Happy Halloween

When do kids stop trick-or-treating nowadays? Yesterday a mom I was chatting with at choir pickup made reference to the idea that this could be her daughter's last year of hitting the streets in pursuit of a sugar high. Her daughter is 10, like mine, but mine doesn't show any sign of giving up Halloween, though she has shown some discomfort with the whole dressing-up-in-costume thing. Granted, she was never a kid who liked to disappear into her disguise, with full makeup or rubber masks or odd, uncomfortable clothing, but now more than ever, she likes a costume that's basically still her—but better. For example, this year she is Katniss Everdeen, which is basically being herself but with a braid and a mockingjay pin and more boyish clothes and a bow slung across her back. And most important: a really excellent jacket.

I guess I was pretty much the same way. Somehow, a costume violated my dignity. I think this photo of me as a leopard (or really, a half leopard, half 1980s East Village chick, given the tights, cutoffs and boots) was taken when I was 9 years old. I remember getting those cowboy boots for my first horseback riding lessons, which I started taking at that age. You might think my mother made that costume, but I'm reasonably certain it was thrifted—my mom was always very vocally opposed to store-bought costumes back in the day, but I don't really remember her hand-crafting my brother and I costumes either. But then again, the Superboy and Supergirl costumes below have a touch of the DIY about them, don't they? Because the store-bought costumes I remember from the ’70s were the kind that just consisted of a cheap mask and a plastic apron/smock-type thingie that basically had a picture of what you were supposed to be on the front (the Hulk or Raggedy Ann or whatever). My mom didn't like those and hence we were pretty snooty about them too.

The only costume I remember wearing after the leopard was a "beatnik" outfit I assembled from my actual 9th-grade wardrobe, much of which came from a thrift store or head shop. I wore it to march with the high school marching band in our town Halloween parade, and that's the last time I remember wearing a costume as a kid (that was also my first and last year in marching band).

Anyway, the real reason I'm posting those photos—especially the leopard photo—is to marvel over our full-on 1970s kitchen, with the avocado green linoleum, the faux brick wall covering (I don't know what to call it—I mean, it wasn't wallpaper) and that crazy rice-paper lampshade, which I imagine was totally flammable and inappropriate for the kitchen. And eek, those cabinets, all of it long gone as that room has undergone many transformations over the years, but at this point it was newly expanded: the area where I'm standing used to be a pantry and a mud room and we were all very pleased with our official eat-in-kitchen.

Just a few snapshots of that 70s childhood of mine, which I've posted about here, and I think about often, as I peruse the vintage decorating books I collect and sell in the etsy shoppe.

The return of the Trapper Keeper

Having school-age children will make you nostalgic for all kinds of things that you didn't think twice about back when you had them the first time around. For example, I've had borderline-Rosebud yearnings for my fire-engine-red Mead Trapper Keeper, the binder-cum-briefcase thingie that all ’80s kids carried with pride in junior high (Lindsay and I had a protracted discussion about this last night—by high school, the Trapper Keeper had lost its luster and was replaced by multiple single-subject college-ruled spiral notebooks, one for each class). 

Anyway, I can't tell you how many times I've thought "I loved my Trapper Keeper therefore my children shall have Trapper Keepers and love them as well" (really, I can't tell you how many times—it's too embarrassing). I always assumed I'd find one at an estate sale or thrift store, but it's never happened. Which is both frustrating and not: I mean, this is just the kind of grail I enjoy questing for, so I purposely avoided searching for one on ebay or etsy—I only do that when Iabsolutelyhavetohavesomethingthisinstant. Otherwise, I prefer the leisurely thrill of the hunt.

Well, the hunt is over. Kind of. Yesterday, I found myself at Super Target, futilely searching for some last-minute supplies in the desolate echo chamber that is the back-to-school section of any big-box store three days into the new school year. Only the least popular items remained; the aisles resembled an Island for Misfit School Supplies: Bieber notebooks, grimy white binders, folders with the wrong kinds of brads, #2 pencils that aren't Ticonderogas and...Mead Trapper Keepers?!?

Hello. Apparently I've been asleep at the wheel for a good six years because according to my friend Wikipedia, Mead reissued the Trapper Keeper back in 2007. In my defense, my kids were one and four years old at the time so organizing homework in a snappy retro binder wasn't a big priority—I guess that's why I missed all the fanfare when it made its triumphant comeback: "Trapper Keeper, the iconic school supply that defined organization is back and better than ever" trumpets the Mead website. 

