Archive for the '’70s Decor/Design/Fashion' Category

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »

They May Take Our Freedom, But They’ll Never Take Our Skateboards (1975)

Published July 2, 2014 '70s Decor/Design/Fashion , Skateboarding Leave a Comment

Skateboard 1975

Los Angeles, June 10. This small group of youths, part of some 150 others who were arrested, stand handcuffed and bound together as they await transportation to the police station Monday night after police broke up a crowd throwing rocks and blocking highways. Note two boys at right, one on his skateboard and the other with the board strapped behind his back.

Hugh Holland’s Locals Only: California Skateboarding 1975 – 1978 (Ammo, 2012)

Published July 2, 2014 '70s Decor/Design/Fashion , Photography , Skateboarding 4 Comments

Skate 1975

Skate 1975-2

Skate 197X

Skate 1976

Skate 1975-3

Skate 1977

From AMMO publishing:

One afternoon in 1975, a young photographer named Hugh Holland drove up Laurel Canyon Boulevard in Los Angeles and encountered skateboarders carving up the drainage ditches along the side of the canyon. Immediately transfixed by their grace and athleticism, he knew he had found an amazing subject. Although not a skateboarder himself, for the next three years Holland never tired of documenting skateboarders surfing the streets of Los Angeles, parts of the San Fernando Valley, Venice Beach, and as far away as San Francisco and Baja California, Mexico.

During the mid-1970s, Southern California was experiencing a serious drought, leaving an abundance of empty swimming pools available for trespassing skateboarders to practice their tricks. From these suburban backyard haunts to the asphalt streets that connected them, this was the place that created the legendary Dogtown and Z-Boys skateboarders. With their requisite bleached blonde hair, tanned bodies, tube socks and Vans, these young outsiders are masterfully captured against a sometimes harsh but always sunny Southern California landscape in LOCALS ONLY.

Holland’s skateboard photographs were first shown at M+B Gallery in Los Angeles. Following the success of the show, his work has been shown internationally and used in fashion campaigns for American Apparel.

The book is a startlingly definitive record of the dawning of a sport and a subculture that were long ago corporatized, declawed, and sanitized. The working-class kids in these photographs were so hungry for freedom and speed that it absolutely precluded them from giving a fuck about anything else.

You can buy the book at AMMO or Amazon.

All photos above are via AMMO and NPR and © Hugh Holland.

Disneyland Grad Nite Ticket, 1977

Published June 23, 2014 '70s Decor/Design/Fashion , Disneyland , High School , Tomorrowland 1 Comment

SM 1977

SM 1977-2

Imagine this. It’s Friday morning, May 27, 1977. You wake up and go to school, but it’s not really school anymore: finals are over and graduation is next week. It’s just a party at this point. After classes, you and your friends go straight to the local theater to catch a little movie called Star Wars that opened two days earlier. It looks pretty cool.

Two hours later, your mind forever altered, you go home to change and grab something to eat. You go back to school, get on a bus with your friends, and head to Disneyland, talking about Jedi Knights and summer and college and the wide open future. The park has been taken over by high school seniors: no kids, and only a smattering of chaperones. You’ve got it all to yourself.

There’s a new ride called Space Mountain. It just opened today. You can’t wait.

(Images via Vintage Disneyland Tickets)

Kids at Party, Circa 1975

Published June 10, 2014 '70s Decor/Design/Fashion , Found Photos 2 Comments

Party 1970s

The young lady’s pose pretty much sums up my perception of girls when I was a boy: effortlessly precocious, defiant, untouchable. Feminism seemed to be something they demanded by virtue of being alive, by candidly commanding a room or a conversation or the task at hand. It was an emanation, not a hollow phrase parroted about on Twitter.

The “shesmidas” on the cup is a watermark referring to the eBay store where I found the shot.

See another great found photo of the period here.

