Category: 50s to 90s

Muneera is an independent cultural researcher and documentary photographer who for the past 4 years has been going around Kuwait documenting post-oil houses. Her account is filled with beautiful but decaying homes, that even in their current state still look better than a lot of the newer generic buildings that have been popping up over the past few decades.

When Muneera first started documenting these houses she didn’t have any preconceived ideas of them. Their odd structure compared to buildings around them stood out to her, and their futuristic design contrasted with their deteriorating condition raised a lot of questions about the past and present:

• What happened back then?
• Why do we decide to build our homes the way we do?
• What contributes to shaping our homes, neighborhoods, streets, and cities?
• What impact does that have on our environment and lived experience in those spaces?

She’s documenting and researching these houses as a way to answer some of these questions, and understand the value of these buildings while considering the wider issues related to land use in Kuwait.

I’m always fascinated with Kuwait’s past and its stories, so I really appreciate Muneera’s effort in capturing these beautiful homes before they disappear forever.

Muneera was also initially documenting baqalas so she could look into their disappearance and the culture around it. She had to stop though since it was taking too much time and decided to focus on the house for now. I actually didn’t really notice baqalas disappearing until she brought it up. My two favorite baqalas in my neighborhood closed down years ago, one turned into a bubble tea shop, the other into a Filipino bakery. They really might be disappearing.

Check out Muneera’s account @th9neighborhood for more photos—she’s captured many beautiful buildings.

Not sure how many people remember this, but the Italian restaurant Lorenzo was originally located on the corner opposite Sheraton Hotel in a now-demolished building in Kuwait City. I didn’t know much about the place back then, but I always noticed the cool cars parked outside—red and yellow Ferrari 355s, or a purple Lamborghini Diablo. It definitely intrigued me.

Eventually, in the mid-2000s, a friend invited me to lunch there, and it was my first time seeing the place from the inside. I remember it felt very fancy, and I felt out of place. It was also my first time trying their famous chocolate cheesecake. That location closed when the building was set to be demolished, so they relocated across the street from Salhiya.

Lorenzo originally opened in 1993 under a different name—’Salumaio di Montenapoleone.’ In 1997, the name was changed to Lorenzo. Both the first and second locations were designed by American architect Richard Davidson from Alamosa Design. However, my favorite Lorenzo was in Al Khalid Complex, designed by Atelier Aziz Alqatami.

In 2019, Lorenzo finally closed after 23 years in business.

I had a tough time finding photos of the original Lorenzo, but eventually, I reached out to the family that owned it, and they graciously searched for and shared what they had. The photo of the Salhiya location is from the Almosa Design website, while the Al Khalid Complex location photos are from Aziz Alqatami’s website. To check out all the photos, click here.

If you’re a fan of cars you’re going to appreciate this video. It was shot in 1982 and is of a car meetup in Blajat Street, Salmiya. YouTube

There is a German car dealer that has a 1963 Alfa Romeo 2600 Spider for sale that was originally sold in Kuwait back in 1963.

According to confirmation from the Alfa Romeo archives, the Spider they’re selling was delivered to Kuwait on 1 April 1963. The car later went to South Africa and then a few years ago was sent to Germany where its now on sale again.

I actually have a copy of the ad above that I had taken from a 1962 issue of the Kuwait Times that showcases the Spider. The dealer for Alfa Romeo back in the early 60s was Kazima Trading Co.

It’s a beautiful car and I kinda feel someone needs to buy it and bring it back to Kuwait. I would have, but at over 40,000KD it’s not really an impulse buy. Link

Sir Wilfred Patrick Thesiger was a British military officer, explorer, and writer. His first visit to the Gulf was in 1945, shortly after the Second World War, when he accepted a position as a researcher with the British Middle East Anti-Locust Unit (MEALU).

Based in Saudi Arabia, Sir Wilfred was able to travel to Kuwait and Bahrain, thanks to having access to a car. He made a second visit to Kuwait in 1949.

