Unusual Life

Hidden passages have a long history of appearing in fictional novels and films but an even richer past in reality dating back to Egyptian tombs passages for Christians to worship in hiding from Romans. Over the years hidden passages have been used to arrest kings and evacuate popes, hide shogun warriors, facilitate guerrilla fighters, enable drug smugglers and conceal serial killers.

In recent times, however, many more modest individuals have created (or discovered) secret passages in ordinary everyday households and there are even companies dedicated to designing secret doors, rooms and passages in middle-class houses. In some cases the discovery of a secret room is a wonderful find but it can also be a twisted nightmare.

Hidden rooms today usually serve one of two purposes: security or fun. Sometimes a hidden door is used to disguise a safe or a ‘panic room’ where residents can hide in an emergency.

Creative Home Engineering offers modern-day solutions to those who want to add a hidden room or secret passage in their own home.

Via Neatorama

A sleepy east side street scarred with abandoned houses and weed covered lots in Detroit's depressed lower east side has become the center of a controversy involving a volatile mingling of ruins, art and politics.

Begun in the eighties by artist and Heidelberg Street resident Tyree Guyton the Heidelberg Project, as it came to be known, developed into a block long environment consisting of free standing found-object constructions and abandoned buildings and trees adorned with found objects. Much of the area and works are are simplistically painted upon with multi-colored polka dots being the signature icon.

Via Detroit Yes

I wrote an article for this months issue of MAKE Magazine (http://www.makezine.com/) about folk artist Martin Sanchez and the environment he created out of found objects (including a beer-bottle chapel) and I’m going to be featuring some of those photos with commentary this Thursday 4/10 at See Sound Lounge on 1st and Blanchard in Belltown at 6pm.

Pecha Kucha Night was conceived in 2003 as a place for designers, architects and artists to meet, network, and show their work in public, and it has spread virally to over 100 cities across the world.

Give a mic to an architect or an artist and you may be trapped for hours. The key to Pecha Kucha Night is its patented system for avoiding this fate. Each presenter is allowed 20 images, each shown for 20 seconds each - giving 6 minutes 40 seconds of fame before the next presenter is up. This keeps presentations concise, the interest level up, and gives more people the chance to show.

Pecha Kucha (which is Japanese for the sound of conversation) has tapped into a demand for a forum in which creative work can be easily and informally shown, without having to rent a gallery or chat up a magazine editor.

http://www.pecha-kucha.org/cities/seattle

http://www.UnusualLife.com

Artists and presenters for the evening are Marlow Harris, Alex Steffen, Cameron Hall, Sage Saskill, Elizabeth Buschmann, Karen Lorene, Jesse Harris, Dawn Clark, Ross Leventhal and Michael Franz Horner

Liberace Museum

In 1966 Liberace opened Liberace Interiors and Objects d’Art,” in Hollywood, California. No surprise for he had quite a flair for decorating, and spared no expense when it came to one of his many homes. He even offered his interior design services to clients!

He had several homes around the country. Here are a few pictures from his Hollywood Hills home, completments of Bob’s World of Liberace.

Bob’s tribute to the

Glitter, the Glitz, and the Camp of America’s most flamboyant entertainer, the one and only “Mr. Showmanship®”, Liberace!

is not to be missed and feature incredible photos of Lee Liberace’s many homes.

Christmas was Lee’s favorite times of the year and he spent thousands of dollars decorating his home. He had custom Christmas cards made for himself every year, sometimes costing up to $4 a piece, and he had a mailing list of 7,000.

Bob’s Liberace Christmas Card Collection

Flicker set of abandoned swimming pools.

Solid Rock Church

• HAPPY VALENTINES DAY •

• Here’s a very red room we stayed in last August at The Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo, California. They named it the Tack Room. I had red leather wall covering, red leather bedspreads, red stained wood walls, pink marble pedestal sinks, and lots more red stuff.
I wonder who’s staying there this Valentines Day?

• See our full set of photos from the extraordinary Madonna Inn

• The Madonna Inn has 109 unique theme rooms where you can stay, as well as multiple odd over-the-top dining environments. You can/should see photos of all 109 rooms here.
Click "Tour Our Rooms Online" at the top right, and then the "Next " button under the photos to tour through each room.

