Anybody who is under a certain age will not remember how mall department stores once ruled the retail roost. Before their peak and then eventual decline in the 1980s, these massive shopping cubes, which often went by a single name moniker (Alexander’s, Dalton’s, Gottschalk’s, etc.), were the place to buy everything from clothing to books… Continue reading Screw You, Food Court! When Department Store Restaurants Reigned
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.
“Forever” Mid-Century Homes of Steel and Concrete: Invisible, Forgotten Whittier Hugheston Meadows
Honeysuckle Lane. It sounds too good to be true, too mid-century-modern-suburban, like Desperate Housewives’ Wisteria Lane or a David Lynch dream. But it did exist in the imagination of two Southern California brother developers, two famous MCM architects, and it still does exist today. And it promised a new kind of building that would never… Continue reading “Forever” Mid-Century Homes of Steel and Concrete: Invisible, Forgotten Whittier Hugheston Meadows
Yestermen With Titanium Balls: F. Bert Farquharson at the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, 1940
What to call these men who, in decades past, did fearsome things for a purpose and did so with utter aplomb? While dangerously close to yes men, the term yestermen works for me. He’s the man who saves the woman from falling off of Mt. Rushmore–all without taking off his tie. The polar opposite would… Continue reading Yestermen With Titanium Balls: F. Bert Farquharson at the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, 1940
American Suburbs As Cultural Trope: Any Juice Left?
Recently, I read an Associated Press assessment of how the American suburbs are no longer “your father’s suburbs of the 1950s and 1960s” and have become educated communities with vibrant arts scenes, and where Brazilian grocers and Vietnamese nail salons reside joyfully next to one another. Civic leaders in the city of Shawnee and county… Continue reading American Suburbs As Cultural Trope: Any Juice Left?
From Happy Beer to Glum Tick Spray
So what happened here. How, in the span of 19 years, did we go from this to that? The first image is from a beer ad dated October 31, 1949. The second image is from a tick spray ad dated August 9, 1968. Most people might actually be more familiar with the 1949 image. It’s… Continue reading From Happy Beer to Glum Tick Spray