Feh! The new Trapper Keeper totally sucks. Or, okay, it's not how I remembered it. For one thing, the snap closure doesn't work. For two, it's encased in clear plastic that gets all scuffy and gnarly—hence the abundance left on the shelves at Super Target, destined for the clearance section. And I won't even buy one when it's 75% off! They are an abomination. So naturally, I was driven to google the vintage variety, and naturally ebay and etsy is crawling with them. Average price? Around $75. Curse you, vintage resellers!

P.S. If you are wondering what the photo above has to do with anything, it comes from a Sunset Book I'm selling at the etsy shoppe, Children's Rooms and Play Yards, which was published in 1980 (the Age of Trapper Keepers). The photo appears in a section devoted to "enriching" a child's room and the caption is quite funny: "Classic technology clusters around an intriguing—if still costly—newcomer: a home computer....The computer broadcasts math exercises via the family TV (it can also straighten out a parent's tax confusions)."

P.P.S. Yes, that's Lori Loughlin starring in the Trapper Keeper commercial posted below. You may know her as somebody from some show called Full House, but I will always remember her as Jodi from the great noir-y soap opera, The Edge of Night.

A Trapper Keeper I didn't buy at Target.

That ’70s childhood

I was born in 1968, which makes me a true child of the ’70s. I was two when the dazed-and-confused decade began and 12 when it ended. I guess that means that I "came of age" in the ’80s (does anyone come of age outside of novels?), but I formed my aesthetic in the ’70s. At least that's what I've been telling myself these last few years that I've been obsessing over vintage decorating books, especially those of Sir Terence Conran. And finding this detailed illustration of what looks like a Studio 54 after-party in some old box in one of my parents' many storage units confirmed that notion.

Yes, people, I am the wielder of the Flair pen who created this marvelous time-capsule drawing on a 5" x 8" sheet of notepaper, most likely in sixth grade. Take away those swingers with their Halston dresses, ample cleavage, martinis and cigarette holders and you have yourself one hell of an estate sale—or a page out of any of Conran's house books. Note the fully stocked bar, the Marimekko-style wall hanging, the abundant houseplants (in wicker! and macrame!), the built-in hi-fi, the purple-and-red color scheme, the Arco-style floor lamp... and is that a picture of the Manhattan skyline over the bar or an actual window? It is most definitely a window into the consciousness of a certain New Jersey middle-schooler: Moving into a rad pad in NYC, something out of Apartment Life magazine, was my dream. And I did end up living in (many) NYC apartments, but funny how my home didn't start to resemble this ideal till I moved to Texas. Make of that what you will.

Stripes and stripes forever! From Conran's The House Book.

Match game

The 21 Club

I promise this will be the last post in which I gas on about the odd poignancy of other people's matchbook collections. The collections that belonged to the unrepentant smokers, the older generation, the ones whose estates are being sold off object by object to junkers/thrifters/dealers/pickers/collectors/bottom-feeders, whatever you want to call us/them. Few types of ephemera give you a sense of the (late) person the way matches do—matches are like the digital trail you leave on Facebook or foursquare, but you know, tangible and cute and not an invasion of privacy. The person who collected matches was a person who got around, maybe even globetrotted, smoking and drinking and dining and dancing their way through life. Hell, they probably used cigarette holders! Who were these people? And don't they seem like they would've been fun to hang out with?

Yaffa Cafe

But I try not to buy other people's matchbooks—dust magnets!—especially now that I've rediscovered my own. Last week I shared some relics from places in NYC that no longer exist—here are some from much-loved establishments that are still standing. Though in the case of Yaffa Cafe, I had to google to make sure (if Life Cafe has been shuttered, how is it that Yaffa continues to survive?). I don't think I set foot in the place past my 23rd birthday, but I did love it fiercely for a while there. The food was crap, but that twinkling back garden just epitomized the boho East Village setting I'd been imagining myself in all through my teen years.

Docks

I wasn't sure about Docks either—a very slick noisy yuppie ’90s place—could it still be around? Apparently so. When we lived on the Upper West Side back in the day, good restaurants were few and far between and dang if Docks didn't have the best oysters. We used to celebrate birthdays there. One time we were wedged into a corner table by the window facing Broadway, and Oliver Platt was with a date at the table adjacent to ours. The whole time Lindsay and I just kept staring at each other and trying not to laugh and communicating telepathically "Look, it's Oliver Platt. We are dining next to Oliver Platt." Why do I even remember that? Why will Docks, a place we ate at dozens of times, be forever associated with Oliver Platt (who at the time was starring in a very terrible version of The Three Musketeers)? That's the kind of story other people's matchbook collections will never really tell. You might be able to draw a few accurate conclusions about their lives—about where they traveled and how old they were and whether they liked Chinese food the most or Mexican—but the good stuff, the details, the Oliver Platts, well, that stuff just gets lost.

