Think your daily dose of public transit is commuter hell? Try taking a double-decker bus for a Sunday drive in the Australian Outback, Jack! You don’t have to be Crocodile Dundee to know that’s one trip that WILL end in tears and WON’T end back at your starting point. It’s been tried, as this mellow, yellow, slowly rusting relic of 1950s Sydney now standing out back in the sands of the Outback so beautifully illustrates.

Bus Da Move… NOT

Permanently parked in Australia’s inhospitable Strzelecki desert, just off the road near Cameron Corner stands one of the most incongruous objects you’ll ever see: a cheery though weary yellow 1952 Leyland double-decker bus – or to be precise, the abandoned remnants thereof.
Time hasn’t been kind to this former commuter-carrier that, in a previous life decades ago, trundled through the peaceful, tree-lined streets of Sydney and Newcastle along with dozens of its ilk. Then again, time works in strange ways out in the outback, preserving some things well beyond what might be expected while accelerating disintegration in others.
But back to the busted bus… how did a veddy-British “London Bus” end up all alone at the end of the Earth, antipodean-style? The answer lies entombed in Australia’s history and that of Sydney in particular. According to the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, “about 2,000 mechanically powered double deck buses have operated in Australia since 1905.” The last one was withdrawn from service in May of 1986 as new, more-reliable, articulated “bendy” buses were introduced.
New South Wales is world’s apart from the blistering deserted desert of Australia’s “Red Center” but if one wishes to get away from Sydney’s rat race, the only choices are into the Outback or out to the ocean. Obviously, inland is the way to go but getting there is half the fun and by “half the fun” we mean “all the fun”: when the bus eventually, inevitably stops, so does the fun.

Outback Mistake House

You’d think there’d only be one dummy dumb enough to drive a double-decker bus into the hotter, dryer, ever more isolated Australian Outback but that would give down-under dummies too much credit. Indeed, there’s an identical, yellow, abandoned double-decker bus moldering away behind the Betoota Hotel between Windorah and Birdsville.
Yet another abandoned double-decker bus stands within shouting distance of the main (OK, only) road from Karratha to Port Hedland near the northwest Australian coast. This ragged survivor of the transit wars now fights a losing battle between gritty desert winds and salty sea breezes yet still proudly bears patches of pale blue paint and the number 2159.
One abandoned double-decker bus to an article, however, and we’re focusing on the bare beauty beached in the shifting sands of Cameron Corner. The “corner” refers to the junction of the Australian states of Queensland, South Australia, and New South Wales. It’s located about 1,400 km (870 mi) west of Brisbane and approximately the same distance west-northwest of Sydney. That a clapped-out double-decker bus whose best days were long past could have managed to travel that far over mainly miserable roads is a miracle in itself.

Gimme Bus Shelter

Miracle or not, there it stands amidst a copse of struggling trees just off a much-beaten path (actually the Lyndon Station track). It’s not certain which came first, the bus or the trees, but word has it the bus was used as a temporary out-camp for cattle workers who called it “Jack Camp”. Anything to get out of the blazing Outback sun, son!

The bus is better known as the living space and home base of Australian artist Joshua Yeldham. Born in 1970, Yeldham set out one day in the early 1990s in his VW Combi van, searching for inspiration along the sprawling Dingo Fence. By chance, his van happened to break down near Cameron Corner and as a Kombi doesn’t offer much living space, Yeldham co-opted the empty bus: he ended up staying there 6 years.
Alone with the ghosts of bus-riders past and emboldened by the spirit of Eliza Kennedy, whose grave lies nearby, Yeldham enjoyed one of his richest artistic periods. A book of his paintings entitled“Solitude’s Bride,” possibly after Eliza, was published after Yeldham and his career moved on. The epitaph on Eliza’s tombstone reads “Her charity covereth a multitude of sins,”which certainly says much in just a few words.
The abandoned bus also attracts artists of a different sort: photographers. Australian native Dirk Spennemann is one of many who’ve been entranced by the Cameron Corner double-decker but one of only a few who’ve creatively captured its essence for the ages on film.

Spennemann’s strikingly ethereal images, several of which are showcased above, do justice while paying homage to the rare set of circumstances that have taken this bus where no bus has gone before.

The Outback Waits, Dreaming

As for the Cameron Corner bus, its remains remain in situ long after the cattlemen and creative types have come and gone. Passersby do occasionally leaves their marks, however, though the practice is frowned upon. Take Ken Duncan, a defender of culture who “prepares to wage war on a growing threat to the pristine nature of our precious outback icons: idiots with spray cans.”
“Talk about the last bus stop,” relates Duncan. “When I first saw it, there was no graffiti – but over the years dipsticks have felt the need to add their names. While standing there recently, ready to take a new photo of the bus, I was pondering the worst of the fresh graffiti, a scrawled name: “Wishbone”. I was thinking, “What would possess someone to do that?””

