You’re looking up from the basement through a grate in the sidewalk. Today’s challenge was to cover it up so rain doesn’t flood in. If the process proves interesting you’ll be updated. If it turns out to be stuffing a bunch of cement in it, who cares?
Next thing. Looking at the stereo section of an early 1970′s mail order catalogue makes you realize simulated wood grain had it’s heyday. The lesson to be learned? We are slow to accept change. Instead of letting radios be crazy colors and shapes, they used it like wood. Little brown boxes for alarm clocks and big brown boxes for the tv.
Wood grain was the style, in the 1970′s. Every appliance tried to have some wood grain. Even cars had simulated (and some real) wood grain inside them. They made ‘em that way because that is what people wanted; if you could go back in time and bring current radios there (without the new stuff of course), they would not sell as well, except maybe to the younger crowd who tends to accept new stuff more.
Comment by Belcat — April 7, 2010 @ 11:49 am
Hey, I just had to add — earlier you were dissin’ plastics, and now you’re saying it’s great because it allows radios to be all shapes and colors. Yes, only plastic allows stuff to be made any shape that cheaply. You could do it with other materials, yes, but by the price would make it silly.
Comment by Belcat — April 8, 2010 @ 7:55 am
It’s like computers replacing typewriters, but at first people don’t understand the potential computers have. They just want to type of forms rapidly. What does the Internet have to do with typewriters? Perhaps typewriters created so much information we needed to develop something to organize it.
Anyway, if all those appliances from the seventies were made out of wood, they could be biodegrading now. Instead we have temporary fashions built out of an eternal substance. That’s my problem with plastic. It lasts longer than our fickle hearts.
Comment by Rolston — April 8, 2010 @ 10:28 pm