Finger Lakes

Sunday was a day I honestly thought would never come, especially after the fuckery in Poughkeepsie -- my first time in a real abandoned mental asylum. Not just Rochester psych, half of which wasn't even built until the 60s, and the other building which I only saw by permission, but a real explore, a respectable location, and as an added bonus, even a working camera! Willard was actually the third asylum we tried that day, after abject failures at Rochester and Newark, and it seemed I would do anything possible to make it three in a row. I barely had…

Bernar'r Macfadden, eccentric fitness guru of the last century, was arguably the inventor of the culture of diet, exercise and weight loss for health that is so prevalent today. Before the actual health benefits were known, or even suspected by the mainstream medical community, Bernar'r promoted alternately vegetarianism and a predecessor of the Paleo diet (raw food, including red meats) as the natural diet of the human animal. This, combined with strenuous outdoor exercise, became the foundation of Physical Culture, and the beginning of a lucrative career for Macfadden as America's first fad-diet shiller. Promoting his Physical Culture, Macfadden created…

How better to enjoy finals week? Bernar'r Macfadden was a very eccentric man. His Castle on the Hill, the Dansville Physical Culture Hotel, served as a shining example of his health advice. The inventor of Grape-nuts and push-ups, Bernar'r (originally named Bernard; considering this name unmasculine he respelled it with the roar'r of a lion) considered fresh air, the outdoors and a raw diet essential to the promotion of health. Besides vigorous exercise, the hotel also offered the latest in music and theater, and lectures religious and secular, to contribute to its patients' mental health. This brochure from about 1938…