The New Yorker volunteers to pick up my slack!

"What do Chrysler, Rolls Royce, and girdles have in common? They've all been advertised in The New Yorker throughout the magazine's eighty-six year history. This week, our Back Issues blog débuts a new column of our vintage ads."

They even start off with an ad celebrating interesting people wearing interesting pants!  I say good for them.  And lucky for me getting a kick in my own non-interesting pants to start blogging more often.  And also lucky for me as I now have another excuse to post this:

Buying the New Yorker 1976 - page 74

I'm reasonably certain that nobody wore an ascot and mukluks at the same time. Much to my pity.

Buying the New Yorker 1976 - page 73

This is a long thin ad. I've chopped it up to make it a bit easier to manage.





Looking that over, I thought that the two places I was going to go with this were.

1. Riffing about the fjords. I love riffing on fjords.
2. Is that font the same as the Gilligan's Island opening credits?

And then I search for Raymond & Whitcomb, and find an article from 1893 in the New York Times Archive:

TWENTY-SIX MANGLED BODIES; TRAIN FILLED WITH EXCURSIONIST WRECKED AT BATTLE CREEK. MORE THAN A SCORE BADLY INJURED. A Frightful Holocaust Caused by Disobe- dience of Orders. PASSENGERS ROASTED TO DEATH. Raymond & Whitcomb Excursion Train Filled with Returning World's Fair Tourists Driven Like a Rod of Steel into a Pacific Express -- Unlucky Thirteen Cars Crushed into Splinters About Sleeping Passenger -- Then Fire Roasted Helpless Travelers Who Were Pinned Down by Debris -- Terrible Suffering and Heroic Death of Mrs. Van Dusen of Sprout Brook, N.Y. -- Pitiful Scenes, of Which Those Who Would Rescue Were Powerless Spectators -- Engineer Wooley of the Raymond & Whitcomb Train Says Conductor Scott Told Him That the Road Was Clear -- The Engineer and Conductor Arrested and Held to be Tried for Manslaughter.

That's just the summary. It's quite an article.

Raymond & Whitcomb have a website, but there's not much there. A quick poke through eBay can bring up a bunch of their old brochures as well as a few for the MTS Argonaut.

Buying the New Yorker 1976 - page 72

Another one that I've seen before. Last time I saw The Cloister, I sort of hauled off on them:

It looks like a swamp with a golf course going through it. I can't imagine who this ad would appeal to beyond the retired banker who is looking for someplace to take the girl from the secretarial pool who is starting on the track to be promoted to trophy wife.

Mind that was my reaction to the old ad. I liked the look of the website much better.

Here for the 1976 version, I like this ad a bit more than the 1996 one (but it still looks less than thrilling). On the other hand, I took a quick peek at the website and wasn't as enthralled as before. Now it looks more like you can book a room in the Brooks Brothers Spring/Summer catalog.



I just love the hell out of this ad. I like that it looks like the guy is living in his garage full of junk. And look at that sleeping dog! What a great sleeping dog.

If you were to have ordered one of these catalogs back in '76, I've got happy news for you: They're going for about twenty bucks on eBay

Buying the New Yorker 1976 - page 71

It's been a while since I dipped my toe into this project. I was thinking of spinning it off into another blog, but now I think that if I can go for half a year without touching it, I can just as well keep it in the fold for the time being.

We've seen Maupintour a couple of times before. I'd like to say something new about them, but I can't think of anything.


They don't seem to have a tour to Greece set up for the coming future. There was one in 2007 that ran about $3,000.



I was happy to see that these guys are still going strong. Here's their site. Check out all the interesting gigantic houses that they build!

Wait, scratch that. They're in receivership.

Buying the New Yorker 1976 - page 70

Just a note. When I've had multiple ads in a post, I've always gone from top to bottom. This one I'm doing the bottom ad first. You'll see why.


The Delta Queen is now being operated by Majestic America, but it looks like this summer might be the last - it had been exempted from maritime safety regulations, but the exemption is about to lapse, meaning that it will be no longer considered seaworthy. Naturally, there is information on the site that you can share when you contact your Congressperson, the media and whichever Presidential Candidate you might think would be interested in lending a hand.

In other bits of the site, I notice that you can cruise the Alaskan Fjords in a riverboat!

Outdoor traders is now setting its sights on sporting goods and not on casual wear of the caliber that you see pictured here. If you really want to rock the Madras Patchwork Trouser look, I was able to find some from Brooks Brothers.

Madras fabric is a light summer weight cotton fabric that is most frequently printed with plaid patterns. It is named for the city of Madras, India which is now known as Chennai.

Who am I kidding? I mean, just look at that. If only it was in color. Sigh.