Michael's

Is it morbid to ponder your own future estate sale—especially on the day after a quasi-milestone birthday...? Perhaps. But I do it all the time, not just around birthdays. What will my legacy be? What's the story my stuff will tell? What does my matchbook collection say about me? Here lies a person who lived hard in NYC for a pair of decades, who went on a lot of expense account lunches and late-night dinners and continued to smoke even when she knew better. Of course this is assuming my matchbook collection will ever be up for sale. I can easily imagine one of my pack-rat children hanging on to it.

The King Cole Bar

Veritas

Balthazar

My city was gone

I miss you, Savoy.

So yesterday we were talking about matchbook collections. About matches as time capsules, touchstones. How they were not only great souvenirs but very handy for lighting cigarettes and temperamental stoves. When my collection of matchbooks was recently dislodged by a closet avalanche, my first reactions was, damn, did I really move a sack of matches across the country? But then I started sifting through them, and, wow, how does a THING give you such a rush of nostalgia? I dumped them out on the dining room table and was all like, hey, Lindsay, remember this place? And remember when we went here? And wait, is this one still open? When did this one close again?

On my visit to NYC two weeks ago, I purposely took a three-subway-stop stroll down Broadway, through a neighborhood where I'd worked two different jobs on the same block between Bleecker and Houston (did I really just mentally pronounce Houston "HEWsten" like the Texan city as opposed to HOWsten like the NYC street? I'll never tell...). Back in high school, I used to hang out on the same short stretch of downtown. My friend Rob's dad used to work at a print shop in Noho (can you imagine? a print shop in Noho?) and sometimes we'd go in with him so we could shop for weird clothes at Antique Boutique and Unique, then over to Bubba's near Washington Square for a Ruben lunch. Is Bubba's still there? I'm not sure if I was visualizing the addresses accurately, but it looked to me like Antique Boutique and Unique are now American Apparel stores.

Godawful food, great sign. Replaced by a Chipotle.

My New York has more layers than a particularly fine wedding cake. If you've lived there for any length of time, I expect yours does too.

I've quoted from this Nora Ephron essay in the past, because, well, she hit many, many nails on many, many heads during her illustrious career but none of her bons mot touch me quite as personally as this one, about what it's like to voluntarily exile yourself from NYC and then come back a mere visitor.

Things change in New York; things change all the time. You don't mind this when you live here; when you live here, it's part of the caffeinated romance to this city that never sleeps. But when you move away, you experience change as a betrayal. You walk up Third Avenue planning to buy a brownie at a bakery you've always been loyal to, and the bakery's gone. Your dry cleaner move to Florida; your dentist retires; the lady who made the pies on West Fourth Street vanishes; the maitre d' at P.J. Clarke's quits, and you realize you're going to have to start from scratch tipping your way into the heart of the cold, chic young woman now at the door. You've turned your back for only a moment, and suddenly everything's different. You were an insider, a native, a subway traveler, a purveyor of inside tips into the good stuff, and now you're just another frequent flyer, stuck in a taxi on Grand Central Parkway as you wing in and out of La Guardia.

Every time I go back, I think about how I used to be able to glide through the city without thinking, without looking, how I probably could've negotiated the subway blindfolded. Eight years after my departure, I definitely have to keep my eyes open—and often glued to my GPS. Did I really live in New York before cell phones? Before Metrocards and Starbucks and 9/11?

NYC will keep changing but I'll still have my matchbooks, artifacts from another age, proof that the city I lived in once really existed, even if it's now full of ghosts and shadows and unfamiliar subway lines.

I come from the ’90s. Rialto was my hang.

Didn't the waiters wear rollerskates?

Many an expense-account lunch was consumed here.

The Tall Ships: lost on 9/11.

Matchless

A handful of matchbooks advertising defunct restaurants, mostly in San Antonio.

