San Francisco by Postcard (1960's)

Good morning! I thought I would start out today's post with a "true confessions" style statement about my vacationing habits: Twenty seven years on the face of this green earth as of August, and I have YET to visit anything west of the Mississippi! Is this not a travesty? My parents and grandparents would drive practically everywhere we went on vacation (and I'm talking from a starting point in Nashville to Dearborn, MI to Cape Cod, MA, to Orlando, FL...we love to roam!). It seems north and south were perfectly acceptable directionals, but we never took Horace Greeley's advice to "Go west, young [Lisa's family]." I'll get there someday, but I did get to do a little midcentury vicarious vacationing via these postcards I found among the Doris and Ray papers. Lucky Doris and Ray seem to have been to San Francisco several times, possibly on stop-overs before the big jump across the Pacific to Hawaii (as said, lucky Doris and Ray). I've added a little strip of information from the backs of these postcards via the magic of cut-and-paste on the Paint program. So hi-tech, haha.

Let's take a look!
  

Here's a shot from the top of hill on a street in San Fransisco. You can see what that same street looks like in 1945 here, in 1978 here, and what it looks like today here. Look at all that neon! City lights at "twilight time", as the caption describes it, are one of the best subjects for vintage postcards. Skip the mountains and the fountains, give us sixties' near-dark street scenes! See the Manx Hotel?

Here we have a "fully air conditioned 400 room motor motel" known as "Del Webb's Towne House Market at Eighth". What a mouthful! It was designed by architect Martin Stern, Jr. in 1959. I love that the amenities include an ice machine, a heated pool, and parking. The heated pool I can get behind, but don't the other two listed conveniences seem kind of like cop outs? Maybe parking was at such a premium in downtown San Fransisco at the time that having a place to leave your car, as a paying guest, was a luxury. Who knows. You know what I do know? I want to dine in the Garden Terrace dining area! Too bad there wasn't a postcard for that.

Here's a kitschy type attraction to boast about to the folks back home, via postcard- Lombard Street, the crookedest street in the world! Are you not nuts about the jaggedly placed typography in the little yellow box on the word "crookedest"? It's the little things, people. I thought it might just be a perspective issue, but look at the Wikipedia page and the aerial view in one of the photos. That street really IS crooked-as-heck. Even with the crookedness, i wish I lived in a place that looks as sunny and lush as that street! Also, lemme get that striped awning. Thanks.

Whooooweee! This was one of the picture postcards that really knocked my socks off when I was going through the stack. Does it not look like the hotel in that episode of Mad Men where Betty and Don go on a Valentine's Day date to a hotel? Maybe a little more baroque, but the same kind of column-y magnificience. I, for one, was impressed. Look at the men in white dinner jackets coming down the stairs, and the women in wraps and evening gowns. So pretty!

If you weren't impressed by their lobby, CHECK OUT THEIR POLYNESIAN THEMED IN-HOUSE RESTAURANT. Oh man. Man, oh man. I don't know where to start. No, wait, i DO..."dance to soft romantic music played by native musicians aborad a raft adrift in the Tonga pool". As I die. Do you see the ropes they must use to drift back to the restaurant's "main land"? The gimmick of a lifetime. Wanna know what's crazy? IT'S STILL THERE! Not quite in the exact vintage style of its old incarnation, but pretty dang close. Check out the reviews on criTIKI (also, possibly my favorite genre-specific vintage online resource for tiki bars?) for more about the exotic dinner-and-dance place.

While it's neat to see a for-real tiki bar in a hotel setting, how about the tiki bar chain that started the craze in the first place? Here's a postcard from Trader Vic's.  You can see a lot more color postcards of the joint and tourist photos from back-in-the-day here, but be forewarned before you start packing your bags for Trolley town, this particular place has been closed since the early 90's. TRAGEDY.

Here's a postcard of Bay area. And isn't it beautiful? I'm still, at heart, the eight year old pressing nose-to-window on vacation and hollering "WAAAAATERRRR!" everytime we pass over a bridge, so to see a bay like this in real life would really be something! It's weird living in a landlocked state and seeing vast bodies of water on vacation. I wonder if I lived somewhere near the sea if I would become accustomed to it. Maybe, but maybe not. Hillbilly to the core!

Another shot of the Fairmont. Here's a neat little nugget of history from the Wikipedia page:

The hotel was nearly completed before the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. Although the structure survived, the interior was heavily damaged by fire, and opening was delayed until 1907. Architect and engineer Julia Morgan was hired to repair the building because of her then-innovative use of reinforced concrete, which could produce buildings capable of withstanding earthquakes and other disasters.
I love hearing about natural disasters that thwarted architectural plans at the last minute. I mean, I love the "what are we going to do now?!" -ness of it more than the tragedy. But you get the idea.

