Is it me or has it become harder to sell things on Classifieds or anywhere else?

[tonyb]

I just read a piece online about a 1958-vintage, A. Quincy Jones-designed, Eichler-built house in Concord, California.

For MCM enthusiasts, that’s like invoking the names of God the Father and God the Son, while eagerly awaiting the arrival of the Holy Spirit.

The homeowner, a young fellow of apparent means, is quoted saying this about his home’s era …

“Everything around us in that decade was designed differently — cars, houses, toaster ovens — everything. I think mid-century modernism was one of America’s most incredible eras to be alive. Or so I hear from those who lived it.”

Well, okay. It some ways it was. I dig the young man’s house. It’s beautiful, indeed, and, having been to Concord a time or two myself, I can see how a person would find much to like about it.

Still, few were living in A. Quincy Jones-designed Eichlers in 1958. Even most of the new construction back then hardly resembled it.

I cite this as another example of the human tendency to romanticize the recent past, their parents’ and grandparents’ eras, generally. For the fortunate fellow living in that beautiful house in Concord, that’s the go-go post-War years.

 

[Edward]

Do you good folks in the USA and UK have this phenomenon where young guys wear skinny suits with no socks? Just trouser legs that are too short, then two inches of hairy ankle, then shoes. It's gotten really common around here.

Something you see in London moreso in the Summer, usually among younger, more fashionable men - the sort who pay heed to fashion bloggers or GQ or the likes. I get the impression it's starting to change, though. A lot of the online ads I see for mainstream fast-fashion places are starting to push high (natural) waists and longer, wide legs, so....

I edited my post to more accurately reflect my sense of the level of hat-wearing among the masses, as it does more coincide with yours.

Wearing a ”proper” hat may not have a guy sticking out like the sore thumb of lore, but he might still be identified as “the guy in the hat.”

Yes, I think that's fair. Interestingly, I find it gets less remarked when I'm obviously in a suit; more casual wearing of a brimmed hat seems to mark it out as odd. Maybe people 'get' it better in a certain context that chimes with their frame of reference. Mind you, that can be odd too. I don't mind the slightly off gangster, or even 'hey cowboy' references when I'm in a fedora, it's usually just people trying to say "I like that" within their own frame of pop culture reference. The one sinister experience I've had was one day about fifteen years ago. I wore a 1950s West German military overcoat at the time, bundled up with that fastened to a white silk scarf at the neck, and a carbon grey Akubra Fed. On the way through the local market, one individual called me, to paraphrase him, an unclean, fornicating follower of Judaism, then later on that same afternoon a man leaned out of a white van and shouted "You Nazi C***!" at me. Same outfit, two very different reactions. Neither got a reaction - and neither was clearly confident enough for it to be more than a hiss as I went past (to the point I didn't even realise it was aimed at me til I was a hundred yards on) or yelled from a moving vehicle. Odd, though. That said, those stick out because they were unusual reactions.

I cite this as another example of the human tendency to romanticize the recent past, their parents’ and grandparents’ eras, generally. For the fortunate fellow living in that beautiful house in Concord, that’s the go-go post-War years.

I wish I could remember where, but years ago I read a great piece on nostalgia. I think it was one of those long-form, Sunday Times Magazine type pieces on vintage lifestylers, around the time the 40s were the hip thing in Britain. Several decades covered - 40s, 50s, 60 I think - it was before you'd see 80s and later being a big thing, and when 70s were only something you'd see revived by old punks and kids going to 70s themed night where they played disco (surfboards optional). The piece pointed out that in every case, none of the lifestylers lived through the period they chose to replicate, typically having been born one to two decades thereafter. Often it was an era that would have been their parents' childhood, and more associated with their grandparents as adults. I'm all for this sort of thing of course as long as its knowing... and not an excuse to indulge some rather unpleasant opinions ("Wasn't Britain better before women and ethnics got uppity", "Bring back national service / conscription" - the latter exclusively a point of view popular among those too old to be conscripted) under cover of "being vintage". I suppose it's a big part of why the Chappist identity has long appealed to me - 'modernity in moderation', or - as Gustav Temple himself once memorably put it when asked on television what Chappism is, "It's about celebrating and retaining what was good about the past, without the bigotry and the bloodsports."

