The other day I was walking through the walmart parking lot looking at cars, and noticed how bland and boring even the sports cars look. then I thought about movies like American Graffitti and Dazed and Confused (both featuring classic cars in classic era’s) and I can’t imagine anyone ever making a movie about the classic 90’s and the economic ford escort’s. This coupled with the results of the ‘best of’ threads reminded me of the old saying…
They just don’t make’em like they used to.
I also notice this with furniture pieces, vintage clothing, music instruments, etc. Now I realize that some things like computers and electronics are getting better, but what do think ‘they don’t make like they used to’? What do we have today which may be classic later?
My list for all time favorites are
'57 Chevy’s
'59 Gretshe 6120 Guitar
Ties from the 40’s and 50’s (the naked or hula girl ones especially)
Music, Music, Music
Books (The Great Gatsby, To Kill A Mockingbird)
kids
p.s. If this has been done before, do it again, there’s lots of new people. thanks
We live in an age that reads to much to be wise, and thinks too much to be beautiful–Oscar Wilde
Oh yeah, board games too. it seems kids are still playing the same ones. maybe they’re becoming extinct altogether because of video games, but i still enjoy monopoly.
We live in an age that reads to much to be wise, and thinks too much to be beautiful–Oscar Wilde
Oh, my friend, you did pick a sore spot. I don’t know about the rest of it, but there is some very good new literature out there when you open your eyes. You can’t go to the grocery store and pick it up off the bestseller rack, but it’s there. Try the Vintage Contemporary publishing house, or ask for the trade fiction section. Yes, you have to wade through crap, you always did. Only thing is, when we look back - we only remember the good stuff, as they are the ones that have remained in print. Remember that before you wave away every modern writer, who can be so omniscient as to think that just because everything there is to say has been said, that there aren’t always new ways to say it? Everything had been said long before F.Scott Fitzgerald came along - he did nothing new, not to take anything away from him. Widen the horizons - the classics are great, but you have to add to the mix. There. There is my rant.
I’ll tell you what they really don’t build like they used to: Buildings, and houses. In northern Virginia these days you can buy a half million dollar four bedroom house way out in the suburbs, and you only get a brick front. Tackiest thing I’ve ever seen, brick facade and siding everywhere else. And god knows they don’t make beauties like the woolworth building anymore.
Have you noticed that as good as the economy is doing, this country is still steeped in cheapness? Good luck finding high quality whatever unless you pay as much as you possibly can.
Hmmm not to stray too far from the subject but at least they are making postage stamps better than they used to. Every 1st and 15th of the month, and especially close to Christmas card sending time, I thank the Stamp Gods for self-adhering stamps!
“Only when he no longer knows what he is doing, does the painter do good
things.” --Edgar Degas
Furniture. My grandparents’ houses were filled with furniture they inherited from THEIR parents… yet most of the stuff I’ve bought new in my lifetime has already fallen apart.
Books. Not the authors, but the books themselves. Half the time when I read a book, the pages start falling out before I’m half done! And it isn’t just paperbacks!
And I gotta go with houses. I’ll be surprised if the houses built today outlast the ones from the turn of the century or before.
Oh, and metroshane? You seem to have dropped a handful of extra apostrophes in your OP. ;D
Tall buildings. Several new tall buildings have gone up in Albuquerque over the past decade (tall for Albuquerque being more than ten stories), and all of them, quite frankly, suck. They built a new Federal Courthouse, they just finished the outside last year, and it has to be the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen. It looks like a giant adobe cube, with a tiny dome on top. If you’ve been to Albuquerque recently, you know what I’m talking about. I think that it should have been at least twice its height. Then they could have made it into a sort of neo-Pueblo mini-Empire State Building, but nobody asked me…
Re: old houses and other buildings. The ones that are still around from Victorian times or earlier are the well-built ones. It’s not that they didn’t build shoddy things back then (Exhibit A: the crap that some manufacturers unloaded on the Government during the Civil War!) but that anything built shoddily just didn’t survive to our lifetimes. I have heard several builders (admittedly, some bias there) and others (IIRC, Steve Thomas, the present “This Old House” host) state categorically that with modern materials, you can build a house that’s much sturdier (we know more now about surviving earthquakes and high winds, for example), more energy-efficient, etc. that any 100-year-old house.
Oh, and I almost forgot… Self-adhering stamps? I hate those! I never minded licking stamps, and as a former stamp collector (yes, believe it or not, I collected stamps.) I can tell you that the philatelists of the world are probably being driven up the wall by these, because you can’t remove the used ones from the paper, and the ones in mint condition will stick to everything.
Women! They used to do what you told 'em, and they’d cook & clean too. If they got out of line you could hit them and they’d be too ashamed to tell anyone. Now, all they can do is bitch to everyone about how they’re being abused and blah, blah, blah.
Seconded! Stylistically, it’s been downhill ever since the Chrysler building in whatever that was built - 1920’s or so I guess. There is the occasional inspired one but mostly now you get your boring bland glass towers.
I’m sure this one will get some flames, but: music. Sitting here listening to Chopin Opus 10 #4, and thinking that nothing this fundamentally cool has been written in my lifetime, and probably not even in this century.
As for cars, I gotta argue. I like some classic cars, but I think there’s no shortage of sweet modern ones. Not the cookie cutter Escorts and minivans, mind you.
I haven’t seen a spirograph for decades. What did they do to them? They did used to be cool.
The 1950 Leadsled Merc
I am talking the custom jobbers with the shaved doors, the dropped frame, the whole niner. The ultimate in a cruise car. (I am saving to get one)
Bettie Pages and Swank Magazine (Up yours Playboy…these chicks were black and white and real real real!!)
Las Vegas circa 1950-60 when the mobsters owned it and it was truly Sin City.
Oh and fashion? Fedoras and Sharkskin suits cut tight.
I know that I have put you through hell, and I know that I have been one rough pecker. But from here on, you are all in my cool book.- Seth Gecko From Dusk Till Dawn
The Googie Period of architecture. One of the most original periods of architecture, fashion and furniture of the century. Still beautiful in disappearing Americana.
Metroshane, the Vintage Contemporaries label is an offshoot of the Vintage (classics) label. It is the new writer side of the company, often, but not always, publishing books by minority, or gay, or foreign writers, whom a lot of the major companies (used to) shy away from. Some of my favorite authors not yet considered to have written classics are Tom Robbins, Haruki Murakami, Donald Barthelme, Paul Auster, John Irving (except his newest), Julian Barnes. A little older (1960’s) Richard Brautigan, Robert Pirsig. Just waiting to find even more.
Yeah I agree about Donald Barthelme just waiting to be a literay hero. 40 stories was amazing, but I have to admit i was really let down by 60 stories. Maybe HE can’t write like he used to.
We live in an age that reads to much to be wise, and thinks too much to be beautiful–Oscar Wilde
