The Retro Blog

Pink Tentacle has a wonderful collection of photos and videos up from the Expo ‘70 event that took place in Osaka, Japan. The retro-future style is quite fun to look at.

This three wheeled beaut is known as the Dymaxion car. It was designed by Buckminster Fuller in 1933. It carried 11 passengers and Fuller claimed it could reach 120 mph. As you can see in the video below, the car’s unique design allowed it to perform almost hypnotically sharp turns.

Unfortunately the first prototype crashed during a demonstration at the Chicago’s world fair, killing the driver and all funding for the vehicle.

Twine has these lovely 1950s rotary phones for sale. Rotary phones are all that practical these days (I haven’t even had a landline for four years), and at $210 they’re a bit pricy, but they’re such lovely little works of art I had to post them.

[via boing boing]

In the 1960s, the government had some pretty insane ideas about how to win the Cold War, but my new favorite is a secret CIA project known as Acoustic Kitty. The CIA felt that it could gain intelligence by creating a super cat spy. They surgically installed a microphone and transmitter into a kitty. Now, I know from a great deal of experience that cats aren’t quite as eager to please their owners as dogs. The CIA, however, didn’t put a lot of thought into that. They just went right ahead and spent 20 million dollars to stick a microphone in the cat. When they decided to take Acoustic Kitty on a test run in a Washington D.C. park. The team sat in their van full of fancy electronic receiving equipment and set the cat out to spy on some people on a park bench. Then kitty made a run for it and was hit by a taxi, dying instantly.

This is true.

The New York Times has reported that Mattel is releasing these ‘Mad Men’ Dolls. I love the Joan Holloway, but I must say I can’t really see much of a resemblance to the actors in the Roger Sterling, Don Draper, and Betty Draper dolls. They’ll be priced at $74.95.

Female Illustrators of the Mid-20th Century is a blog about talented artists who succeeded at their jobs in a time when it wasn’t so easy for women to make it in the advertising industry.

[via boing boing]

Can’t decide which chair best fits your swank, retro lifestyle? I made a flowchart to help you make your selection.

(click to see full size)

If you’re not as obsessed with John Waters as I am, you should be, if only because he was celebrating 50s throwback decor in the 70s, way before everyone else decided it was hip. There is actually somebody more obsessed with John Waters than me and they’ve started a blog called trashytravels.com. It’s documenting various locations of John Waters’s films, recent news about the filmmaker, and various other sights that Waters fans might be interested in. My love for Waters was reaffirmed when I read this quote:

People always ask what my favorite thing to do in San Francisco is. They’re usually surprised when I tell them I love riding around on public transportation

Ahh, Muni. It’s like being forced to commute with the cast of Multiple Maniacs.

In this edition of Gateways To Geekery, the A.V. Club helps the reader get into Exotica, the fantastic lounge music of the 50s and 60s. They discuss some great artists, including my beloved Esquivel.

BAFTA hired artist Tavis Coburn to make Retro Posters For Best Picture Nominees. This one is for Up in the Air.