Last but not least, another bay shot:

I found some information about Mike Roberts, the photographer for a lot of these color postcards, on a tiki-themed forum. You can see more of his postcards here. Wouldn't it be neat to be a commercial photographer period at a time when the most colorful, bright images were desirable? I'm imagining a Robert Redford in the early seventies' type creature in trim khakis with a camera slung around his neck. I wonder how close my daydream is to reality!

Have you been to San Francisco before? Seen any of these places in real life? Tell me all about it! :)

That's all for today, gotta get crackin' on the obligatory school work. Only four more weeks to go! Have a great Monday, and I'll see you tomorrow!

                              

Photo Friday: Tiki Vacation Edition

Good morning! It's Friday, so you know what time it is...let's take another peek into the Doris and Ray photo archive and see what our favorite midcentury middle-agers are up to today.

This set of  photos were taken at some Tiki themed hotel sometime the early 60's. I think Doris and Ray went to a lot of civic organization dinners/retreats/conferences, and this is probably from something of that nature. Ruth and her husband Bob show up in most of these, so it might have been a combination vacation/event. AT ANY RATE, look at those warm, Kodachrome colors and the sunglasses, good LORD the sunglasses. My little heart is thumping out a jungle drumbeat of "WANT. WANT. WANT."

My friend Tom, a 32 degree Mason (it's so cool that I know a Mason!), wrote a comment on the She Was a Bird facebook page to explain that Ray's Shriner-wear tells us that: "Ray was a noble at Al Menah. On his fez, it says 'Legion of Honor', which is a Shrine unit for veterans". I think it's awesome he's sitting poolside, with a bunch of casually dressed people, casually dressed himself, in this gorgeous fez. Get it, Ray! Get it! Another thing that makes him look particularly Don Draper in all his photos? His wedding ring and his large, metal watch. Why doesn't anyone wear watches anymore? Not the nylon-band, digital kind either; I'm talking a REAL watch. I was surprised when English Rob came down last time to see that he had one his parents gave him for college graduation that was suitably metal, hefty and impressive-as-wrist-wear. We gotta get back on this, people.

Here are some really picturesque snaps of Ruth and Doris and their husbands next to the sea. Photography tip #1: standing next to a vast body of water improves the scenic value of your vacation pictures by about a million.  Photography tip #2: Taking a picture of local scenery with you in it is always better than without. I can't tell you how many mid 70's vacation photos of a-cliff-that-could-be-anywhere or a-lake-but-what-am-I-supposed-to-be-looking-at? I've been through in trying to sort these photos. Isn't it better to see what you looked like when you visited some mountain range, rather than what the mountains looked like? Unless you're Ansel Adams, stick a family member in there, all right? That said, I am dying over Doris's dress and Ruth's sunglasses. Ruth's husband Bob looks a lot like Roy Scheider. Just sayin.

A rare, beefcake photo of a shirtless Ray! Here you can get a better look at the wrought iron embellishments on the hotel room balconies, if you're not too distracted by his manly brawn and how cute the sisters' swimsuits are. There seems to be a central courtyard here that has a tiki garden type thing going on. See the bamboo bridge they're standing on and all the foliage in the foreground?

Here are the sisters and their swimsuits again, joined by this Polynesian idol carving. I think Ruth is actually the visual definition of that "You're so skinny, if you turned to the side you'd disappear!" How were people so thin! Doris has a pretty smile on her face but, being a dramatically pear shaped woman myself, I can totally emphasize with the moment these photos came back from the developers' and she went "THOSE THIGHS! WHY!" before vowing to subsist on nothing but cottage cheese and cantaloupe for the next month. Do you see the little girl behind the tropical plant's palm frond in the right-hand side of the frame? I love people-who-don't-know-their-picture-is-being-taken in photos. It gives the whole thing such a three dimensionality, as I immediately start thinking about the living, interactive world outside the photo's confines.

Doris in one of my very favorite colors, getting ready to go to an evening out on the town! There were two more photos on the bridge, one of Ray in his fez and a pale blue suit, and another of Ruth in this dress, but they were so dark you could hardly make out what was going on, so I skipped them. Somebody invest in a flashcube! 

