Niko Bell

May 21, 2024 | montecristomagazine.com | Niko Bell

The narrow alleyways of Souq Al Tawabil, Dubai’s spice market, crowd the senses. Glittering gold and pearls drip from displays of extravagant wedding jewellery. Gentle clouds of sandalwood smoke waft from the doorways, past brilliant cones of turmeric, saffron, cumin, and pepper. Camel-milk ice cream is sweet and acidic on the tongue, and distant music—Arabic, Bollywood, American pop—twangs over the rooftops.

May 21, 2024 | flipboard.com | Niko Bell

Oudh, the Heart of Arabian Perfumery, Is Finding a Global AudienceThe narrow alleyways of Souq Al Tawabil, Dubai’s spice market, crowd the senses. Glittering gold and pearls drip from displays of extravagant wedding …

May 13, 2024 | montecristomagazine.com | Niko Bell

In the middle of a conversation over tea, in the living room of a house on the south shore of Saturna Island, cultural historian and curator Michael Prokopow had the sudden and inescapable urge to stand up. It was the house itself that did it. Something about the sheer, precipitous openness of the view in front of him—the distant islands and sky and the waves that appeared by illusion to lap almost up to the very windowsills—demanded to be taken in all at once. “Everything is gone,” he recalls.

Dec 11, 2023 | montecristomagazine.com | Niko Bell

As the doors of the warehouse clatter open at Shelter Point Distillery, letting in the afternoon sunlight, the air from indoors and outdoors blends for a moment on the threshold. Outside, a breeze blows smoky salt air off the Strait of Georgia, settling in a haze over maples and firs on the treeline and carrying the sweet decomposition of barley stalks and a hint of precious rain after a dry summer.

Oct 3, 2023 | montecristomagazine.com | Niko Bell

The bus was bumping along the North Shore from Horseshoe Bay toward downtown Vancouver one January day in 1992 when John Riley, an accountant on his way from Bowen Island, noticed an unusual apple. It was enormous, weighing almost a pound, with mottled red skin fading into a ruddy golden crown near the stem. Unable to control his curiosity, Riley got up from his seat near the back of the bus, made his way forward, and approached the man from whose lunch box the gargantuan fruit had emerged.