Anyone Else Stuck in the Early 1930's ?

[highway66blues]

Howdy.
Been mostly a lurker here'bouts for a few years. Posted some in a few different threads of different topics of different boards.
I was fortunate enough to get into an apartment just about 2 year back that screamed 1930's to me as my now landlord was showing the available apartments. I asked how old the building was and was told it was built in 1913.
On first seeing what is now my home, I knew I had to live there (here)...the 2 narrow French doors in the small "living" room, the gas lines still in the walls of every room (there's only 4-kitchen,small entryway, living, small bath & bedroom) original 10" baseboard in the entire place, 3 of the 4 original doors all with original hardware, living and bed rooms still have original hardwood floors as well as all original wood trimmings around every doorway and arch. Cast iron heat radiators in each room, as well.
Well, at any rate, I dress in a vintage early 1930's average rural laborer style. A lot of my inspiration comes from MUCH photographic research of early 30's laborers, rural family photos, tenement photos, a few correctly done modern period films ("Lawless" anyone ?). Along with how I choose to dress everyday I try to live it as well...as close as I can get ( as well as as much as my landlord will also allow).
When I get home from my work and close the door, 2016 is shut out.
Many Old Country Blues, Rural Blues and (now) Old time Appalachian Blues songs are heard to the outside from my open living room french doors...(gave up on "modern music" too...if ya wanna call it that.

So as the thread title asks... anyone else stuck in the 1930's ?

 

[GHT]

If you want an honest answer, no. The thirties were a time of great depression, the fallout from the Wall Street Crash reverberated around the world. Here in the UK, things weren't helped when Winston Churchill restored the gold standard to our currency.

But, I do have an empathy with the things about the 30's that you hold dear. For the privileged few, there were fabulous fashions and some great dance music. One of my all time favourites from that era was one Django Rheinhardt and his so called Gypsy Jazz. And, I just love things like: "End of Prohibition," dance parties, where I can don the zoot suit and lindy hop the night away.

 

[highway66blues]

Yeah, I understand why it would not be much appealing to many because of it being mostly the the beginning of the Great Depression. Always look in' at more, learinin' more and find in' all manner of different things to add to me and my home.. Anyone else ?

 

[LizzieMaine]

I've always considered the thirties to be the most fascinating, most radical decade in the twentieth century. My tastes run more to the Northeastern working-class side of things, and if I had to pinpoint the most interesting period of the decade to me it would be 1936-38: a period where real progress was being made in improving the lot of people like my family. Plus, I'd submit that American popular culture -- music, movies, radio, art, literature, you name it -- reached its absolute peak in 1937. When George Gershwin died, there was nowhere to go but down.

 

[highway66blues]

Yes Ma'am. Northeast is where I am from (and still at) small town Northeast of Pittsburgh called Vandergrift, born and raised two counties west of here.

 

[emigran]

Really like the styles of the late 30's specially the high crown fedoras... like Wm Powell.

 

[2jakes]

My growing up years were in the ‘50s.
There was good and bad times.
The "Fabulous Fifties" is a phrase
I heard later as an adult.

At times today, I choose certain
clothes,music and bicycle from
that period because that's what
I remembered and enjoyed.
And still do.

Never having lived in the 30s,
I can only base it on the folks,
movies, books and places.

(Bonnie & Clyde from 1967)
Driving a Ford Fordor Deluxe and sticking
up banks with banjo music in the background
riding over the Texas roads is one thing.

Ever driven in a Texas summer without A/C
for a long spell?


To say that the 30s were this or
that is mostly my fantasy of the
way I think it was during those times.

To the op, I like your enthusiasm for the past.

 

[Fading Fast]

My parents were both kids / young adults in the Depression and only told me miserable things about that period as that was their experience of the '30s. Despite that, I also was a huge fan of classic movies as a kid (late '60s / '70s) and loved the style, culture and tone of the movies made in the '30s which sparked a life-long interest in the period (really the '30s through to the late '60s).

I carry both thoughts in my head. I understand the depredations of the '30s economy and the struggle families went through - both from stories told by my parents and grandparent and from my study of history - I have no illusions (at least I don't think I do). But I also love the style and romanticize it a bit when I want to indulge and just let myself enjoy that aspect of the period - but I am never more than a blink away from remembering the abject reality of it.

 

[2jakes]

I once asked my grandma about her times growing up in the depression.
She more or less told me that it wasn’t as nice as today. But it was
a way of life, it wasn’t noticeable as much since everyone was in the same
boat.

But added that it wasn’t as bad as reading the newspaper about the rich
folks who had everything and lost it all.
Some even jumping out of buildings.
She would shake her head....
"Now that was depressing”.

 

[LizzieMaine]

What I found interesting is, growing up in a time and a place where the economy was in a perpetual state of depression -- 25 percent local unemployment the year I graduated from high school -- was how relevant many of my grandparents' experiences were to my own. Like them, I knew acutely what it was to go to bed hungry because there was no food in the house, I knew what it was to be cold because you had to nurse every drop of oil in the tank, and I knew what it was to grab desperately at any job you could get because you never knew if there was going to be another one. I still tend to think that way to this day.

