Retro & Vintage – Page 102

1910 Stropper

Both my grampas had stroppers in their bathrooms, and they weren’t used for disposable blades. They used straight razors with a cup of hard shaving cream and a brush. Put a little water in the cup, brush up a lather, then pay attention.

For those of you who grew up later than I did, the strop was a strip of leather hanging by a ring adjacent to the barber’s chair. Barbershops still had them when I was a kid, and they were used to get rid of a used blade’s microscopic burl:

BTW, $2 in 1910 was about $50 in 2015 bucks.

Q1: Anyone remember the slots in bathroom walls for disposal of disposable Gillette blades into the wall cavities?
Q2: Did they ever fill up?

[Images found here and here.]

M. Gaudron’s Contribution to The World: The 1910 Aerial Torpedo Boat

“This machine is the invention of M. Gaudron, a Frenchman, who claims that in this perfected ‘aerial torpedo boat’ 100 feet long five passengers can be carried at a speed of 30 miles an hour.”

The article doesn’t mention where the passengers might be carried to at 30 mph, but after 114 years, who cares. [Found here.]

Saturday Matinee – Pushing Hay, The Ballad of Holland Island House & The Tom Stormy Trio featuring Rhythm Sophie

Pushing hay [via]. Makes me itchy just watching it.

“The Ballad of Holland House” is based upon a true story.

Holland Island sits in Chesapeake Bay, near Wenona, Maryland. The five-mile-long island was settled in the 1600s, and at one time had a population of 360 people and 70 buildings. Erosion ate away at the island, which sat on silt and clay, and the residents moved away between 1914 and 1918. The island’s church was moved in 1922, and only one house remained standing. It was built in 1888. For decades, the water ate away at the island, and the last remaining house finally collapsed in October of 2010. What’s left of the island is now a marsh, home to hundreds of sea birds. See pictures of the island and the house -and the cemetery- at the Baltimore Sun [via].

How ’bout some retro rockabilly from Budapest?

The Tom Stormy Trio (featuring Leipzig’s Miss Rhythm Sophie) is just the thing to wrap up this edition of The Saturday Matinee.

Have a great Passover / Easter, folks.

Nothing Much Happened Today.

Hunter S. Thompson is ON THE AIR.

[Image found here.]

Quadratic Hot Links

Gorilla punched out camera man.

There’s an app for water. Really.

It’s raining here. [via].

1939 burglar alarm dials number and plays message.

Urban Planning Fail that won awards in 1984.

Here’s another one from 1978, called “the first postmodern ruin.” I visited the latter ten years after construction and it was a crumbling bio-hazard with human feces in the dry pools.

The Spelling Nazi Reports:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Lotsa sundials.

I got 12/12 on the Elvis Lyrics Test [via].

41 April Fools Day pranks for kids.

Top image from here. Obviously the work of the Al-Gebra gang.

Saturday Matinee – Fritz the Dog, Rockabilly Speed Drawing, Billy Woodward & The Senders, The Howlin’ Brothers, Imelda May with Darrel Higham

Fritz The Dog finally gets it.

This vid is entitled “Rockabilly Speed Drawing.” It’s cool and fast and rockabilly. Not sure what the connection is besides the sound track, but it’s still cool and fast and rockabilly.

Billy Woodward & The Senders. Awesome retro sound.

The Howlin’ Brothers crank out some home-grown basics.

Imelda May is killer with “The Right Amount of Wrong.”

Have a great weekend, folks, and be back here tomorrow.

Saturday Matinee – Hayes Carll, John Prine & Steve Goodman

Hayes Carll sounds a lot like what’s his name.

Oh yeah. The great John Prine, who doffed his hat to the late Steve Goodman.

Talk backwards, and have a great weekend, folks.

1967 High School Girls

Note the difference.

[1st image found here via here, 2nd from here.]

Hat Molds

I’m guessing they’re wooden, and some appear to be from the 1920s, perhaps earlier.

I don’t know a lot about hats, except that early makers of felt hats used mercury in the process, and the accumulation of that metal in their systems eventually affected their mental stability, resulting in the phrase “Mad as a hatter.”

Originally, cowboy hats and others were functional rather than a fashion statement. Brims were flat, designed to shade the sun and drain the rain, but once movies came about, the sides of the brims were turned up to show the actor’s faces. I suppose the crease in the top kept water from flowing off the sides and toward the back.

The side “dent” is a mystery, unless it was where a man grabbed it just before saying,
“Well, helloooo, ladies.”

[Found in here.]