Vintage Things That Have Disappeared In Your Lifetime?

[HudsonHawk]

It mighta choked Artie, but it ain't gonna choke Stymie...

 

[LizzieMaine]

I always knew Stymie was a LaGuardia man.

 

[2jakes]

I'm not going to mention his height or a Napoleon complex, nope, not going to mention it.

Too late pal .
He might retaliate. Might need your girl for “back-up”.

Never knew if Lou was a Fedora member.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Nah, he always wore a derby.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

The Cubs not going to the World Series.

 

[Bigger Don]

The Cubs not going to the World Series.

Weren't 1929-1945 at least partially in the Golden Era?
1945 World Series Detroit Tigers Lost, 4-3
1938 World Series New York Yankees Lost, 4-0
1935 World Series Detroit Tigers Lost, 4-2
1932 World Series New York Yankees Lost, 4-0
1929 World Series Philadelphia Athletics Lost, 4-1

 

[Bigger Don]

 

[LizzieMaine]

People do forget that the Cubs were among the class of the National League during the Era -- they mixed it up with the Giants and the Cardinals during the thirties, but they were always in the race. The "lovable loser" image coincided precisely with the Baby Boom, for whatever that's worth. But whatever they accomplished in the thirties, not winning a World Series since 1908 is mind-boggling.

Think about that for a moment. A hundred and eight years ago. There are less than a hundred people in the United States alive today who were alive then, and it's doubtful that even the oldest of them -- who would have been five years old -- have any memory of it.

Only six members of the last Cubs pennant winner, in 1945, were alive in 1908 -- pitchers Paul Derringer, George Hennessey, Ray Prim, Ray Starr, Hy Vandenburg, and outfielder Johnny Moore. Moore, the oldest of these players, was four years old in 1908. Phil Cavaretta, who led the '45 Cubs in hitting, was born eight years after the last Cub world championship, and died in 2010 at the age of 94.

The last survivor of the 1908 Cubs, pitcher Bill Mack, has been dead for forty-five years.

The last surviving member of the 1945 Cubs, infielder Lenny Merullo, died last year at the age of 98.

 

[BobHufford]

Maypoles. At least in this area.

 

[MisterGrey]

Two outstanding pictures. I love the exhibit one's full glory and the miniaturized "realism" of the single machine.

It's funny, a year or so ago, I was meeting a friend in a different neighborhood and walked by a - I kid you not - pinball arcade that was new, but had pinball machines out of the '40s - '70s and early video machines (the stuff that was popular in the '80s). Then, the next day, I caught an article that said the Hipsters (of course) were getting into the "retro" games and stores like the one I saw were popping up.

That said, after seeing the store and reading the article on back-to-back days, I haven't seen or heard much more about the putative revival since.

This may be a regional thing. Pinball machines in "hipster" hangouts are a TREMENDOUS thing in Oklahoma and Texas (at least, the regions of those states that have a hipster population). It's unusual to go into a bar or movie theater that DOESN'T have pinball games and/or early 80s arcade equipment. The Alamo Drafthouse chain, in particular, would be incomplete with at least two pinball machines in every lobby.

For my own addition to this list, I'll add the Roadside Attraction/Tourist Trap. I seem to recall seeing very few of these growing up on our annual road trips, but they were still something real of which I was acutely aware. Heck, they even got nods on kids' shows in the late 1980s as a phenomenon the viewer was supposed to be familiar with, which says something about their ubiquity even that late into the game. Since about the mid 90s/early 2000s, though, I think that the general "freak factor" of the internet and the decline in road trips as a cultural norm have pretty much destroyed the "industry."

 

[MisterGrey]

Interesting fact -- pinball was illegal in New York City from 1942 to 1976. Mayor LaGuardia really really really really hated pinball machines for their connection to gambling and racketeering, and he liked nothing better than to go down to the warehouse and smash up a few.

This is really fascinating to me as a dilettante of Times Square history. I know that the Playland Arcade was a fixture there throughout the 1970s, predating the ban by at least several years. Was there a particular sort of pinball game that was explicitly banned, or was Playland just yet another example of the authorities turning their backs on 42nd Street activity?

