We live in weird times, when the press ranks almost as low as Putin in national polls yet reporters in TV and movies can still be heroes. The 2015 film Spotlight, which dramatized the work of The Boston Globe reporters who exposed habitual child sex abuse within the Catholic church, reaped box office and critical success and took home Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay. This month, moviegoers can see director Oliver Stone’s Snowden, starring Joseph Gordon Levitt as whistleblower Edward Snowden and Zachary Quinto as reporter Glenn Greenwald. And the Panama Papers—the inflammatory leak of 11.5 million documents detailing the offshore dealings of wealthy individuals and public officials worldwide—have inspired two impending films, including a Steven Soderbergh project based on a book by journalist Jake Bernstein and a Netflix feature created in collaboration with journalists Frederik Obermaier and Bastian Obermayer.

Given the roiling political climate—where Facebook hoaxes and insane conspiracy theories are the norm—it’s perhaps not surprising that we fantasize about crusading journalists. So for this installment of In the Background we thought we’d turn our attention to one of the most iconic cinematic portrayals of journalism, All the President’s Men, which turns 40 this year. 

Released in 1976 and directed by Alan J. Pakula (Klute, Sophie’s Choice) the film casts Robert Redford as Bob Woodward and Dustin Hoffman as Carl Bernstein, Washington Post reporters who investigated the Watergate scandal. The pair’s reporting on a break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C. uncovered abuses of power by the Nixon administration and were instrumental in fueling President Richard Nixon’s subsequent impeachment hearings and eventual resignation in 1974. The film was celebrated (although The Washington Post found it a little boring), won eight Academy Awards and has gone down in film history as a classic journalism thriller.

The look? Rumplecore. 

Much ado was made of Spotlight’s attention to detail, right down to the “artless look” of journalistic attire, and it owes more than a little to the obsessive recreation that informed All the President’s Men. Perhaps inspired by their subject, Hollywood fetishes the accuracy of their world-making when it comes to journalism, even as they fictionalize it.

The film is set (naturally) mostly in Washington D.C. and the offices of The Washington Post. And make no mistake—Washington D.C. is a shady place. Literally. The city and its landmarks are a foreboding chiaroscuro of darkness. There are barely lit parking structures, inky car rides, gloomy apartments and homes. Even the offices of the Library of Congress are shot as if in a cave. (Please, somebody buy these librarians a lightbulb!) Conversely, The Washington Post offices are a glowing halo of truth-telling. They are glaringly lit; blazingly bright in comparison to almost every other scene.

Someone please get the Library of Congress some lightbulbs.

The office is as much a star of the film as Redford and Hoffman who are elbow to elbow with landslides of paper, stacks of well-thumbed reference books, clusters of coffee cups and overburdened ashtrays. Some of this can surely be chalked up to artistic license, but the newsroom was a careful recreation that included actual garbage transported from the Post offices.

Not winning any clean desk awards.

Art director George Jenkins obsessively reproduced the Post office’s at Warner Bro’s Studio in Burbank. According to a 1975 Post story about the making of the film (and invasion of the office by Hollywood types) the newsroom was recreated for $200,000 and spread out over two sound stages. “Nearly 200 desks at $500 apiece were purchased from the same firm that sold desks to The Post four years ago,” the story continued. “And to color them just right, the same precise shades of paint—be they '6 ½ PA Blue' or '22 PE Green'—are being mixed on special order.” 

Jenkins even obtained a brick from the building’s lobby so he could have it copied in fiberglass. And, in what the Post termed “The Great Hollywood Trash Lift," Jenkins asked reporters to toss their unwanted ephemera into boxes, which he had transported to the set and strewn across desks. According to the Post, reporters helpfully supplied the filmmakers with a risqué Christmas card, a newsletter from the Little Richard Fan Club, a chart on animal parasites, and enough other goodies to fill 75 boxes.

One writer reportedly left a note on a coworker’s desk warning them not to chuck old love letters in the box, lest they be projected on a screen in front of a new paramour a year later.

The paper strewn office, populated with actual documents from The Washington Post. 

The idea of a love letter written on paper is quaint today, and the chaotic desks are a startling contrast to today’s offices, where paper and pencils are relics and workspaces often consist of a computer, a monitor, and not much else. The background is often in frenetic movement as bodies rush back and forth, as if the reporters work in a bustling gym.

Also in complete chaos? The wardrobes of Woodward/Redford and Bernstein/Hoffman and their compatriots (who are almost exclusively male). Rolled up sleeves and enormous, disarrayed collars are ubiquitous. Very few ties in this film are knotted with any authority. Jason Pollack, the film’s costume designer, ended up making a career around masculine style. He was a struggling actor who fibbed his way into costume design, and went on to become Robert Redford’s regular costume designer. He also dressed Hoffman frequently, as well as stars like Harrison Ford, Sylvester Stallone and Tom Cruise. (Pollack was especially praised by The New York Times style section for swaddling Ford in a pair for flattering Wranglers in the film Extraordinary Measures.)

No time to tie a tie. 

Pollack is sanguine about his role of picking out duds for leading men. “If I do my job well, then nobody notices the wardrobe,” he told the Los Angeles Times in 2008. “It just assists in telling the story and creating realistic characters.” 

The rumpled-ness of reporters is something Hollywood still holds dear. When asked to describe the style of journalists, Spotlight’s costume designer told The New York Times that “it’s an unthought-about uniform.” The irony, of course, is that every detail has been lovingly constructed by Hollywood. When the central action of a film revolves around a paper chase instead of a car chase, those details have to be just right.

In the late 19th century, Dr. Henry Cogswell, a wealthy dentist from San Francisco and a proponent of the prohibition of alcohol, had an idea. He believed that if people had access to free, cold water, they wouldn't be tempted to go into saloons to quench their thirst with alcohol.

To put his idea to the test, he paid for the installation of sixteen “temperance fountains” around the country. Today, people still drink booze despite ample access to water, and the only fully intact remnant of Cogswell's experiment stands in Washington, D.C.

Installed in 1884—with Congressional approval despite local dissent—at the prominent intersection of 7^th and Pennsylvania Ave NW, the fountain is a small pavilion, topped with a bronze heron. Around the outside of the fountain are inscribed the words “Temperance,” “Faith,” “Charity,” and “Hope.”

The pavilion houses a somewhat grotesque sculpture of two entwined fish; originally, bronze cups chained to the fountain were provided to catch the water flowing from the mouths of the fish. A lower trough captured overflowing water for horses to drink. A reservoir below the fountain was filled with ice to cool the water. This costly routine maintenance quickly fell by the wayside, however, and the fountain ceased functioning (if it ever did) shortly after it was built.

Cogswell's fountains were largely unpopular. The fountain built in San Francisco was torn down by a mob who protested its ugliness. One in Connecticut was pulled out of the ground by a crowd and tossed into a lake. Others were simply removed over time, or altered to be less obtrusive, as temperance declined in popularity. The fountain in Washington, D.C., however, was mostly ignored and ironically spent many years after Prohibition in front of a liquor store.

