Vintage Things That Have Disappeared In Your Lifetime?

[rue]

Just plain laziness as I see it. It takes ten minutes to wrap a present. However, in today's world, you are lucky to get a present in the first place---much less a wrapped one. I get roped into wrapping presents for my boss at work. I guess I do a better job so what the heck--I get paid by the hour.

Look at you Mr. Martha

 

[jamespowers]

Look at you Mr. Martha

Sneaky. It means I know how much they spend on everyone and I expect more for me.

 

[AtomicEraTom]

I still wrap gifts. I do like the gift bags though. Not because they're easier, because they're more economical. We only exchange gifts within the family, so we just re-use them. I have no problem with wrapping gifts. I have two on the table right now for my father I wrapped last night. It just seems wasteful, because I cannot re-use it.

Now that Christmas is almost over, may I add one thing to the disappearing vintage things list? Wrapped Christmas presents. The trend these recent years to giving your presents in gift bags is a triumph of convenience over, well, tradition, I guess.

 

[dnjan]

I still wrap gifts. I do like the gift bags though. Not because they're easier, because they're more economical.

My wife does most of the wrapping, but I wrap her gifts - in Sunday comics. She always knows which gifts are for her from me, just by looking at the wrapping.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Christmas at our house when I was growing up was punctuated by my mother yelling "SAVE THE PAPER SAVE THE PAPER WE CAN USE IT NEXT YEAR!" Needless to say she was one of the first converts to Gift Bags.

 

[scottyrocks]

I like the idea of Sunday comics as gift wrap. There are others (ahem) in my family who turn their noses up at it simply because the person who does the wrapping obviously didn't care enough to buy special, made-for-the-purpose paper and pay money for it.

 

[rue]

Christmas at our house when I was growing up was punctuated by my mother yelling "SAVE THE PAPER SAVE THE PAPER WE CAN USE IT NEXT YEAR!" Needless to say she was one of the first converts to Gift Bags.

My grandmother Bonnie did the same thing, but I don't remember ever seeing the gifts wrapped in the same paper year after year, so I don't know what she did with it.

 

[IsaacRN]

Call me crazy, but my Step Father had a huge roll of the basic brown roll of shipping paper. I enjoyed doing every gift in this paper, and then spiced them up with bows and ribbons. Most people that looked at the tree noticed the gifts that I wrapped as being quite unique.

On a thing that has disappeared is foil christmas paper. This was a very thick/shiny type of paper in various colors. It would take a crease like no ones business. When I was a child, I had one grandparent that would use only this. It had embossed prints, but only came in solid colors. I was lucky enough to find it, although very expensive, for a few christmas'. Lately they only sell this type of wrapping, if your luck, for door coverings and it is even more expensive.

 

[dnjan]

Most of our wrapping paper (other than the Sunday comics that I used) came from the local grade school kids selling it as a fund-raiser.
I remember the thicker, shiny paper from that.
Once our kids (and the kids of our friends) moved on to high school/college, both the quality and the quantity of wrapping paper around the house has declined.

 

[John in Covina]

Now that Christmas is almost over, may I add one thing to the disappearing vintage things list? Wrapped Christmas presents. The trend these recent years to giving your presents in gift bags is a triumph of convenience over, well, tradition, I guess.

For those of us that don't have the wrapping gene and has a profound sense of self disappointment when trying to wrap a present - gift bags are perfectly acceptable. It's the thought that counts.

 

[AtomicEraTom]

I spend every Christmas being reminded of the fact that I will never have a career as a gift-wrapper.

For those of us that don't have the wrapping gene and has a profound sense of self disappointment when trying to wrap a present - gift bags are perfectly acceptable. It's the thought that counts.

 

[WineGuy]

I recently had a chuckle when a twenty something year old saw a photo on my computer screen that was of an LP album cover and sitting on it was the plastic 45-to-33 spindle adapter, she was utterly clueless.

 

[Yeps]

Call me crazy, but my Step Father had a huge roll of the basic brown roll of shipping paper. I enjoyed doing every gift in this paper, and then spiced them up with bows and ribbons. Most people that looked at the tree noticed the gifts that I wrapped as being quite unique.

