Located in Anaheim, California, Spradrom Estates was a $7.5 million development of 486 homes that broke ground in 1956. It’s still there. Hundreds of housing developments were built across the Southern California landscape in the post-World War II housing boom of the 1950s and 1960s. Like most housing developments of that period, Spadrom’s original name… Continue reading Cheap and Easy Dreams: Spadrom Estates and Herbert Heftler
Category: ApexUSA
ApexUSA is a stab into the darkness, an attempt via ad images to locate the exact point in the 20th century when America reached its cultural peak.
Is a LIFE ad for Pullman coaches really indicative of what was going on in America in 1937? Isn’t that a distorted view? Yes. But a serious, tight-lipped historical account would be equally distorted. Pick your distortion.
This is not a yearning for the past. As time goes by, you gain some things, lose others. There are no answers here. Only evidence.
No Down Payment (1957)
No Down Payment begins peppy and optimistic as the two central characters, a couple, move to Sunrise Hills, a Southern California suburb. Things turn dark quickly. This is pure John Cheever and Raymond Carver and Mad Men all tossed together. No Down Payment is not a perfect movie, and the ending has a bit of… Continue reading No Down Payment (1957)
Helen Dzo Dzo Kaptur: Pure Palm Springs Attitude
Getting invited by friend Nelda Linsk to her home in 1970 for a casual photo shoot immortalized Helen Dzo Dzo Kaptur.
Haverhill’s and Its Whacked-Out Ads
Haverhill’s: a weird stuff-emporium of the 1960s and 1970s, with goofy ads in big magazines like LIFE. Let’s start with the name, stylized as: haverhill’s. Why? Because this is post-apex America and it’s time to be humble. Fonts go Helvetica on us and upper-case bows meekly into lower-case. The ad copy, too, no longer is… Continue reading Haverhill’s and Its Whacked-Out Ads
Fake Americana With a Topping of Grit: 4 Aces Movie Ranch, Palmdale
4 Aces, located in Palmdale, California, is every Highway Patrol with Broderick Crawford and B-Minus-film noir from 1949 to 1960 wrapped up into one, big, delightful fake. The Diner This is where you take the woman hitchhiking in heels with a suitcase and a shady story about her father, in Chicago, kicking her out of… Continue reading Fake Americana With a Topping of Grit: 4 Aces Movie Ranch, Palmdale