The unsought, unused, unloved, and unsuccessful monument became, over time, a most ignominious landmark. In 1945, Senator Sheridan Downey introduced a resolution to remove the fountain, calling it a “monstrosity of art.” Congress, busy with legislation concerning World War II, allowed the resolution to die in committee. Ulysses S. Grant III, grandson of the former president and at the time in charge of the defense of Washington, D.C., argued against the fountain's destruction by calling it “ugly, but interesting.”

The fountain was moved a block north in 1987, to the corner of 7^th and Indiana Ave NW. Editorials in The Washington Post have called it “Washington's ugliest statue” and criticized it for its “silliness, hideousness, futility of message. Cogswell's temperance fountains were so unpopular that they led to the creation of fine arts committees in many cities across the country, creating a mechanism for the refusal of other unwanted gifts of public art. The Washington fountain is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Officially it’s the Milwaukee Building, but since 1999 few have called it that. Back then, looking to help shake some of the drab off of its downtown office towers, the city of Milwaukee went on a beautification bender, and one of their pet projects was this building.

Generic and kind of boring, what better way to add some architectural zest than three giant ladybugs, each one ten feet long.

The insects were added to the façade as an art installation, adding stark but whimsical contrast to the glass and metal cladding, and to the 19^th century buildings scattered around it. There are pretty standard office suites on the upper floors (some are available if you’re in the market), and on the ground floor there have been a couple of different night clubs.

One venue, aptly named the Ladybug Club, opened and closed by 2010. But there’s a new hotspot in the space now, called 618 Live on Water. The ladybugs are clearly climbing down the building, not up. If they make it to the entrance they might just get carded.

Spider monkeys from a fore-edge painting on The Natural History of Monkeys (1838). (Photo: Courtesy of The Swem Library)

While you don’t see them very often these days, fore-edge paintings were once some of the loveliest book illustrations around. Literally, they were around the edges of the book.

A fore-edge painting refers to an image painted or drawn on the closed leaves of a book. While covering the collected page edges in gold or silver leaf was a popular choice, sometimes artists went one step further and painted whole scenes and landscapes on them. This form of fore-edge decoration is known as “all-edge” painting, and it was only the beginning.

Some ambitious, “disappearing” fore-edge paintings were painted on the inside edges of the pages, so that the hidden scenes could only be seen when the page block was fanned in a certain direction. If the book was simply closed, the page edges could look normal and unadorned (or possibly gilded), only revealing the image when one of the covers were shifted back, slanting the pages.

A two-way double fore-edge painting from The Book of The Thames (1859), slanted one way... (Photo: Courtesy of The Swem Library)

... and the other.(Photo: Courtesy of The Swem Library)

These secret illustrations could be doubled, with an illustration on either side of the pages, revealing themselves depending on the slant of the page block (known as the “two-way double”). Some were painted so that if the book was laid open in the center, naturally splaying the pages to either side, two different illustrations could be seen on either side (known as a “split double”).

There are even examples of rarer variations that required the pages to be pinched or tented in a certain way to see the image. The only limit was the artists’ imaginations.

The American capital painted on the edge of American Poems (1870). (Photo: Courtesy of The Swem Library)

"Sometimes the fore-edge paintings corresponded to the subject of the book, and sometimes not," says Jay Gaidmore, Director of Special Collections at the Earl Gregg Swem Library. The library holds the 700-strong Ralph H. Wark Collection, the largest collection of fore-edge painted books in America.

"Typical scenes include Oxford and Cambridge, the Thames River, Westminster Abbey, the English village and countryside, Edinburgh, authors, ships, and classical figures," says Gaidmore. "Most of the books are 19th century English fore-edges, but there are a few American scenes."

Henry Longfellow from The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. (Photo: Courtesy of The Swem Library)

Fore-edge paintings can be found on books dating back to the 11th century, with early examples being decorated with symbolism and heraldry. Disappearing fore-edge paintings began to appear around the 17th century, as the paintings began to become more elaborate, consisting of fully illustrated scenes, portraits, and composed artworks.

It wasn't until many centuries later that the art form had a Renaissance, and become more common. "Fore-edge paintings peaked in the late 18th and early 19th centuries in England," says Gaidmore. "Edwards of Halifax, part of the Yorkshire family of bookbinders and booksellers, has been credited with establishing the custom."

According to the Boston Public Library’s website for their 250+ collection of fore-edge books, for the most part the paintings were made using watercolors, and went unsigned, often being commissioned by a book-binding firm. 

 A circus scene from Essays, Poems, and Plays (1820).(Photo: Courtesy of The Swem Library)

Examples of fore-edge painting continued into the early 20th century, and as a 2013 piece over on Flavorwire points out, they are still being created by modern artists such as Clare Brooksbank and Martin Frost.

The technique has even been printed onto some modern books like Chip Kidd’s 2001 novel, The Cheese Monkeys, which was printed with a two-way double, disappearing fore-edge message. If the pages are shifted in one direction, the phrase “GOOD IS DEAD,” appears, while if they are shifted in the opposite direction, the message, “DO YOU SEE?” can be read.

Take a look at more incredible historical fore-edge paintings below.

A ship painted in Lectures on Modern History (1843).(Photo: Courtesy of The Swem Library)

A tiny farm scene on the side of The Farmer's Boy (1827). (Photo: Courtesy of The Swem Library)

John Milton's house, grave, and portrait on the side of Paradise Lost, Vol. 1. (1796). (Photo: Albert H. Wiggin Collection/Boston Public Library)

Matches, Mackerel, Scissors on the side of The Poems of William Cowper (1820). (Photo: Albert H. Wiggin Collection/Boston Public Library)

The Last Supper on the edge of The Holy Bible (1803). (Photo: Albert H. Wiggin Collection/Boston Public Library)

A hunter firing at a bird on the side of The Poetical Works of John Milton (1843). (Photo: Albert H. Wiggin Collection/Boston Public Library)

A hunt on the side of The Seasons (1811). (Photo: Albert H. Wiggin Collection/Boston Public Library)

Hindu temples painted on the side of The Modern History of Hindostan. Volume 1 (Date unknown). (Photo: Albert H. Wiggin Collection/Boston Public Library)

Four putti on the edge of Des. Erasmi Rot. Moriæ encomium (1629). (Photo: Albert H. Wiggin Collection/Boston Public Library)

Diana sitting with a handmaid by a lake from the side of Dictionnaire Grec-Français (1817). (Photo: Albert H. Wiggin Collection/Boston Public Library)

Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden on side of The Bible (1795). (Photo: Albert H. Wiggin Collection/Boston Public Library)

Aylesford Church and bridge on the side of Sermons, Vol. 2 (1814). (Photo: Albert H. Wiggin Collection/Boston Public Library)

A chess scene from the side of Analysis of The Game of Chess (1790). (Photo: Albert H. Wiggin Collection/Boston Public Library)

The people of Orleans greet Joan of Arc, from the side of Jeanne d'Arc: Her Life and Death (Date unknown). (Photo: Albert H. Wiggin Collection/Boston Public Library)

George Washington and Ben Franklin from the side of The Speeches of The Right Honourable William Pitt (1808). (Photo: Albert H. Wiggin Collection/Boston Public Library)

Stonehenge painted on the side of The Royal Kalendar, and court and City Register for England, Scotland, Ireland, and The Colonies (Date unknown). (Photo: Albert H. Wiggin Collection/Boston Public Library)

The White House painted on the edge of A History of New York (1821). (Photo: Albert H. Wiggin Collection/Boston Public Library)

An empty, tumble-down, sprawling complex sits amidst handsome new apartment buildings in Berlin's Weissensee neighborhood. Though an intrigued passerby probably wouldn't guess it, this crumbling graffiti gallery was once a cutting-edge pediatric medical facility, abruptly banished almost 20 years ago to a bizarre limbo that continues to this day.