During both trips, Sir Wilfred captured numerous photographs, including some of Souk Mubarakiya, which I found particularly interesting and am sharing in this post.

These pictures are part of the collection at the Pitt Rivers Museum and are available to view online. If you’re interested in seeing more of the photos he took during his time in Kuwait, you can explore them at prm.web.ox.ac.uk or by checking the two links below:

Thesiger’s Journeys in Arabia – Hejaz and Nejd, Saudi Arabia 1945
Thesiger’s Journeys in Arabia – Kuwait and Saudi Arabia 1949

I previously posted about the club back in 2011, but I’m reposting it again today with more information because today is the first day of their pre-season training.

The Kuwait Scorpions Rugby Football Club is the oldest sports club in Kuwait, and very possibly the oldest in the region.

The club was originally formed by expatriates from the Kuwait Oil Company, who began training together as a hobby. In 1946, the team formally became the Kuwait Scorpions Rugby Football Club when they played the British Army in the region’s first recorded rugby fixture. In the 70s, as rugby community clubs started forming around the region, the Scorpions began traveling and competing in neighboring countries. Rugby in Kuwait continued this way until the 1990 invasion when the team was dispersed.

Following the invasion, the rugby club gradually reformed as its members returned to Kuwait. They were renamed the Kuwait Nomads, a name inspired by the way they reunited. The team played as the Nomads until the 2000s, when they reverted to their original name and relaunched the club as the Kuwait Scorpions.

The Scorpions are still very active, and in fact, their pre-season training starts today. If you’re interested in having fun and getting fit, bring plenty of water and a good attitude, and head to KOC Ahmadi Park. They train every Monday and Wednesday from 7 to 9 PM. For directions and more info, check out their Instagram @q8scorpions

I found these really old aerial photos of Kuwait City while browsing through the Tareq Rajab Museum photography archive so decided to scan them to share. There wasn’t a date on them but I’m assuming they were taken in the early 1950s. I came to that assumption since in one of the photos I could see the Thunayan Al Ghanim Building under construction, and that was completed in 1954.

Thunayan Al Ghanim Building is the old building on the corner of the Sheraton Roundabout. It was considered to be one of the most advanced buildings in Kuwait at the time, and one of the first to have an elevator. There are stories of bedouins coming in from the desert to watch “the flying horse” that could go up and down. The Thunayan Al Ghanim building housed the original KOC offices, the British Consulate, the first English bookshop in Kuwait, as well as the Sultan Gallery and the Rolls Royce dealership.

It’s kind surreal looking at these photos since it was really that long ago. In some of the photos you can make out the new buildings that were popping up beside the old houses. If you want to see how it would have looked like if you were in one of the alleyways looking towards the more “modern” buildings, click here.

All these photos were taken from a plane and I’m assuming on the same day, but don’t quote me on that.

This is a summarized repost of the original post I published a few years ago. In case you’ve never heard the story, read on. I decided to repost it on Instagram since there is a chance Saif will be performing in the UK later this year with the help of Habibi Funk.

I found out about The Scorpions & Saif Abu Bakr through the former Australian Ambassador to Kuwait who one evening made me listen to their album ‘Jazz, Jazz, Jazz’. The album was a reissue by the label Habibi Funk and they had included an interview with the band who were Sudanese and had performed on KTV and in various hotels around Kuwait in the 70s. I took some photos of the album and shared them on my personal account when to my surprise, I got a message from a follower telling me that Saif was a colleague of hers and she was surprised to find out he used to be part of a popular band. She put me in touch with Saif and I invited him to dinner over at the ambassador’s house.

Saif was full of interesting stories. He was never meant to come to Kuwait, when he turned 18 he decided to leave Sudan and head to Germany. His plan was to head to Lebanon first so that he could then take the train to Germany, but due to a series of events and the fact he needed to make money, he got convinced to try his luck in Kuwait.

