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Couple lives in the 1950s

panamag8or

Practically Family
Messages
859
Location
Florida
Foofoogal said:
I am desperately leaning that way but noone will cooperate with me. lol

Right here!:cool:
I'm getting close with the kitchen, and the rest of the house is next. It was built in 1960, and I would like to furnish it in that period.
 
Ho-hum. Senator Jack's pad.

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A true 50s pad wouldn't have those awful doo-wop/chrome/betty-boop signs and statuary. They didn't have to go all the way to PA.
 

BegintheBeguine

My Mail is Forwarded Here
Cool

The fur rug looks comfy. Somewhere in my house is that coffee table. The couch and chairs that went with it are different. They're stored in the garage for the time being. (Dang it, where in the seven rooms of gloom is that coffee table?)
Also, I was watching a soap last week and there was a Shag picture in the background.
 

Feraud

Bartender
Messages
17,188
Location
Hardlucksville, NY
Ugh. I hate those stories. Why do they have to go with the kitsch angle.. it is always the dreaded 50s sodashop look.
Did the woman really make a reference to Fonzie??

Senator Jack's place is the real deal. No neon, restaurant menus, or records hanging on the walls. It looks like a real home and not a set from Back to the Future.
 
Messages
640
Location
Hollywood, CA
Feraud said:
Ugh. I hate those stories. Why do they have to go with the kitsch angle.. it is always the dreaded 50s sodashop look.
Did the woman really make a reference to Fonzie??

Senator Jack's place is the real deal. No neon, restaurant menus, or records hanging on the walls. It looks like a real home and not a set from Back to the Future.

I agree. I'll admit, I'm more inclined to think of the Ricardos' apartment in I Love Lucy rather than the requisite diner/soda shop, when thinking of the 50s. Granted, that too was a set, but it didn't look "plastic" if that makes sense.
 

BeBopBaby

One Too Many
Messages
1,176
Location
The Rust Belt
Midnight Palace said:

I feel dirty now, hold me.

On a more serious note... Why is it the people who lived through the actual decade of the 50s are the ones that cling to that idealized malt-shop, doo-wop, Betty Boop kitsch the most? They've lived through the decade, they should know what it was like. And don't get me started on all the doo-wop festivals - nothing is worse than mediocre 5th incarnation doo wop band with no original members but still retaining the original name of the group.

I hope I don't sound too mean or "more vintage than thou." It's the last thing I want to be. I just don't understand the fascination with such a mediocre cliche. Anymore society seems to favor mediocraty. American Idol makes it okay to be a pop star without any musical talent. Rachel Ray makes it okay to be a so-so cook. Thomas Kincade sells his paintings as high art. The Quacker Factory Lady on QVC just keeps selling her be-dazzled wares. Is current society's lowered expectations the reason?
 

epr25

Practically Family
Messages
622
Location
fort wayne indiana
My house is pretty much vintage other then the microwave and washign machine. Ad well some other things like blow dryer ect. Oh, and the flat screen. I enjoy ironing my dresses with my 50's iron. I just feel that most of the stuff from back thenwas made better. The design was so much better in just the most simple things. I would just freak out of I ever happened to see another retrophile out and about. It's never happened. I would like to share the stares with someone else! Just not the thrift shops and garage sales lol
 

Edward

Bartender
Messages
25,116
Location
London, UK
People always get nostalgic for their own youth era, I guess. I remember some years ago my parents' generation were fixated with "sixties nights" - which I'm pretty certain weren't remotely like an authentic recreation of that decade. I remember the 70s, and certainly the seventies-themed events I've been to were nothing like it really was. I know I went to one about nine years ago where I was one of I think maybe three people (the other two were girls in skirts) who turned up not in flared trousers. Were that night accurate, you'd have thought that everyone in the 70s dressed like the Bay City Rollers. :rolleyes:

FWIW, me I rather like the kitch maltshop look in and of itself (I'm a sucker for kitsch schtick). I guess the everything-fifties like that is what people who consider that to have been the era to aspire to would have wanted. If that's the goal, to celebrate stuff that was produced by the fifties, then I can see that working. Thing is, it's never going to be period correct. If in fifty years' time someone decided to recreate something with the vibe of Casa Marlowe circa 2007, they'd be way, way off track if they went out and bought reproduction or orginial 2006/2007 furniture etc. All of my furniture was bought in 2001/02, but most of it is designs that were first out in the late 90s. My leather reclining chair is probably early-mid 90s (I bought it used). I have varying bits and bobs around the place that date back as far as the 70s. It seems to me that people lived the same in the 50s. The average home then (especially bearing in mind that there wasn't anything like the 'disposable' culture of today back then - they made things to last. There would have been folks with furniture from the thirties and the forties - bits they'd inherited, or bought used, or had bought back when they were new and kept using. Many people, especially the less well off would have been driving thirties and forties cars (assuming they could afford a car). I guess it's the difference between creating a themed place in the vein of something you'd see at the Ideal Homes Exhibition in 1959, and creating the sort of house that folks would actually have really lived in in 1959. Two very, very different beasts.

Course, if that's what they want to do, fair play to them, as long as they enjoy it - it's their home and their money. It just seems glaringly incorrect to me for it to be represented as an accurate recreation of a 1950s home.

In general, I don't think I'd want to live like that myself. Why would I want to have a 50s black and white TV when I could have a huge modern screen with high quality surround sound, for instance.... Maybe if i had several homes, I'd love to do a couple up as retro places - say, a thirties and a 50s, but I would feel very limited living like that full time. But then maybe it all depends on what you aspire to: I'm not trying to recreate those earlier eras, but rather to take and adapt the best of them - the clothes, the style, etc. I'm not gonig to place limitations on myself because they're not "period."

I too was disappointed they went with the black and white gimmick - I'd have liked to have seen that place in colour. Television was in black and white in the fifties, but real life wasn't!

Re: the laughter track et al.... I actually found it quite disturbing that this went out on whast was supposed to be a news channel. Sure, local television news has for years had the "quirky human interest" / "dog buys newspaper" spot-fillers at the end for years, but the interviewer's "acting", the general goofiness of it all, the laughter track (I guess it's supposed to emulate a fifties sitcom, though likely the height of that is they heard on on Happy Days - which is, of course, despite its setting a seventies sitcom...) .... on a news station !? I wouldn't be able to take that channel seriously after that.
 

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