Don’t be ridiculous. The price of a small cup of coffee is quite sufficient in that regards :p.
I think the “mixed uses” part is the part that’s confusing me - where I live there are mixed uses to the point where I can stop at the butcher, baker ,fish market,bank, drugstore, dry cleaner etc while walking home from the train station (which doesn’t have a parking lot) and it is very common for people not to own a car ( or even know how to drive) There doesn’t happen to be a store on my corner, but zoning allows it and there is a store on the next corner. What you’re saying is coming across to me as"nearly everyone lives over or next door to a store or office" and I’m not sure if that’s what you mean.
Yes. Each individual building is mixed uses, not just the area.
The Alchemist I know of is much more fun - http://alchemistbeer.com/
Technically, cursive has been obsolete since the invention of the ballpoint pen.
It was actually a technique which minimized damage to quill pens.
You can still buy quill pens. Also fountain pens and straight pens, as well as Chinese/Japanese calligraphy brushes with ink stones.
Straight razors are still being made and used. I got my fedora steamed and brushed at a local Goorin Brothers store. Shoe shine services are still being done downtown, I should probably get that done, too.
Hem hem … 
Well, handspun luxury yarns are a thing, I know one guy who has a GF who owns an online company providing said yarns. I also know that until about 15 years ago a guy locally had a small spinning mill putting out 100% wool yarn dyed to order for the custom weaving industry. Not sure when he closed doors offhand, I know his wife had health problems and I haven’t been past their location as I stopped working at that company. I had been seeing them around at SCA events however.
And there is a wooden toy/game company locally in Harford CT, I should look for them online, I have a teacher friend who buys goodies from them as rewards for her kindergarden class.
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Well, there is now Jersey Jack Pinball (formed by some guys who were laid off from Stern during the economic crisis of the last few years). I guess you could say they’re not ‘major’, but I believe until they started up, Stern was literally the ONLY company in the world in making pinball machines.
The only reason I know this is because the latest Stuff You Should Know podcast is about pinball and I happened to listen to it last night.
Mostly intended for air raids,originally, since the alert system was designed in the 50s (WWII and cold war in mind). And it’s not only in Paris.
I’m surprised by some jobs people mention as obsolete. Some are cultural differences (for instance I expect to find butchers everywhere over here. And at the contrary, milkmen never existed here to my knowledge) but for others, it’s a weird assumption. People are still having clothes custom made everywhere, so tailors aren’t a rarity, they are still using their fireplaces, so you need people to sweep chimneys and they’re easy to find, people have their shoes repaired, their iron balcony ornaments done to their specifications, put wind vanes on their roofs, have grandma’s copper ustensils repaired, and so on. So most are jobs that might be less ubiquitous than they used to, but never dissapeared, and for some are pretty common (again, tailor).
What surprised me the most was non digital watches. Pretty much all watches I see have hands. Digital numbers on watches were a thing…in the 80s, something like that…if anything, it’s those watches that are obsolete.
Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. If all you need is the time, you have a cell phone. If you want to have a fashion accessory that happens to tell the time, you have a more normal watch.
And the old Timex I had which was a digital display of hands is stuck back in the 80s where it probably belongs.
Here in the US Midwest they’re actually used for tornado warnings more than anything else. We never had to worry about bombing like Europe did, but we do get tornadoes every year.
Thank you.
This will save me the trouble of stopping in on new schools and having to explain, “Never mind me. I’m just checking to see what kind of clocks you have.” and probably getting put on a list.
Not quite true about the audio amplifiers.
Also, for guitarists it is highly unlikely that tube amps will go away any time soon. Solid state amps and amp sims range from crap to ok but nothing beats a tube amp.
Slee
In the first chapter of Jerry Pournelle’s book WEST OF HONOR, a character says “Ever think, Lieutenant, that every military generation since World War One has thought theirs would be the last to carry bayonets?”
The year is 2064, and they’re debarking from a starship, carrying a weapon meant to convert a musket into a pike.
Pournelle himself had a bayonet in Korea in 1950, and they’re still being carried by American troops in Afghanistan in 2014.
Although it’s not something you can buy off a shelf, there’s a resurgence amongst hobbyists who are building Nixie clocks. Nixie tubes have the digits 0 through 9 as small neon tubes, and they’re quite retro/steampunk looking.They haven’t been built for decades (except in the USSR where they were made into the 1980s), but there are enough stock and parts available, mainly on eBay. Frankly, I’m surprised some cheap Chinese knockoffs haven’t caught the trend.
Travel far enough and you’ll find these jobs. One of my favorite parts of living in rural Cameroon was the odd feeling of living in a nursery rhyme-- with my friends the blacksmith, the baker and the tailor fetching water from wells and waiting for the weekly market.
We’re had a milkman for the last 19 years. I also know a farrier and my next door neighbor is a third generation barber. My husband used to go with his dad, to have my neighbors dad cut his hair. Now my neighbor cuts my husband and my two son’s hair.
I had to have a17 th century wicker settee repaired. That’s a specialty.
I’ve had to have horse tack repaired.
There’s some stucco guys we work with, big family, third generation, and some of the custom plaster work is phenomenal.
My lumber yard where we buy must of our material is third generation.
But seriously, with five kids, a milkman is totally worth not running to the store. Buying one candy bar is moss than the difference.
I think this is in kind of a different category. Pinball is still a thing, probably more popular than it was a few years ago. But the machines on the resale market are enough to satisfy most arcades, bars, and players. New manufacture is pretty damned expensive, and a niche even if the game itself isn’t.
After hearing many alarmist reports about the “terrible” state of literacy right here in the US, I wondered if I could move to an inbred hollow of Appalachia and set myself up as “that guy who can read and write” and make money telling people that this is a gas bill, it says you owe them $60, you need to send payment to 345 Utility Drive, Podunkville, West Virginia, that letter is a coupon for 50 cents off Shake and Bake, etc., and then charging them $10 a page to transcribe and format letters to their children in the city. It’s not actually that bad. Do professional scribes exist in Cameroon or anywhere else in the 3rd world? In other words, are there any areas where just knowing how to read and write at a high school level is in and of itself an in-demand skill that people will hire you just to read and write for them (not do administrative work, not write technical documentation, not compose speeches, just read and write at a basic level)?
Here in the Tacoma/South King County we have a reasonably high profile milkman. And they’d be even more prominent in my neighborhood if they served apartments.