Social reformer and photojournalist Jacob Riis took many pictures of New York City in the 1890s to show how “the other half” lives. Those pictures are now part of The City Museum, and a selection is online at Vintage Everyday. These pictures show the streets of the city, the back alleys, tenements, poorhouses, schools, sweatshops, and makeshift livings spaces for the struggling poor of the era.
As you see how much has changed in the past century, you also realize that cities still have sweatshop workers, homeless people, crowded slums, and marginalized folks getting by the best they can. -via mental_floss
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Roberta Huddy, 50, has lived in her van with her husband for about a year. They are constantly moving to avoid harassment and ticketing by the police. Photo: PF Bentley/Civil Beat
Living in the tropical paradise of Hawaii - with its glistening surfs and golden sands - is dream to many of us, but to some, it's a living nightmare.
With the highest cost of living of any state in the United States of America, it's no wonder that Hawaii has a problem with homelessness. There's an estimated 4,700 homeless people living in the Hawaiian island of Oahu (1,600 of them go without shelter at any given night). Honolulu, the largest city of the island, has the dubious distinction of being fifth in the list of US cities with high homelessness rate. The island itself has the largest homeless encampment in the United States.
But tourists visiting Honolulu probably didn't notice. Mayor Kirk Caldwell was recently lauded for cleaning up the problem at the beaches of Waikiki. "Police officers came up to me and said it looks much better," Caldwell said to Civil Beat, "Residents who live there came up to me and said, 'Mayor, what are you doing? It looks so much better.'"
But the reality is that the homeless are still homeless - they didn't find housing, but instead, they were being bounced from "sidewalk to sidewalk and park to park," as Nick Grube of Civil Beat reports:
A good night’s sleep in Waikiki is hard to come by for Roberta Huddy.
She became homeless about a year ago after losing her job as a guest services agent at one of the hotels.
Now Huddy, who was born and raised on Kauai, lives in a worn-down Ford Astro with her husband, Greg, on Kalakaua Avenue next to Kapiolani Park.
Their few belongings fill the vehicle from the passenger seat to the back hatch, blankets on the floor serving as a makeshift bed.
The van is also their getaway vehicle. It allows them to avoid police and city park crews who have ramped up their efforts to clear the homeless out of Waikiki.
Like many others who live on the streets, the Huddys are on the run.
“All they say is that we should move around,” Huddy complained while perched on the edge of her Astro. “At night I like to go up to Kapahulu because at least there I can sleep in peace.”
Read the entire story over at Civil Beat.
Glossy print magazines, especially fashion and lifestyle magazines, are filled with advertisements for goods that you can't afford. Some of these magazines, such as Vogue, are hundreds of pages long.
Noah Veltman, a journalist, added up the costs of all of the goods advertised in popular magazines for the month of June 2014. Jenni Avins of Quartz used that data to compose a series of charts. Vogue is, by a wide margin, the most expensive.
But it's not just because of the staggering size of Vogue. The individual items are pricier.
It's notable that Vogue does not have the highest percentage of page-length advertisements. That contest goes to In Style.
-via The Hairpin
(Photo: Herald Sun)
It was a lot of money. But Chamindu Amarsinghe knew that the money didn't belong to him, so he didn't keep it.
Amarsinghe works as a custodian at a television station in Melbourne, Australia. While cleaning a toilet, he found a lot of money in large denominations in a trash bin. He immediately told his supervisor, who then called the police and a plumber. They pulled out from the toilet more than $100,000 (Australian).
No one stepped forward to claim it. After the government took a cut, it handed over to Amarsinghe $81,597. He plans to donate some to charity. But as he's a college student, so he'll use a lot of it to advance his career.
-via Huffington Post
This classy bookcase fits neatly into the corner, don't you think? Entero, a custom furniture company in Estonia, made it from a ruined antique piano:
As work progresses, the strings and hammers where removed from the body. The body was made deeper that we could build there bookshelf. The keypad was restored. Piano lacquer casing was removed, damaged veneer patterns where repaired and to the edges we made new moldings from mahogany and we lacquered it with glossy varnish. The bookshelf was made from mahogany veneer, and the contents were prepared with matt lacquer.
You can view more pictures at the link.
I'm quite taken with the sculptures of British artist Anna Gillespie. She uses stone, bronze, acorn cups, tree bark and other materials to create striking images of human frailty. She explained why she makes heavy use of unusual natural materials:
Even speaking of 'nature' as something distinct from the human race suggests an artificial separation. We are all part of the natural world. Collecting beech nuts and acorns for sculptures, made me realise that every one is the same and yet different...just like us. Nature is so prolific.
Artist's Website and Interview -via Wunderkammer
Mania's beautiful snow globe ring is perfect for the proud Londoner who doesn't need to wear gloves regularly. The glass sphere is three centimeters across and is fitted to an adjustable brass ring. Mania made a similar ring featuring the Eiffel Tower.
Simon, the 6-month-old dog, is happy to teach 8-week-old Daisy how to walk down stairs. That's a helpful dog! -via Tastefully Offensive
Russian artist Vadim Zaritsky has loved and collected butterflies since he was a child. He knows many other collectors and it saddened him to see them throw away damaged butterfly bodies. Then he found a creative way of recycling them. Zaritsky uses the wings to make collages:
Over the past five years, the artist has created more than 100 pictures of varying size and theme. As artist and entomologist, he clearly prefers restrained color combinations to glaring fluorescent colors, which he uses very rarely. His works include still lifes, genre pieces, philosophical works, portraits and landscapes. He has even copied some celebrated masters, such as Van Gogh, Gauguin, Picasso and Vrubel.
Link -via Oddity Central
Bulldogs are so short and so heavy, it's hard for them to actually get any air while jumping. Fortunately for this guy, he's got an owner with a trampoline to help him get his bounce on.
Via Pet's Lady
23-year old Xiao Feng doesn't want to get a job. He'd rather spend his time playing video games. To discourage this activity, Feng's father hired players to hunt down and slay his son's characters:
Unhappy with his son not finding a job, Feng decided to hire players in his son's favorite online games to hunt down Xiao Feng. It is unknown where or how Feng found the in-game assassins—every one of the players he hired were stronger and higher leveled than Xiao Feng. Feng's idea was that his son would get bored of playing games if he was killed every time he logged on, and that he would start putting more effort into getting a job.
Now that's creative parenting!
That's exactly it. We made those jokes about seeing our house from the ISS, and now that it's time to take the Christmas lights down, we've managed to remove about two strings a day. At this rate, they will all be down by, uh, April or so. A comic from Shoebox Blog. Link -via Geeks Are Sexy
Having a hard time waiting for Girl Scout Cookies to come back out again? Well, this guide to mixing them with brownies won't help, but it sure will be worth bookmarking when they go on sale again because these Thin Mint, Samoa and Tag-Along cookie brownies look like pure heaven.
What do fireworks look like when you see them backwards? Simply beautiful. Julian Tay recorded the New Year's Day fireworks display in Melbourne, Australia and reversed the image.
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