“And guess what? I got my answer. At that very moment, a guy pulled up in his Ute with the big aerials, driving lights, bull bar and fluffy dice on the rear-view mirror, and jumped out with his girlfriend. He headed over to the bus and said proudly, “Look, darling, there’s my name. Wishbone. I did that – isn’t it great?” His girlfriend just giggled nervously, not really knowing what to say. They were both right near me and I overheard this profound dialogue. I couldn’t believe I had actually now met the owner of the graffiti.”
“Wishbone looked over at me, clearly so proud of his ability to spell his name, and announced once more, “That’s me,” awaiting my approval. I like to be as friendly as I can, but I just looked at him and said: “If you did that, then you are a dipstick. Why did you do it?” The poor fellow just looked at me with a vacant stare – obviously not the sharpest tool in the shed.”
Sixty years after it rolled off the factory production line, chrome gleaming and exuding the aroma of New Bus Smell, this solitary people-mover now silently observes the overhead transit of sun, moon and stars. As a man-made consumer product its life has been unusually long and curiously eventful but the spirits of the Outback simply smile and wait their due. Weathered by the elements and vandalized by the Wishbones of the world, the bus is doomed to deteriorate into rust and become part of the Outback’s relentlessly scouring red sands. Sic transit gloria indeed. | WebUrbanist #end.

Have you ever wanted to rule your very own country? Bizarre as it sounds, a micronation is an area of land claimed by one or more persons to be independent from any major recognized nation in the world. Some of these have incredible histories of war, triumph and independence and still survive today, while others have long since been abandoned, annexed or destroyed.
Sealand was established in the 1960s an Englishman and his family took possession of an abandoned anti-aircraft platform off the coast of Britain and declared it to be the Principality of Sealand. In the1970s a coup attempt was made and the island was taken over by one citizen of Sealand with outside assistance. Sealand was retaken with armed forces and its overthrowers were held for a time as prisoners of war until negotiations with foreign nations secured their release. More recently, Sealand caught fire though no one was seriously injured. Sealand has since been of international news interest in relationship to its controversial status as a data haven.
Above: a brief and humorous interview with the president of Molossia

Molossia was founded in the 1970s on a small stretch of land in rural Nevada. The population of four claims to be an independent nation-state though it is completely encompassed by the United States of America. In theory, the country has a constitution. In practice, there has been “political unrest” which has given rise to a state of martial law in which the president (Kevin Baugh) has full authority. In Molossia, incandescent light bulbs, cat fish and tobacco have all been outlawed. Molossia was even host to the first ever intromicronational olympics.
Redonda was first claimed by Christopher Columbus in 1493, though many have claimed to be the king of this strange uninhabited rock ever since. With steep cliffs and just one square mile of land, Redonda is essentially empty save for some feral goats. Redonda’s biggest natural resource has historically been  bird excrement, which was mined at a rate of 7,000 tons per year around the turn of the 20th Century. More recently, a pub in England claimed to be an embassy from Redonda in an attempt to be exempted from the English smoking ban on workspace. They were denied such status.
Other micronations have not fared so well. The Republic of Rose Island, for instance, was a short-lived pursuit that was demolished by the Italian navy for not paying taxes. Another would-be micronation founder, Leicester Hemingway (brother of author Ernest Hemmingway) attempted to found his own such settlement known as New Atlantis only to be pillaged by Mexican fishermen. The island Republic of Minerva also did not last long, being quickly invaded and annexed by the neighboring Tonga. The bizarre Empire of Atlanteum, located in Sydney, Australia and founded with some interesting and bizarre ideals, still survives, though its international political and legal status is questionable.  | DailyMail #end.

While Cappadocia, Turkey may be best known for its incredible cave homes, there are other wonders hiding in the historic region. One of the quirkiest is the bizarre Avanos Hair Museum: a small cave containing hair samples, names and addresses from more than 16,000 women from all around the world.

The hair museum was founded by Chez Galip, a talented potter in Avanos. Although there are conflicting stories about where the idea came from, Galip’s own website states that the museum was simply meant as a promotion to increase enrollment in his pottery workshops. It seems much nicer to believe the legend: Galip’s friend was moving far away and left him a lock of hair to remind him of her, then subsequent visitors began leaving locks of hair to remind the potter of them as well.
Since the first lock of hair went up in 1979, women of every description and from every corner of the world have willingly snipped off pieces of hair to leave in Galip’s cave. Each one carefully inscribes her name and address on a piece of paper before taping the hair and paper to the cave ceiling or wall. The surfaces of the cave are covered in dangling hairs of all colors and many different lengths.
The purpose of the addresses is to give Galip a way to contact his former visitors. Once a year, ten of the hair samples are chosen at random. The women to whom they once belonged are invited to come back to Galip’s studio for a pottery workshop and a stay in his traditional guest house – all free of charge.

