🪞350,000 mirrors in one room | Bulletin #156

This week: 2 giveaways in 1 Bulletin 🎟️

June 17, 2026

Ashbel Smith Building 📍 Galveston, Texas, USA 📸 Roam Galveston

On June 19, 1865, more than 250,000 enslaved people in Texas were freed when Major General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas and issued General Order No. 3. Though the Emancipation Proclamation had been signed two and a half years earlier, Texas's geographic isolation - and the reluctance of enslavers to comply - meant freedom arrived late. What began in Galveston became Juneteenth: a celebration of Black freedom, resilience, and culture that spread from Texas across the nation. The last to know became the first to celebrate.

WIN TICKETS TO THE HOLLYWOOD BOWL 🥣

The music of Wes Anderson is heading to Los Angeles, and you could be there! We're giving away some very special tickets with our friends at the Hollywood Bowl. Want in? Head HERE, give the photo a like, and tag your concert co-conspirator. Consider yourself in the running!

AWA SNAIL MAIL CLUB?

We’re considering launching something a little old-fashioned: an analog Snail Mail Club. Picture this: Once-a-month a small surprise arrives at your doorstep for a nominal fee. A trinket chosen with care, a special story for a small group of Adventurers, and the kind of anticipation the internet can't quite replicate. Let us know if this sounds like your kind of thing 💌

If we launched an AWA Snail Mail Club, would you be interested in joining for a small fee?

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THIS WEEK IN AWA AWESOMENESS

🎾 Have a ball
🛑 The only octagonal residence
🇨🇭 A day in Geneva
✍️ Win a Wes signed notebook

With the French Open freshly finished and Wimbledon around the corner, we pulled together some tennis tales we ‘love’ (a pun for the true tennis fans out there!)

The Armour-Stiner Octagon House 📍Irvington, New York, USA 📸 Marjorie Becker Photo

AN OCTAGONAL OASIS

A few steps from the Hudson River stands a house unlike almost any other. Inspired by a 19th-century craze fueled by phrenology, the whimsical home promised better light, better air, and even better morals. Decades later, it sat abandoned and near demolition before an ambitious restoration brought it back to life…

Amer Fort 📍 Jaipur, Agra 📸 Marjorie Becker Photo

A NIGHT OF 350,000 MIRRORS

The evening begins with a ceremonial handwashing ritual once reserved for Rajasthani royals. Then comes the flicker of 350,000 hand-pressed mirrors catching candlelight in a room with no lightbulbs, creating the illusion of a thousand stars overhead. The artisans behind these mirrors have centuries of experience under their belt, all dating back to a doting husband…

A DAY IN GENEVA

Geneva in the springtime is something to behold: trees bloom, the light goes golden, and even the most ordinary streetscape starts to feel like a film. Thankfully our friends at Ink Studio made a Wes-inspired video to share that beauty with all of us. Fun fact: Geneva is Switzerland’s greenest city with over 20% of the land dedicated to parks!

This week’s Secret Link winner is in for an extra special, noteworthy prize: a Wes-signed notebook courtesy of our friends at We Do Not Work Alone and Astier de Villatte. Thank you to our friends, and happy searching! 📒🔍