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  1. MikeKardec

    When did the penny drop?

    There may have been some fundamentally flawed thinking, emotional logic that goes back a good deal earlier than the start of the war. Looking at it superficially, it seems to me that Germany, Italy and Japan all wanted to get into the "Empire Game" but were too late to really make it work ...
  2. MikeKardec

    Tiki Culture

    There's a lot of vaguely Tiki/south pacific influenced architecture in LA. I'm guessing that few even notice the milder influences caught in the roof or window lines of some mid century houses. Tiki bars have survived here but the great Polynesian restaurants have pretty much been reduced to...
  3. MikeKardec

    1940s/1950s cars vs. 1960s cars

    So far as I can tell pure generator hybrids are only used if there is a collateral benefit, like the gentle acceleration (lack of gearing) needed for railroad trains or the running under water aspect of subs. The current hybrid car system is certainly seems flexible with the internal combustion...
  4. MikeKardec

    1940s/1950s cars vs. 1960s cars

    Even in that remote country of southwest Colorado remnants of the Rio Grande narrow gauge network existed into the 1960s. The tourist trains that run out of Durango and Chama were part of the greater network but originally it was pretty extensive, in later years it rarely made any money but it...
  5. MikeKardec

    1940s/1950s cars vs. 1960s cars

    When it was first brought up I was thinking that the overhead wires might be good for a traveling recharge without having to use an internal combustion engine ... a way to plug in with out having to be out of service.
  7. MikeKardec

    whats the closest thing to Traveling back in Time? to get a feel of times past?

    The Chinese is still there, usually quite the mob scene it's even more of a tourist attraction that it used to be. I have no idea about Carrie Fisher but stars are rarely comfortable in public, though it's often their job to act that way, people desperately want their attention and usually...
  8. MikeKardec

    1940s/1950s cars vs. 1960s cars

    We used to have those buses (you probably did too) that could run electrically on overhead power lines, then start their motor and run where they needed to off the grid. It was a good stop gap measure. Many thought all the wires were ugly but I felt that they fit right in with the gray stone...
  9. MikeKardec

    1940s/1950s cars vs. 1960s cars

    Though it's more crowded you might find it more hospitable now, however. The air is cleaner, crime is lower, vandalism is certainly less. When the smog was at it's worst you tell the chemicals in it by what hurt your lungs or your eyes ... you have to search out the worst places in the whole...
  10. MikeKardec

    whats the closest thing to Traveling back in Time? to get a feel of times past?

    Wow! What a magical mystery tour you had. Very cool.
  11. MikeKardec

    whats the closest thing to Traveling back in Time? to get a feel of times past?

    As a late twenty-something I used to live at Park La Brea a 1940s planned community in central LA. A couple of blocks to the north was the Farmers Market and Fairfax District, neither of which had changed in many years and to the south was the Miracle Mile and Museum row ... also fairly stable...
  13. MikeKardec

    1940s/1950s cars vs. 1960s cars

    It's just a different scale and it looks different here in So Cal. If you ignore the opportunities to do what seems like anything and everything, you can walk or take public transportation enough places to get by. If you lived in a town of 40,000 and you had another town of 80,000 within a...
  14. MikeKardec

    1940s/1950s cars vs. 1960s cars

    Too true and that is all there is these days ... now it's every vehicle and nearly every system! I get your point but that wonderful old 300 looks positively naive and easy to deal with compared to the diabolical vehicles of today. They do run longer and much more reliably than the cars up to...
  15. MikeKardec

    1940s/1950s cars vs. 1960s cars

    No but they have their place. They were built to replace the horse cart in postwar Europe and we now live in a world where there is no longer many simple, effective options (no matter how slow) for vehicles in the developing world. The air cooled VWs were perfect, light, easy to fix, hard to...
  16. MikeKardec

    1940s/1950s cars vs. 1960s cars

    If I've got this right once you're over 6,000 feet your air pressure (and thus power) is down about 30%. A 40 hp engine doesn't have much left once it gives up 30%!
  17. MikeKardec

    1940s/1950s cars vs. 1960s cars

    Okay, you are on a roll. Among car designers it seems completely forgotten that people will have to use them on real roads. Meaning washboards, pot holes, frost heaves. Those idiotic low profile tires every one is now using handle amazingly on a perfectly maintained racetrack but they are...
  19. MikeKardec

    1940s/1950s cars vs. 1960s cars

    Hysterical! I had a Mini Cooper Paceman for a very short time and it looked SO unhappy. It wasn't big enough to be threatening but it sure was angry. In 4,000 miles it had a seizure trashed it's electrics and got returned to an understanding BMW dealer who was happy to give me a massive trade...
  20. MikeKardec

    whats the closest thing to Traveling back in Time? to get a feel of times past?

    A wonderful quote from Ray Bradbury's, The Sound of Summer, Running: "Somehow the people who made tennis shoes knew what boys needed and wanted. They put marshmallows and coiled springs in the soles and they wove the rest out of grasses bleached and fired in the wilderness. Somewhere deep in...
  21. MikeKardec

    What was your first car...???

    Mine was a 1968 Mustang California Special, a promotional model initially just given to the Southern California Ford Dealers. From the doors back it had the Shelby fiberglass bits and some chrome badges reading "California Special." The rest of it was pretty stock, 289, automatic. I found it...
  22. MikeKardec

    1940s/1950s cars vs. 1960s cars

    Besides all the negatives that have been brought up, many of which I agree with, there were some positive aspects that were being attempted in the 1960s that lead to the difference in look. Prior to the mid '60 a lot of American cars were built on a frame while later on the idea was to...
  23. MikeKardec

    Chinatown - alternative soundtrack

    Wow! Not nearly as impressive as what they used but, if I remember correctly, even that score went though some changes with the distinctive horn line, which is really the thing that matters, being added late in the process. If you stop thinking about the wonderful horn you can tell that both...

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