Planning for the Weissensee Children's Hospital (Kinderkrankenhaus-Weißensee) began in 1908, undertaken in an effort to combat rising infant and child mortality rates. Inaugurated in 1911, it was the first municipal hospital of Prussia, and incorporated novel concepts like a 2.8 hectare (6.9 acre) park surrounding the hospital and an onsite dairy that produced milk for the young patients, their mothers and the surrounding neighborhood. The hospital survived two World Wars and the Cold War, even being enlarged in 1987 when the East German government added a new wing.

The facility even survived German reunification for several years, but was eventually closed in 1997. Empty since then, the buildings and grounds are protected as historic monuments under the care of the municipal government. In 2005 the property was sold to a Russian investor and medical cooperative that proposed converting it into a new clinic. After years passed without any construction or even basic maintenance at the site, curious journalists found the new ownership led only to a sketchy location housing multiple shell corporations.

Further inquiries yielded a fantastical tale of Russian doctors who had discovered a method of curing cancer and AIDS with radio waves. The hapless spokesman associated with the bogus address claimed that this method had already cured many people in Russia. Unfortunately, their results proved difficult to verify, as the patients they cured were all quickly killed thereafter by mismanagement by conventional doctors..

After years of lawsuits, local courts ordered the fraudulent Russian owner to return the property to the municipal property management authority. The future of the former landmark children's hospital is as yet unclear.

Today, Weissesee's abandoned children's hospital is frequented by homeless people looking for a place to sleep, as well as graffiti artists who have used the site to create some astonishing street art. It also remains an attractive target for curious urban explorers, but it is not hazard-free by any means. Intrepid visitors should be very careful, as it is a very old and decaying building.

 

About yesterday 🌌✨ #reykjavik

A photo posted by belakarsai (@belakarsai) on Sep 28, 2016 at 11:31pm PDT

Living in Reykjavik, the northernmost capital in the world, has its perks, including, of course, the Northern Lights, also known as aurora borealis. 

And last night, to better take in the show, officials shut off the city's street lights, making it darker on the ground but more visible in the sky. Safety, for the moment, would have to take a backseat to natural beauty. 

 

A photo posted by Daði Guðjónsson (@dadigud) on Sep 28, 2016 at 6:16pm PDT

The Northern Lights are a natural phenomenon seen at the northern and southern reaches of the Earth, created when charged particles emitted from the Sun disturb Earth's magnetosphere, depositing other charged particles closer into Earth's outer atmosphere. As Icelanders well know, what happens next is a dazzling show.

The street lamps were out for just an hour, from 10 p.m. to 11 p.m., according to the Iceland Monitor, but that was more than enough time for many a resident to snap a shot for Instagram. 

 

A photo posted by Adam Thor Murtomaa (@adammurtomaa) on Sep 28, 2016 at 6:32pm PDT

Berliner Unterwelten was founded in 1997 to explore, document and preserve the city's subterranean architecture. The organization's base is in a former air raid bunker in the Gesundbrunnen subway station, now a museum—the Unterwelten Museum (Subterranean Museum)—that offers various tours through Berlin's underground.  The bunker was cleared and reconstructed by the group transformed into a museum while maintaining its original character. Hiding on four floors below Berlin are dozens of bunkers, tunnels, walkways, canals, the route of a pneumatic postal system, storage rooms, bomb and ammunitions storage, and abandoned subway stations.

Berlin, so full of history above ground, has a lot to tell in it's subterranean areas as well. There are exhibits about everything from air raid bunkers to the removal of rubble from the destruction during World War II. Berliner Unterwelten found a huge file system about slave workers during the war in a forgotten bunker, helped the former workers to receive reparation pay and have an exhibition about slave workers in Berlin. Found objects such as ammunition, grenades, gas masks, etc are on display as well. There is an exhibition about Hitler's "Germania," his utopian vision to rebuilt Berlin. (The exhibition shows that the project was not, of course, a utopia after all.) 

Berliner Unterwelten also works to preserve subterranean areas. They have dug and cleared out many locations, including half destroyed bunkers, and opened them to the public. Several different tours are offered, including underground bunker hospitals, mother-and-child bunkers, flak bunkers, subterranean factories, examples of subterranean escape routes from East to West Berlin, Flak towers, an underground prison, Cold War bunkers for nuclear war and a tour through the Schwerbelastungskörper, a heavy tower built to test the possibilities of erecting Germania on the sandy ground of Berlin. 

Despite being one of the coolest cars to hit American streets, the Chevrolet El Camino didn't quite take off in terms of popularity. By contrast, coupe utility vehicles became common Down Under—common enough to earn an affectionate nickname, as well as an annual festival that celebrates the usefulness and versatility of Australia's beloved "utes."

The Deni Ute Muster is the largest event of its kind in the world. It began as a celebration of all things Australian—including the Aussie icon that is the ute—and has developed into a two-day festival featuring live music concerts, ute driving competitions, a show-and-shine arena, and a bull ride.

In its first year, the event held the largest parade of legally registered utes in the world wherein 2,839 drivers took part, establishing Deniliquin as the ute capital of the world. Since that time, the event has grown in popularity and each year breaks the previously established world record. As of 2010, the record stands at 8,152 utes, with over 25,000 attendees in a town that normally has a population of about 8000. In 2013, a new ute record of 9,736 was set.

The Deni Ute Muster also holds a record count for most number of people wearing blue singlets; in 2013, new blue singlet record of 3,924 was set.

La Condesa neighborhood of Mexico City, where La Llorona is likely to be heard. (Photo: Keizers/CC BY-SA 3.0)

There are many reasons to fall in love with Mexico City, but among the most understandable are its sounds. Linger on a park bench long enough for the ocean swell of the traffic to blend into the background, and a second layer reveals itself. The gas sellers calling up to the apartments. The scratched Big Band-era songs of the helado trucks. The organ grinders outside the national monuments, twirling their ancient machines for change.

