BY: CONNOR BRIAN, TYLER FYFE, ROB HOFFMAN AND MELISSA GONZALEZ If Salvador Dali and Dr. Seuss had a child born out of wedlock, it would have been conceived at Bestival. On the Toronto Islands, a nature sanctuary and nude beach…
Expression & Culture
Fathers are tweeting beautiful selfies with their daughters to prove India’s proud of its women
Twitter has become a platform for social change in India, where thousands are posting a #SelfieWithDaughter to fight back against a social stigma that puts a boot to the face of unborn fetuses whose only injustice is failing to grow…
Russian tattoo artist turns childhood fears into permanent works of art
BY: SHAY ANSARI Skulls, snakes and ravens are not usually the first thing you think of when choosing a tattoo. However, Russian tattoo artist, Alexander Grim, takes these dark images and turns them into breathtaking pieces of art that will…
Tinker’s Bubble is a sustainable forest community living almost entirely off the wilderness
BY: MATTHEW CHIN On the southern part of the United Kingdom, tucked away in the thick of a 40-acre woodland in Somerset, England, lies a tiny community that thrives in the wilderness. The community began in 1994 when Michael Zaer…
This old-fashioned bakery/coffee shop, plus $15,000, is going to the best 250-word essay
The Plaid Zebra has already published a couple of well-received articles featuring business owners who, rather than selling their businesses through the more traditional route, have chosen to invite would-be new owners to pen an essay explaining why they might…
Watch New York City’s most influential buskers reveal why they sing to strangers
BY: MELISSA GONZALEZ I race to the subway, balancing a dripping tray of coffee while glancing anxiously down at my wristwatch. Already I’m late to work and I’ll no doubt be caught in the human swarm of Monday morning—sleep deprived…
Chuck Palahniuk reading “Fight Club 4 Kids” is some seriously disturbing shit
BY: THE PLAID ZEBRA The consumingly violent novel-turned-cult classic, Fight Club, had millions of Average Joes across North America thinking about clearing the dusty cardboard boxes from their unfinished basements to start an underground fight club and grind their neighbours…
Wedding photographer exacts sweet sweet revenge on homophobic client who asked for a refund
The U.S.’s legalization of same-sex marriages across all 50 states represents a celebrated moment in history for most. For others, the ruling might as well be the first step on the slippery slope of national degeneracy. There’s no doubt it’ll…
Doing Laughter Yoga with complete strangers was awkwardly enlightening
BY: MOLLY SANDERS They say laughter is the best medicine. But even in the funniest of life’s memorable moments, a good tear-jerking laugh lasts a couple of minutes at most; it’s a very temporary high. Enter laughter yoga, or Hasyayoga:…
Skinny jeans refuse to die and they are killing your nerves
BY: DANIEL KORN Skinny jeans have always been pretty ridiculous. I’m not going to be so naïve as to say that they don’t look good; heck, I tried on a pair in high school once, but my stocky build and…
Artists create powerful “anti-logos” to protest modern day slaves building the 2022 World Cup stadium
BY: DANIEL KORN Even before the current World Cup 2022 disaster, FIFA had come under fire for several indiscretions. As covered in a 2014 segment on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, the burden of the World Cup forces countries…
Blind artist’s paintings will change your perception of what is and isn’t possible (Photos)
BY: JESSICA BEUKER John Bramblitt was only 30 years old when he lost his eyesight. He suffered from epilepsy since the age of two and as he grew older his seizures became more frequent and more violent. At first his…
How Ken Kesey used LSD and a travelling bus of hippies to start the 60s psychedelic revolution
BY: ROB HOFFMAN Ken Kesey took his first tab of acid in a government control room. “How did the substance make you feel?” Asked the nurse. “I felt like I discovered a hole in the centre of the Earth and…
A 9-year-old girl is building shelters and growing food for the homeless
BY: ZOE MELNYK When most children have their first homeless-person encounter, they are usually stricken with fear, confusion or told by their parents to simply ignore the less fortunate. At age five, Hailey Fort had a much different experience when…
The Church of Cannabis is now a legally recognized religion and weed is its holy sacrament
BY: MATTHEW CHIN In Indianapolis, Indiana, following the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a controversial law that has been known to deliberately suppress LGBT rights, has unintentionally helped The First Church of Cannabis become a legitimate establishment. The RFRA states that…
Salvador Dali’s illustrated version of Alice in Wonderland will give you nightmares (Photos)
BY: DANIEL KORN The story of Alice and her descent into the loopy, maddening world of Wonderland has been a cultural touchstone for over a century. Both the original 1865 Lewis Carroll novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and the colourful…
Instagrammer captures surfers riding sub-zero swells in the isolated Arctic Ocean (Photos)
BY: THE PLAID ZEBRA “Anything that is worth pursuing is going to require us to suffer, just a little bit,” declares surf photographer Chris Burkard on TED, a man who has found inner peace by surfing the world’s coldest and…
Before he died, Van Gogh wrote a letter to his brother explaining how a true artist must live
BY: MATTHEW CHIN At 37, Van Gogh shot himself and died in his brother’s arms, but before his death, he struggled with philosophical concepts of identity, purpose, and searching for a moral compass. His art became his outlet to find…
Gas masks, beakers and blue meth: a Breaking Bad-themed bar is opening in London
BY: JESSICA BEUKER If you’re anything like me, you reluctantly watched the Breaking Bad pilot after all of your friends kept ranting about how amazing the series was, only to become more obsessed and addicted than the meth junkies onscreen.…
Hippies, drugs & street art: at this lawless commune citizens build their homes on the oceanfront
BY: MATTHEW CHIN Off the Eastern coast of Denmark, in the heart of Copenhagen lies Freetown Christiania, a hippie commune with its own government and unique set of laws. Potheads, hippies, artists, idealists, and non-materialists are all welcomed in this…