Ultra Swank - Retro Adventures

1960s

Classic Cars are the Lucky Cars
Written by Koop Kooper in Roadtrip

Classic Cars are the Lucky Cars

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...

Shopping Spree – Part 11
Written by Christopher in Stores

Shopping Spree – Part 11

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 has its own Monorail Train

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...

Video

A one hour long documentary telling the story of how Pan American World Airways kickstarted the jet-age and shrank the globe. Real-life ‘Pan Am girls’ recall a high-life of luxury and glamour; rubbing shoulders with celebrity passengers, international romances and having to wear the now infamous girdle. Stars of the jet-age such as Robert Vaughn and Mary Quant remember the food, fashion and girls that...

Sex and Hi-Fi – Let me show you my woofers and tweeters

At some unspecified moment of the 1950’s the burgeoning technology of high-fidelity sound and sex became synonymous. Instead of grand-dad’s ukelele or uncle Frank’s player piano, vacuum tubes and transformers took over the machinations of audio seduction. Clearly it was the breakthrough technology of throbbing bass and ecstatic treble that opened the path to perdition. The breathless merging of woofer and tweeter. But there were...

Ray Bradbury Lives on Mars
Written by James Vaughan in Readable

Ray Bradbury Lives on Mars

The man and his wheelchair sat silhouetted against an endless vista of bright unblinking stars and twisting nebula. He was a very old man. Born in 1920. That made him one year into his ninth decade of life. Very old indeed he mused … except for the fact that he was already dead. Well, if this was Heaven it wasn’t half bad he thought. Sitting...

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