Another interesting trend in nostalgia in the English speaking world on this side of the pond is often how Americanised it is. Which is fine: Old Hollywood, rockabilly, rock and roll... an the rest. A certain Britishness to it does dominate for the WW2 period (to this day a very core part of the British, specifically English, sense of identity for very many people) and into the 60s, but otherwise a strong American influence. Again, I'm entirely cool with this: my style icons are Bogart and Brando - but it's a shame if people lose sense of 'real' history and where nostalgia differs. The shiny chrome rock and roll 1950s were really very drab in Britain and Ireland - and I know not all Elvis made it seem in the US. This is very pronounced also in the current wave of eighties nostalgia for the Stranger Things generation - or maybe, being old enough to remember the real 80s, I just notice it more....

All done and said, I'm not anti-nostalgia, but I do think it healthy to know where the fun fantasy and the historical reality cross over - and diverge.

 

[tonyb]

^^^^^^^
The King Tut exhibit that toured the U.S. in 1978 made a stop in Seattle. My sister-in-law (RIP) somehow finagled tickets to what was billed a “private showing” and saw to it one of those tickets made its way to me.

The event was well-attended but not so crowded that a person couldn’t linger a bit at any of the displays. (I’ve attended other blockbuster exhibits — The Dead Sea Scrolls, for instance — where I had difficulty seeing the displays at all, what with the crowds.)

The show lived up to the hype. It was nothing short of spectacular. I was left thinking there is an innate human aesthetic sensibility that transcends time and place.

Around here the material culture of the 1930s and ‘40s is called “the apex of style.” But for people with a critical eye, it doesn’t take much fancy book learnin’ to recognize what the styles of the “Golden Era” owe to what came before — way before, in some cases. (See how the “Egyptian revival“ styles of the 1920s strongly influenced art deco.)

A few years back at an antique mall in Denver I came across a poster promoting the Seattle stop on the King Tut tour. (It features the famous gold and lapis lazuli death mask, of course.) I took that as a sign from some ancient deity. It’s been on a wall in a bedroom that serves as an office here ever since.

And …

The Lascaux cave paintings date to about 17,000 years ago, or so it is now estimated. (Previous estimates were for far earlier dates.) That’s some beautiful stuff, too.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Every house I ever saw in every era I've lived in was a mishmash of elements from different periods, nearly all of them well-worn and second hand. I slept in a bed that first saw light when Grover Cleveland was president, our household furniture covered the gamut from the 1910s to the 1940s, and the only things that clued you into the fact that it was the 1960s were the television set and the rotogravure photo of JFK clipped from the Sunday magazine and hung on the wall in a Woolworths frame, next to the yellowed portrait of FDR. (If we'd been Catholics, there'd be a portrait of Jesus up there too.) And all the neighbors lived the same way. The few times I've ever been inside a house that was "decorated," as opposed to having a lot of stuff just accumulate, I always wondered if there'd be a gift shop on the way out.

The only house in popular culture that I ever saw that reflected the way people I knew lived was the Bunkers' house in "All In The Family." I not only recognized that house instantly the first time I saw it on television, I could smell it. I've never quite had that reaction to any other fictional environment.

 

[Benny Holiday]

When I was a kid in 70s, my parents used to buy new furniture on hire purchase. Even at the ages of 7 and 8, I had the sensibility that the colours were garish: dark wooden dining table, bright orange Namco chairs, lime green curtains. My Mum still had her old 1960 rocket-ship Mixmaster in salmon pink, and some crockery from the 50s. Oh, and some cute little glazed pots for plants too - a Mexican donkey, a Mexican guy dozing up against a cactus (not really a comfortable proposition I'd have thought!). And I remember the kitchen table and chairs lasting through the 80s, but not the lounge, that was changed to a modular one at some time (now that was a very comfortable lounge suite. It got laid on more than sat on. It was a dark plush red).

Speaking of the 50s being not the TV version we're all so familiar with, when I was a teenager into Rockabilly I worked with a girl after school at the local supermarket whose dad was a bodgie - in the US, you'd have termed him a 'greaser'. We actually got to be good friends and I sadly attended his funeral just before Covid hit. Henry Twindley was his name. Anyway, in his late 40s then, Henry still had his DA and pompadour, and some really great memories and stories to share. I asked him what the 50s was like, and he told me straight out it was nothing like Happy Days or American Graffiti, at least not in Sydney. He told me when an bunch of guys at his work in 1954 told him he needed to adopt the 'American look, like Tony Curtis" and proceeded to cut his hair with a pair of old shears, his father's reaction was to smash his head through the plasterboard wall of their kitchen, shouting for him to never come home looking like that again. It was a rough working-class neighbourhood. The street gangs were not cartoonish, they were genuine thugs and they put people in hospital. There were drive-in movies but not drive-in restaurants; but there were 'milk bars', like soda shops where kids could go after school to hang out and listen to the jukebox.

