Ultra Swank - Retro Adventures

The Challenge of a Vintage Lifestyle in a Twenty First Century

Written by Koop Kooper • May 18th, 2015
The Challenge of a Vintage Lifestyle in a Twenty First Century

A phone in a car, circa 1958 — Via Flickr/James Vaughan

When it comes to living an authentic vintage lifestyle nowadays, I believe it’s a lot harder than when I first started hanging out in the Rockabilly scene in the late eighties. Back then it was easy to avoid technology, it was easier to be separate from the mainstream society.

Back then if a buddy pulled out a cell phone or admitted to us that he enjoyed gaming we’d probably rib him for the next year.

It was a time when my rotary phone was all I needed, a touch phone wasn’t needed to get through to a business because you actually spoke to an operator.

I do remember the day when I had to buy a phone with a keypad which I kept in a draw for when I needed to make such calls. It felt like an end of an era. I guess it kind of was because after that phone banking came into being and in ten year’s I would be logging onto the internet to pay my bills and make reservations. The world was moving faster and faster. Before too long you needed to keep up with technology or fall behind in your job. The purity of the vintage life would never be the same again.

Today one has to make a conscious decision to live a vintage lifestyle, to get that buzz of the traditional that is so lacking.

How do you do it? Embrace the vinyl, put away the phone when you go for a walk and make a concerted effort to live a life that is not distracted by the eternal buzzing of devices. It’s about taking a drive in your classic car and smelling the fumes and hearing the engine roar. It’s about reading a paper back book and letting your mind wander and encouraging that internal dialogue.

Listen to the music, play some music and go watch a classic film at your local arthouse, see a live band and talk to a friend over coffee.

Breaking away from the beeps will set you free and you will find very soon that you will crave the vintage buzz as opposed to the electronic buzz.

Let me know how you go!

Koop Kooper

Koop Kooper is the host of The Cocktail Nation, He's also a writer, voiceover artist and known around Sydney as a hepster, always on the lookout for new crazy music.

Find out more about Koop Kooper

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