 

High School Yearbook Covers, 1978 – 1979 (Part One)

Published May 1, 2014 '70s Decor/Design/Fashion , High School Yearbooks , Star Wars (Original Trilogy) 3 Comments

1978-6

1978-5

1978-1

1978-4

1978-2

1979-1

1979-6

1979-4

1979-3

1979-5

1979-6

1979-2

Photos from the San Diego Comic-Con, 1973

Published April 16, 2014 '70s Decor/Design/Fashion , Comic Book Stores , Comic Books , Conventions (Cons)/Trade Shows , Frank Frazetta 2 Comments

CC 1973-1

CC 1973-2

CC 1973-3

CC 1973-4

CC 1973-5

CC 1973-6

CC 1973-7

I went to the San Diego Comic-Con once, in 2008 or 2009. Never again. It no longer caters to the intelligent, discerning patrons you see above.

I’m intrigued by the Orange County Nostalgic Society seen in the second photo. That’s Neal Adams in the last photo.

The pictures are from Comic-Convention Memories, an amazing love letter to the early cons and the people who got them started. It’s run by Mike Towry, one of the founding members of the SDCC.

Richard Alf at the Opening of Comic Kingdom, 1975

Published April 16, 2014 '70s Decor/Design/Fashion , Comic Book Stores , Comic Books , Conventions (Cons)/Trade Shows , Frank Frazetta , Jack "King" Kirby 4 Comments
Richard Alf 1975

Photo: Mike Towry

Richard Alf, at age 17, co-founded (with Shel Dorf, Mike Towry, and Ken Kreuger), chaired, financed and organized the first San Diego Comic-Con in 1970.

Above: Alf at the opening of his comic book store, Comic Kingdom, in 1975—a great year for comics. Those are Frazetta posters on the wall. One of Alf’s notable achievements was expanding Comic-Con to include the fantasy and sci-fi genres (Ray Bradbury appeared and spoke in 1970).

Below: Alf (in glasses) with Jack Kirby and fans in 1969. Shel Dorf is second from right.

I’ll post some early Comic-Con photos later today.

Kirby and Fans 1969

Photo: Mike Towry

(Photos via Inc.com and comic-con.org)

Close Encounters of the Third Kind T-Shirts (1977)

Published April 8, 2014 '70s Decor/Design/Fashion , Close Encounters of the Third Kind 2 Comments

Close Encounters Tee 1978

Close Encounters Tee 1978-2

(Via eBay sellers American Ringer and Hattrick Vintage Shirts)

A Portrait of Young Geeks Playing D&D (1978)

Published March 12, 2014 '70s Decor/Design/Fashion , D&D , D&D Portraits 8 Comments

D&D 1978-2

D&D 1978

The earliest portraits I’ve found so far, taken at a camp in Asilomar Beach, California, are courtesy of Pip R. Lagenta. I believe the guys are using the 1975 printing of the original D&D set. You can see the bottom of the white box on the left of the first photo, and I think two of the three booklets on the right. The book on the bottom looks too big to be part of the set. The white box is in the second shot as well.

Oh, and the Tab can.

Pip names the players in the group here and here. UPDATE: Pip says in the comments section below:

I took those Asilomar photos of the D&D games in 1978 with my cheap Kodak Instamatic X-15 camera. Donald Chapel, the guy with the bright colored camera strap, had a much more expensive camera, but I don’t know that he ever took photos of the D&D games. David Woolsey, the DM, put a lot of work into creating artwork for his adventures, drawing his own versions of treasure, tools, maps and monsters on cards, in addition to painting figurines. As a side note, Paul Marsters, the guy with his back to the camera in one photo, is the younger brother of James Marsters, the actor who played the character `Spike’ on the TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer…

* * *

Tomorrow I’ll be reviewing an incredible book full of homemade D&D modules from the early ’80s. The project behind the book is as incredible as the book. Please tell your friends about both!

New posts will resume on Monday.

Pages

Archives

Categories

Donate Button

Join 1,118 other subscribers