When he arrived, he met up with an old friend who hooked him up with a job as an English teacher for air traffic controllers, and a side gig where he would perform music on a KTV talk show. One day one of the producers at KTV asked him if he could put together a band because he wanted to record a performance for the station. Saif told him he could and called up his friends in Sudan whom he used to perform with called The Scorpions. The band ended up on KTV and you can actually watch that performance on YouTube since Habibi Funk uploaded the whole thing.

Saif eventually performed for a Kuwaiti event organizer back then called Hussein Abul. Hussein was the guy who brought the likes of Boney M, Demis Roussos, James Brown and Santa Esmeralda to perform in Kuwait. Saif actually had the job of driving James Brown around when he was in Kuwait.

Saif is still in Kuwait today and until recently was teaching English at a local aviation school. He still performs in Sudan every now and then with his old band. Jazz Jazz Jazz is available to stream on Spotify and you should check it out.

Four years ago I posted about the Burgan Blowout, an incident that took place back in 1964 and is now long forgotten. The Burgan Blowout was the largest oil well fire in Kuwait before the 1990 invasion. It took six weeks to extinguish and for that short period of time, was the biggest touristic attraction in Kuwait. Since I originally posted about the event I’ve now come across a lot more photos so I’m reposting the story again with a bit more details as well as the new photos.

The explosion took place at Burgan oil well No. 331 on December 29th, 1964. The gas was ignited by a spark as a worker tried to control a sudden upsurge of mud. Once work started on putting out the fire, it became the biggest tourist attraction in Kuwait. So, a plan was put into place to let the public come and see it, but in a controlled manner, so that it was safe and so that no one got in the way.

Once you got to Burgan you followed in a convoy to a designated parking area a safe distance from the fire. You’d then would walk the remaining way towards the viewing grandstands that were set up for the public. According to a reader (John Beresford) who was 10 years old at the time, as they drove towards the oil well, they could hear a moan that kept getting louder and louder. The force of the gas coming up was so powerful it was causing the ground to vibrate, and this was from quite a distance from the well. It was winter but the heat coming off the fire was so strong that the climate was getting warmer as they walked towards the viewing area. The sound was also getting louder to the point where they had to speak more loudly, almost shouting at each other. By the time they reached the viewing area the temperature had increased to a level that was unpleasant causing the skin facing the flames to get quite warm.

A couple of days after the fire started the famous American oil well firefighter Red Adair was called in to help. Adair became notable internationally as an innovator in the specialized and hazardous profession of extinguishing oil well blowouts. Amazingly, at the age of 75, Adair was called again 26 years later to help extinguish the 1991 oil well fires set by retreating Iraqi troops after the Gulf War.

The first image is from the @trmkuwait family archive, the second was taken by the John’s parents, and the remaining black and white photos were provided by @badshaiji

Interesting tidbit, the photo above is of Red Adair (left) and his fellow fire fighter lieutenant Coots Matthews (right). Coots formed his own competing company in 1978 called Boots & Coots. Combined, Red Adair Co. and Boots & Coots were responsible for extinguishing more than a third of the 700 oil well fires set by the retreating Iraqi soldiers in the Gulf War.

Kuwait is currently oversaturated with burger spots but that wasn’t always the case. Back in 1969, when Wimpy opened in Kuwait, there weren’t any other burger brands.

Wimpy was a US burger franchise that first opened in 1934 with the name inspired by the burger loving character, Wimpy from the Popeye cartoons. In 1957, Wimpy International was created, and in 1969, Kuwait Food Company (Americana) brought the Wimpy franchise to Kuwait.

The first Wimpy location in Kuwait was in Salmiya which I’ve shared the pictures above. The other location I have shared is the Ahmadi Market location below.

Wimpy claim to have served the first ever cheeseburger to Arabia. I know from people who used to go to Hubara Club in Ahmadi in the 60s that they had a burger on their menu. But, that wasn’t really open to the general public. So, it would be safe to say, that Wimpy, at least helped introduce the burger to the mainstream population of Kuwait.