For the past couple years (except this one) I wrapped my gifts in white butcher-block paper, tied with string. It made for a very clean, attractive pile under the tree.

 

[rue]

For the past couple years (except this one) I wrapped my gifts in white butcher-block paper, tied with string. It made for a very clean, attractive pile under the tree.

That's really strange.... I did too until this year.

 

[3PcSuit]

So support your independant neighborhood theatre, support traditional 35mm film -- while you still have a choice.

+1!


Just wanted to add, here in the staates,the "Big Three" chains basically got together (illegally, this is tantamount to trust-busting in the railroad days or Standard Oil) and got joint financing to SCRAP all their 35 machines.

The local theatre in town stopped getting film prints when they built a multiplex up the street.



So the local theatre owners were out on their asses, overnight. How is that legal to stop distributing film to a theatre because someone greedily built one far too close to it? Don't ship films to the NEW theatre, not the old one.


Anyway, the big three chains (who shall remain nameless) all buy Coke products, Orville Redenbacker, and stream taht Cinemedia garbage before the show (they co-own the company). That is graft, collusion and monopolism, and I urge everywone who val;ues the cinematic arts to insist on 35mm, and patronise as much as possible the local theatres (although there certainly are some dives I worked for, not insinuating anything about your theatre Lizzie).

If you know of a couple who got booted out of their cinema, and now eeks out a living oone city over, wouldn't you want to patronize them over the corporate stooges at a chain in cahoots with 90% of the rest of the screens in America?

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

Welcome to the era of the Mega Mondoplex.
25 screens of nothing I really want to see

 

[LizzieMaine]

Our theatre was actually a victim of cutthroat monopoly tactics before its resurrection. It had been owned continuously by the same family from 1923 until 2000, but when they decided to retire, it was sold to the regional chain that runs the multiplex just over the road in the next town. That chain shut the place down and sent a goon over to, literally, wreck everything -- he went thru the building with a sledgehammer destroying equipment and then turned the sprinklers on to be sure everything got soaked and moldy. They let the building sit empty and decaying like that for five years to ensure they'd have no competition until our local newspaper got involved and goaded the state antitrust authorities to investigate. The multiplexers were legally compelled to sell the place within six months to someone who would operate it as a theatre -- and it just happened that a wealthy summer resident with a fondness for theatres and historic buildings happened to come across the situation and took on the challenge. And here we are.

I *hate* chain multiplexes with a bloody passion, not just for what they did to our town personally, but for what they've done to the whole idea of cinematic presentation. Herd people into a stinky, sticky-floored hole, show them a dim, poorly-focused, hash-sounding, cretinous superhero picture, sell them some overpriced warmed-over stale popcorn and watered soda, and make them think that's what "the movies" are all about. No wonder the multiplex industry is coming off its worst year in recent memory -- it's committing suicide for the sake of the bottom line. And it couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of people.

 

[scottyrocks]

I *hate* chain multiplexes with a bloody passion, not just for what they did to our town personally, but for what they've done to the whole idea of cinematic presentation. Herd people into a stinky, sticky-floored hole, show them a dim, poorly-focused, hash-sounding, cretinous superhero picture, sell them some overpriced warmed-over stale popcorn and watered soda, and make them think that's what "the movies" are all about. No wonder the multiplex industry is coming off its worst year in recent memory -- it's committing suicide for the sake of the bottom line. And it couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of people.

Sounds like they're right in lockstep with the big box stores.

 

[Wally_Hood]

Welcome to the era of the Mega Mondoplex.
25 screens of nothing I really want to see

Echoed by Bruce Springsteen, re: cable tv:

I bought a bourgeois house in the Hollywood hills
With a truckload of hundred thousand dollar bills
Man came by to hook up my cable TV
We settled in for the night my baby and me
We switched 'round and 'round 'til half-past dawn
There was fifty-seven channels and nothin' on

 

[mdove]

When I was still wrapping presents I used the comics, and sometimes the sales flyers. There was/is no reason to waste a tree. Pretty paper used but once is a waste. My wife used to scream save the paper too.