Behold the American Motors Corporation mid-'70s car lineup in its full glory, from the 1975 Chicago Auto Show. There was the Gremlin, Hornet, Matador, and the all-new Pacer. You just cannot beat that color palette.
Here's a delicious slice of life from the 1950s for your viewing pleasure. More specifically, a day in the life of Chicago in 1953. I found this set of vintage Kodachrome slides on eBay, and they're a beaut. It appears to me that the photographer took in a Chicago Cubs game at venerable Wrigley Field and also spent some time hoofing around the Friendly Confines as well. The auction puts the location of the street scenes as Maxwell Street, for what it's worth.
First up is the baseball game. I can't tell for certain who the Cubs are playing, but only one National League team in 1953 wore red caps at all -- the Philadelphia Phillies. The sign in front of Wrigley is advertising tickets for the three-game series from June 23-25, so I think it's reasonable to guess these photos were shot duri...
Ask anyone who was of driving age in the United States during the 1970s, and they likely remember well the two major oil shortage crises the country faced. The first oil shortage crisis, which lasted from October 1973 until March 1974, was set off when the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries, or the OAPEC (consisting of the Arab members of OPEC, plus Egypt, Syria and Tunisia), proclaimed an oil embargo. This was reportedly in response to the U.S. supplying Israel with arms following the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
On October 16, 1973, OPEC announced a decision to raise the posted price of oil by 70%, to $5.11 a barrel. In the United States, the retail price of a gallon of gasoline rose from a national average of 38.5 cents in May 1973 to 55.1 cents in June 1974. President Richar...
Getting to a World's Fair is definitely one of the items on my bucket list. But until I can attend one in person, I guess the next best thing will have to be to look at some vintage World's Fair postcards. The selection I present here spans every officially sanctioned and recognized fair and exposition from the first half of the 20th century. Due to the outbreak of World War II, there were no fairs held between 1941 and 1957. The next part of this overview (to be published later) will pick up with Expo 58 and run through Expo '98.
Exposition Universelle (Paris, 1900)
(via)
Pan-American Exposition (Buffalo, 1901)
Louisiana Purchase Exposition (St. Louis, 1904)
(via Brenda)
Liège International (Belgium, 1905)
(via alanp_photo)
Milan International (1906)
Irish International...
As the GOP prepares to party in Tampa and nominate Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan to take on Barack Obama this November, I thought I'd take a look at Republican National Conventions gone by. Here's a selection of vintage photographs from GOP pow-wows starting with 1908 and ending with 1976.
1908 -- Chicago (William Howard Taft)
1912 -- Chicago (William Howard Taft)
1916 - Chicago (Charles Evans Hughes)
1920 -- Chicago (Warren G. Harding)
1936 -- Cleveland (Alf Landon)
1940 -- Philadelphia (Wendell Willkie)
1944 -- Chicago (Thomas E. Dewey)
1948 -- Philadelphia (Thomas E. Dewey)
1952 -- Chicago (Dwight D. Eisenhower)
1956 -- San Francisco (Dwight D. Eisenhower)
1960 -- Chicago (Richard M. Nixon)
1964 -- San Francisco (Barry Goldwater)
1968 -- Miami Beach
1...
I really do love the internet. For a lover of vintage ads like myself, there really is no better resource outside flea markets or estate sales for tons of them. Of course that means weeding through a lot of unremarkable ads before I get to a gem. And boy is this one ever a gem.
I've long assumed that the phenomenon of suburban, white men feeling the need to escape dreaded femininity was a recent one. And yet I now have this 1953 ad, advertising one of the forerunners of the "man cave," right in front of me. One imagines the dialogue in the top part of the ad going something like:
"Good evening, Mr. Thompson. So nice to see you again."
"Evenin', Jack. How's the weather look for the flight?"
"Oh, just swell. Before I let you on board, I'll have to check your briefcase. Standa...
It's been just over a year since the last installment of cool color photographs from the Library of Congress's Flickr page, so let's get a gander at some more! These photos were all taken between 1939 and 1944 by the United States Farm Security Administration (FSA) and later the Office of War Information (OWI). Just click on a photo to see a larger version.
(Part 1 can be seen here, Part 2 is here.)
Not only is this a cool photo for its historical value, it's just a skillfully executed shot all around. The Boeing B-17 was widely used in bombing raids over Germany in World War II and became known as the "Flying Fortress." (Alfred T. Palmer, photographer)
***
I find it interesting that the trucks are much more colorful than the cars. I would've figured all that drab ...
To read the Ben Edmonds-penned essay that accompanies Rhino Handmade's 2011 Chicago offering -- Live in '75 -- you'd get the impression that the two handsomely packaged discs contained therein contained a glimpse of the band at its apex. This is true to an extent, as Chicago was on a hot streak when they rolled into Maryland to play a series of shows in Largo's old Capital Centre. That tour -- which saw the group join forces with the Beach Boys -- marked the band's graduation to the Big Time, aka stadium and arena concerts.
But artistically, the band was straying further and further from their jazz/rock roots and was on the precipice of Cetera Ballad Country. So in a sense, Live in '75 does offer diehard fans a service in that it presents Chicago as they were right before the bad times ...
I've tried without much success to find ways of sharing my photography on this site, but I think the best thing to do is just to share one at a time and let you browse the Photography category if you want to see more.
I took this in the United terminal at Chicago's O'Hare airport back in 2007, while returning from a business trip. I worked with the contrast level a bit and punched up the brightness of the rays, but other than that I didn't do a whole lot of tinkering.
Click the image to see the full-size version on Flickr.
