All Stories

Everything we've published, newest first.

Sepia-toned vintage studio portrait of a young man with wavy hair in a knit collared shirt, a handwritten inscription reading ‘Devotedly yours’ across the shoulder

Daddy Groovy

The colonel who sketched a dream house that was never built, and the son who has started to see him in the mirror every morning.

By Igan D'Bayan · June 15, 2008
Heidelberg Castle floodlit amber against the night sky, its towers and broken walls rising above the pale facades and dark rooftops of the old town below

Baroque and roll in Heidelberg

‘Put your foot here and you will return to Heidelberg and live happily ever after,’ our guide says. I stepped into the impression. (Narrator: It would.)

By Igan D'Bayan · May 30, 2008
Mock theatre poster for a Poldertheater production of Hamlet: a hyena in an Elizabethan doublet, its face streaked red, cradles a skull among Filipino tombs beneath a tattered Philippine flag

Dead thoughts about death and dying

A real human skull inside a bookcase, mortuary curiosities, and a middle-of-the-night meditation on Damien Hirst and why death spares no one.

By Igan D'Bayan · March 14, 2008
Illustrated lowbrow crowd of eyeball-headed kids, skeleton punks and a vintage hot rod outside La Luz De Jesus Gallery on Hollywood Boulevard at dusk

La Luz in my religion

Inside La Luz De Jesus on Hollywood Boulevard, the gallery that turned lowbrow art into a congregation, with a gift shop of relics and toys.

By Igan D'Bayan · January 18, 2008
The Empire State Building, its crown floodlit white, shot from the street at night between dark towers and an ornate stone facade full of glowing windows

Twisted stars, plotted lines and NYC

The city that never sleeps will not let you snooze, so take a walk on the wild side. Five cubist women in a brothel, skies delirious with stars.

By Igan D'Bayan · December 14, 2007
A horned devil in a fur coat raises a whiskey in a room crammed with Eagles memorabilia, a Hotel California neon sign, gold records and a 2010 Long Road Out of Eden ticket for the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles

From Hell to Eden and back: Welcome to the Eagles gig in California

The Eagles at the Nokia Theater in Los Angeles, Hotel California in full cinematic paranoia, for a crowd still hoping to party like 1979.

By Igan D'Bayan · November 18, 2007
Illustrated wild-haired figure in black leans against the graffiti-covered Berlin Wall, KEINE MAUER KANN UNS TRENNEN painted on the concrete, the TV Tower in the distance

Achtung Berlin

A vanished Wall, neo-expressionists on Sophienstrasse, and the ghosts of Bowie, Iggy and Lou still loitering around Hansa Studios.

By Igan D'Bayan · June 1, 2007
Cthulhu as Elvis (jet-black pompadour, gold aviators, rhinestone-studded white jumpsuit) lounging in a red convertible on the neon Strip past the Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas sign, his driver grinning

Viva lost Vegas

‘People need to laugh after losing their money,’ somebody informs me. How prophetic. A first trip down the Strip, and a sucker leaves the building.

By Igan D'Bayan · March 2, 2007
A sheep-headed insomniac in a Haruki Murakami T-shirt lies awake at 3:17 a.m., sheep leaping over the bed past a stack of Murakami novels

The wild sleep chase

Three in the morning, wide awake, counting sheep into the thousands. A record, a book, and the bakers’ radios arriving at last like a lullaby.

By Igan D'Bayan · October 21, 2005
Illustrated Cthulhu in an indigo yukata carries a paper umbrella and a Tokyo lantern through rainy, neon-lit Shibuya Crossing

A city where the lights never go out

Two Japans in one trip: ninja houses and the record bins of Akihabara, then the long silence of the A-Bomb Dome in Hiroshima.

By Igan D'Bayan · September 25, 2005
A gothic Tim Burton-style illustration of a wide-eyed figure parachuting over a moody Singapore skyline of Marina Bay Sands, the Flyer and Gardens by the Bay

Singapore Skydive Festival: ’Xcuse me while I kiss the sky

A man with “10,000 assorted fears,” heights chief among them, leaps from a Russian helicopter 12,000 feet over Singapore.

By Igan D'Bayan · September 9, 2005
A man in an ECM Records t-shirt with a surreally painted face carries a stack of LPs topped by John Coltrane’s Blue Train past a metal record shop

Life, death and all that jazz

Mingus and Coltrane, Harry’s Bar at Boat Quay, and a goodbye to drummer Bob Barreto. Life may be short, but the beats are infinite.

By Igan D'Bayan · August 26, 2005