Just in time for Valentines Day, Godiva offers a stay in a chocolate room to the lucky person who finds a golden ticket in a box of their chocolates.

Photo from Chihuly’s Boathouse Studio. View from entering the hotshop under the Perisan ceiling in Seattle.

www.Chihuly.com

This post has been guest blogged by Hyder from EverybodyGoTo

Hyderabad is a bustling, rapidly developing, metropolitan city almost smack in the middle of South India. At the same time its people are known for their laid back attitude and the famous Hyderabadi Biryani. The architecture and culture is one of the richest in India, today you would probably hear more about Hyderabad due to its growing presence in the IT field. Companies like Google, Microsoft, IBM and others have set up offices here.

I would like to take you away from all the noise and modern development and take a look back at the past of my city.

The city of Hyderabad got it’s name from a local girl known first as Bhagyamati whom the ruler of Golconda, Quli Qutub Shah, fell in love with. The city was then named Bhagyanagaram after her, and later on to Hyderabad after Bhagyamati converted to Islam and adopted the name Hyder Mahal.

Golconda - Diamonds in the rough

Golconda fort is the origin of some of the most spectacular diamonds the world had ever seen. It was also the birthplace of modern day Hyderabad. Trade between Persia and India grew as a result of the diamond trade mines in Golconda.

The main entrance gate to Golconda is an architectural marvel. It’s basically a loud speaker. Any announcements made while standing in the middle of the entrance chamber could be heard all the way at the top of the citadel - almost 0.63 miles away! Also, any whispers made in one corner of the entrance dome could be heard in the opposite corner with amazing clarity. I know because I tried it.

The royal family would spend the hot summers of Hyderabad all the way at the top of the fort, but I’m sure they had a cool time. A specially designed array of ducts would swoosh the wind to constantly flow providing cool and breezy air to take away the heat of the day. The breeze was cool and even quite strong at times.

Even more ingenious was the water supply system which flowed from the bottom up! The bottom level tanks would get filled up first and then supply water all the way to the chambers at the top of a steep hill. Simple but so effective.

The fort of Golconda was probably one of the highest guarded and most defensive forts of its time. The Mughal ruler Aurangzeb tried hard to sack it for almost nine long months. It was only through the treachery of a gate keeper that he was able to enter into the fort, otherwise Golconda fort would have stood longer against his army.

Today the ruins of the fort are visited by many and the stories still live on. Standing at the top of the fort, you can tell that the rulers had a good time staying there. The view was probably much different too.

Hope you enjoyed this little glance into history.

Christmas in Compton

Children play during break time at the Dongzhong (literally meaning “in cave”) primary school at a Miao village in Ziyun county, southwest China’s Guizhou province, November 14, 2007. The school is built in a huge, aircraft hanger-sized natural cave, carved out of a mountain over thousands of years by wind, water and seismic shifts.

More Photos

This Taipei restaurant might consider it a compliment to be called an outhouse as the Modern Toilet diner is one of chain of themed eateries appealing to largely young clientele with a toilet humor.

All 100 seats in the crowded diner are made from toilet bowls, not chairs. Sink faucets and gender-coded “WC” signs appear throughout the three-storey facility, one of 12 in an island-wide chain of eateries with a toilet theme.

Customers eat from mini plastic toilet bowls. They wipe their hands and mouths using toilet rolls hung above their tables, which may be glass-topped jumbo bathtubs.

Owner Wang Tzi-wei opened his first Modern Toilet in 2004 after being inspired by a Japanese cartoon featuring restroom images and the toilet themes run through the food and drinks menus.

Please take a seat.

Plain apartment houses decorated in graffiti and Japanese-style anime designs on Damn Cool Pics.

Leila’s Hair Museum is perhaps the world’s greatest collection of jewelry and other artifacts made of human hair.

On display are hirsute necklaces, hat pins, wreathes and even hair trees, one of which resembles a palm. No pruning necessary.

Beyond the thousands of just plain curiosities, the museum gathers strands of history. “We have a mourning broach that contains a lock from Daniel Webster with 32 seed pearls representing tears, and it’s dated the day of his death,” says Linda Goldsmith, tour guide.

Leila’s Hair Museum

Hair Museum on Roadside America