Tanker Desks - take two

Greetings and happy 2012! This new year finds me in a new home in Brooklyn, currently on the hunt for a work desk, which will hopefully aid in motivating me to update this site a little more frequently! (Ha.) While hunting around Craigslist and assorted other internet treasure troves for some sort of an affordable vintage office desk ("affordable"? Ha again.), I remembered a post about retro furniture I'd made ages ago on this very site. While I still am unable to afford to spend $700 on a desk, I can at least share the assorted other resources for vintage desks I've found, and maybe you'll be lucky enough to both have the cash and live near enough to the seller to score one.

Past, Present Future
This online retailer out of Minneapolis has an incredibly huge collection of mid-century furniture, as well as what appear to be some new pieces crafted in a solid vintage style and made to your specifications. Tanker desks, club chairs, sofas, book shelves, and even clocks and staplers.

For a few hundred bucks, you can have these vintage pieces restored in a basic manner. For double your money you can secure a custom restoration job, with a huge assortment of powder coat finishes, fabrics and linoleum choices (depending on what item you are having redone). Also, if you are planning on making your own wanna-be period televisions series of Mad Men, you can talk to them about prop rental furniture for your sets. If I lived anywhere even remotely close to Minneapolis, I'd be in their showroom browsing around instead of writing a blog about tables I can't afford!

Oh, and the other thing I love about Past Present Future's site is that they happen to have a ton of images from old product catalogs for some of these pieces. You know I love me some vintage product ads. For more, check out their "tables" section, and look at the bottom two rows of thumbnails.

Etsy
I hardly EVER go to Etsy. Don't ask me why. I even have a store (with nothing in it, apparently!) and still hardly bother to wade through the masses of handmade craft projects and overpriced vintage clothing. BUT I somehow was directed over there while Google searching "tanker desk" and lo and behold...people sell furniture there!

Ebay
I know many people have had success buying vintage cars and parts on Ebay, and I assume buying some huge vintage office desk would be about the same. Of course, as always, shipping these things is a bitch, so you are best off searching in your particular area and picking it up yourself. I didn't have much luck, but since I'm always wasting time browsing that dame site, I might as well continue to keep my eyes peeled.

Craigslist
You know...there's always this.

The Wonder of Vintage Eye Wear

A friend of mine just sent me a link to this lovely video about 1950's glasses fashion. As a long-time wearer of big, plastic vintage frames, I love them for the same reason I love classic cars. The designs were big, bold, startling, provocative and shiny, marrying overindulgent decoration with sleek style.


I only wish that I had each and every one of these pairs of frames! Looking for your own vintage eyewear? Check out Ebay's vintage eyewear section, where you can still find a deal on some things, or if you're in the NYC area, a local favorite, Fabulous Fanny's.

Sum-sum-summertime

Swimsuit postcard, Wildwood, N.J. via metromonthly

Oh my! I'm ashamed at how long it's been since I've parked any more verbal and/or visual vehicles in the ol' Greaser Garage! Three months? Seriously? Get it together, self. Ultimately I've had a lot going on with my life (some of it positive, some of it not; c'est la vie) and just haven't had an extra moment to put a cohesive thought to virtual paper for you. The blogging is the first thing to be jettisoned from my schedule when there is too much going on, unfortunately.

That said, do not fret! I can tell you that I will have a lov-e-ly bunch of photographs (dee-del-ee-dee!) from a trip I'm taking with some good friends to lovely Wildwood, New Jersey next weekend! I continually doubt that anybody reading this site has been with me long enough to remember any of the old website posts or redesigns I've ever made. But in the off chance you were, perhaps you recall that once upon a time, back in the YEAR 2000, I took a trip with my boyfriend at the time to Wildwood, came back and wrote a little photo essay on my time there.

It's hard for me to believe I was a young babe - emphasis on "babe" - of nineteen years when I wrote that. My youthful naivete shows (and makes my whiny teenage missive almost impossible for 30 year old me to stomach). So take a little trip back to Wildwood, NJ in the year 2000: when websites looked...well, like that, when digital cameras were mini floppy-disk drives that took ten photos max, and cellphones were giant tumor-causing toys for rich people.

I promise that the sequel - "Wildwood, NJ: 2011, a Beach Odyssey" will be much, much more interesting. Probably because of that drive-thru liquor store.

Monday Morning Va Va Vroooooom

In case you haven't had enough coffee yet today, maybe this will perk you up.


Linda Vaughn, Miss Hurst Golden Shifter.