Visitors to the cave are not required to leave a sample of hair, but Galip provides all of the materials necessary for those who wish to leave a little piece of themselves behind. What reportedly began as a promotional stunt has evolved into a weirdly compelling display – whether that display is of generosity, a great sense of humor or something else entirely is up to the viewer to decide.
| mb #end.

Built in 1926 alongside the connected 13-story Michigan Building office tower, the 4,000-seat Michigan Theater has been left to decay, another casualty in Detroit’s long decline since its heyday as a car-manufacturing mecca.

“It is not merely a theatre for Detroit,” John H. Kunsky, the theater’s owner, told The Detroiter in August 1926. “It is a theatre for the whole world. It is designed to be the great showplace of the middle west.” It was described in the press as “a jewel”, and “the world’s finest”. The auditorium featured 10-foot crystal chandeliers that hung eight floors above the seats, and the mezzanine was open to black-tie guests only. But by the mid-1960s, the Michigan Theater was among dozens in the city to close due to dwindling profits, and though it was saved from the wrecking ball in 1967, its glory days were over.

Ironically, one of the factors that forced the closure of the opulent theater was a lack of parking. The theater faced stiff competition from modern nearby theaters that offered plenty of parking space. After a brief interlude as a music venue, during which it drew some of the industry’s biggest names, the Michigan Theater was gutted. While the shell of the building remained intact, it was filled with a three-level, 160-space parking deck.

One perk to the theater’s latest incarnation is that one need not be an intrepid urban explorer (which often includes law-breaking and physical danger) to get a good look at these modern ruins. A paltry parking fee will get you up-close-and-personal with peeling gilded walls, a crumbling ticket booth, the remains of an upper balcony and a shredded bit of red curtain.














| WebUrbanist / Foro: detroitderek, Flickr #end.

Construction on Tianducheng, in China’s Zhejiang district, began in 2007. It was meant to be a luxurious gated community resembling Paris in every way possible. The highlight of the town is its 354-foot replica of the Eiffel tower, but plenty of Paris’ other landmarks have been faithfully recreated here.

There is a major incongruity between one’s expectations for a “little Paris” and what you will actually see in Tianducheng. The streets are, for the most part, entirely empty. There are no throngs of tourists or business people rushing off to their offices. There is a lot of quiet, and there is a fair amount of traditional Chinese culture, seemingly completely out of place in the French surroundings.

The development was built to house 100,000 people and to draw rural families into a bustling metropolitan area. As of 2007, (the last time the population was counted), only 2,000 souls inhabited the gated compound. The population seems to be dwindling, leading local media to refer to Tianducheng as a “ghost town.”

It may seem odd to build a replica of a famous city in a different country, but the developers were working on the idea that Paris was seen as a romantic destination. They felt that Chinese people would want to live in this faux-European environment with its stately townhouses and wide-open courtyards. Several other Western-style towns and communities have been built in China around this idea.

At least in Tianducheng, you are more likely to see empty streets and traditional Chinese agricultural life than the distinctly Parisian pastimes of shopping, strolling, and sipping wine on a restaurant patio. Daily life in the town is documented in the video above.

Work is still in progress in the compound; its expected completion date is in 2015. So the Paris of the East, it turns out, isn’t quite a ghost town – it hasn’t had the time to develop ghosts just yet. In a few years, this now-quiet development could very well be chock full of Chinese residents ready to begin their European-style lives. | Business Insider Fot. ALY SONG REUTERS#end.

The Wave, Arizona, U.S.


Travertines, Pamukkale, Turkey



Grand Prismatic Spring, Yellowstone National Park, U.S.



Red beach, Panjin, China



Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia



Dragon's blood trees, Socotra, Yemen



Sossusvlei, Namibia



Rice terraces, Bali, Indonesia



Cappadocia, Anatolia, Turkey



"Door to Hell," Derweze, Turkmenistan



Giant's Causeway, Antrim, Northern Ireland, U.K.



Hitachi Seaside Park, Hitachinaka, Japan



Giant Buddha, Leshan, China



Tunnel of Love, Klevan, Ukraine



Antelope Canyon, Arizona, U.S.



Odle Mountains, Italy



| Photo: HopeHill/Flickr #end.

Daycare center does not require store receipt to pick up their child. People are so clever! My husband said, we have to wait till after our generation all die first, then we can talk about quality (of people). Ay ~ daughter, it is up your guys now! IKEA, I am really impressed by your tolerance!

Ikea in Beijing

| ChinaHush #end.