger growls at him menacingly, and Aladdin says, “C’mon… good kitty. Take off and go!” while shooing the feline away with his turban. The captioning supports this argument. However, the line is whispered and not enunciated well, and in addition, it seems to be edited poorly. Snopes http://www.snopes.com/disney/films/aladdin.asp says that the same bit of dialogue seems to have been inserted twice, so the whispered line is doubly garbled. Because it was so close on the heels of The Little Mermaid controversy, people heard what they wanted to.

Speaking of which, The Little Mermaid did not contain any sexual images on purpose. There were two issues that concerned the public: first, that artwork for the movie contained a phallic images as part of a castle in the background, and second, that the priest officiating over the wedding scene near the end of the movie seems to get an erection right in the middle of the ceremony. Neither is true, according to Snopes. The phallic image was unintentional and was not drawn in by a disgruntled employee who had recently gotten laid off (the artist didn’t even work for Disney) and the “erection” is actually the priest’s knees.

So what is true? Well, there’s definitely an image of a topless woman in the 1977 movie The Rescuers. And Disney fully admits it. In fact, the image – which is a photograph, not an animated bit, and was clearly intentionally placed in the movie – was basically pointed out to the public by Disney themselves. The image occurs so fast in two single, non-consecutive frames, that a viewer would have to know exactly where to pause the movie in order to even see it. The movie was recalled in 1999 after Disney discovered the image was there; they claimed it must have been inserted in post-production. Photo from Snopes.

One that’s maybe true: Jessica Rabbit going commando in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. There’s a scene in the movie where Jessica and Eddie Valiant are thrown from a car, causing her dress to flip up very briefly. It goes fast, but people who have slowed the movie to frame-by-frame say that the way the coloring was done suggests that mischievous animators may have drawn Jessica without any undergarments. However, the coloring, which is darker than the rest of Jessica’s skin, may also suggest underwear.

And here’s a not-so-hidden image you can check out for yourself the next time you’re at Disney World – there’s a Nazi “hidden” in plain sight in a mural at the Grand Floridian resort. In the book Sabotage in the American Workplace, the artist who painted the piece says that Disney hired him to create a Great Gatsby-esque mural for the ballroom in the upscale hotel. He decided to paint a Nazi in the background of the mural to “comment on what was happening in the rest of the world while the Great Gatsbys where whittling away their hours with cocktails.” Photo from Snopes.
There are definitely more dark Disney tales – in fact, we could probably turn this into a series! What weird and/or disturbing rumors have you heard about the House of Mouse? Share in the comments, and maybe we’ll investigate for future posts.

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Hello Kitty Castle

Welcome to the Hello Kitty Castle in Taiwan. It can help take care of all of your cute needs. The gallery has some amazingly cute things in it, including food garnished with a Hello Kitty chocolate dusting.

Link Via Cute Overload

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An Incomplete Evolution of the Cartoon Political Map

Maps have always been good visual aids for political cartoons, since there’s no question about who is referred to. BibliOdyssey takes a look at political cartoon maps of Britain and Europe through history. Twelve maps are featured, including this 1793 map by Robert Dighton (portrait artist, caricaturist, and thief). Portraying Britain as a person, often riding a fish, is a recurring theme in such maps. Link -Thanks, peacay!

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A Zoo’s Message About Pollution

Artists Christoph Steinbrener and Rainer Dempf created this art installation in the Schönbrunn Zoo in Vienna to show the potential effects our negative actions take on the evironment.

According to the artists, these scenes of ecological nightmares are “experimental set-up[s]” in which “the viewer is forced to reconsider traditional modes of animal presentation and simultaneously to question the authenticity of concepts which are restaging ‘natural’ environments while they are increasingly endangered.”

Link

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Time Wastes Too Fast

Author and illustrator Maira Kalman took a trip to Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson and was moved to write a travelogue. But this is no ordinary travelogue. Kalman writes about Jefferson’s life and philosophy as well as his home, with whimsical pictures that drawn you in to her experience. Link -via Everlasting Blort

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There’s A Squid In Your Water

Bandai toy company from Japan has finally realized that bottles of water just aren’t cute. As Japan is the cute capital of the world, this just wouldn’t do. To fix the problem, they developed these adorable floating squids that can be added to any bottle of water. Thank god for Japanese innovation. Of course, they’re only available in Japan, but at least they’re affordable at only $6 each.

Link

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Tree Grows Under Car -Lifts It Up

Junkyard workers in Japan noticed this seedling sprouting up under a car over 25 years ago. They let it grow and now it’s lifted the whole car up in the air. Now they’ve created a shrine around it. Check out the video here.

Link via Boing Boing

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Luxury Russian Cruise Hunts Somali Pirates

Perhaps this is the way to deal with Somali pirates, and get a little R&R at the same time: a Russian luxury cruise line is offering wealthy customers the chance to hunt pirates!

