Why vintage?

[tonyb]

I don't know...that was 1998. Is 26 years enough time to label something "vintage"?

Seems close enough to yesterday to me, but then, I was already middle-aged by then, and I looked it.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve read or heard of domestic kitchens either built or last remodeled in the 1990s referred to as “dated.”

So, I dunno. I wouldn’t be tearing out a perfectly serviceable kitchen and dumping piles of money to rebuild it because some self-appointed arbiters of taste say it isn’t up to date. So maybe that makes me old. I’ll gladly wear it on my sleeve.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Ha, 1998!
1998, I bought Chicago's 16 from 1982.

 

[GHT]

I don't know...that was 1998. Is 26 years enough time to label something "vintage"?

In 1998, Tina's car, a series two BMW, was starting to produce some painful repair bills. It was eight years old and had quite high mileage on the clock. Time to bid farewell to it.

Looking at BMW's Tina said, "don't bother, I just want a small runaround like a VW Golf." Twenty-six years later her runaround is still her daily drive. It goes to show that the way to look after a car is to park it in a warm, dry and aerated garage along with a seventy-seven year old MG. But it's still "just" a Golf and is no further in reaching that magical status, which the MG has acquired, a status we call, vintage.

 

[tonyb]

In 1998, Tina's car, a series two BMW, was starting to produce some painful repair bills. It was eight years old and had quite high mileage on the clock. Time to bid farewell to it.

Looking at BMW's Tina said, "don't bother, I just want a small runaround like a VW Golf." Twenty-six years later her runaround is still her daily drive. It goes to show that the way to look after a car is to park it in a warm, dry and aerated garage along with a seventy-seven year old MG. But it's still "just" a Golf and is no further in reaching that magical status, which the MG has acquired, a status we call, vintage.

I’ve owned cars with a quarter million miles on the clock and driven others with a half million and more, on their original engines and transmissions. There comes a point with all cars where keeping them going is throwing good money after bad, but that point can be far more distant than most people know. And it isn’t that the more expensive cars are necessarily the more durable.

 

[tonyb]

Yesterday a friend mentioned that “bohemian,” sometimes abbreviated “boho,” styles are once again fashionable, as they were in the “hippie” era.

Yes, they are, I said, but with a twist, as all retro styles are. Fifty-plus years ago, when I was shaggy and dressed in patched-up Levi’s and flannel shirts and huaraches, I and my friends and associates outfitted our abodes with cable spools and hatch covers and ratty old chairs found at the curb with their stuffing spilling out. It wasn’t just a lack of funds that had us going that route (although that was a large part of it), but a desire not to look like we came from money, because, you know, that was for the squares. Aspiring to material comforts was looked down upon.

These days, bohemian stuff runs real money. The garret in an old house a stone’s throw from downtown Seattle I rented for next to nothing is now a condo that was recently listed for half a million dollars, with a several-hundred-dollar-per-month condo fee. And no off-street parking.

So yeah, boho is back, for you to adopt, if you got the scratch.

 

[Tiki Tom]

^^^^. True. A classic example being the ripped-up and “distressed” looking jeans that cost $150 a pair.

 

[tonyb]

^^^^^^
Or the rockabilly look adopted by people a couple generations (at least) younger than the people who first adopted that style. It was generally exaggerated by the later people, often to an extreme degree.

 

[Turnip]

They’re still available, the good „old“ things……for those well stuffed…

 

[Tiki Tom]

What!? A $19,000 pair of jeans?

https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/18/style/how-much-is-too-much-to-spend-on-jeans/index.html

Our Culture has jumped the shark.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I love that looking like a second-quarter-of-the-twentieth-century working-class woman who shops from Sears and Roebuck will never ever be trendy.

 

[tonyb]

^^^^^^
I dunno. I know a woman who could play Rosie the Riveter in her everyday attire. It looks good on her.

 

[tonyb]

What!? A $19,000 pair of jeans?

https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/18/style/how-much-is-too-much-to-spend-on-jeans/index.html

Our Culture has jumped the shark.

Yeah, that’s nuts. Makes me all the happier not to be a part of that world.

 

[GHT]

What!? A $19,000 pair of jeans?

https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/18/style/how-much-is-too-much-to-spend-on-jeans/index.html

Our Culture has jumped the shark.

For $19,000 I can get three pairs and have some change left over.
https://www.harveynichols.com/prole...ate&utm_campaign=HarveyNicholsUK&utm_content=

 

[tonyb]

^^^^. True. A classic example being the ripped-up and “distressed” looking jeans that cost $150 a pair.

 

[tonyb]

For me I have to be vigilant about being nostalgic for time that never existed. .....or if it did exist it was only in my imagination.

I’ve been witnessing a quite elderly person increasingly creating an imaginary personal history.

It’s attributable in part to the sort of cognitive decline typical of people that age, and, I think, in part to wanting life to be something other than what it has been. There’s just so much loss when a person gets to that age, and so little remaining opportunity to make of it something better, that people fall into magical thinking.