Into this clutter every so often, particularly in the La Condesa area, perhaps the most city's fashionable and bohemian (read: "hipster") neighborhood, arrives the haunting voice of a wailing woman. Her calls echo through the narrow streets and swirl in the zocalos, full of despair and obsession like the Latin legion of La Llorona. But rather than asking passersby if they've seen her lost children, this voice is asking for your junk. This is what she sounds like:

Follow the calls to its source and you'll find a rusty speaker bolted to the top of a flatbed truck. Depending on what hour of the day you happen upon it, the truck will either be empty, chock full of so much junk it seems it'll tip over, or in between. Peak through the refuse and you'll find mattresses, washing machines, stoves, microwaves, loose metal, and other detritus. To the non-Spanish speakers out there, these items, after all, are what the woman on the recording is asking for. 

“I heard the voice for years,” says Wendel Equisuvequis, who grew up in the suburbs of Mexico City. When he was 14 years old, Equisuvequis heard the recording from inside of his home and ran out to meet the trunk. “My dad bought some new sports wheels for his car, so I assumed he didn't want the other ones.” He let the junkers into the house to take the rims, netting a sweet 450 pesos in return. But it didn’t end well. “Little did I know my dad was planning to sell the car with the original wheels and use the sports one for the new car,” he says. “He was pissed!”

After the trucks pick up the rims, or whatever else they're looking for, they return to warehouses and garages where they unload the materials, which are resold or have the copper stripped. The business is legit, but has a reputation for being tough guys to deal with, particularly for anyone trying to muscle into their territory. “Urban legend is that it is a super-powerful cartel controls most of them,” says Equisuvequis. “I don't mean breaking the law, but they act with almost unquestionable power. They are a gremio, which is like a union on steroids.”

But where does the wailing call come from? Turns out, the recording is not the voice of an older woman at all, but from a young girl.

According to 2013 broadcast from ForoTV, the speaker is Marymar Torreón, since given the awesome moniker of voz del fierro viejo, or, “the voice of old iron.” It was recorded 11 years ago by her father, Marco Antonio Torreón, who drives one of the trunks for a living. One day, Torreón realized how tired he was getting not only from walking—back then, he was using a wheelbarrow to collect scrap instead of a truck—but also from yelling at the top of his lungs. So, he bought a cheap tape recorder and gave his daughter a script.

Mexico City. (Photo: Kasper Christensen/CC BY-SA 2.0)

“He started recording me from about 12 a.m. to 4 a.m. until I got it right,” Marymar remembers in the broadcast. “My tongue would get tied, I would say one word instead of the other.” Which accounts for the drowsy, droning quality of the recording. After a brief editing session, they began to use it to save Torreón's throat. But how did it get from that to, as the ForoTV broadcast puts it, “a classic sound of the streets?”

“I passed it out to some colleagues that asked for the recording,” he says. “And they passed around to others, and the others to more people, and there you go.” 

The tapes spread in the most viral, old school sense. Soon copies began popping up at swap meets, sold for around 200 pesos or less. In fact, the recording is no longer claimed solely by Mexico City, or even the country itself. Marymar's voice can be heard through much of Latin America and, if a YouTube commenter is to be believed, even in St. Petersburg, Russia.

But not everyone's pleased with the droning call. If you're in Mexico City when a truck rolls by, it's not uncommon to see a curious smile morph into an annoying scowl the closer it gets. “I would ask my colleagues to put the volume a little bit down,” pleads Marco at the end of the news broadcast. “That is the reason why some people doesn’t like the recording. Sometimes, they put it too loud.”

Of course, that's not going to happen anytime soon, not as long as there are kids out there ready to part with their parents' seeming junk for a few extra pesos. But if it’s bothering you, take comfort that the wail will soon pass, and more will rise from the city’s ever-changing soundscape.

When the Sloss Blast Furnaces closed in 1971 the site had been an anchor of Birmingham’s industrial life for nine decades. As one of the South’s largest manufacturers of pig iron, the obsolete hulk that was left behind was an inspiration for then-graduate student Joe McCreary, who created a rusting giant for the University of Alabama campus.

Called “Goldie 1971,” the creature has stopped to rest in the sculpture garden of Woods Quad, just outside the Department of Art and Art History where McCreary earned his MFA in 2011. The University bought the sculpture in 2010, and installed the three-ton titan as part of its permanent outdoor collection.

One of five public art installations in the quad, McCreary’s piece honors the workers of Sloss, and their jobs smelting pig iron (an element used to make steel). Early concept art for the piece put Goldie to work alongside the ironmen, under grueling and often dangerous conditions. Goldie may not have been vulnerable to the heat and poisonous gasses like his denim-clad brethren, but even a pig iron robot is susceptible to plant closures.

If it’s true that when one doors closes another one opens, Goldie 1971 and Sloss Blast Furnaces are two good examples. Sloss, after ten years of dormancy and decay, was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1981. It opened to the public as a museum and event venue, and provides artist studios and metalwork classes. Goldie may have dropped down into permanent silence in the middle of Woods Quad, but he’s a reminder to the hundreds of students who pass by every day that art can tell all of our stories. As his creator likes to say, never forget who you are or where you came from.

Abandoned pier on the Salton Sea, California. (Photo: Hank Shiffman/shutterstock.com)

In the Imperial Valley of California’s southeastern desert is an unexpected, almost oasis-like sight: a vast saline body of water called the Salton Sea, covering an area of around 350 square miles. On a closer look, though, its long-term neglect is obvious. The area, once called the “California Riviera”, was once awash in pastel boating outfits and jet skis; now it’s littered with broken trailers and run-down yacht clubs. Millions of fish die there yearly, largely from the water’s rampant avian botulism.

And now, decades after the water began to recede into an ultra-concentrated smelly, salty mess, environmental groups are finally getting funding to manage the water. “It’s a terminal lake, which means there are no outlets to the Salton Sea,” says Bruce Wilcox of the California Natural Resources Agency, part of the Salton Sea Task Force. “Anything that’s in the water or comes into that basin stays there, and it's getting progressively saltier.”

The Salton Sea is now one-and-a-half times saltier than the ocean, and evaporating quickly. But saving the Salton Sea isn’t your typical restoration effort, undoing human mistakes. This time, ecological interest groups are fighting nature to keep the mistake intact: the Salton Sea is a man-made lake, created by accident.

An aerial view from the early 1930s of Salton Sea. (Photo: National Archives/23935069)

“The fact that [the Salton Sea] was an accident, and a human accident, makes no difference to the birds,” says Wilcox. Birds use the Salton Sea as if it were a natural habitat, and taking that away would cause more damage than it would have decades ago; most of the wetlands along the shores and central valley of California have since been drained and developed. Losing the Salton Sea would be destroying a necessary foodsource and pitstop for thousands of birds migrating from the west, Appalachia and Colorado, many of which would face extinction, unable to replace the loss.

This is an unexpected development for the Salton Sea, considering that for much of its history, it wasn’t a source of water at all. In 1900 the Salton Sea was called the Salton Sink, and was, at the time, a dry geological depression, deep and wide, with vast salty deposits on its floor. Commercial interests grew around it: salt farmers harvested the basin, and the California Development Company began an irrigation project to send water from the Colorado River to surrounding farmland, which exists today. The company dug canals to divert water into the Coachella and Imperial Valleys, hoping to build lush green farmland in the desert.