Wealthy punters pay £3,500 per day to patrol the most dangerous waters in the world hoping to be attacked by raiders.

When attacked, they retaliate with grenade launchers, machine guns and rocket launchers, reports Austrian business paper Wirtschaftsblatt.

Passengers, who can pay an extra £5 a day for an AK-47 machine gun and £7 for 100 rounds of ammo, are also protected by a squad of ex special forces troops.

Link

Update 6/26/09 - It’s a hoax, though I think the proposed (morbid and not to mention unethical) solution is still a matter of interesting debate - Thanks rb!

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Crop Circles Made by Stoned Wallabies

Forget aliens, the real culprits behind mysterious crop circles in Tasmania are far weirder: stoned wallabies!

"The one interesting bit that I found recently in one of my briefs on the poppy industry was that we have a problem with wallabies entering poppy fields, getting as high as a kite and going around in circles," Lara Giddings told the hearing.

"Then they crash," she added. "We see crop circles in the poppy industry from wallabies that are high."

Link

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Church Turned Graveyard Into a Parking Lot for Wimbledon

It seems that the St. Mary’s Church in Wimbledon village has maneuvered itself into a rather tight spot: church officials let tennis fan park their car on top of graves for £20!

The Church later apologized:

Reverend Mary Bide said that although the cars look ‘odd’, they were only parked in the oldest part of the graveyard and funds raised would make a ‘valuable contribution to the Church and the Diocese’.

But the church has since apologised for the car parking arrangement and has stopped the use of the churchyard.

‘Over many years, during the Wimbledon Championships, the parish of St Mary Wimbledon has offered this service to the public,’ a church spokesman said.

‘Each year three designated charities benefit from some of the money raised by allowing the cars to park and the rest goes towards work within the parish. Sadly, this year, some cars were parked in inappropriate places.’

Link (Photo: National Pictures)

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World’s Most Interesting and Dangerous Raceways

Ever since the dawn of civilization, humans have had the need for speed. Indeed, raceways have been in existence for just about as long as we have cars, and although you may have
never found yourself in the middle of a Formula 1 competition, I’m sure
you’ve experienced the  taste of racing in some form or another.

Perhaps our interests in speeding things are the result of an early childhood training. Take, for instance, Disney’s Autopia:

In 1955, Autopia was an example of the multilane limited-access highways which were still being developed. Before the park initially opened, the cars were tested without their rubberized bumpers. This is course resulted in some major collisions, although that was the fun part of the initial test drive. The cars at Autopia were eventually fashioned with rubber bumpers, and a guard rail was put in place to discourage reckless driving. What’s the fun in that!

Over the years, Autopia was updated using the very latest is fashionable vehicles including a 1967 Corvette
Stingray, a Volkswagen Bug, “Dusty, an off-road style car; Sparky, a sports car; and Suzy. Each was designed to be tied into the Chevron line of animated ‘Chevron Cars‘, and 4 versions of the Autopia cars were sold as toys during the 2000 summer season at Chevron stations nationwide.”

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by lannaxe96.

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The Face in Hogenakkal Falls

Photo: get_debashish [Flickr]

Neatoramanaut Debashish Paul took a photo of a section of Hogenakkal Falls in South India that has a face of a mustachiod man. I know, I know, it’s just pareidolia (the tendency of human brains to see familiar images and faces in objects), but it’s still very cool!

Link - Thanks Debashish!

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The Town Devoured By Rock

Setenil de las Bodegas, Spain, is a town built under overhanging cliffs! With ancient rock over, under, and behind the buildings, the town was easier to defend against invaders than most throughout its history, and is also climate-controlled. The rock makes excellent insulation against both heat and cold, and the homes are whitewashed every year to reflect instead of absorbing sunshine. See more pictures at Environmental Graffiti. Link -via the Presurfer

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Borderlands

Today’s Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss is my favorite kind -geography! You’ll be given a pair of US states. Do they share a border or not? I scored 100%, of course. Link

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Life-Size Mobile Suit Gundam

To celebrate the anime Mobile Suit Gundam’s 30th anniversary, Japan is building a life-size RX-78-2 Gundam in Odaiba, Tokyo. From Anime News Network:

The statue will be free for viewing, but it will only stay up for two months. It will be built with fiberglass-reinforced plastic over a steel frame so it can be disassembled later. The head unit will move and the body will have 50 points that will emit light. Mist can shoot forth from 14 locations on the body. The park is just four trains stops from Tokyo Big Sight, the home of the Comic Market dojinshi convention and the Gundam Big Expo convention that will be held from August 21 to August 23. Bandai NAMCO Group is still determining what to do with the statue after its allotted two months in the park are over.