ROD-A-DAY :: '64 Chevy Biscayne Pinner "service car"

1964 Chevy Biscayne Pinner "service car" from ImpalaForums.com.
I came across this photo doing some browsing of photos of '62 Chevy Biscayne wagons (because they are oh so early sixties minimalistic, like a beautiful woman wearing only red lipstick), and just had to make a post about it. The story of this peculiar car - only three were ever made - is as follows (from the original forum post by the owner, Hotrod Dwayne):

"It started life as a 1964 Biscayne wagon, when new only three Biscayne wagons were shipped to Pinner Coachworks for this conversion. Service cars were popular mainly in the 1930's thru the 1950's, larger funeral homes who could afford one used them as the workhorse of the business. They were mainly used for removals (removing the deceased from their home is more discreet with a service car) but also used to fetch caskets from warehouses or taking chairs & flowers to the cemetery. Production numbers were very, very low for service cars, only the most profitable homes could afford yet another coach in their fleet (a coach-built cars are extremely expensive) and Pinner only built three of these in 1964 only. All three were delivered to a distributor in Brooklyn NY & sold locally.

How were they built? The rear doors were removed, then the door jambs were cut out. All the window posts were cut out and then the car was cut in half & stretched 30". Somehow they formed new sides for the car to fill the now huge void (door skins were not reused) & a single sheet of steel to fill in all the windows on each side.
They were finished off with large chrome wreaths & 3 narrow chrome spears on the window filler panels. All 3 were black with full custom made gold interiors. I do have all the coach-specific parts & the full interior. In the professional car world these three cars are still highly talked about, desired, & sought after.

Of the three mine is the only one known to exist. It was last seen in the 1980's in a driveway in Brooklyn & photographed by an enthusiast. These 5 photos have been in several coach-related books & publications through the years as they are the only photos to ever surface."

It's those kinds of awesome stories (plus a million other things, obviously) that really get my blood racing for old cars. No fucking shit. I tried to contact Hotrod Dwayne, but had to join a million random internet forums and have to now wait for my membership to be approved before I can email him and ask for continued updates. I'd really like to see how the restoration of this baby pans out.

Lost America :: Photography of the Abandoned Southwest

Troy Paiva is a designer and artist who, in a quest for means to be creative outside of his heavily art-directed nine to five job, took up photography. He'd been traveling the Southwest for much of the 1970's, and since 1985 has been photographing some of the great abandoned wastelands of Americana using a technique called light-painting. The result is an visual feast for nerds like me called LOST AMERICA.


Pontiambulance, via Lost America Flickr.

Light painting is, in essence, shooting a long exposure photo (camera on a tripod), typically at night or in a low light setting, with a light source being the only thing that moves, allowing you the ability to, in Paiva's case, highlight different areas of the scene with different colored light sources. (He uses flashlights or strobes covered with theatrical colored gel filters.)


Rasta-ribbean, via Lost America Flickr.
He truly has a massive portfolio of work done this way, and most importantly to me, a slew of photos from old junkyards, collector car scrap yards, and various other galleries of automobile related polychromatic magic. Most of the the locations that Paiva shoots in are either in such disrepair he is putting himself in harm's way for the love of his work or he is forced to trespass on the property to get the shots he wants, giving him serious badass bonus points. But he does what he does for the benefit of people like you and me: preserving the last remaining remnants of an era long gone, of a time when our country felt new and full of hope and (outlandish?) dreams.


Dart Seneca, via Lost America Flickr.
Unsurprisingly, many of the places featured in Lost America have completely disappeared, either and the hand of man or by the ever erasing scheme of nature, so it is a blessing to have this work to look back on. For more, check out the Lost America Flickr page and hear Troy Paiva give an interview on the technique involved in capturing these images.

Tattoos for your Tuckus :: Electric Solos Motorcycle Seats

I like it when people make stuff. Handcrafted goods in this country have been disappearing at an alarming pace over the last few decades, and I am always excited when I come across someone putting their nose to the grindstone, producing quality artisan products. I get even more excited when these handcrafted goods are badass, either functionally or aesthetically. In Alex Higgins' Electric Solo tattooed motorcycle seats, you have both.


Higgins hard at work in his studio.
Alex's work is a combination of two of the most symbiotic things in rockabilly culture - tattoos and custom parts for your ride. He has logged in over 15 years of tattoo experience, and uses his mastery of old school flash to provide custom bike aficionados with a way to bring even more of their individual style to a bike build.


Some examples of Higgins' work.
And if you decide you'd like a matching piece of work on your own rawhide (aka, your skin!), you can find Alex working as a resident tattoo artist over at The Tattoo Factory in Chicago.