The oldest memory I have of Hardee’s is this 3D kids meal box. It’s from 1983 and I remember vividly picking it up from Hardee’s in old Salmiya, the location that was opposite Fay and Barakat (the shawarma place). The memory I have is being in the car parked outside Fay, and I remember as soon asI got in the car, the first thing I did was look through the red and blue windows to see if I could see anything inside. I also remember I had ordered a roast beef as my kids meal burger.

Back in 2015, I found the advert above in an old bookshop in the city which helped me re-spark that memory and I knew I needed to get the box again. Fast forward to last week, I finally found a box that was reasonably priced, was of Spiderman, and most importantly, included the comic. And now I have it thanks to eBay.

Update: I have an old photo of the building that used to house the Swan Lake music shop, Barakat and Fay. The photo was taken from my PDA, a Sony Clie UX40 back in the early 2000s and was posted on MoBlog back in 2004 (usurp.textamerica.com). Text America died and I never backed it up but I have the image as a thumbnail which I enlarged. Posting it here just for Google incase anyone in the future is ever looking for it. Hardees is the red lit up sign on the bottom left. Previous location of the first Wimpy location in Kuwait.

Random fact I recently discovered, the manager of the Swan Lake music shop in the 80s was the owner of the Bells music shop in the 90s.

Fashion Way, the complex right across the street from Fanar Mall in Salmiya is getting demolished. I personally don’t have much attachment to it but I know a lot of people do.

Construction on that building started in the late 80s and it was rumored to be Safeway the supermarket chain opening there, right next to Sultan Center. The building wasn’t covered in the ugly grey alucobond panels like today, I think I remember it being white ribbed metal panels. But then the 1990 invasion happened and the main Safeway store in Farwaniya got burnt down and they never reopened in Kuwait again. I also just realized while digging up old photos of Safeway that Americana owned it in Kuwait. I never knew that even though it clearly says Americana right next to Safeway on their sign. It now makes sense why Americana had their fast food brands there 90s onwards.

The building eventually finished construction and opened in the mid 90s I think. I remember Sbarro Pizza opening there, it occupied the whole area where Americana was today, but back then it was just Sbarro and it was a dine in experience. Hardees was located in a blue and white colored standalone building next door where Starbucks is right now. When that Hardees building got demolished, they eventually moved in with Sbarro and KFC into Fashion Way.

Inside Fashion Way was Mothercare with their huge animated tree inside. Mothercare was still there until they closed down a couple of months ago as well.

I just tried finding out when Sbarro opened in Kuwait but couldn’t find anything. I found an article from 1995 in the New York Times which mentions Gennaro (Jerry) Sbarro being 29 years old when he came to Kuwait to open Sbarro. I tried to find his date of birth online and I found multiple Jerry’s but the closest one might be 1966 which means Sbarro opened in 1994-1995. I contacted Jerry to find out and see if he has any photos, will see if he responds.

Anyway, the building is getting demolished. Not sure what the plan is, but my guess is they’re going to build an office tower in its place.

If you work at Americana, get in touch with me since I’d love to dig up old stuff with you together. I previously got in touch with the Wimpy social media team because I was working on a post about the history of Wimpy in Kuwait and they were a disaster. Firstly they replied saying they would get in touch with me if there was a potential for future collaborations. I told them they misunderstood and I wasn’t looking for them to advertise with me or send me free food. I explained that I just needed some information for a post I was working on. So then they gave me a phone number to call.. the Wimpy delivery phone number. I called them out on that move and they just copy pasted the same information all over again about how they would get in touch with me in the future if there is potential for a collaboration.

A couple of weeks ago, I revisited the Tareq Rajab Museum to explore their private photography archive again. This time, I discovered several more interesting items, including the beautiful old photo above, taken sometime in the 1970s, of a mosque in Kuwait.

I didn’t recognize the mosque, so I asked my Twitter followers if they knew it, and one person did. It turns out the mosque is called Ahmad Abdullah Mosque, and not only is it still standing, but it’s also located practically across the street from my office.