As you can see, the mecha is almost done. Just in time to deal with the shenanigans over at North Korea, too! Moé passion blog has more pics: Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Frau.

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Raining Tadpoles in Japan: A Modern Biblical Plague in the Making?

Is it a prank or is it a modern-version of the Biblical Plagues? You decide:

About 70 more dead tadpoles have been found in Ishikawa Prefecture, local officials said Friday, as the mystery over how they came to be in areas with no paddy fields or other habitats continues.

The latest findings, Thursday afternoon, were in the cities of Nanao and Wajima. More than 100 dead tadpoles were found in Nanao and Hakusan last week and tiny dead fish were found Tuesday in the town of Nakanoto. [...]

Masafumi Matsui, a professor at Kyoto University’s graduate school of human and environmental studies who specializes in amphibians, said: "It is hard to comment without actually seeing these tadpoles . . . but considering the circumstances reported by the media, someone could be pulling a prank."

People have speculated the tadpoles might have fallen from the sky after being sucked up by waterspouts or carried by birds. But there have been no reports of strong winds, and ornithologists dispute the bird theory.

Link

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Snake Charming School for Kids

When other kids are going to kindergarten, the children of the nomadic Indian tribe of Vadi are also going to school of sorts. Except that the ABCs aren’t in the curriculum - instead, these kids are learning to be snake charmers with real cobras:

Divided between the sexes, the act of snake charming with traditional flute is the role of the men, while the Vadi women care for the snakes and handle them when their husbands or brothers are not around.

‘The training begins at two, the children then are then taught the ancient ways of snake charming until they are ready to take up their roles in our community,’ said chief snake charmer Babanath Mithunath Madari, 60.

‘At twelve the children will know everything that they can know about snakes.

‘They are then ready to continue the traditions of the Vadi tribe which can be stretched back over one thousands years to India’s great Raja’s (kings).’

Link

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The Great Urban Handbag Hunt

Handbag designer Rachel Nasvik had a great idea on how to promote her new line for cheap: stage a great urban hunt for handbags!

Rachel places her handbags, stuffed with all sorts of girly stuff like lip gloss and bobby pins along with the note "You didn’t find this bag, this bag found you," hidden in public places around New York City. If you find it, you can keep it.

Clues on the whereabouts of her handbags are on Rachel’s Twitter. You can see imags of the discovered bags on her blog Thrill of the Chase - via Steve Hall and Angela Natividad’s Adrants

Whatever you think of the ad campaign, the photo is priceless! PLEASE NO PEE-PEE.

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Star-Shaped Fort of Bourtange

You’re looking at the the star fort of Bourtange in the Netherlands. It sure looks fantastic, but there’s a wily logic behind building a fort in such a shape. Turns out, a circular fortification of the medieval era was vulnerable to cannon fire. All the crazy angles and moats surrounding the star-shaped fort was made it easier to defend.

There’s no danger of an invading horde today, but these star-shaped formations are so darned picturesque that I wish they’d build more of these instead of ho-hum suburbs and strip malls.

If you like the Bourtange fort above, check out this article written by one of our favorite bloggers, Shaun Usher (better known as deputy dog). He has compiled 6 communities with intriguing bird’s eye shapes as can be seen on Google Maps. He even turned the caps on for us: Link - Thanks Dave!

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Parking Spot in Boston = $300K

Housing prices may have tanked, but the cost of a coveted parking space in Back Bay, Boston, is apparently unfazed by the economic crisis:

An unidentified buyer yesterday paid $300,000 for a private parking space in the Back Bay, making it the most expensive parking space in Boston, according to Listing Information Network, which tracks the city’s real estate market.

Debra Sordillo, the Coldwell sales agent who brokered the deal, said several residents at 48 Commonwealth Ave. engaged in a bidding war for the space, driving the asking price of $250,000 up to the record-breaking $300,000. The winning bidder did not want to be identified, she said.

The price is more than what many people pay for a house, but Sordillo said prime parking spaces near the Public Garden are in short supply.

Link

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Footage from Inside a Wyoming Tornado

Most people run away from tornados, but not storm chasers: they run toward them! Here’s a video clip from TornadoVideos.net SRV Dominator, of a Goshen co., Wyoming tornado last week which actually passed over their car!

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Geekazoid.

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Pierogi Fest and Other Spectacular Summer Food Festivals

Summer is almost upon us, and with it, comes the strange and wonderful food festivals around the country. Cheese, watermelon… pierogi?  I’m all over that one. Yum, pierogi!

