Ultra Swank - Retro Adventures

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Seeing the Sun Rise on Dulles International Airport

In 1964 my father accepted a job as Press Secretary for Senator Carl Hayden of Arizona, so my family left the Arizona desert outside of Phoenix for the foothills of the great Blue Ridge Mountains of Fairfax, Virginia, approximately thirty miles from Washington D.C. and approximately thirty miles from the newly emerging Dulles International Airport that straddled Fairfax and Loudoun Counties. Northern Virginia was in...

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Written by Christopher in Travel

Look at Life – City of the Air

For those of you who are waiting to get away over the summer, here’s some inspiration. This “Look at life” video clip from The Rank Organisation dated May 1964, tells us about air travel in England from Heathrow Airport featuring classic BOAC (British Overseas Airways Corporation) and BEA airplanes. Look at Life was a regular British series of short documentary films of which over 500...

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A 14-minute documentary about the last “red car” train from downtown Los Angles to Long Beach in 1961. The red cars, along with buses and streetcars were famous sights in California and operated by the Pacific Electric company. The Los Angeles to Long Beach passenger rail line served from July 4, 1903 until April 9, 1961. Back then it still had long stretches of open...

Final Call – All Passengers Should be On Board

I remember as a child, the huge propeller driven airliners starting up at the Cleveland Airport. In the dark blue December twilight, clouds of fire and smoke bellowed from those huge radial engines as they cranked over. Machines as living creatures. Angry tethered dragons. With names like Douglas, Constellation, Viscount and Convair. These were the brothers of the thundering machines that had rained bombs on Hitler’s Germany...

Vintage Swedish Postcards – Scenes from the Good Old Days

Do you ever think that things were better decades ago? Do you feel nostalgic looking at vintage postcards depicting city life with happy-go-lucky people, a shopping mall with a orange and brown color scheme or the latest and greatest town monument? Here are eight Swedish postcards from the golden era of urban-living that does just that for me. The 1960s and 1970s in Sweden were...

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Written by Christopher in Roadtrip

Cruising Sunset Strip in 1964

Here’s a interesting video capturing the midst of a sunny 1960s Los Angeles. Let’s take a cruise down famous, Sunset Strip with a up-beat rock & roll surf tune blasting out from the radio. Look at the beautiful and colorful signage advertising everything from restaurants, liquor and mortgages and not forgetting the parade of Chryslers, Oldsmobiles, Chevrolets that look like they just drove out of the car dealer lot....

Vintage California Prints in Living Color

Melvin Hale is a award-winning digital artist from Los Angeles, California that specialises in bringing back old photographs to life. He also offers a collection called California Chromes, which are composed from remastered and re-imagined vintage color images of a colourful California. They are primarily street scenes of cities, beaches and other destinations. California Chromes showcase fun places with fond memories, and make for truly...

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