 

[Tiki Tom]

My problem is that I can’t get my magical thinking to the level where I actually believe it.

 

[tonyb]

^^^^^^^
Pretty much the same here. My magical thoughts are generally of the superstitious type (knock on wood, etc.), but I recognize it for what it is.

 

[Tiki Tom]

Oh, my magical thinking can sometimes run all over the place. My career was more exciting than it actually was. That dame at the book Store has a thing for me. I’m better looking than the evidence supports. My foreign language skills are fantastic. I fit the wise old man stereotype. The list goes on. Unfortunately (or fortunately) I’m perfectly aware of the truth… and know better than to make risky claims to anyone but the man in the mirror. Still, sometimes these exaggerated tales to myself help me get through the day.

 

[Edward]

In 1998, Tina's car, a series two BMW, was starting to produce some painful repair bills. It was eight years old and had quite high mileage on the clock. Time to bid farewell to it.

Looking at BMW's Tina said, "don't bother, I just want a small runaround like a VW Golf." Twenty-six years later her runaround is still her daily drive. It goes to show that the way to look after a car is to park it in a warm, dry and aerated garage along with a seventy-seven year old MG. But it's still "just" a Golf and is no further in reaching that magical status, which the MG has acquired, a status we call, vintage.

It's interesting how it goes. My dad is still semi-active on the vintage car scene back in the north of Ireland. Always been all about the cars (there was once, in the 90s, a guy who turned up in a 30s Lagonda, dressed the part. The hardcore laughed at him for it, taking pride in the fact they looked like slightly unwashed IT workers). But there's nobody much under their mid-late 50s interested now. Partly I suppose a generation of kids who don't know how to double-declutch. Partly financial: there just aren't many people now can afford to run a purely hobby car, many don't have anywhere to store one. Also it seems that in the car world enthusiasms shift over time. Folks in my dad's generation were restoring 1930s & 40s cars in the 70s, stuff they remembered still being on the road in their childhood. I remember our neighbours in 1977 driving a ten year old Herald 13/60. I'd been on all the pre-war Austin club runs by then, but it was the first car I'd seen with tailfins, I remember calling it the Batmobile. Twenty years later the "Classic Car" scene was all about cars of that era. Now it's dying out. There are kids restoring old cars they remember from childhood, but it's all first generation Golfs, Mk III Escorts, and the likes. I see a lot of hobbyists restoring things like XR2 Fiestas from the late 80s / early 90s (cars now older than many on the runs I was taken on in the 80s and 90s were then, when the cutoff was something about 1973). Sort of thing they wanted when they were first driving, but couldn't afford. Alien to me.... but then TBH when I started driving I hated doing it, and I hated the aesthetics of contemporary cars - the attraction of something vintage for me would have been something like a Morris Minor (late model, ideally a two door from about 68/69), reliable and with a style that appealed to make driving a bit more bearable... I was never interested really in anything then in production, so I suppose that's why I've never felt any nostalgia for the cars of the 90s. I'd probably have felt very differently had I grown up in a household where there wasn't already a sense of "older vehicles are nicer" of course. I suspect had we lived in a climate where salt on the roads in Winter wasn't lethal for an older car, my dad would likely have driven something vintage year round.

^^^^^^
Or the rockabilly look adopted by people a couple generations (at least) younger than the people who first adopted that style. It was generally exaggerated by the later people, often to an extreme degree.

Rockabilly is a fascinating subculture that way. I don't think it's ever been a mainstream 50s thing, more like it stayed true to the somewhat underground vibe it had before rock and roll hit the mainstream. I do see some intermingling of styles in there, which ring truer somehow than a fashion-plate approach. A lot of the girls sport a very fifties look augmented with 40s hairstyle, victory rolls and the likes. I like the range of looks on the scene, everything from a very authentic 50s look through to significant adaptations via punk rock. I suppose much of that stems from it being an active and ongoing scene particularly in mainland Europe, as distinct from a lot of UK Vintage events which have more of a re-enactment vibe (and tend towards more often people who dress for events rather than it being something they do daily. Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course - just a different approach).

I'd say the biggest difference between "reality" and the rockabilly scene is age. Back in the 50s, inevitably, it was a youth thing, these days there's a wide variety of people at gigs who still all turn out on what was really young people's wear in the 50s. Which is fine by me, as long as nobody starts claiming that their jeans and t-shirt are more accurate than what somebody else is wearing to a dance to which neither of them would have been admitted wearing that in 1958... Beyond that of course in the UK and Europe it's very much an Americana thing as distinct from what the 'real' 50s were like in our parts of the world. As Sean 'Two Types' used to note in this place, at least in Britain the concentrations of interest in rockabilly and 50s Americana are quite concentrated around areas where there was once a strong USAF presence in the post-war years.

