Malmö’s first skyscraper (and one of Sweden’s earliest) was built in 1964 and namned Kronprinsen (The Crown Prince). It stands 27 floors tall and features 700 apartments which can house as many as 3 000 people. The cost of building it was a staggering 90 million SEK (approx. $12 000 000). Standing at the top of the building, on the visitors terrace, one could see...
It is officially summer and very hot outside so many people prefer to stay indoors in a temperature-controlled environment. Why not spend that time at your local mall? This is a exclusive custom compilation for this website, to celebrate the mood and feel of the American shopping malls of the 1950s and 1960s. This compilation has everything a mall need to make their visitors feel...
Time for another album share here at Ultra Swank, this time featuring the groovy beats and melodies of Hugo Montenegro. This is the original soundtrack to the movie Lady in Cement starring Frank Sinatra as a private eye working in the swank (and not so swank) settings of Miami, Florida in the late 1960s. The movie is pretty nice, not a very original story –...
As promised here is my first of (hopefully) many more vinyl shares. First up is a real classic by Les Baxter. Found it on a auction site here in Sweden for about $6 – what a bargain! Although this isn’t a exotica record per se, it is still very recognizable if you have heard Les Baxter’s work before. Most of the songs on it are...
Shopping in Luleå in the northern parts of Sweden was the first indoor shopping mall in Europe. Built in 1955 and designed by the famous architect Ralph Erskine, who wanted to create a mall for people to enjoy and socialize – even with the cold winter climate of northern Sweden. Apparently he got the idea while visiting a outdoor shopping mall in Canada, during the...
Trams are a thing of the past. Nowadays, they have been replaced by buses, subways or cars. There’ something about trams that invokes our imagination (and perhaps a more romantic side as well). Sweden have had its share of trams. At least five of the major cities that had them. Stockholm was one of them, but the Stockholm transport authority decided to remove them when...
I recently discovered a Swedish website that featured abandoned and disused places, buildings and what not. One of the locations was one of those old motel / restaurant / bar establishment thingies that was a common sight along the Swedish highways up to the 1980s. The interesting thing about this place is the design. It looks like nothing I have seen before, at least not...