No longer fun, still curious - abandoned amusemsent parks

Abandonment always reveals the true colours of a place, don't you think? In their high time, these places must've been filled with joy with laughter, yet now they are, however fascinating, disturbing. Broken dinosaurs and railways reclaimed by nature stand vulnerable to the gaze of frozen swans.

Source. (go there for sources of individual photos)

The Boneyard Project

The Boneyard is an Arizonian place with over 4400 planes. Most of them are kept to be used as spare parts magazine for the U.S. Army. Eric Firestone, however saw a little more than just that. He has invited many artists from the States in order to enhance some of the machines with some art.

Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2113934/Blue-sky-thinking-Disused-jets-U-S-Air-Force-graveyard-given-new-lease-life-worlds-best-graffiti-artists.html

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Saint Louis City Museum

What a wonderful place. Opened in 1997, it looks like a Gaudi's Or Dali's wet dream than a "real" museum.

http://www.citymuseum.org/site/

Frogner Park, Oslo

On the premises of XVIII-century Frogner Mansion in the capital of Norway, a eighty acres park stretches across. Inside, you can find an outdoor museum of Gustav Vigeland, who dedicated all his works to the city. Vigelandsanlegget features various sculputeres about the universal theme of human life. And some of them are, to put it mildly, weird. At least that's what I call weird.


Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frogner_Park

Dublin - the dragon den

So, someone wanted to build a house. I have already posted about a hobbit house. But this someone did not want a hobbit house. They wanted a dragon house. Yea. A dragon house.Plus some eclectic iconography. It is located in Dublin, an old villa remade into a fantasy dwelling. Take a look.

Source: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/property/2011/0915/1224304141383.html

Space Invaders

On my trip to Paris this summer I've seen many awesome things. People storming bookstores. Acrylic sculptures of terriers for 40 Euro. Special discount for a sex club entrance.
Amongst these things there was curious kind of street art - mosaics resembling a pixel alien, as seen in the "Space Invaders" game. People who had Nokias back in early 2000's know what I mean. (The game itself originated in 70's in Japan) Those were hidden from public eyesight, avaiable only for those who looked up or went to places normally avoided.

I've seen some kind of guide mentioning those with one sentence only.But after I got home I accidentally found out that those mosaics are not typically parisian thing - they were created by a worldwide movement which adopted the name and the logo. The Space Invaders.

I couldn't find much about them than they wanted me to know - an international art movement with people involved all over the world, few exhibitions, that's all. The cube art I have presented few days ago was made by them. Ok, let the image take over from now.

P.S.: anyone near me interested in starting a local SI division? ;)

Source: http://www.space-invaders.com/

A larger gallery is here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/spaceinvader

I cannot post the pictures due to copyright issues.

Waitomo Caverns

Nature never ceases to amaze me. Well, maybe when I see my biology textbook and the amount of work before me I'm not THAT amazed, but there are still really awesome thing out there. For example, the beetles of Waitomo.
Waitomo is a cavern in New Zealand that was thought to be just a Maori legend. Well, it's not. Thousands of bugs light up the celling above your head when you slowly drift in your boat...

What are we still doing here? Who's up for a trip to NZ?

Source: http://www.waitomo.com/itinerary-ideas.aspx