What I can't deal with are the "OMG the thirties were terrible ewwwww" people who have no idea of what the decade was beyond what they learned in sixth-grade social studies. It was a time of great deprivation -- but that deprivation forced more concentrated social progress than would ever be seen again until the 1960s, and it can be argued that the advances of the thirties were in fact more radical and more revolutionary than those of the later period. There were probably far more people in the mid-1930s willing to sack and burn the Rainbow Room as a symbol of depredation than there were people dancing the Continental inside it.

 

[1930artdeco]

Does my 1930 Model A count? I try and live (to the best of my abilities) near the early 30's. But more often than not all I can muster is the late 30's-40's. I try and get the early clothes but they are very expensive so I end up with mid 30's and 40's clothes. Oh well...I try.

Mike

 

[highway66blues]

YesSir, to me a modelA counts. I'd Love to have one ('28, '29 or '30) it'd be my everyday car.
And was me think in' wasn't gonna find anyone else here.

 

[vitanola]

YesSir, to me a modelA counts. I'd Love to have one ('28, '29 or '30) it'd be my everyday car.
And was me think in' wasn't gonna find anyone else here.

A Dodge Victory 6 or a Plymouth are other cars of the period which one can easily keep on the road. Both of them are usually cheaper that the equivalrnt A, and both have the advantage of longer wheelbases, more comfortable seats, improved (four-wheel "Juice" brakes), and all-steel Budd bodies, even on the four-door sedans. Parts availability is fairly good save for sheet metal...

 

[highway66blues]

Now that's a subject I am still learn in' lots about... what other makes of vehicles were aside from the Model A's

 

[highway66blues]

I agree, Miss Lizzie (bartender), the OMG eewww. I grew up a farm boy and purdy much still live that way. I eat simple, nuthin fancy but still, GOOD food. Not many I'd think would wanna live as I do.

 

[Edward]

I'm very happy living in 2016 with 2016's technological and other advances; I tend to look to the past as a way of bringing forward / preserving what was good about it as distinct from now. Mostly it's a sense of aesthetics I want to keep, but also elements of popular culture and such. I prefer being able to cherry-pick like that than living with the negative sides of it - I wish I could do the same with 2016!

As we redecorate my flat, I'm looking to add a few mid-century modern (and earlier) touches to it - my block opened in 1951, the first of a whole post-war development on an area already heavily remodelled by the Luftwaffe (the streets which had previously been on the land were largley cleared as the result of a direct hit by the second biggest bomb dropped during the Blitz, on its first night in 1940). My wardrobe is not entirely 'pure vintage' or even 'pure repro', but it's an affordable attempt to put together a wardrobe that wouldn't have looked too out of place back in the day. I tend to like styles mainly from 1930ish through to about 1956. Love the sharpness of the Young Elvis look, but I mostly lose interest after the trouser waists drop and the legs get too skinny. I have a strong afection for tweed, which seems to summon up the late 40s / early fifites, middle-aged educator to me. (I'm sure I'm influenced by one Professor Jones in that regard.... I realised last year that there are certain elements of my lecturing style that are - wholly subconsciously, of course - based on him!).

In the perfect world, I'd probably have several dwellings, each done to a different character. Perhaps one big house with a 30s wing, then a 40s wing, then a mid-century modern 50s bit.... but in a timeless way that I could live comfortably in, not a showhouse.

 

[highway66blues]

That is what is greatest about opinion.... it can be neither right nor wrong. Glad you are happy where you are, as I am where I am at as well.

 

[St. Louis]

My tiny bungalow was built in 1929, so I keep to that era. Most of my furniture is from the late 20s to the mid-40s, but my personal appearance (clothes, hair, etc) dates mostly to mid-thirties to early forties. I love the wood-grained, stained-glass, bakelite, mohair-velvet textures of the era. When I turn the lights on in my living room in the evening, everything basks in a golden homey glow. St. Louis hit the skids a little later than many American cities, mostly because of the navy yard ship-building & similar industries, and it also came out of the doldrums a little later (some would say, still hasn't emerged) so we never went through the worst of urban renewal projects. If you don't count Pruitt Igoe, St. Louis has actually managed to hold on to a lot of its well-built brick architecture from the 20s & 30s.

 

[five6seven8]

I've very recently discovered how much it means to me to take inspiration from the way things were done in the past, and I'm still exploring it to some degree. But one thing is very cut-and-dried for me - at least two things I can't change about myself were either illegal or deeply frowned upon in the 1940s, and over half the daily medication I take hadn't been invented. So I'm happy enough to take lessons from the past, but I'll always want to blend it with the best of modern technology and social progress.

(I mean, much as I loathe the Internet for the fact its main purpose is apparently to start stupid arguments, we wouldn't be here at the Fedora Lounge without it.)

 

[VintageEveryday]

for me, it's anywhere from the early 30s to the late 40s, when my family was doing just fine/ all of the family photos that i've been shown seem to have been taken. i don't romanticize things too much. But being your average American in the late 30s up to December 6th 1941 would suit me just fine. Though because o my abysmal eyesight and flat feet, i doubt i would have seen service in ww2, so I guess i would go with my plan b and work at a tailor's or a dressmaker's. That would be much easier than getting a job at such a place today, i would imagine.


pardon me. I've been planning what i'd do if i ever got stuck back in time too much.