As to housing design, there were a lot of new suburbs being built in the 50s and 'atomic design' was at the forefront here because of what media at the time termed the 'cultural cringe', which was when Australia started to turn its focus away from our British heritage post-WWII, and started to look to the USA for our cultural icons: Hollywood stars, American fashion, cars, furnishings and music, and Coca Cola. the only problem for adults was that rock'n'roll came with it.

In established suburbs, houses in the 1950s in Sydney looked like this:

Newer suburbs had houses like this:

 

[tonyb]

^^^^^^^
I get ”design” stuff from Australia in my daily email. I realize it’s representative of only a smallish slice of Australian architecture and such, but I get the sense that the coastal areas, where the overwhelming majority of y’all live, are a lot like California. On the infrequent occasions when the lovely missus and I contemplate where we might go should we bolt God’s Country, Australia is always mentioned. (The likelihood of that ever actually happening is quite remote.)

 

[tonyb]

Every house I ever saw in every era I've lived in was a mishmash of elements from different periods, nearly all of them well-worn and second hand. I slept in a bed that first saw light when Grover Cleveland was president, our household furniture covered the gamut from the 1910s to the 1940s, and the only things that clued you into the fact that it was the 1960s were the television set and the rotogravure photo of JFK clipped from the Sunday magazine and hung on the wall in a Woolworths frame, next to the yellowed portrait of FDR. (If we'd been Catholics, there'd be a portrait of Jesus up there too.) And all the neighbors lived the same way. The few times I've ever been inside a house that was "decorated," as opposed to having a lot of stuff just accumulate, I always wondered if there'd be a gift shop on the way out.

The only house in popular culture that I ever saw that reflected the way people I knew lived was the Bunkers' house in "All In The Family." I not only recognized that house instantly the first time I saw it on television, I could smell it. I've never quite had that reaction to any other fictional environment.

Among the more visually interesting homes I’ve ever visited were ones occupied by people of modest means. Sure, it would be nice to have crazy money to spend on stuff from DWR and RH and West Elm and all those places with new Range Rovers in the parking lots, but to my eye that stuff often reveals nothing so much as more money than imagination.

I have friends living in a yurt in one of the wettest places on the planet. Before that they had lived for years in a fifth-wheel trailer with a small room tacked onto it. I always admired and respected them for living within their means and not getting sucked into paying half their income or more in rent.

The yurt is outfitted in odds and ends acquired free or close to it — the old sinks and appliances and all that. The furnishings are similarly many and varied and found on the cheap. They told me what they had into the project, which eludes me at the moment, but it was but a few thousand dollars. And it’s really cool. I mean, really, really cool.

 

[Benny Holiday]

^^^^^^^
I get ”design” stuff from Australia in my daily email. I realize it’s representative of only a smallish slice of Australian architecture and such, but I get the sense that the coastal areas, where the overwhelming majority of y’all live, are a lot like California. On the infrequent occasions when the lovely missus and I contemplate where we might go should we bolt God’s Country, Australia is always mentioned. (The likelihood of that ever actually happening is quite remote.)

The climate is very similar to California. If you get out this way for a holiday, let me know, I'll show you around all the best spots. The far north coast of New South Wales is like Hawaii, but since characters with names like Hemsworth moved to Byron Bay it's way overcrowded with tourists and expensive as all get-out.

 

[Hurricane Jack]

Is it me or has it become harder to sell things on Classifieds or anywhere else?​

I had to laugh when seeing this thread title reminded me of the quip, “It’s the economy, stupid” made by James Carville, strategist for Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign, to staffers & campaign workers.

 

[Edward]

Is it me or has it become harder to sell things on Classifieds or anywhere else?​

I had to laugh when seeing this thread title reminded me of the quip, “It’s the economy, stupid” made by James Carville, strategist for Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign, to staffers & campaign workers.

Prevailing economic conditions have I'm sure taken their toll. I know I've bought an awful lot less from the US since the pound dropped in value in 2016. It's rallied a little, but not anywhere near close to what it once was. Certainly nothing like the glory days of that spell in 2008 when it was USD2.20 to the pound. Back then I even bought a few things I could have picked up locally here from the US for - including shipping and any customs charges and VAT - markedly less than I could in local shops in London. Strange days.

 

[Al 916]

Is it me or has it become harder to sell things on Classifieds or anywhere else?​

I had to laugh when seeing this thread title reminded me of the quip, “It’s the economy, stupid” made by James Carville, strategist for Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign, to staffers & campaign workers.

