HudsonHawk
I'll Lock Up
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No doubt there will eventually be a thread about reproducing these in exact period detail.
In the photo of the shirtless man smoking a pipe, there is a man behind him to his right holding cards in his hand. Do you suppose those are playing cards?
Yep. A lot of gambling went on in the bleachers. Somebody's got a game of gin rummy going on, which was the card game du jour in 1940.
Here's some more hot pasteboard action, outside Ebbets Field before the first game of the 1951 playoff series against the Giants, as fans wait for the ticket booths to open. A few hats, a few caps, and OMG a leather jacket! And the African-American gentleman at center-right leaning over to kibitz the game seems to be smoking an old-fashioned Irish clay pipe. Multiculti before multiculti was cool.
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...My favorite image from older movies, even into the 1950s, is when a character pulls up in front of a fancy apartment building--and parks right in front of the door! The setting inside is usually a fancy penthouse apartment which always had a padded bar in the living room. So that has always been my idea of luxury: a parking spot right out front.
People are confused about what luxury is. Luxury is not a granite countertop in the kitchen or leather seats in your car. Luxury is having a cook in the kitchen and a chauffeur in the car. I believe it used to actually be more common to have household help but what do I know. Luxury is having someone else do things for you instead of you doing them yourself.
At one time, people didn't spend a lot of money on the kitchen, even if they had a lot of money. They might have had newer or more elaborate kitchen equipment but the kitchen wasn't a place to show off. If you had company, they stayed in the living room and the dining room. That does raise the question of who is company and who is "just family," but that's beside the point. Anyway, the kitchen was probably going to be more utilitarian than it would be now and probably smaller, too, sometimes a lot smaller. It could still be a lot nicer than some people's kitchens, of course, and probably had more cabinets. That doesn't apply so much to places out in the country, though, which would invariably had larger kitchens.
In general, I chuckle at any movie or TV show set in New York City that shows anyone parking, anywhere, at anytime, near where they want to with ease...
Kind of like watching Friends, where young, semi-employed 20-somethings lounge around in huge, well-appointed apartments in Greenwich Village, which rent for $10,000/month?
I have granite in my kitchen...in my living room...in my bathroom...on the hearth (with a real Texas limestone surround)...not because I'm trying to show off, but because I'm a geologist and think everyone should surround themselves with as much rock as they possibly can. And to that end, rocks are not delicate pieces of art. They are meant to be sat upon, kicked, poked, scratched, cut, and burned. They were here millions of years before you put them in the kitchen, and will last for millions of years after your house has turned to dust.
We put carrera marble counter tops in our kitchen because (1) they are very period appropriate to our 1920s coop, (2) it was one of the least expensive options - shockingly to us as we never thought we'd be able to afford it, (3) it's been used since ancient Rome and holds up very well (as long as, as you note, you are good with it showing some wear and tear) and (4) like you, we like having it around.
The in-vogue options that people want today (and that the stone yard we went to tried to talk us into) like calcutta gold marble and some other stones whose name I don't remember were a multiple higher of the price we paid for what is, by today's standards, humble carrera marble. And a picture of our counter top at the sink:
Very nice. What bugs me about stone sellers is they label everything as "granite". Granite has a very specific compositional definition, it's not a catch all for any type of natural product. It drove my wife nuts at the kitchen store when I'd start with "that's not granite, it's diorite..."