Start Here
What this place is, where to begin, and why I hope you’ll stay.
Welcome to the detour...
I’m glad you found your way here.
Detours & Footnotes is a place for stories that begin with something familiar, then wander toward the part nobody told you.
The detour is simple: take one object, system, ritual, invention, drink, building, tool, failure, or strange little detail, then follow it into the footnote.
The subjects change. The idea behind them does not.
I want to tell you something surprising, make you laugh once or twice, and leave you seeing an ordinary thing a little differently than you did before.
That’s the whole point.
Made for curious people...
The internet has no shortage of information.
What it often lacks is a reason to care.
Detours & Footnotes is written for people who still enjoy following a good story simply because it’s interesting. People who like history, design, science, culture, strange decisions, accidental inventions, ambitious failures, and the small details hiding inside things we all recognize.
You don’t need to be an expert.
You only need to be curious.
No ads following you down the page...
I built this site because reading online has become exhausting.
Ads cover the screen. Videos begin playing without permission. Pop-ups interrupt the paragraph you were trying to finish. Recommendations are sometimes advertisements in disguise.
None of that is here.
There are no ads chasing you down the page, no sponsored interruptions, and no affiliate links quietly steering the story toward a purchase.
The article is the point.
I want you to settle in, read at your own pace, and reach the final sentence without having to close six boxes along the way.
A few good places to begin...
A free story about how gin, quinine, empire, medicine, and a wedge of lime found their way into the same glass.
Another free story about why the soccer ball in your head still looks like it came from 1970.
The story of a con man who found one of the world’s most recognizable landmarks at the center of his deception.
How one wristwatch followed astronauts to the Moon and then became almost impossible to separate from the story.
Why generations of readers are still waiting for an owl to arrive.
Some stories are free. Others are available to members who help keep the site growing.
Built without a giant machine behind it...
Detours & Footnotes is still small.
There is no newsroom, publishing empire, marketing department, or mysterious group of investors demanding more engagement from you. And I don't intend for it to become any of that.
There’s just me, a long list of things I can’t stop wondering about, and the belief that thoughtful, entertaining writing still deserves a home.
My goal is to publish at least four new articles each month. Some will be about famous objects. Others will follow strange historical turns, misunderstood inventions, cultural obsessions, brilliant ideas, terrible ideas, and people who managed to change the world without realizing what they’d started.
This is the beginning of the journey, not the finished version of it.
I hope the site grows into something larger, deeper, and more ambitious. A place readers trust. A brand with its own voice. A collection of stories worth returning to.
Help build what comes next...
A membership costs less than one regrettable bottle of airport water each month.
That support gives me the time and freedom to research more stories, write more often, improve the site, and keep the reading experience free from the clutter that has taken over so much of the internet.
As Detours & Footnotes grows, membership will also help me and my family give back to people and causes that need support. None of us gets where we are without the help of others, and I want that generosity to remain part of what we build here.
You’re not paying to remove an inconvenience I created.
You are helping keep the inconvenience from showing up in the first place.
You are also joining early, while Detours & Footnotes is still growing into something larger.
That means more to me than I can properly fit inside a subscription button.
Stay curious...
Read something that catches your eye. Follow a detour too far. Tell a friend when a footnote surprises you.
And whether you become a member today, later, or never, thank you for spending some of your time here.
I know how many other places are asking for it.
