There was a Chinese restaurant my family went to a lot back in the 1980s that had a beaded curtain in some doorway. I think maybe it separated the bar area from the main dining room or something. When I saw it for the first time my reaction was “Hey, a beaded curtain like you see on TV all the time!”
I don’t know if this has been mentioned already or not (it’s a long thread), but I’ll add houses with two stairways. I remember a lot of sitcoms from the 1980s-90s era would have their interior house sets designed with a stairway in the living room, and another stairway in the kitchen. Off the top of my head The Cosby Show, Family Matters, and Full House all had sets like that. I think I’ve only seen a house like that in real life once. My mom dragged me along on some home tour thing, and one of the houses on the tour was a McMansion type place that did indeed have a second back stairway. But it’s way more common on TV than in real life.
Must have been the pioneer days’ legacy of the terrible though cheap local beers that lasted well into the 20th C.:
Brew “102” in Los Angeles
Primo beer in Hawaii
Rainier beer in Seattle
Lone Star in Texas
Etc. etc. All bad beers, but available and affordable. And often revived by the same major big breweries that had put them under as hometown pride labels
I’m not sure that it’s so much that it’s more common on TV than in real life - I don’t remember that many TV houses with two stairways. I think that it’s more common in certain areas because certain areas are more likely to have old houses. And for both the The Cosby Show and Full House ( not sure about Family Matters) the houses used in the exterior shots were built in the 1800s and would have been owned by people wealthy enough to have domestic workers who would have used the staircase near the kitchen. I’ve absolutely seen the second staircase in old Victorian houses in NYC but you wouldn’t see it in a neighborhood where the houses were built in the 1950s
There was a point where Pittsburgh’s Iron City Beer was sold in Caribbean bars as a premium import, often in bars with Steelers memorabilia. I’d order a Carib or Presidente and be in the minority.
It wasn’t just “old man bars,” it was pretty much all bars. At least in my location, back in the day. Bars had one tap–sometimes with a sign over it, saying “On Draught Today” and a hook-on sign that would say, “Molson Export” or “Labatt 50” or similar. The draught beer that the bar served was whatever the distributor delivered that day.
And it was just like in the movies–you ordered “a beer,” and you got whatever was on tap, no matter what it was. You could, of course, order by brand, and the bar had a selection of bottled beers to fill those orders, but simply ordering “a beer” got you a glass of draught beer.
It wasn’t until the early 1980s that I saw bars with two or more taps. At that point, you could no longer order “a beer.” You had to specify which.
Older houses needed a front staircase for the family and a back stairway (often from the kitchen) for the staff. My aunt’s house in New England dated to that era - the back staircase was narrow and uneven.
That’s a lot more common in old houses where people had “staff.” The backstairs are nearly always in the kitchen, and usually lead to the cook/maid’s rooms.
My great-uncle had an old Victorian with two staircases like this. Sadly, I was only in the house once (he was in Ohio, and we were in California), but I loved it. The second “staff” staircase is usually narrower and steeper than the staircase in the front of the house. made of lots on accidents (includiing deaths) in the old days.
I’m old, so I saw a ton of beaded curtains back in the day. I have a good friend with one now.
Rats – ninja’d! I thought I was close enough to the end of the thread.
Servants were to NEVER use the front staircase in the course of doing their everyday chores! How would it look to have the butler usher in a gentleman and his retinue, and see the maids scurrying up and down the grand staircase with towels, laundry, and chamber pots! I believe cleaning, polishing, and so forth was done at the crack of dawn, or when the family was out. (I read a book by a butler who said it was surprising how often a family traveled and left the servants to their own devices in their big house.)
