The city of Los Angeles, late 1940s. A place of glamour, fame, and wealth, but also where crime, vice, and corruption are rife. Film noir and neo noir movies such as Sunset Boulevard, L.A. Confidential and Double Indemnity help to set stark contrasts. However, here is some old stock footage that was shot in color and still holds up very well. It is rare to...
From Flickr user Arbyreed comes these wonderful photographs that captures the everyday life and style of “Swinging London” in the late 1960s. From Carnaby Street, to Picadilly Circus to a stylish Heathrow airport. Arbyreed explains: I lived in Oxford, England in the late 1960s and this collection contains some of the sights I took time to photograph. I wish I had taken more and more...
Today I was cruising Sydney’s freeways in the 1965 Valiant, the car hugging the open road and me confidently accelerating past people as they went about their business, me, I was enjoying the simplicity of the basic drive experience, one that was devoid of technology that rob me of the true driving experience. The music from my stereo blared as I was enjoying a beautiful...
The Shopping Spree article series continues with part 11. As usual we head back 50 years or so to visit the stylish, kitschy and sometimes strange looking malls and shopping centers of the past. This time we take a look at Montgomery Ward, Woolco, Randhurst Mall and Colonial Plaza in Orlando. Like most of us retro lovers know, time stands still in photographs, but progress...
The Disneyland Hotel in Anahem, California opened its doors in 1955 as a motor-inn type Hotel. Walt Disney wanted to build a hotel for Disneyland visitors to stay overnight. However, Disney’s financial resources were significantly depleted by the construction of the park, so he negotiated a deal with Jack Wrather and his business partner Maria Helen Alvarez under which Wrather-Alvarez Productions would own and operate...
According to Wikipedia, a roadside attraction is a feature along the side of a road, that is frequently advertised with billboards to attract tourists. In general, these are places one might stop on the way to somewhere else, rather than being a final or primary destination in and of themselves. The modern tourist-oriented highway attraction originated as a U.S. and Western Canadian phenomenon in the...
It was Saint Augustine who said that “The World is a Book and those who don’t travel read only a page”. Before I got into radio I travelled on the Professional Tennis circuit and I would say that I consider myself a well seasoned traveller. People have often asked me what makes a great traveller. Well it’s a pretty simple equation really, firstly you need...