I don't collect matches. At least, I didn't think I collected matches until a few bags full of matchbooks resurfaced in my life after a recent closet avalanche. So I guess it's more accurate to say I never set out with intent to collect matches, but I ended up with a collection just by virtue of being a smoker and a New Yorker who warmed many barstools and dined in many fine restaurants and never could turn down a complimentary matchbook, especially if it was cute but mostly because I was always losing my lighter.

I see a lot of matchbook collections on my estate-sale rounds; the graphics are so great and the establishments being advertised sound so awesome, it can be difficult to resist buying them. But usually I resist. I have my own memories in matchbook form—do I really need someone else's? The handful you see here are from two Ziplocs I selected at random from two laundry baskets overflowing with matches at a sale last summer. Somebody used to really get around!

A lifetime's collection of matches.

I've been mourning the ephemeral nature of ephemera on this blog for some time now, and most often the digital age we live in the culprit: Concert tickets, greeting cards, invitations, business cards, address books, etc., have all been outmoded. But we can't blame the slo-mo extinction of matchbooks on the interwebs ’cuz last I checked, fire had not yet been digitized—obviously, it's because no one smokes anymore. Okay, people still smoke, but they are (for the most part) no longer encouraged to do so, and judging by how my children react to the sight of some pathetic smoker, huddled in the cold for a furtive puff, I don't think the tobacco companies are going to have much luck seducing the next generation (seriously, my kids are ready to make a citizen's arrest of any smoker they see; I have to remind them that even when we're visiting the Nanny State of NYC, smoking is not actually against the law). I assume Red Bull, or some pernicious variation thereof, will be their version of smoking.

Ah, to have frequented the Gay ’90s or Ichabod's...

But what a pity, right? Towers of Future Red Bull and its accoutrements will never have the panache of a serious matchbook collection. We used to keep ours in a large wooden bowl in the living room. My parents (not smokers) kept a container full in the kitchen. Lindsay remembers his grandparents having some sort of  three-tiered platter—like the kind for serving those extravagant shellfish apps at your nicer brasseries—where they displayed their assortment of matches.

My rediscovered matchbooks are still in a plastic grocery bag in the Closet of Doom. I've thought about displaying them in a jar or bowl but they're just another dust magnet and what if the kids take it upon themselves to burn the house down? I did photograph a few of the choicer ones, however, which I'll share this week here on the blog.

Gail and Harold, was it a good marriage?

The Uncola

Feelin' old-school 7-up?

Here is a typical story from childhood: My father's secretary—yes, that's what they called them and she also took dictation and chainsmoked while doing so—had a hoarder mother (though that's not what they called them then), who passed away or was moved to a nursing home or both, but in different order, leaving her daughter to deal with the old house chock full of crazy. Naturally, our family would be invited to help out by picking through its wonders (who you gonna call?). I don't remember much about that day, mostly just the exhortations to be careful in certain rooms because "you might fall through the floor," which probably explains why my brother and I spent most of our time outside, in the shady overgrown rock garden, where we found several large rocks for our own garden (including one that looked just like an alligator), and picking through heaps of rubbish amid a few broken-down outbuildings.

In one of these piles my brother unearthed this old 7-up bottle, which we both considered a tremendous score. For a time there, 7-up was cooler than Coke. They had great commercials, and it just seemed more grown-up, like a cocktail. This bottle stood proudly on a bookcase in his bedroom for many years, and I have no idea how it ended up accompanying me to Texas. I wonder if he wants it back? Am guessing not, especially now as he's in the middle of a classic NYC-style move, physically carrying his stuff from the old loft to the new one a few blocks away because it's too hard to find parking for his car in Brooklyn and the Man With the Van is too expensive/unreliable. The sort of lifestyle that would turn even the most unrepentant hoarder into a minimalist.

Memories are made of this

Last stop on our trip down Memory game lane: This 1968 Milton-Bradley version is the best I've encountered since it's basically a Midcentury Illustration's Greatest Hits, featuring work by Alice and Martin Provensen, Roger Duvoisin, Mary Blair, Eric Carle and of course, our beloved Eames House of Cards. How did all this great stuff end up in one game exactly? I dunno, but the box says "under license to Otto Maier Verlag, Ravensburger, Germany." Ravensburger is the German game and puzzle company founded by Otto back in the 19th century, and obviously the Germans know (and create) good design so somehow it must all be owing to their genius. So to them, I say, "Thanks!" And also to the members of the Bain family (the name scrawled on the box in a couple of places)—I bought this for two bucks at his/her/their estate sale and I've cherished it ever since.

