What Happened....

[ChiTownScion]

My grandfather died two houses down the street from the house he was born in 75 years earlier. My mother has lived on that same street for all but a couple of years of her entire 77 year life.

I left that street for good when I was 25, and I don't like to go back for visits, because it's unrecognizable now. The last straw came a couple years back when somebody put a repulsive hulking McMansion on the vacant lot kids had used as an ad-hoc playground since the 19th Century, and took down a grove of pine trees that were older than the town itself. My mother wrote an enraged letter to the paper denouncing the owners of the lot, but it didn't help. Made her feel better, but otherwise it didn't help.

She didn't block 'em and climb atop her car to curse at 'em... or chuck an ashtray at 'em? Or go berserk with a sledge hammer on their motorcycle??

And some still claim that people cannot be rehabilitated !

 

[LizzieMaine]

You know how it is when a great athlete passes her prime. If she'd been twenty years younger she'd have chased them off the street with their own chain saws.

 

[BlueTrain]

There was an episode of an old TV cop show that was a comedy instead of a murder mystery. The plot, I think, was about an old woman who refused to leave her apartment so they could raze the building for urban renewal. The cops were funny and goofy and nothing bad ever happened where they patrolled but I don't remember how it turned out. That was also the basic plot of the second "Herbie" movie (the Volkswagen) about a developer that wanted some old woman's property.

 

[Fading Fast]

A similarly neat David vs. Goliath story is P.J. Clarks - a reasonably famous NYC bar in a 19th Century building - that held out against a developer building a skyscraper in the '60s. Despite a lot of pressure from the developer to get PJ's to sell, they didn't (actually, they did, but got a 99 year lease in the bargain) and is the only other building on the 3rd avenue side of the block. They look cozy together, don't they:

 

[LizzieMaine]

Bugs Bunny didn't like redevelopment either.

 

[Stearmen]

Back on topic, some men still wore hats in the 60s!

 

[Fading Fast]

Bugs Bunny didn't like redevelopment either.

It's great how the last scene of Bug's home next to the skyscraper perfectly foreshadows P.J. Clarkes' future state. Nice find Lizzie.

 

[GHT]

Back on topic, some men still wore hats in the 60s!

They certainly did.

Looking at photos of yesteryear, there's hardly a soul without a hat, and how those hats finished off the smart attire that was worn back then

Many theories have been put forward as to why there was a decline in hat wearing, classic smart hats I mean, not the ubiquitous cap, worn back to front. In the past few years the neck tie has become far less prevalent, will it too go the same way?

 

[Tiki Tom]

Many theories have been put forward as to why there was a decline in hat wearing, classic smart hats I mean, not the ubiquitous cap, worn back to front. In the past few years the neck tie has become far less prevalent, will it too go the same way?

Could it be that proper hats disappeared in part because people are no longer out doors much on a typical workday? First, you are in your car where hats don’t usually fit; then you are in your building. Be interesting to see if hats declined in direct proportion to how people stopped walking to work, shopping, restaurants. No body walks anymore. As for ties, they are already gone in my office except for on a few over-50 old school holdouts. I wear ties 5 days a week and hats most every day in winter, not so frequently in summer. But they are usually for warmth or sun protection. Once upon a time it might have been a style statement too, but not so much anymore I think.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Hat wearing was already on the decline by the mid-1930s. There's extensive film footage of crowds at the 1933 and 1939 World's Fairs, and you see quite a few more hatless men in 1939 compared to 1933.

College boys were especially known for not wearing hats. There was even a song about it:

Ties are usually seen here only on lawyers, defendants, and guests of honor at funerals.

 

[The1940sHousewife]

I wish they came back. I've heard hats disappeared because JFK never wore one so hats fell out of style.

 

[MikeKardec]

In the late 1930s my father bragged to several girlfriends that he never wore a hat. This was his way of showing that he was a rebel, like having long hair in 1967. There was also the issue of people fearful of the sun, a cautious move that went away for a few decades and then returned with the ozone hole.