I should have known Gordon Brown could not have originally said that..

Or indeed anything

 

[tonyb]

…

Another interesting trend in nostalgia in the English speaking world on this side of the pond is often how Americanised it is. Which is fine: Old Hollywood, rockabilly, rock and roll... an the rest. A certain Britishness to it does dominate for the WW2 period (to this day a very core part of the British, specifically English, sense of identity for very many people) and into the 60s, but otherwise a strong American influence. Again, I'm entirely cool with this: my style icons are Bogart and Brando - but it's a shame if people lose sense of 'real' history and where nostalgia differs. The shiny chrome rock and roll 1950s were really very drab in Britain and Ireland - and I know not all Elvis made it seem in the US. This is very pronounced also in the current wave of eighties nostalgia for the Stranger Things generation - or maybe, being old enough to remember the real 80s, I just notice it more....

All done and said, I'm not anti-nostalgia, but I do think it healthy to know where the fun fantasy and the historical reality cross over - and diverge.

I’ve made a couple of hats for an English fellow who is part of a group that has recreated an American Wild West town. He also participates in a group that dresses in 1940s attire. He has sent photos. There appears to be a significant overlap in membership between the groups.

The majority of Americans are, for better or worse, descended from Europeans. Our culture is, to a great degree, an extension of Europe’s. The older monuments in the graveyard behind the rural Wisconsin church where my natural father is buried are in German, and he and his siblings often spoke German at home, and their parents and grandparents spoke it almost exclusively when they were within “the community.”

It’s little wonder, then, that we look to Europe and Europe looks to us.

 

[tonyb]

…

The piece pointed out that in every case, none of the lifestylers lived through the period they chose to replicate, typically having been born one to two decades thereafter. Often it was an era that would have been their parents' childhood, and more associated with their grandparents as adults. I'm all for this sort of thing of course as long as its knowing... and not an excuse to indulge some rather unpleasant opinions ("Wasn't Britain better before women and ethnics got uppity", "Bring back national service / conscription" - the latter exclusively a point of view popular among those too old to be conscripted) under cover of "being vintage". I suppose it's a big part of why the Chappist identity has long appealed to me - 'modernity in moderation', or - as Gustav Temple himself once memorably put it when asked on television what Chappism is, "It's about celebrating and retaining what was good about the past, without the bigotry and the bloodsports."


All done and said, I'm not anti-nostalgia, but I do think it healthy to know where the fun fantasy and the historical reality cross over - and diverge.

The aroma around this place back in the early days often carried a whiff of that to which you alluded — that the culture itself was superior back when Grandpa was a young man and things have gone almost entirely downhill since. There seemed among some of the more regular contributors back then a particular disdain for anything “hip,” be it “hippie“ or “hipster” or any other variation on that theme.

It wasn’t exclusively that, of course. There have always been the more thoughtful, less doctrinaire among us, although at times those softer voices got drowned out. It is to the better that the louder mouthed found this place less receptive to their often bigoted observations and took themselves elsewhere.

 

[Edward]

I’ve made a couple of hats for an English fellow who is part of a group that has recreated an American Wild West town. He also participates in a group that dresses in 1940s attire. He has sent photos. There appears to be a significant overlap in membership between the groups.

The majority of Americans are, for better or worse, descended from Europeans. Our culture is, to a great degree, an extension of Europe’s. The older monuments in the graveyard behind the rural Wisconsin church where my natural father is buried are in German, and he and his siblings often spoke German at home, and their parents and grandparents spoke it almost exclusively when they were within “the community.”

It’s little wonder, then, that we look to Europe and Europe looks to us.

Something I love in the US is the diaspora traditions. It can be irritating too, of course - especially when a fiction is presented as "the National Dish of Ireland" when in reality it is a completely US diaspora tradition that should be celebrated in its own right. But I love seeing how the roots of distinctly different traditions across the US have been built upon 'old country' traditions in areas with large immigrant concentrations, and how that has developed. The TV show Diners. Drive Ins and Dives used to look at that in a really interesting and accessible way.

The aroma around this place back in the early days often carried a whiff of that to which you alluded — that the culture itself was superior back when Grandpa was a young man and things have gone almost entirely downhill since. There seemed among some of the more regular contributors back then a particular disdain for anything “hip,” be it “hippie“ or “hipster” or any other variation on that theme.

