Editor / Publisher
Jessie Schiewe is an unapologetic user of exclamation marks who spends most of her time surfing the web and avoiding washing her dirty dishes. Aside from her first job selling cupcakes in Beverly Hills, she has spent the bulk of her career working as a print journalist and editor for daily newspapers, websites, and alternative-weeklies.
RECENT ARTICLES
At Free Oakland UP, money is no object and you never know what you’ll find.
How Robin Leach, for the sake of charity, spent more than he expected on art his granddaughter could have made.
How a Jack Russell Terrier became an online sensation — and a comfort to many — five years after her death.
The soundtrack to your childhood does more than just sell cones and popsicles.
Could I learn more about my favorite actor by poking around his former home?
The ultimate makeshift swimming pool is something you already own.
One of the tell-tale ways of identifying a body, fingerprints can still be of aid, even after you’re dead.
“Mewing” promises aesthetic and structural improvements to one’s visage through simple mouth exercises.
Google Maps is meant to look up addresses, but it can also provide a window into the lives of the recently deceased.
Callery pear trees were once a nationwide favorite, but now government and environmental groups are trying to quash the growth of the invasive species — and not just because of their foul smell.
The common household item is great for treating dryness and redness of the eyes, but it’s also poisonous if swallowed.
Virginia has the highest number of personalized plates in the country. One artist set out to catalog them all.
Masafumi Nagasaki lived alone, in the nude, for 30 years on a deserted island. He planned to die there, but then something changed that.
Why you should put down the paper and pick up a peel the next time you need to get a point across.
Famous for knowing American Sign Language and understanding English, the legendary gorilla was also pretty obsessed with areolas.
Marco Kyris has no shortage of tales about the 20 films he made with the famous Hollywood actor.
A cleverly-edited Instagram profile shows the King of Monsters getting into shenanigans across the globe.
Thanks to climate change, what lies beneath is coming to the surface.
As an objectophile, Amanda Liberty feels attraction to objects, not people. Previously in a relationship with the Statue of Liberty, she’s since moved on to a 100-year-old female light fixture named Lumière.
Learning how to masturbate doesn’t have to be a gateway to sex.
Why an unassuming plumber practices shamanic rituals in the forest while wearing a raccoon-fur suit.
People with body integrity identity disorder struggle with a desire to amputate their limbs or become disabled. This is the story of someone who followed through with that task — and what happened next.
For otherwise healthy-bodied people, BIID is a rare condition that spurs a desire to amputate body parts — sometimes by whatever means necessary.
After almost 30 years of living alone in the forest, Christopher Knight figured he’d die there. But then his long-practiced habit of stealing from empty vacation homes backfired, and the modern-day hermit ended up somewhere he never expected: jail.
It’s weird and unusual, but that icy stuff covering the ground can also be used as a mold for DIY crafts.
Holiday art projects for the lazy, cheap, and artistically challenged.
You can’t trust everything you read online, especially when it involves getting high on blood-sucking insects.
The downsides of being attracted to art.