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
Category: Things You’ve Never Heard Of
Farny: Mysterious Drop-Dead Death of Bette Davis’ Husband
An overactive imagination could come up with a scenario where Bette Davis kills her second husband, Arthur Farnsworth. After all, pick any Bette Davis movie at random, and she’s probably killing someone. Just the other night, I caught a very random Bette Davis movie: a weird 1964 late-late-film noir called Dead Ringer where Bette Davis… Continue reading Farny: Mysterious Drop-Dead Death of Bette Davis’ Husband
Hong Kong Bank of China as Giant Protest Sign
As some of us sit around in the burgs and hamlets of the United States, knitting our fingers and wondering about the shape that China’s “invasion” of the U.S. will take, need we look any further than Hong Kong? In 1997, Hong Kong’s sovereignty was transferred to China, and the “one country, two systems” principle… Continue reading Hong Kong Bank of China as Giant Protest Sign
Switchboard Receptionist School: Never Again
File this one in the annals of things that will never again exist: switchboard operator school. This ad from the June 1, 1948 Los Angeles Times hit the zeitgeist of the times perfectly well, though. Picture: it’s 1948, the war has just ended, L.A. is booming, phones are still run through switchboards (though not for… Continue reading Switchboard Receptionist School: Never Again
Zona Sage and Paul Camera: Progression, But Not Fast Enough
Sharpen your knife, go back in the past, and slice off any section. It all says something. Everything is significant, every mote of dust on the microfiche slide. We flip to San Francisco. We look at a woman named Zona Sage. In 1970, Zona Sage is a 25 year-old law student at Hastings College of… Continue reading Zona Sage and Paul Camera: Progression, But Not Fast Enough