Trains, Planes, and ... Kodachrome

Michael Williams at A Continuous Lean made a post yesterday about the glories of Kodachrome, and one of the guys who commented on Michael's post mentioned a site called "Shorpy: Always Something Interesting." The site is loaded with amazingly exposed 4x5 Kodochromes of train yards, plane yards, factory workers, general stores and the like - all from the early 1940s. MUCH more to come later about the men's clothing and lifestyle store I'm opening (with four other guys) in Austin this November, but it's photos (the clothing in the photos actually) like these that are so obviously the inspiration for many of the trends in menswear right now. Great stuff. Great photos:

Workingman's Hands - and Clothes

via A Continuous Lean

Interiors

Race Numbers

From Maraid's Flickr page

If You Love Burgers....

Buy and read this:

Today's Score

I just stopped by a vintage clothing store to pay a friend for some artwork I bought last night (an awesome huge painting of Abe Lincoln) and found these while I was there. I never knew Levi's used to make Chukkas:

I Want You So Bad

Must Get to Japan #2

I'm continually amazed at how well the Japanese do American workwear and denim. Unreal:

Well Done, Nashvillians...

I wish there were more men's shops like this new one in Nashville. Casual, comfortable, and homey with loads of great looking stuff. Props to Secret Forts for finding it - and for snapping these pics:

Time Warp

The blog world and Facebook lead to some strange old connections. I grew up going to camp each summer in the mountains of North Carolina. For five weeks each summer and over the course of 6 years, I ran and jumped and sweated and smiled and loved the communion of mountains and music and sport and camaraderie. It was an innocent, pleasure-filled time in my life, and I'm pretty sure most of my fellow campers feel the same way. Well, an old camp friend by the great name of Perry Silver recently posted some photos on Facebook from way back in the day, and a friendship has been resumed. And come to find out, it just so happens that Mr. Silver's aesthetic interests share a very similar sensibility to mine. That is, we're both junkies for old time Americana, for environmental photography, for the slightly twisted yet beautiful, and the list goes on. But to the point of this post. Perry and I fired some emails back and forth this morning discussing the merits of photographer Shelby Lee Adams. Born in Hazard, Kentucky in 1950, Adams has spent the summers of his adulthood traveling through the Appalachian hills in which I spent much of my youth.

Adams artist statement: "Every summer, traveling through the mountains photographing, I am somehow able to renew and relive my childhood. I regain my southern, mountain accent and approach my people with openness, fascination, and respect; and they treat me with respect. My psychic antennae become sharpened and acute. I love these people, perhaps that is it, plain and simple. I respond to the sensual beauty of a hardened face with many scars, the deeply etched lines and flickers of sweat containing bright spots of sunlight. The eyes of my subjects reveal a kindness and curiosity, and their acceptance of me is gratifying. For me, this is rejuvenation of the spirit of time past, and I am better for the experience each time it happens. These portraits are, in a way, self-portraits that represent a long autobiographical exploration of creativity, imagination, vision, repulsion and salvation. My greatest fear as a photographer is to look into the eyes of my subject and not see my own reflection.

My work has been an artist search for a deeper understanding of my heritage and myself, using photography as a medium and the Appalachian people as collaborators with their own desires to communicate. I hope, too, that viewers, will see in these photographs something of the abiding strength and resourcefulness and dignity of the mountain people."

Dig in folks. This is seriously rich material:

Willy

Harry Allen, product and interior designer of notable regard, has a seriously good looking 1964 Jeep Willy. Photos by Mark Rabiner for The New York Times.

M Ward Comes To Town

He'll be at Antone's tonight, and it's likely he'll cover the Buddy Holly (Texan of course) classic "Rave On."

Vintage Sideshow Banners

My friend Bruce Webb has an amazing collection of pre-1950s sideshow carnival banners, and this week I finally took the plunge and bought one from him. For many years sideshow banners weren't looked upon as serious works of art but merely as advertising to pull customers into the tents. It wasn't until sometime in the '80's that collectors and outside art dealers began to acquire and sell the pieces. Among the artists who found fame in the last couple of decades (posthumous fame in most cases), Fred Johnson is considered to be one of the finest banner painters in the history of the circus and sideshow world. I'm fortunate to now own one of his pieces -- Midget Bull below. Check out some more of his amazing banners here.