The mosque is located in Kuwait City and was built in 1915. It’s situated in the area behind Dickson House, where the old city project is currently under construction.

Although the project is cordoned off with a wall, there are two mosques in the back that are still accessible through a gate. As soon as I saw the mosque, I recognized it as the same one, even though the part of the mosque that housed what looks like a baqala in the old photo seems to have been demolished at some point.

I took some photos of the mosque, but since it’s currently right next to the wall surrounding the construction site, I couldn’t capture the exact same angle as the old photo.

If you want to check out the mosque in person, here is the location on Google Maps.

I’ve always been fascinated with Ahmadi because of how different it looked to the rest of Kuwait. Most of it hasn’t changed since it was originally built in the late 1940s, but over the decades, some important landmarks, including the Ahmadi Cinema and Market, fell into disrepair. Now, the National Council for Culture, Arts, and Letters has a very cool project to save them.

I was given a tour of both sites, but the first we visited was the cinema. It was designed by the renowned architect Sayed Karim in the 1960s. The ground floor has shops and restaurants which are still used today, but the upper floor where the cinema was is closed off from the public and empty. The large hall that used to hold over 1,200 cinema seats is now empty and derelict. But, a lot of the interior is still intact and original, which is why it was interesting to explore the building. The cinema stands as one of the last cultural centers in Kuwait, and is the only remaining building of its kind in the country. The rehabilitation project aims to restore it to its original state and function while supporting and enhancing the local performing arts industry.

The second location we visited was the market. Similar to the cinema the aim will be to restore the market to its original state. The market is in pretty bad shape and so will be a more difficult project for them to restore. But, one building has already been refurbished and I got to tour that as well. One thing I only discovered while on the tour was that the metal beams on the building facade are actually functional. They open and close to control the amount of sunlight that comes in. That must have been so ahead of its time back when it was built.

This restoration project is the pilot model for the NCCAL, which aims to create policies and procedures to preserve and protect heritage sites throughout Kuwait. The Ahmadi Township is also being considered for designation as a UNESCO World Heritage Site which would a huge benefit to Ahmadi and Kuwait if that happens.

I feel relieved knowing that there are now people working on preserving Kuwait’s history and I can’t wait to see their future projects. Follow @ahmadi_township if you want to stay updated on the Ahmadi project.

For more photos which I took on the tour, click here.

We have the habit of demolishing old structures instead of restoring them in Kuwait, so when I found out the old Al-Othman Mosque in Hawalli was being restored, I reached out to the team working on it asking if I could write about it.

The mosque restoration is being spearheaded by Eng. Adnan Al-Othman and sponsored by the Abdullah Abdulatif Al-Othman Charitable Trust. Adnan’s father is the one who built the mosque so he’s very familiar with it.

Al-Othman Mosque was established in 1958 and later opened for public use in 1961. It was one of the first grand mosques to be built in Kuwait, and also the first to have a dome, making it an important landmark.

Since its opening over 60 years ago, many changes were made to the mosque, some permanent, but most were thankfully superficial. The mosque originally had a colorful design that was unique for the time, but over the years it got repainted a monotone beige and white blending it into it’s Hawally surroundings. The interior which was covered with intricate decorations and script were also all covered with white paint erasing a lot of what made the mosque so unique and special.

The restoration team dug up as many photos and videos of the original mosque as they could find, so that they could better understand all the changes that were made over time. They also started the process of removing structures that weren’t there originally, like metal shading over the courtyard and an extension to the mezzanine floor. Additionally, they began stripping the paint from both the interior and exterior of the building, revealing some of the old decorative art and colors (samples above).

The restoration team’s plan is to restore the mosque as close as possible to its original state. They’re deep into the restoration process now, but they don’t have a clear timeline for completion since the work must be slow and careful. Once this project is finished, I hope more people will realize and appreciate the importance of preserving old Kuwait.