 

[LizzieMaine]

All pinball was banned -- but especially toward the end of the period, the ban got ignored, or operators paid a little graft to the police to avoid attention. LaGuardia's successors as mayor didn't share his antipathy toward pinball, burlesque, or artichokes -- or racketeering, for that matter -- so a lot of what he instituted fell by the wayside as the years went on. The story is that a pinball advocate actually brought a machine to a City Council meeting to prove that it was a game of skill and not a game of chance, and it was that demonstration that finally ended the ban.

LaGuarida really should have gone after juke boxes, which were overwhelmingly dominated by racketeers thruout the Era, and for quite a while after, but I guess he must've liked to dance.

 

[Fading Fast]

There's an almost-goes-by-so-fast-you'll-miss-it moment in the movie "Footloose" where Sara Jessica Parker walks into a diner and they are wheeling out a pinball machine (maybe a video game, but I think it was pinball) and she says something like "you've got to be kidding - this town is a joke" (in the context of the movie, you know it is being taken away as the town leaders are trying to crack down on activities that, in their very traditional opinions, lead young people astray). That's the moment, then the movie moves on to its main theme where dancing is the great threat to morality of the town's young people.

 

[Siggmund]

Maybe someone already mentioned lead toothpaste tubes? Hard to believe, these days, but they were convenient: you didn't have to roll up the tube from the beginning every time you brushed your teeth. (First world problem.)

 

[LizzieMaine]

Eighty years ago you could buy a toothpaste (Pebeco, to be exact) that contained potassium chlorate. This substance was used to release oxygen in your mouth as you brushed, giving a pleasant foamy effect. It was also poisonous if you swallowed too much of it, which led to at least one known case of someone committing suicide by eating an entire tube of Pebeco. Potassium chlorate is also a key ingredient in percussion caps and fireworks, which gives a whole new meaning to "shooting off your mouth."

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

A few years ago there was a museum display of pulp magazines with their garish colors. One was singled out for its personal condemnation by Fiorello LaGuardia. He had seen it at a newsstand and complained about the scantily-clad woman on the cover. Strangely enough, he said nothing about the grinning Yellow Peril Chinaman who was also on the cover, torturing the scantily-clad lady.

 

[2jakes]

Convertibles.

Last one was a beetle in ’67.

 

[Zombie_61]

Convertibles...Last one was a beetle in ’67.

I've seen some newer model convertibles here and there in recent years but, strangely, never with the top down.

 

[2jakes]

I've seen some newer model convertibles here and there in recent years but, strangely, never with the top down.

I also don’t see as much color as in the past.
Most today are dark, grey or silver.

 

[LizzieMaine]

A few years ago there was a museum display of pulp magazines with their garish colors. One was singled out for its personal condemnation by Fiorello LaGuardia. He had seen it at a newsstand and complained about the scantily-clad woman on the cover. Strangely enough, he said nothing about the grinning Yellow Peril Chinaman who was also on the cover, torturing the scantily-clad lady.

That was a pretty famous case -- the publisher of that particular magazine, "Spicy Detective," got in very hot water, and very nearly went to jail for violating city obscenity laws because of a picture in that issue which, shall we say, revealed a bit too much south-of-the-border terrain. That publisher got one of his low-level employees, a schmo named Herbie Siegel, to take the rap in the case in exchange for a promise of lifetime employment, and decided then and there that he needed to find a more legitimate line of business. He found a struggling publisher of comic magazines, took it over and muscled out its founder, and thru a combination of strong-arm distribution methods and the luck of stumbling onto a character that would become world-famous, he built it into the most successful company in that line. The publisher was Harry Donenfeld and the company was DC Comics. And well into the 1970s, even after Harry had gone to where all magazine publishers inevitably go, employees at DC would see this short, fat, old man sitting around the offices reading the Racing Form, and be told the story of Herbie Siegel, "Spicy Detective," and how he kept Harry out of jail.