How long have you been a member?

BlackDahlia said:

11 years for me. However, I went silent for a very long time and had to start a new account. Hi everyone!

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I was going to say that you aren't "new in town" and then I read your post. Welcome back. Now if only Tom and a few others would come back. At least for a visit would be nice.

Edward said:

I knew a few people who took it to relative extremes (though not the *total* immersion) and burned out on it. Yeah, most of us know where to reasonably draw the line before it becomes OTT. The ones who raise my eyebrows are the 'vintager than thou' types who use the internet as their primary means of telling everyone else how much more vintage they are than the rest of us.

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I know of people into the rockabilly scene. Judging from what I’ve seen of it (and its “subcultures”), it scarcely resembles the ’50s styles it in some ways emulates. (Slicked-back hair, engineer boots, etc.) I’m not presuming these folks mean to strictly adhere to any bygone fashions, as do, say, the “hardcore” Civil War re-enactors. Rare was an extensively tattooed woman in 1957. She’s not so rare a sight in 2020, leastwise not at a rockabilly gathering.

“Everything comes back in style again,” it’s often been said. But it doesn’t, not really. Echoes might be heard, but those echoes are quite distorted.

I’m a fan of International Style/Bauhaus/Streamline Moderne furnishings and architecture, and the post-War, mid-century stuff that grew out of it. What we see today in the design mags and websites that reference those styles is almost entirely quite unlike the built environments of 1920, or ’30, or ’40, or ...

tonyb said:

I know of people into the rockabilly scene. Judging from what I’ve seen of it (and its sub “cultures”), it scarcely resembles the ’50s styles it in some ways emulates. (Slicked-back hair, engineer boots, etc.) I’m not presuming these folks mean to strictly adhere to any bygone fashions, as do, say, the “hardcore” Civil War re-enactors. Rare was an extensively tattooed woman in 1957. She’s not so rare a sight in 2020, leastwise not at a rockabilly gathering.

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The rockabilly crowd are fascinating that way - especially over here, where it's a very heavily Americanised scene, not remotelt reflecting the actual 1950s UK. It's a subculture less "vintage", strictly speaking, and more akin to steampunk or Chappism, where they've retained a huge chunk of the past, and carried on from their own year zero, within set parameters. It's a scene as a living thing, rather than a conscious 'livingb history' reproduction. Which isn't to say there's not room for both, but it's certainly a more practical way of it being a lifestyle in the modern world.

I've developed a real thing for Mid-Century Modern in recent years; it's fascinating how often you'll see a piece in that which makes you think "1959" (the stereotypes of the early Mad Men design), then you discover it was made in 1946 - or 1978. Seeing earlier echoes in modern design is also interesting, even if it is annoying when you see the influence and then howc they ruined it.

Touchofevil said:

I was going to say that you aren't "new in town" and then I read your post. Welcome back. Now if only Tom and a few others would come back. At least for a visit would be nice.

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Hi there TOE,
It's so nice to see a familiar face here. How have you been doing? Did you stay connected in the Lounge this whole time?

Edward said:

... I've developed a real thing for Mid-Century Modern in recent years; it's fascinating how often you'll see a piece in that which makes you think "1959" (the stereotypes of the early Mad Men design), then you discover it was made in 1946 - or 1978. Seeing earlier echoes in modern design is also interesting, even if it is annoying when you see the influence and then howc they ruined it.

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There are now entire suburban subdivisions built to appear as though they date from the early to mid-1960s (see Starlight Village, near Austin, Texas, as a prime example). A house the lovely missus and I sold five years ago was built in 1992. To an untrained eye, it may as well have been 1962.

A couple decades back, in the Seattle area, there was a not small amount of new housing that emulated the craftsman style of some 80 years or more earlier. To my eye, almost all of that retro-craftsman stuff was a stylistic failure, although I do know of one such house that was done so well it could fool all but the experts, and it might trick even a few of them.

I trust you have at least a passing familiarity with the work of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. For those who don’t, and who are curious about the architecture and furniture styles of the past century, I recommend looking into Mies’s German Pavilion at the 1929 Barcelona International Exhibition and the seating he designed for it. Unless a person came to it with some prior knowledge, he’d likely guess it dates from four decades later. (The pavilion was meant to be a temporary structure and was taken down in 1930 but meticulously rebuilt in the 1980s. The chairs and benches and ottomans, now commonly called “Barcelona,” are still in production and are commonly knocked-off.)

Hmm...looks like October 2007! I popped in quite a bit for awhile, and then didn't...but now I'm back!

BlackDahlia said:

Hi there TOE,
It's so nice to see a familiar face here. How have you been doing? Did you stay connected in the Lounge this whole time?

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I am doing very well as are you, I hope. I have been here the whole time although less often this past school year. So busy and unfortunately I haven't carved enough Lounge Time for me in my day. Although a number of the old familiar faces have disappeared, there are a lot of really neat people still hanging around. It's still a very friendly place to hang/chat/lurk.

11 years this past May. I was leaving the Regulars for the Reserves that year, little knowing I would be a full-time part timer!