I know this one doesn't match the others because it's in black and white, but it's the same hotel and the same swimsuits on Doris and Ray, so I think it was the same trip. Once again, they look adorable. Ray has chosen to don his matching pool-shirt with his swim trunks there. I think there's a waterfall type thing going on in the tiki garden. Ohhhh, how I want to go on vacation in 1960-something Florida. It just ain't the same these days!

Are you planning any vacations, retro or not, this summer? How happy would you be to have one of the above swim suits? Ever been to a for-real tiki themed business of any kind?

Have a great weekend, I'll see you Monday!

Air Conditioning is Important (1953 ads)

 Good morning!

Of the many things I'm thankful for this summer...Cola icees, the Wave Country, gold braided sandals, the online presence of season 9 of Project Runway on Hulu...I have to say, my air conditioner is RIGHT THERE at the top of the list. It's a Trane model put in sometime in the early nineties'...I know this because I distinctly remember its installation for two reasons: one, a toddler-sized Susan crawled into the closet where they'd cut the hole for the register and fell under the house for a less-than-two-minute period (of great agitation and excitement) before my pappy hauled her out; two, I had some weird, five-year old's crush on the Dale-Earnhardt-resemblant head installation guy, and sat in my favorite tree and cried when they told me we had air conditioning now, but that I would probably never see Darryl again. Later that day, my broken heart somewhat mended, I came down from the tree, and enjoyed the fruits of my unrequited love's labor. And have been so happy with air conditioning ever since! It's about the only thing that has gotten me through the recent heatwave sweeping my beloved South.

Turn it up! However high it goes, turn it on that!

Which set me to wondering, naturally...what was life like, in the South, in the summer, WITHOUT the benefit of air cooling future technology? Probably like being within spitting distance of hell. From these 1953 ad clippings for a variety of air conditioning brands, I am convinced that a mid century me would probably sell my car to have one of these, rather than languish in heat-induced misery. Let's take a look at fifties' air conditioners, shall we?

The above clipping is from an ad for a Servel model which looks like a gorgeous console record player of the same vintage to me. What I love about this advertising tactic is the juxtaposition of a man who's so hot he's taken off his jacket (that's almost like being naked in public!) and is dabbing his brow with his pocket handkerchief outside, in stark contrast to the people having a ball indoors with their Servel Air Conditioner. Note the woman's smart kerchief and charm bracelet, the neat-looking bar cart to the left, and the standing man's striking resemblance to Peter Finch. Also, are the lady in blue and the woman of the house in green doing some kind of coded sign language to each other? Lady #1: "One more?" Lady #2: "Sure, one more for the road!" ((secret coded meaning: "Do not let Peter Finch drink anymore Long Island Ice Teas, fortheloveoftheLord....")) This air conditioner also comes in a mahogany model, which  I think speaks to the consumer's fear of having this ugly, metal, hulking object sticking out of their window. Even if it DOES provide a necessary household function, let's make it handsome!

Here's the mahogany model in another woman's bedroom. I think it would have been more effective to show the blonde signaling lady from the first panel, but no one asked me, did they? One of the most important parts of having an air cooling system is, in my opinion, being able to sleep at night. Though I usually can't stand to have the windows down in a car or a fan pointed directly at me in the day time, I sleep with an oscillating stand up fan in ADDITION to the air conditioning all through the summer. I think it's partially the sound of it, and partially the coldness, that keeps me umbilically tied to the dadgum thing. The man in the next ad agrees with me about the sleep-cool air connection:

Like the "Sunburns Murder Sleep!" ad from the other day, the drama in the man's face in the first panel is intense. Him: "Let me die! It's 12:40 AM for Pete's sake! I can't sleep because the sweat trickling down my handsome brow keeps waking me up!" I'm surprised he's kept on his striped pajamas... usually the first thing that happens when the house is too hot is me stripping down to my skivvies. The addition of a GE air conditioner, in the second panel, has changed his sleeping conditions from sad to glad. Look at that smile of contentment! I don't think the GE model is as pretty as the other, but it could be more effective. Plus, it offers "kitten-quiet operation" to "assure you of undisturbed sleep". What more do you want?

Because it seems like EVERY electronics manufacturer there was wanted in on this whole "air conditioning" racket, here's Philco's 1953 models. I think I may like the be-legged console air conditioner even better than the first one in the Servel ad. Doesn't it look dignified! And $229.95 with a 5 year warranty seems totally reasonable (cheap, even!) until you realize that's almost two thousand dollars in 2010's money. LAWD! We might have to do with a series of oscillating and box fans set up in a complicated pattern to provide air movement AFTER all.