It wasn’t exclusively that, of course. There have always been the more thoughtful, less doctrinaire among us, although at times those softer voices got drowned out. It is to the better that the louder mouthed found this place less receptive to their often bigoted observations and took themselves elsewhere.

Yes, I think there are those types - I tend to find that they largely burn themselves out on the vintage thing if it's not a primary interest but more of a 'front', as it were, for certain attitudes, and move on. We see it sometimes among the Chap crowd - typically they don't get the satire at first, and as they gradually realise that most / a majority of us really aren't what they would regard as "the right sort", they fade away.

I've long appreciated this place as somewhere where we do focus on common interest(s) in the period; I have no doubt at all that the House Rule on contemporary politics goes a long way to keeping it civil. I've seen one too many other forums on things as diverse as guitars and motorcycles become very poisonous very quickly where they aren't so discreet as us on those matters.

 

[tonyb]

…
I've long appreciated this place as somewhere where we do focus on common interest(s) in the period; I have no doubt at all that the House Rule on contemporary politics goes a long way to keeping it civil. I've seen one too many other forums on things as diverse as guitars and motorcycles become very poisonous very quickly where they aren't so discreet as us on those matters.

If not for that rule I would have left long ago. And even with that rule there remain some so taken with their own ideology that they attempt to slip it in wherever they can.

W.H. Auden is credited with saying “Most people enjoy the sight of their own handwriting as they enjoy the smell of their own farts.”

Substitute “keyboarding” for “handwriting” and we’re brought up to date.

 

[Hurricane Jack]

If not for that rule I would have left long ago. And even with that rule there remain some so taken with their own ideology that they attempt to slip it in wherever they can.

W.H. Auden is credited with saying “Most people enjoy the sight of their own handwriting as they enjoy the smell of their own farts.”

Substitute “keyboarding” for “handwriting” and we’re brought up to date.

My post above had nothing to do with politics. I was only thinking about the spendable income people might have, in relation to the thread’s title.

 

[tonyb]

My post above had nothing to do with politics. I was only thinking about the spendable income people might have, in relation to the thread’s title.

I wasn’t referring to anything you posted.

 

[tonyb]

Hagerty posted a piece today about the market for vintage British sports car going soft, what with the “baby boomers“ (I hate that designation, but we’re stuck with it) who coveted those cars when they were new either dying off or offloading their more superfluous possessions while “downsizing” into their senior years. And it appears that subsequent generations aren’t so enamored with the things.

I’ve owned an MGB and a Triumph Spitfire and a GT6. That’s been quite some time ago now. I’ve mentioned before that the reason I might be able to afford things like a car that in truth is more toy than practical means of transport is because I no longer buy things like cars that are in truth more toy than practical means of transport.

But I confess to being tempted by the more recent sports cars that also appeal to younger people — ‘90s vintage BMW Z3‘s and Porsche Boxsters, for instance, which are, for people in their 30s and 40s nearly as “vintage” as my British sports cars were when I was in my 30s and 40s.

 

[Amy Jeanne]

Edward said many people have contempt for their former vintage selves. I experienced this. I still see snobbery in "antique" and "vintage" areas. Total turn off. Explain to people what is correct instead of mocking them. They've all turned people off to "The Golden Era". I notice Gen Z with their love of the 70s to 00s are enthusiastic and love to share/compliment each other.

I just use all my waterfall furniture, read my history, watch my old movies, and just do me!

 

[Benny Holiday]

@Amy Jeanne this was the death of the Sydney Rockabilly scene that flourished in the 1980 and early 90s. Young kids who dug the style and wanted to get into it were snubbed and belittled by those established in the scene who thought they were some kind of vintage kingpins or something. As the founders of the scene that were teenagers in the early 80s hit their mid-20s and looked at settling down, getting married and having a serious career and kids, those younger guys and gals were the ones who should've stepped in to keep it going - except they figured they didn't need the BS and the grief and vanished from the subculture.

I started playing in bands in November 1990 and it was sad to see idiots destroy the happiness of kids who just wanted to dress up, go out and have a good time. I got into a huge argument with a couple of guys one night who bemoaned that the scene wasn't like it "in the old days." I called them filthy hypocrites, reminded them they were two of the major players who harassed those coming in who would've kept it going "like the old days".

Now it's all but gone. One or two bands, playing to 80 people aged 45-60 in tiny bars, from a scene that once had thousands of kids eager to learn about and enjoy 'atomic-era' music, clothes, cars and furniture. Well done to the morons. Mission successful, you wrecked an entire subculture that used to be positive and fun.