This Amazing America

Today’s scan is a 1938 brochure promoting “Strange and Unusual” places you could visit via Greyhound Bus Lines. There are 140 locations overall and as an extra bonus we get a profile shot of the beautiful streamlined Greyhound Super-Coach. I’m a sucker for old buses, and this one’s a beauty.

Cover:

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Discovered Mural

In Alameda, CA an old Mug Root Beer advertising mural was uncovered when siding was removed during a facade update.

When you look at it up close you can see that there are many layers of murals on this wall, and below the plaster on the original sideboards is still another mural, visible because of an old pipe installation that cut through the plaster. The future of this mural is unknown to me.

If you are in the area and want to see it for yourself, the Mural is located at the intersection of Webster and Haight.


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1960′s China Souvenir Slides

Today’s post is 20 souvenir slides of China from the 1960′s. These are those pre-packaged professional photos for tourists that are sold in gift shops at attractions and airports. The package and slides are undated, but in the rickshaw photo you see the top of a Volkswagen Splitscreen bus which stop being produced in 1967.

Movie Cover Cliche

While browsing Netflix the other night, I started to see a pattern in the covers of action movies. Guns. Guns in every direction. Here is a sampling:

Guns Aimed Up


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There’s No Noise In It

I always love it when I find home recorded acetates. The records are not actually made from acetate, but they are usually a metal record with a fragile lacquer coating.

The reason I enjoy these is that I never know what I’m getting when I drop the needle. Most of the time it’s someone’s piano recital, or other boring stuff. Then when I find something like today’s post, it makes up for all the bad organ music I listened to.

I found these two 8″ records at a white elephant sale a few years ago, and they are dated 1941 in pencil. The first side was unremarkable piano music in one track taking up the whole side, but the flip side only contained a single short track. On it was children playing with the microphone! A little yelling, which I assume is being done while they are enjoying making the monitor gauge needle jump into the red. Then the child laments off mic that “There’s no noise in it!”, then sings Happy Birthday”. I don’t know why, but I like this random private moment captured in time. Continue reading "There’s No Noise In It"