One of the subjects/themes of this blog (apart from the overarching theme of I-am-cray-cray-and-need-to-stop-buying-so-much-stuff) is...why do we like what we like? Why do we buy what we buy? Aesthetically speaking, what attracts us to an object? I'm not given to philosophizing; I was an English major and, I'm not speaking for all English majors here, but personally I'm not capable of deep abstract thoughts. I once attempted to take a class on the philosophy of aesthetics but dropped out after the first week on the grounds that I did not understand a single word that the professor said. ’Twas definitely a roadblock to learning. Anyway, why do you like to look at what you look at? What makes it pleasing to your eye? I find it hard to divorce aesthetic appreciation from nostalgia. I like it because I've always liked it. I like it because I grew up with it. I like it because I remember it. I like it because it reminds me of another time and place that's still somehow this time and place cuz it lives on in my memory. Memory mixed with desire. Wasn't that T.S. Eliot? Okay, sorry, I'm going off the rails—deep thoughts, watch out!—but then again, maybe not. After all, "mixing memory and desire"—isn't that what the best purveyors of vintage do?

Dean Martin - Memories Are Made Of This by beautifulcynic

Pikku, the Finnish Memory game

As promised, this week I'm strolling down Memory game lane. I got this one on my storied trip to Finland back in 1975, and look how beautiful it is! You wouldn't expect anything less from a Finnish Memory game, would you now. I've talked about how I only had a few things with which to amuse myself on that three-week trip—complimentary puzzles and art supplies given to all kids on the Finnair flight, a farm-animal stencil kit, my Asterix books, my brother's Tintin books, a book about mammals entirely in Finnish... Well, suffice to say, I squeezed a lot of good times out of this game, on the trip and for many years after. Like the Eames House of Cards, its images are burned on my retinas, deposited for good in my memory bank, and see below—there's even at least one photograph from the House of Cards, the nails (or are they pins? I've never been sure).

Sometimes I let my kids play with this game, when I'm feeling very generous, but mostly it stays on a high shelf of treasures while they use their own, a 1980 version put out by Milton-Bradley, which I forgot to photograph but you can see all over etsy (like here, for example). It's cute, but not as cute as this one—nor is it a repository of my precious memories!

But the 1980 Memory is waay cuter than the current incarnation put out by Hasbro, which is seriously fugly. My kids have received several over the years as birthday presents, and I keep donating them or regifting them yet somehow there's always one in the game closet. Maybe it's like the proverbial single fruitcake being passed around the universe?

I think if you want a new Memory game that in any way rivals the vintage ones you have to make it yourself. As I was photographing these game cards a couple weeks ago, I suddenly realized how much their perfect squareness makes them resemble Instagram photos (really good Instagram photos, anyway, not so much the ones of your dinner or your latte). Naturally, I thought I'd hit on a great money-making idea—custom Memory games made out of your favorite Instagrams!—but a few seconds of googling confirmed that I was a little late to that particular party. But is anyone Instagramming images of vintage Memory games and turning them into Insta-Vintage Memory games? Hmmm... that might just be meta enough to work...

The Eames House of Cards

At some point early in my life I came into possession of this House of Cards set. My parents gave them to me, I assume, and of course, Crazy Lady still has them. The House of Cards, if you're not familiar, was designed in 1952 by Charles and Ray Eames for children. Like me! A deck of cards, a series of images, that celebrated what they called "the good stuff...familiar and nostalgic objects from the animal, mineral and vegetable kingdoms." I loved my cards to tatters, as you can see from the box.

The cards have small notches on the sides so you can build all manner of structures, but I was never a builder—more of a gazer—so I think I mostly just gawped at mine. A lot. Because those images—the snail shell! the pills! the technicolor veggies! the buttons!—all of them are absolutely etched in my brain, the way the Eameses meant them to be. And every time I see them, I get that Proustian chill of recognition and remembrance (excuse me for being one of those assholes who references Proust without actually having read Proust—I need to learn French! I don't trust translations! You already know that about me!).

So here are just a few of my favorite images from the cards. I've been thinking about them lately because I've discovered that they are also used on a couple different vintage editions of the Memory game, which I plan to share this week if I get my act together.

On a practical note, you can still buy these cards—I believe they're published by the Museum of Modern Art and come in a variety of sizes and styles. They're a bit pricey, but I think this is one of best gifts you can give a kid who has advanced beyond the stage of gnawing on cards or ripping them up just for ha-ha's.