Unfortunately, a series of mishaps plagued the area from the beginning; the Colorado River was not yet controlled by the Hoover Dam, and the canals flooded and filled with silt. Efforts to fix the problem included making additional, hasty cuts into the river basin, making the problem worse, and money and interest ran out after a major flood filled the Salton Sink at a rate of one inch per hour. For two years, the Colorado River filled the sink creating a large saline lake, later known as the Salton Sea.

Old signage at Salton Sea. (Photo: Library of Congress/LC-DIG-highsm-21008)

Over time the Salton Sea became a tourist draw. In the 1920s its soft waves and migrating birds enchanted entrepreneur Gus Eilers into promoting the area and building a clubhouse with boat races near the water. The word spread, and property developers rushed to the area, building marinas, resorts, and a yacht club in Salton City—the Salton Sea became known as the California Riviera. In June 1954 women entered an annual contest to become the official Miss Salton Sea.

Celebrities like Frank Sinatra and Jerry Lee Lewis spent their weekends boating and jet skiing into the 1960s, and fish were added to the brackish water for recreation. Corvina and tilapia thrived, attracting birds and fishermen to the new watering hole. But, since the Colorado River was under control, its water wasn’t supplying the desert sea with water anymore; farming continued to thrive in the area with more controlled irrigation, and unregulated agricultural runoff began to flow into the lake from nearby farms, sustaining its water levels to a degree.

The Salton Sea had been slowly shrinking since the 1950s, but hurricanes in 1976 and 1977 further devastated the area. Conservation groups sought aid from the government. Sonny Bono (of Sonny and Cher fame), who by the 1980s was a congressman, introduced plans to save the Salton Sea before his death. The plans were briefly supported before falling by the wayside, though a wildlife refuge there bears his name. As the water and property values evaporated, many people moved away, and the area faded from public consciousness. 

Abandoned gas station at Salton Sea. (Photo: Marc Cooper/Public Domain)

Now, the Salton Sea is surrounded by vacant property and few residents remain beyond a smattering of elderly folks and families attracted by the low cost of rent. Fish have been dying by the millions since the 1990s. The water is now at 59.3 parts of salt per thousand parts water, and “fish can’t breed at 60 parts per thousand,” says Wilcox, though invertebrates continue to thrive. Locals complain of the smell, the lack of stores and amenities, and the regret that their property investments did not live up to the dream.

But the issues around the Salton Sea are getting more serious, beyond the financial collapse of a local tourist economy. On Monday, there were 200 earthquakes under the lake, which sits near several fault lines including the San Andreas Fault. Water management in the region is an issue in the desert and for California, which had to divert water from reaching the Salton Sea in 2003 in order to supply San Diego. A 2014 report estimates that by 2045, the receding lake will expose nearly 150 miles of the lake’s floor, called “playa,” which will release around 100 tons of fine dust into the air per day.

“The playa is hazardous because it’s such a small size dust particle,” says Wilcox. “They can travel through your lungs into the bloodstream.” The surrounding valleys provide much of the United States’ produce, and that dust will also destroy crops, affecting our food supply. Since 2003 elevation has dropped six to seven vertical feet, exposing 10,000 to 11,000 acres of playa around the lake, which would flood the area and the Coachella Valley to the north with dust.

A ditch in the Salton Sea. (Photo: Akos Kokai/CC BY 2.0)

Current playa control plans of the Salton Sea Task Force include finding areas that are higher in arsenic and copper, in order to control those first, with an initial goal of 12,000 acres of habitat creation and control. Teams will build canals and storage ponds next to the Alamo and New rivers to store agricultural runoff to add water to the lake. Plans also include rooting the playa with plants, covering the dusty Salton Sea floor, and building nearby shallow habitat wells for fish and insects while monitoring the lake’s salinity. Wilcox adds that wildlife concerns are pressing: the Salton Sea alone is a vital stopover point for over 420 species of birds.

While these matters are in need of immediate action, those who are working on and advocating for saving the Salton Sea are realistic; they’ve stopped calling their efforts “restoration,” and instead use the word “management.” “What we’re talking about doing will not turn it into a natural habitat, it will have to be managed forever,” says Wilcox. “But we’re trying to put something in place that has minimal management requirements over time.”

While the task force’s plans are not entirely funded, the California government recently earmarked 80 million dollars for saving the water, which is a start. President Obama’s administration gave another $30 million from the federal budget in September of this year. In addition to suppressing the playa and adding water, Wilcox says these plans aim to add value for humans and local tourism. Bird watchers and sailors may one day use the Salton Sea again, though the waters will never be quite as deep as they were before.

Dead fish on the sand at Bombay Beach. (Photo: EsotericSapience/CC BY 2.0)

A new full proposal with updated cost estimates and data is scheduled for release at the end of 2016, just before the last holdout of water supplying the basin will be removed per agreement the following year;  implementation of many management plans is estimated to begin next year. While some plans are estimated to cost millions of dollars, the alternative—which includes a major public health hazard—could cost the government over $70 billion if it spirals out of control.

The Salton Sea was made through blunders because of human desires, but over time, those actions actually made the large salty lake vital. Hopefully a new course of human intervention for it will arrive in time to sustain our lucky mistake.

Narnia hid behind a wardrobe. Doctor Who's Tardis was disguised as a blue police call box. With no signage and no flags, these out of the ordinary things are hidden away disguised as something utterly banal. In some cases, these things are camouflaged on accident; in others, they are secreted away so that only those in the know can find them. 

Either way, the world is full of seemingly mundane places that are more than meets the eye. It reminds us to stay curious—one has to always be on the lookout for wonder. Here are nine places in the Atlas that may seem boring at first glance but are actually amazing once you take a closer look. If you know of mundane place hiding something wonderful, add it to the Atlas!

1. Brooklyn Townhouse Secret Subway Exit

BROOKLYN, NEW YORK

This fake townhouse is actually a subway emergency exit. (Photo: Atlas Obscura user Allison)

You might not notice anything off about this Brooklyn Heights townhouse, other than the black reflective windows. Though it was once a private residence, this building is now a clandestine emergency exit from the 4 and 5 train lines. The decoy has been sitting at 58 Joralemon Street since 1908, but in recent years the NYPD has heightened security measures around the "entrance" to the "house" in an attempt to prevent curious passersby from any subterranean exploration.

2. Bodega

BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS

What sits just behind the Snapple machine in the back of this bodega? (Photo: Atlas Obscura user themakebelieve)

If you've seen one bodega you've seen them all, right? There are shelves of Gatorade and Doritos and maybe a friendly cat if you're lucky. But this deli in Boston is different. Though it does function as a regular corner store, a secret door behind the Snapple machine leads to a shiny, lacquered men's clothing store, supplying the finest designer sneakers and tees in an environment that could not be more of a departure from the mundane shop it hides behind.