It's interesting what revivalist scenes do evolve in terms of their own norms. I've been seeing this very markedly in recent years with kids getting into "the eighties" in a manner which in no way reflects the reality of what it was like here. They think it's all ET and Stranger Things, when in reality it was a lot more like Pride or (barring the obvious) An American Werewolf in London. If you watch pretty much any British-made television or film up to about 1984 or so, the thing that surprises many people is just how much like the 70s it actually looks. Even in the back end of the 80s it was far from uncommon to still see 70s cars around. I distinctly remember three Austin Maxis in our village alone still daily drivers as late as 1990. I doubt there are many of those left now, though.

 

[Edward]

In 1998, Tina's car, a series two BMW, was starting to produce some painful repair bills. It was eight years old and had quite high mileage on the clock. Time to bid farewell to it.

Looking at BMW's Tina said, "don't bother, I just want a small runaround like a VW Golf." Twenty-six years later her runaround is still her daily drive. It goes to show that the way to look after a car is to park it in a warm, dry and aerated garage along with a seventy-seven year old MG. But it's still "just" a Golf and is no further in reaching that magical status, which the MG has acquired, a status we call, vintage.

It's interesting how it goes. My dad is still semi-active on the vintage car scene back in the north of Ireland. Always been all about the cars (there was once, in the 90s, a guy who turned up in a 30s Lagonda, dressed the part. The hardcore laughed at him for it, taking pride in the fact they looked like slightly unwashed IT workers). But there's nobody much under their mid-late 50s interested now. Partly I suppose a generation of kids who don't know how to double-declutch. Partly financial: there just aren't many people now can afford to run a purely hobby car, many don't have anywhere to store one. Also it seems that in the car world enthusiasms shift over time. Folks in my dad's generation were restoring 1930s & 40s cars in the 70s, stuff they remembered still being on the road in their childhood. I remember our neighbours in 1977 driving a ten year old Herald 13/60. I'd been on all the pre-war Austin club runs by then, but it was the first car I'd seen with tailfins, I remember calling it the Batmobile. Twenty years later the "Classic Car" scene was all about cars of that era. Now it's dying out. There are kids restoring old cars they remember from childhood, but it's all first generation Golfs, Mk III Escorts, and the likes. I see a lot of hobbyists restoring things like XR2 Fiestas from the late 80s / early 90s (cars now older than many on the runs I was taken on in the 80s and 90s were then, when the cutoff was something about 1973). Sort of thing they wanted when they were first driving, but couldn't afford. Alien to me.... but then TBH when I started driving I hated doing it, and I hated the aesthetics of contemporary cars - the attraction of something vintage for me would have been something like a Morris Minor (late model, ideally a two door from about 68/69), reliable and with a style that appealed to make driving a bit more bearable... I was never interested really in anything then in production, so I suppose that's why I've never felt any nostalgia for the cars of the 90s. I'd probably have felt very differently had I grown up in a household where there wasn't already a sense of "older vehicles are nicer" of course. I suspect had we lived in a climate where salt on the roads in Winter wasn't lethal for an older car, my dad would likely have driven something vintage year round.

^^^^^^
Or the rockabilly look adopted by people a couple generations (at least) younger than the people who first adopted that style. It was generally exaggerated by the later people, often to an extreme degree.

Rockabilly is a fascinating subculture that way. I don't think it's ever been a mainstream 50s thing, more like it stayed true to the somewhat underground vibe it had before rock and roll hit the mainstream. I do see some intermingling of styles in there, which ring truer somehow than a fashion-plate approach. A lot of the girls sport a very fifties look augmented with 40s hairstyle, victory rolls and the likes. I like the range of looks on the scene, everything from a very authentic 50s look through to significant adaptations via punk rock. I suppose much of that stems from it being an active and ongoing scene particularly in mainland Europe, as distinct from a lot of UK Vintage events which have more of a re-enactment vibe (and tend towards more often people who dress for events rather than it being something they do daily. Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course - just a different approach).

I'd say the biggest difference between "reality" and the rockabilly scene is age. Back in the 50s, inevitably, it was a youth thing, these days there's a wide variety of people at gigs who still all turn out on what was really young people's wear in the 50s. Which is fine by me, as long as nobody starts claiming that their jeans and t-shirt are more accurate than what somebody else is wearing to a dance to which neither of them would have been admitted wearing that in 1958... Beyond that of course in the UK and Europe it's very much an Americana thing as distinct from what the 'real' 50s were like in our parts of the world. As Sean 'Two Types' used to note in this place, at least in Britain the concentrations of interest in rockabilly and 50s Americana are quite concentrated around areas where there was once a strong USAF presence in the post-war years.

It's interesting what revivalist scenes do evolve in terms of their own norms. I've been seeing this very markedly in recent years with kids getting into "the eighties" in a manner which in no way reflects the reality of what it was like here. They think it's all ET and Stranger Things, when in reality it was a lot more like Pride or (barring the obvious) An American Werewolf in London. If you watch pretty much any British-made television or film up to about 1984 or so, the thing that surprises many people is just how much like the 70s it actually looks. Even in the back end of the 80s it was far from uncommon to still see 70s cars around. I distinctly remember three Austin Maxis in our village alone still daily drivers as late as 1990. I doubt there are many of those left now, though.