On Sunday, November 29, I took the extra "Thanksgiving Special" train to Michigan's Twin Cities - St. Joseph and Benton Harbor. As I've written before, the two cities have fascinated me for year, because, although they are only separated by a river, they are different from each other in many very significant respects. St. Joseph is upper-middle ( Read more... )

It's not really clear what happened to "Andrei R," a Digger who had sex with his girlfriend in the service tunnel of the Moscow subway, took pictures and posted them online. His social media accounts have been silent for the past few days, and I can't find any reference to his fate on the news. And there's nothing about his still-anonymous ( Read more... )

I found out about this bit of news over at Gazeta.ru, and soon, I wound up falling down the rabbit hole of Russian-language sources ( Read more... )

The great Russian urban explorer lana_sator recently did a post about a Soviet-era military installation she uncovered. According to her, the installation could fit 3,000 people, and it served as back-up control center and teaching facility to teach Soviet soldiers what to do in the event of a nuclear strike.

I've decided to repost all the photos and ( Read more... )

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Originally, this was supposed to be one post, but after realizing just how long it was getting (even with the cuts), I decided to split it into several.

So, last weekend (two Saturdays ago, to be more precise), I went down to northern Indiana. To be more specific, I went to Michigan City and the nearby village of Beverly shores. Part of it was for ( Read more... )

Back in February, I explored Bronzeville as part of my ongoing column in Chicago Flame. This neighborhood was originally the center of Chicago's African-American community, the core of the so-called Black Belt, the de facto ghetto Chicago's African American population was forced into. 47th Street in particular was a cultural center, playing host to ( Read more... )