3. Mystery Soda Machine

SEATTLE, WASHINGTON 

(Photo: Atlas Obscura user hsstudios) 

In Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood, a dingy 1970s soda machine dispenses wonder in the form of mystery soda. Insert 75¢, select a button (it used to have branded buttons like Mountain Dew and Pepsi, but those have all been replaced by MYSTERY buttons), and receive a random soda blessing from the machine. One person reported receiving more brands of soda than there were buttons. No one knows who stocks the machine or why, but there is no concerted effort to find out either. It would be a crime to strip any of the mystery away from the Mystery Soda Machine.

4. The Lonely Parking Meter

WINTERS, CALIFORNIA

The only parking meter in Winters, California. (Photo: Atlas Obscura user Bruce Ferrari)

This parking meter is actually just a parking meter, but its very existence is the whimsical thing about it. Winters is a quiet little farming town but in the past few years it has become a tourist destination for those who want to take in a country atmosphere. As such, locals have been having trouble finding parking in the business district (which, though full of free parking, is only about four blocks long). In April of 2015 a single old—yet still functioning—parking meter appeared in the downtown area. It wasn't placed by the city council, but rather by a mysterious prankster commenting on the tourist economy in Winters. It's rumored that the police don’t even have an ordinance addressing parking meters. Out-of-towners have been seen feeding the meter and then walking away grumbling, and occasionally parents will drop a dime in to show their kids how it works. The rogue parking meter generates about $100 a year, all of which is donated to the annual fireworks fund. 

5. Sunshine Laundromat

BROOKLYN, NEW YORK

Sunshine Laundromat, a fully functional laundromat as well as a hidden pinball bar. (Photo: Atlas Obscura user dylan)

A clean, friendly laundromat in your neighborhood is a blessing. A laundromat with a secret bar in the back is a godsend. A laundromat with a secret bar in the back featuring some of the rarest pinball machines in the world is an absolute treasure, and that's exactly what Sunshine Laundromat is. You might be happy enough playing the few pinball machines amidst the washers and dryers, but in the very back of the narrow establishment, two of the washers are different. If you look closely through the fish-eye glass of the washer doors, you'll see a warm, brick-walled bar behind, illuminated by flashing pinball lights. 

6. REACH: New York

NEW YORK, NEW YORK

A subway rider experiments with REACH. (Photo: Atlas Obscura user lynn)

On the N/R subway platform at 34th Street Penn Station, there are green metal bars mounted a foot or two above eye level. At regular intervals along the bars are small holes, and between the holes are what look like air ducts. But the air ducts are really speakers, and the holes actually contain motion sensors. Reach a hand up in front of one of the holes, and you'll trigger a sound. You can move from sensor to sensor, playing a different sound on the instrument as you wait for your train. The installation, called REACH: New York, was built by Christopher Janney in 1995. The sounds are updated every year. In 2015, the selection included a number of traditional musical instrument sounds along with six kinds of frog sounds. The 2016 update featured marimbas and xylophones. There is only one small, usually unnoticed sign that explains it, which facilitates the joy subway riders experience as they discover the secret installation.

7. Villa Rose

GLAND, SWITZERLAND

Sweet little Villa Rose. (Photo: Paebi/CC BY-SA 3.0)

When walking along the Swiss border you might be charmed by two pastel suburban houses. Don't be fooled; Villa Rose and Villa Verte are no harmless abodes. They are military fortresses, deceptively disguised as sweet little chalets. Behind the painted-on windows is a substantial cache of weaponry, including cannons behind the garage doors. These were built during World War II, but fortunately Switzerland's history has been very peaceful ever since.

8. Flask and the Press

SHANGHAI, CHINA

The secret entrance to Flask. (Photo: Courtesy of msemmafan on Instagram)

If you live in a metropolitan area, you're awash in speakeasies, period authentic or brand new. Some of them keep the secret well, others not so much. But however many speakeasies you've patronized, a cocktail bar hidden behind a vintage Coke machine within a sandwich shop in the middle of Shanghai remains one of the few instances where that original sense of magic lingers in the air exactly as it did in the Prohibition era. Behind a sleek, minimalistic sandwich shop, The Press, there is a brooding, dark bar called Flask. By pulling the lever on the machine, visitors can peel back the layers of personality in this place and step into a whole different world. 

9. Times Square Hum

NEW YORK, NEW YORK

Times Square in 1977, when the Hum was installed. (Photo: Derzsi Elekes Andor/CC BY-SA 4.0)

There's obviously lots to look at in New York City's Times Square, so it makes sense that you would miss the mysterious hum that can only be seen, not heard. One part art installation, one part social experiment, the hum was installed by artist Max Neuhaus in 1977. Speakers beneath a subway grate on a median between 45th and 46th Streets project an unplaceable sound—sort of a machine/voice humming noise. He wanted to see if anyone would notice the change in the sonic environment. Very few did. Times Square has only gotten noisier since Neuhaus created his piece, making the secret art all the more clandestine and special once you've found it. 

(Photo: Brian Gratwicke/CC BY 2.0)

The Rabbs' fringe-limbed treefrog wasn't discovered until 2005, and only named three years later, but now the last known Rabbs' fringe-limbed treefrog is dead.

Toughie the treefrog lived in the Atlanta Botanical Garden, after being flown out of Panama with several other frogs the year they were discovered, when researchers at the time detected a threatening invasive fungus in their natural habitat. 

Toughie has lived at the botanical garden more or less since then, becoming the only known living Rabbs' fringe-limbed treefrog in the world in 2012, when the penultimate frog of the species died at the Atlanta Zoo.

But botanical garden officials announced Wednesday that Toughie, too, had died, officially ending the species. 

"Found in Panama on an expedition to save animals from a deadly disease, our dear Rabbs’ frog was estimated to be about 12 years old," the garden wrote on Facebook. "It's a sad day here at the Garden as we mourn the loss of our beloved Rabbs’ fringe-limbed tree frog."

The frogs were last seen in the wild in 2007, and have only been observed in cloud forests in central Panama, where, in part because of the fungus, they are also presumed extinct. 

In the heat of summer, 813 Christians huddled in the crypt of their local cathedral. They took the eucharist and waited to be sawn in half by the Turks attacking their village. What's left of them is now behind the altar.

In July of 1480, 128 Ottoman ships landed on the shores of Otranto as the first plan of attack in taking over Italy. It was a bloody attack. The Otrantians put up a fight but they were no match for the the Ottomans, who went from house to house, looting, murdering, and setting afire everything in their path. 

After 15 days of siege, the Ottomans had destroyed nearly everyone and everything. When they reached the Otranto Cathedral, they found a small band of Christian survivors huddled in the nave, led by the Archbishop Pendinelli in full regalia. They were given the option to convert to Islam on the spot, but they refused. The Archbishop was beheaded on the altar and accompanying clergymen were sawn in half.