But they're so fancy looking!

I think this woman's braid is artificial, and for some reason, with my haughty sense of my own braiding dexterity, this bothers me! What doesn't bother me: that Philco model humdinger of an air conditioner! I love the wavy grilles on this one.

Talk about heavy proclaiments and promises in advertising! Look at this one:

AS SURE AS YOU LIVE AND BREATHE. I love it! The Megan-from-Mad-Men-esque woman in the color ad below is adjusting the unit for maximum breathability just as she shoots a loving glance towards her pipe-smoking husband. Don't you love the house across the street, too? I think this is one of the most attractive ads with the least attractive products. You can't have it all, I guess.

Last but not least, IT & T (not to be confused with AT & T, which was later and not-related) created the "Coolerator", which looks the most like in-window air conditioning units of the present, but isn't that a shame when they could look like that Cadillacky Philco model! They make up for in advertising props what the machine lacks in natural elegance. You've got a cool looking model, a driftwood and floral table arrangement, a neat hand printed fish wall hangings, and WOULD YOU BELIEVE IT a fiber glass mobile. This one looks a lot like it, but it also costs $500. That's not as much as an air conditioner, though! Maybe you could make one yourself with an apprising eye and a trip to the hardware store. But I digress...

How thankful are YOU for your air conditioner? Don't take it for granted! Do you remember the first time you had air conditioning, either in your house or your car? What would you do to keep cool in the summer before the age of modern conveniences? Which 1953 air conditioner would YOU most like to have in your home? Do tell!

See you tomorrow for Photo Friday!

Happy Fourth of July! (Victorian Postcards)

Hope everyone has a safe and happy fourth of July! According to these Victorian postcards, you should probably be involved in the setting off of extremely dangerous looking, Acme-Company-and-Wil.-E.-Coyote type explosives, but I must disagree. Practice good judgement and choose something a little less drastic from that Big Daddy's fireworks tent just outside the county line! All these cards (and more!) are available on ebay, click on the sources to find the original listings. Peace out! I gotta go wear some Uncle Sam theme'd gear and hang out with an eagle, while barbecuing! It is the only way! :)

See ya Thursday!

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Noxzema (1950)

Good morning! Once again schoolwork is getting in the way of the frantic pace at which I publish these little blogposts. The NERVE! I only have a minute before I need to go back to the educational theory mines and come up with a couple more nuggets of wisdom for my Content Area Reading course (blech! blech! and blech! Don't they know I would rather be doing...anything else?), but in that minute I wanted to tell you about post-sunburn-care. I ran across this ad (and then subsequent ones from the same year) in a Life magazine and wanted to show you how Noxzema advertised its wares in the year of our Lord 1950.

Do we LOVE the colors in this ad or do we L-O-V-E the colors in this ad? The avocado green of her swimsuit, the boy-scout-esque pocket flaps, the goldenrod yellow of her hair...everything looks SO. SUMMER. As much as I hate to think of my skin someday resembling the color and consistency of Hoggle's due to my lack of vigilance as far as sun protection goes, I do love to get a little color in the summer. What are your thoughts on tanning? I've only been to a professional tanning bed twice, in college, and I wasn't super impressed with the process. My sister, my dad and I are all pretty much natural tanners, who brown up in the summer without laying out just from yard work, walkabouts, and short sleeves. We always do some kind of sunscreen but we always end up tanning. Lately, hearing about "tan mom" type stuff on the news, I wonder if I should eschew my casual sunning ways and wear sunhats, carry parasols, do all those things super fair-skinned people do to block out the sun.

LOOK! AT! THIS! AD! Not only does it look like the cover of some pot boiler detective paperback from the fifties', it uses one of my favorite, usable-in-real-life lines from Shakespeare. "Sleep no more! Macbeth does murder sleep!", is something I say to Babu all the time when I drank eight too many diet Cokes and I can't freaking get back to bed in the middle of the night...and here it is again in this MCM ad! We love it! I think the girl looks more hungover than worried about the bizarrely jaundiced, non-sunburned sections of her body, but maybe there's a combination of factors there. Do you think it's the same girl from the first ad, later that night?

Last but not least, this saucy little number is the third ad I could find with Noxzema's sunburn relief as its main subject. You think that Irene Dunne lookalike is showing enough skin! Jeepers! I know it's a sunburn ad, but it seems a little excessive, especially considering the pained, haggard expression on her face takes this ad waaaay out of the glamorous, sexy category under which the level of cleavage shown would usually fall. Someone take my retroactive advice and put the blonde back in! So we can all get a good night's sleep, sunburn or no! That woman is scaring me.