Brynn Mannino of Woman’s Day has a list of 12 of the most spectacular summer food festivals in the States. Take, for instance, the Pierogi Fest in Whiting, Indiana:

Celebrate everyone’s favorite potato dumplings at the Pierogi Fest in Whiting, Indiana, beginning July 24th. What started as a way to honor the Eastern European heritage of many in the nearby communities has grown into an event that has been featured on The Food Network and in the pages of Bon Appetit magazine. Fun-filled activities include a pierogi eating contest, a pierogi toss and a polka parade! Last year’s festival even featured the “World’s Largest Pierogi,” which was made with 27 lbs of flour, 18 eggs, 58 potatoes, two gallons of water, “too much” butter and “lots o’ onions.” Total weight? 92 lbs!

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by ahammel.

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Gloucestershire Cheese Rolling - 2009

Every year, scores of people fling themselves down Cooper’s Hill in Gloucestershire, England, risking their necks and even lives … all in hope of catching (and winning) a block of cheese.

Behold the sports of cheese rolling:

- via presurfer

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Minnesotastan.

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A Giant Awakes in Nantes

Known for their supersized productions, the French mechanical marionette street theatre company Royale de Luxe have been up to their tricks again this weekend, this time on their home territory of the city of Nantes in western France.  A giant deep-sea diver desperately searches for his niece, a search which has encompassed a hundred years, the sinking of the Titanic and a mysterious mailbox.  This is quite an extraordinary sight by anyone’s standards.

Nantes, the home town of Jules Verne, is situated in western France. Here, near the river Loire a giant deep-sea diver sleeps gently, waiting for his task to begin. Sadness marks his face even as he sleeps. He has been searching the world over for his missing niece and although he may not know it, the end of his search is coming. The diver or scaphandrier as he is known in French will be paraded through the streets of this historic city at the beginning of the Estuary 2009 arts festival. The biannual festival gives the French mechanical marionette street theater company Royale de Luxe the opportunity to unveil their latest creation.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by taliesyn30.

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Top 10 Coolest Places to Swim

Super Tight Stuff blog has a nifty list of ten of the coolest places to swim around the world. Whether it is the Yangbajain hot springs in China, Jellyfish Lake in the island nation of Palau, or Bioluminescent Bay in Puerto Rico, I guarantee that something on this list will blow your mind:

1. Bioluminescent Bay

Located in Puerto Rico, on Vieques Island, there is a shallow body of water with a narrow inlet known as Mosquito Bay. In each gallon of the bay there are 720,000 phosphorescent single-celled organisms that glow when they are agitated. It is a defense mechanism — the glowing is designed to daze whatever predator is bothering the tiny dinoflagellates. All together the bay, on a moonless night, will produce more than enough light to read. Swimming in Mosquito Bay will cause your limbs to be bathed in blue-green light. If you stop moving the light will dim, and eventually disappear completely, but each time you twitch it begins anew. Every time your kayak moves it too will be illuminated. It’s also easy to spot larger creatures; when manta rays or large jellies enter the mangrove swamps gentle rings of light form around them. If you scoop up a handful of the water you can watch individual glowing plankton roll down your arms and hands. And the salinity of the water is high enough you can float sitting upright.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Snappy.

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Petrin Tower Panorama

Prague Skyline from Petrin Tower - Gigapixel in Prague

Panoramic photographer Jeffrey Martin of 360 Cities took this 2 gigapixel panorama stitched together from "a few hundreds shots" taken with a camera with a 70 mm zoom lens, handheld from the windows of the Petrin Tower in Prague.

To get a full appreciation of the panorama, first zoom out by pressing CTRL on your keyboard, then zoom back in by pressing SHIFT - Thanks Jeffrey!

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Iconic Neon Signs From Around the World

Photo: Roadsidepictures [Flickr]

Love ‘em or hate ‘em, there’s no denying that neon signs have become a big part of the urban landscape. Take, for instance, the iconic Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas sign above was designed by Betty Willis for the Young Electric Sign Company in 1959. She never copyrighted it, because she considered it a gift to the city - as a result, the image became synonymous with Las Vegas.

Oobject has an interesting list of The 10 Most Important Examples of Neon Signage for your enjoyment (don’t miss the Vegas neon boneyard!):

The most impressive neon districts in the world include Tokyo’s Ginza and Shibuya, Osaka’s Dotonburi which was the inspiration for Blade Runner, the worlds largest shopping street, Nanjing Road in Shanghai and, of course, Vegas and Times Square. Bangkok’s Soi Cowboy district (named after an American who opened one of the first go go bars in the 70s) deserves inclusion on account of its unpleasant strangeness, with live elephants paraded up and down the pink neon streets.

Link

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Buried Church

In 1943, a volcano began growing out of a cornfield in San Juan Parangaricutiro, Michoacán, Mexico. It erupted for eight years, growing to a height of 336 meters. The lava flow buried the town, but the inhabitants were able to evacuate. Of all the buildings, only the church is now visible, rising half-buried from the new rock. Link -via Dark Roasted Blend

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