The rest of the Christians were taken prisoner–the women and able children were sold into slavery while babies and adult men were killed. They stood firmly by their faith, but one man in particular, the tailor Antonio Primaldo, stood out in his conviction. As such, the Ottomans beheaded him first. However, as Paul Koudounaris writes in The Empire of Death, "...his body rose and stood upright. The Turks could not bring it down, even with the aid of an ox: it stood until the last of the victims fell." This miraculous feat prompted one executioner to fall to his knees and convert on the spot, though he was immediately impaled.

It took the three kings of Naples, Aragon, and Sicily to recapture southern Italy, but they were eventually able to force the Ottomans out. The cathedral had been badly damaged, used for a brief time as a mosque and then as a stable. The rose window and some of the 12th century frescoes were restored, along with the marvelous mosaic on the floor of the nave. The martyrs' skulls were collected and placed in the cathedral's reliquary, where they remain today.

In 1711 a chapel was built off the main cathedral, specifically dedicated to the martyrs. Some of their bones are viewable in glass cases behind the altar while others reside in display coffins. The "stone of martyrdom," upon which the Christians are believed to have been beheaded, lies behind the altar as well. In 2013, the 813 martyrs who hid in the church were collectively granted sainthood by Pope Benedict XVI. 

From the world's best clown police post. (Courtesy Rolla Police Department)

Whether it's because it's an election year, or because hysteria's tend to take on lives of their own, clowns, this year, have been spotted everywhere, no one is really denying that we're in the midst of a clown panic.

Police in Rolla, Missouri, have heard the rumors too, prompting one officer to spend an entire day investigating the rumors. He detailed that investigation Thursday in an epic post on the Rolla Police Department's Facebook page.

It is unclear who the officer is, and Rolla police did not respond immediately to a request for comment, but it's safe to say he or she is probably one of the department's most valuable members. 

The post begins with a sensible survey of the situation, and a quick tl;dr conclusion, before the officer goes deep into the evidence. 

The officer then describes some of the old-fashioned police work he or she used to come to this determination, including a non-lethal encounter with a real clown.

But wait, there's more!

Finally, the investigation concludes.

The post was published a little more than an hour ago, but has managed to rack up dozens of comments already, many thankful to the Rolla police for their hard work. 

A job well done then for the officer, who signed off in style. 

"There is one more thing I think that is worth mentioning," the officer wrote. "This whole creepy clown stuff did actually scare some people. If you think it’s a good idea to put on a clown mask there is nothing illegal about that. Keep in mind that scared people do crazy things sometimes and there the chance you may find yourself in a precarious situation. But don't worry, we will respond and investigate the assault."

This post will be updated if more information becomes available.

In 1915, the manager of the New York Philharmonic Society’s Concert Hall had a unique problem. There had been some unusual disturbances during performances, and to address this, he included a notice in the program. It was titled “Knitting During Performances”. After acknowledging the importance of helping the war in Europe, he wrote, “many complaints have been received from patrons of the concerts who are annoyed by knitting during performances, and the Directors respectfully request that this practice, which interferes with the artistic enjoyment of the music, be omitted”.

This illuminating quote is one of several that puncture a wonderful selection of knitting-related photographs in the new book People Knitting: A Century of Photographs. Complied by Barbara Levine mostly from her own collection, it is a fascinating look at people knitting from the 1860s through to the 1960s. 

There are people knitting while sitting, walking, driving, in a hair salon, and as a hobby, an occupation or a duty. All of them are compelling. Regardless of you’re a knitter or not, Levine’s photographs are a charming ode to this long and timeless tradition. Here is a selection of images of what Levine calls “the meditative act of knitting”.   

 Postcard of Dutch girls knitting published by Utig F. B. den Boer, Middelburg, Holland, 1909.

Carte de visite showing Sojourner Truth, c. 1880. She is sitting at a table with her knitting and a book. Truth commissioned formal photographs of herself and sold the prints to support her career as a traveling lecturer. 

Studio portrait of young Scottish woman with her knitting, c. 1915.

Seattle woman knitting while walking, c. 1918.

Graham’s photo postcard series, “Scotch Fisher Girls,” Blyth, England, c. 1915. During fishing season, fishing families would come from Scotland to England to catch herring. For the women, every spare moment was taken up with knitting.

 High school boys knitting for the soldiers during World War I, Cooperstown, New York, 1918.

Women’s Institute, Jerusalem, Arab women knitting in the Old City, c. 1939. 

 Prisoners knitting in one of their classrooms, Sing Sing prison, Ossining, New York, c. 1915.

Taxicab driver knitting between fares, London, c. 1940.

Girls engaged in knitting and making toy animals in the handicraft class of the St. Simon’s Youth Center of the National Youth Administration, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1941.

Knitting for the forces at the beauty salon, London, 1940.

Mrs. S. Nako and Mrs. William Hosokawa spend an afternoon knitting at the Heart Mountain Relocation Center in Park County, Wyoming, January 8, 1943. They were among more than ten thousand Japanese Americans who were held at this internment camp during World War II. 

Betty Grable knitting baby clothes for her soon-to-be-born child with her second husband, bandleader Harry James, 1943.

The cover for People Knitting: A Century of Photographs. (Photo: Courtesy Princeton Architectural Press)

Hranická propast, the Hranice abyss (Photo: Jiří Komárek/CC BY-SA 4.0)

Krzysztof Starnawski, a diver from Poland, found the cave in 1999. Even back then, he knew it was an unusual cave: the water made the team’s skin itch. Carved from limestone, the cave was shaped by “hot water saturated with carbon dioxide [that] bubbled up like a volcano” from the cave bottom, reports National Geographic, which funded the expedition.

The question was: where was the bottom?

Now, Starnawski and his team—with a major assist from an underwater robot—have found it, 1,325 feet deep, making this cave the deepest underwater cave in the world.

Previously, that record was held by Pozzi del Merro, an underwater sinkhole in Italy. This cave is in the eastern Czech Republic, where the country borders Poland and Slovakia.

To find the bottom of the cave, Starnawski dove down around 650 feet to a small break in the floor of the cave’s upper section. He’d previously been through, only to realize the cave went down, much, much further. This dive, he directed a ROV through the slot, from which it traveled all the way down.

Without the robot, it would not have been possible to get to the bottom of the cave; the deepest scuba dive on record went just over 1,090 feet deep.

It can't protect against underground trains. (Photo: Marianna/CC BY 2.0)

Walking across the top of the Great Wall of China is a classic tourist go-to, but soon enough, traveling under it may be just as common, once China completes its plans to construct the world’s deepest high-speed rail station beneath the world wonder.

The Guardian is reporting that China is planning to build a giant high-speed rail station 335-feet under The Great Wall to accommodate the tens of thousands of tourists that can visit the site in just a single day. The massive station is projected to take up over 387,000 square feet, or as one of the project directors is quoted as saying, “equal to five standard soccer fields.”

In order to dig out the station, without harming the Great Wall itself (or the surrounding area), builders plan on using the latest in advanced explosion technology. The station is planned to sit beneath Badaling, the most visited portion of The Great Wall.