Gotta jet. How's your summer shaping up so far? Any notable sunburns or occasions-to-be-sunburned? I'm hoping to make it up to Holiday World in Indiana before long...I'll make sure and heed Noxzema's stern warnings before I go!

Have a great Tuesday...get hype about Independence Day tomorrow! :)

Weekend Finds

Good morning! I found a modest number of very exciting things this weekend and I thought I would take a Monday morning moment to show you the goods from this weekend! Here's a group shot of some of the highlights:

Ta-dah!

Teenybopper style shrieking

It was H-O-T all weekend, but that didn't stop me from heading up to that sale in Springfield that I was telling you about on Friday... I argued with myself for about twenty minutes over a blonde wood set of fifties', Heywood Wakefield lookin' side tables before leaving them behind (not the right size or shape for my living room set up but whoooo wee what neat pieces!). I DID take these two picture frames home as dim consolation. Above, a not-really-signed-by-Elvis publicity photo of Elvis is housed in this, guess what, ELVIS PICTURE FRAME. I don't know if it's really from 1956, but the stamp on the back reads "COPYRIGHT 1956 ELVIS PRESLEY ENTERPRISES, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED". Reminds me of the some of the impossibly cute teenybopper items (autograph hounds, Beatles charm bracelets, etc) you see in the back of Teen Beat type publications to order by mail.

This wooden, hinged frame features one of my favorite onscreen couples, Clark Gable and Jean Harlow. Have you seen Red Dust? MGM remade it in the 50's as Mogambo (featuring Clark Gable in his same starring role, almost twenty years later!), but I like the thirties' version better, possibly just because of how crackerjack cute Jean Harlow is in it. I think people forget, from seeing all those sexy, bias-cut silk dress photos of her, how adorable/sweet/cute she was in addition to being a red hot mama.

                                       

I let out a tiny squeal when I found this "J.R. For President" button. I haven't seen the reboot yet, but Matthew and I were NUTS about Dallas for a hot minute about two years ago when we picked up some of the series for dirt cheap at a used games and dvds store. Look at Larry Hagman's pumpkin head. You love to hate him on that show!

I found this gondola shaped planter at Goodwill. How great will this be next time I do one of those "Evening in Roma" style spaghetti dinners?

Ciao, bella!

I know....I KNOW...I needed a two foot tall, lithographed metal refrigerator and stove like I need another hole in my head...this did not stop me from buying it. A guy was looking at it at a yard sale I went to over in Inglewood and I remember kind of swooping towards the set with a quickness that surprised me as much as him. "Aren't those somethin?" he says. "Did you see the inside yet?" He opens the little plastic handle (which clicks shut to lock the door in place, by the way) to reveal the rotating center shelf, as well as a fully stocked illustrated door, complete with eggs and celery and cokes-in-bottles. I mean, look at it!

Open sesame!

"Orange soda drink" may be my favorite label.

This actually looks a lot like my current freezer, down to the grapefruit juice concentrate!

Look what's for dinner! Hot dogs and hamburgers, oh boy!

The stove is just about as fun, with buttons you can depress where the stove switches are, and an opening-and-closing-stove door. I know it was wrong from a not-being-a-hoarder-point-of-view, but I wanted 'em! So I got 'em. Check out this sixties' sink and cupboard from the same company that I need to round out the set! (just kidding just kidding...only partially kidding that I am just kidding...)

Annie was in my top three favorite children's movies when I was little, so I freaked out once more when I saw this Annie tv-tray (complete with the metal legs, not shown) at Goodwill for $2. I love that the characters are labelled with their names. You don't have to tell me who Sandy is! I know!

Last but not least, this Jonathan Frid/Lara Parker cover of a soap opera digest from 1968. You remember how crazy I am about Dark Shadows, right? I couldn't say no.

I love how this twelve year old filled the form out, but then neglected to send it in. Phyllis! You could've gone on a chauffered dream date with Barnabas!

TWENTY dresses for $3.50? I want in on this bargain!

Like I said, I've been trying to be better about not picking up every little thing I see, but how could I resist some of these finds?! They just gravitate towards me and I to them. Le sigh.

Did you find anything good this weekend? Is it sunstroke city where you live (Nashville's been in the 100's all weekend! I've got cabin fever like you wouldn't believe from only leaving at night!)? Which of these finds do you think was the MOST necessary of my unnecessary purchases? Tell!

See you tomorrow!