The station is just one step in the preparations the country is making for hosting the upcoming 2022 Winter Olympics, which are taking place in Beijing. The station will be along a route that connects the city of Zhangjiakou, which will host some events, with the country's capital.

Imagine: it's 1976, and you're a busy professional living in LA. You're also single, and looking, but it isn't working. You've been on dozens of first dates, and gamely accepted every introduction that's come your way, but that spark—that someone special—keeps eluding you.

Then one day, tucked among your magazines and bills, you find a strange piece of junk mail. "No more blind dates!" it reads. Intrigued, you head to the address, a "Membership Centre" in Westwood Village, where you're greeted warmly, ushered to a seat and the lights dim.

These days, as everyone knows, you can swipe through a city's worth of potential dates while waiting in line at the bodega. But for decades, if you wanted to gaze upon a plethora of eligible singles, you had to go to a repurposed office building during open hours and watch them flicker by onscreen, spooled through Sony Betamax SLO-320s. Welcome to the age of video dating.

Betamax cassette tapes, an early example of the technology that enabled video dating. (Photo: Tomasz Sienicki/CC BY-SA 2.5)

The 1970s was not only a time of sexual freedom, but also relationship tumult. Thanks to new laws and evolving sexual mores, divorce rates were climbing. Around the same time, VHS and Betamax tapes became widely available, enabling people to record and watch themselves without needing to invest in prohibitively expensive equipment.

After spending a dinner party listening to his cousin lament how difficult it was to meet people, a young videographer named Jeffrey Ullman put two and two together. He borrowed seed money from his parents, did a bunch of research into the psychology of attraction, and created the first video dating company, which he christened Great Expectations. According to company lore, they launched on Valentine's Day, 1976.

"Single people" are a tricky demographic to pinpoint, so Ullman took a scattershot advertising approach, taking out radio ads, bombarding local reporters with press releases, and—most effectively—sending out pounds upon pounds of well-targeted junk mail. Once seduced, prospective clients would head to the Great Expectations offices, where—after they paid one-year membership dues of about $200—the real magic began.

"We didn't call them customers or single people, we called them members," says Ullman. "And we didn't call them offices, we called them Member Centres." These Centres were staffed by friendly customer service representatives, including Ullman's mother, who worked there for years. They were decorated almost exclusively with enormous photos of happy couples—eventually, ones who had actually married after meeting through Great Expectations. "They were huge, like four by six feet," says Ullman. "Candid shots."

New recruits would first fill out a "Member Profile," which asked for your hair color, height, "religious/racial dating preference," and so on. Then they would enter the "interview room," which was dressed up as a generic office set—bookshelves, plants, pleather chairs. A Great Expectations employee would come in, click on a hidden camera, and begin gently grilling you.

Ullman considered this interview, which he called the "Talk Show," the heart of the Great Expectations process. "You have to show as much as possible the essence of the person," he says. "If a picture is worth a thousand words, what do you think video with audio is worth—ten million words?"

A young Jeff Ullman, backed by early success stories. (Photo: Jeff Ullman)

Some questions were the sort usually reserved for late-night reveries: "What do you want to be when you grow up?" "What is your secret dream?" Others, by design, were a bit harsher. "I'd say to you, "You've got five kids, and you live way out in the suburbs. now I don't mean to insult you, Ethel, but how datable are you?'" recalls Ullman. "Now that's putting Ethel on the spot! But if you're John watching Ethel, that's on your mind. You open an objection and then you answer it."

After squeezing acceptable answers out of you, the employee would show you the resulting five-minute tape. Then they'd file it away, and you'd go home and wait. If all went well, within a few days, you'd start getting postcards. "Please come in for a viewing," they'd read. "You have been requested by Greg." At that point, you'd return to the Great Expectations office to read up on Greg, and, if your interest was piqued, to view his tape.

Then and only then—when each of you had vetted the other—would the company brush its hands off, inform you of each others' contact information, and step back. Depending on each party's enthusiasm and availability, this swipe-right process could take anywhere from days to weeks. (If you decided to turn someone down, they'd be informed, delicately, that you were "not available.")

To hardened Tinder users, this probably seems tame, even quaint. But at the time, video dating was considered somewhat scandalous.  Ullman spent a lot of time reassuring reporters that it was both safe and morally sound—after all, he argued, what ne'er-do-well or wannabe adulterer would willingly "put his face on a video tape for the police to see?"

Reputation management was more difficult. "It was really stigmatized at first," says Moira Weigel, author of Labor of Love: The Invention of Dating. "A lot of articles in the late '80s and early '90s would say 'It's not just for losers anymore!' So you can tell everyone definitely thought it was for losers."

But others were great fans. "Where else can you have access to so many potential companions without spending every waking hour hustling and having to go out on dates that may turn out to be nightmares?" wrote Harlan Ellison, an essayist who watched dozens of video profiles while researching a 1978 article for Los Angeles magazine. "Clients are delighted by the novelty of being able to choose someone out of a book, watch them on a TV screen, and then have a neutral party find out if they want to date them, without being rejected face-to-face," gushed a 1981 UPI article, quoting one woman who said that "looking at the tapes was like a kid going into a candy shop."

A scene from "Not So Great Expectations," an episode of the sitcom Ellen that spoofed video dating companies. (Screenshot: Youtube)

By 1985, Great Expectations had 17 franchises, and was pulling in millions of dollars. Competitors got in on the game, offering local flavor. "You definitely see the dynamic of niche-ification that happens with dating apps now. By the mid-'80s you have 'Mazel Dating for Jewish Singles,' or 'Soul Date a Mate,' which is this LA-based one for African-Americans," says Weigel. "There was even one specifically for people with herpes in D.C.."

Then, of course, came the internet—the greatest niche-ification machine of all time. Match.com, the first dating website, went online in 1995, and was quickly followed by JDate, eHarmony, and Ashley Madison. Most smaller video dating sites shuttered, unable to compete with these new offerings' efficiency and (relative) low cost. (But not before playing a pivotal role in Cameron Crowe's 1992 opus, Singles.) Ullman sold Great Expectations in 1995, too, and within a few years, its new owners had shut it down.

Our current technological climate seems like the perfect place to resuscitate video dating—after all, we're already curating our Snapchat stories 24/7. But people haven't really seemed that interested. When YouTube launched in 2005, it was originally supposed to be a dating website—until its founders discovered that people wouldn't post dating videos to it even if they paid them. Take in the vulnerability on display in videos like, say, this infamous montage, and the misgivings become more clear.

But Weigel thinks there may be room for it in the future—if not for a Vine-Tinder hybrid, then something that looks a bit more like Great Expectations. "We've seen, in the past few years, this return to matchmaking—growing numbers of people who want humans to matchmake them, because they're sort of fatigued with apps," says Weigel. "Video dating felt more like matchmaking." There was a person in the room with you, asking you questions about you as though they really cared. Even if you never got a date, at least you got to talk to them.