Buying the New Yorker 1976 - page 69

I had to do a bit of research for this one.

Much of this research involved me asking, "What was it like to shop for clothes at Talbots in the 1970's?"

The answer was "Is this for your blog?"

I'm starting to get a little worried about this.

The real answer: Much the same as now, except that back then it was across the street from the dentist.

One difference after looking at the ad: Back in the day, it seems that Talbot's stocked items from other designers, now it is all in house.

You can now find Meadowbark skirts at vintage clothing stores. Here's one.

Jacques Cohen Shoes has been bought up by Jacques Levine. They look sort of the same.

I tried to find Tapemeasure brand t-shirts, but I was thwarted by the large number of t-shirts that have images of tapemeasures on them. Here's a nice one from the V&A Museum store.

Buying the New Yorker 1976 - page 68

Check out the prices at the Greenbrier:



$37 per person! A room there now starts at about ten times that. How time flies. I tried to see if I could find any sign of John S Lanahan, and Google spat out a little mention of him winning the International Foodservice Manufacturers Association's Silver Plate Award in 1979. Good for him!



LaBarge has a bunch of different mirrors, but I can't find any in Queen Anne style. They've branched out into furniture. They make urn pedestals! I don't know why I find that so fascinating.

Buying the New Yorker 1976 - page 67

I suppose you've all heard the news.


It's been ages since I've used one of these, and honestly I'm not as nostalgic about the pictures as much as the "Schwoomp" noise that the cameras made when you unfolded them.

Of course I won't need to track down film for my nostalgia - I can just find one at a garage sale somewhere and open and close it so I can hear the Schwoomp noise.

I am just the Maniac King of Fun.

Buying the New Yorker 1976 - page 66

The Wente family has now dropped the word "Brothers" from their name, which is sensible as they seem to have at least five generations in the biz. I see from their site that today (honestly, I wasn't holding this post back just for the freaky coincidence) they are having a "125th Anniversary Celebration Dinner."

Attendance at this shindig costs $125 - and you have to get tickets through Ticketmaster.

The Ventes also have a golf course ("Designed for players of all levels, The Course at Wente Vineyards is host of the Wine Country Championship, the 5th stop on the PGA's Nationwide Tour.") and an amphitheatre. (The 2008 concert season is not yet booked. Check back in April.)

They seem to be starting to make something out of themselves. Good for them.

Buying the New Yorker 1976 - page 62

Oh, Wikipedia, can you corroborate the lovely story from this ad?

In 1525, a Saronno church commissioned artist Leonardo Da Vinci and student Bernardino Luini to paint their sanctuary with frescoes. As the church was dedicated to the Virgin Mary, Luini needed to depict the Madonna, but was in need of a model. He found his inspiration in a young widowed innkeeper, who became his model and (in most versions) lover. Out of gratitude and affection, the woman wished to give him a gift. Her simple means did not permit much, so she steeped apricot kernels in brandy and presented the resulting concoction to a touched Luini.

From my small amount of digging, I'm ready to guess that this is the fresco that the young widowed innkeeper posed for.

I quite like the photo of the young couple in the ad. The awkwardness of the shot makes me wonder if there were television ads featuring these two. Luini would have been in his mid-forties by the time this story took place, and this guy looks like he's still in college. His resemblance to a young Joe Namath does not help.

The official Amaretto website has a much shorter and more circumspect version of the tale. You can no longer send for a recipe booklet, as they can now put it all online. The mixed drinks section includes the helpful recipe for "Amaretto on the Rocks" (You want to use Crushed ice). The food recipe section has a cheesecake that looks pretty good and an Amaretto Sweet Potato thing that I can't decide if I want to make or run screaming from.

Buying the New Yorker 1976 - page 61

Honest to God, I was looking at this for ages before I realized that it wasn't food.



So anyway.

When you upload an image on Blogger, it ends up in your Picasa account. The wierd thing is that once you have an image in your Picasa account, you can't manipulate it in the layout as well as when you were first uploading it (This is probably due to Blogger and Picasa having started out as seperate companies that were both absorbed by Google)

A while ago, Blogger made a big announcement about how they had migrated all the photos from the Blogger web locker into Picasa. This was excellent, as there was previously no way that I could find to actually get into my Blogger photo locker. This annoyed me.

A while ago, a chunk of the photos from the Blogger photo lockers were loaded into Picasa, but only some, with the announcement that, in time, more images would be transferred. None have. So the earliest photos that were loaded in are still in limbo somewhere.

The reason that I'm agitated is that when you lose a link or an image upload doesn't work (which happened a lot more in old Blogger) the image is just out there filling up space and taunting me.

Anyway I bring this up now as a roundabout way of letting folks know about my new "Buying the New Yorker Picasa Gallery"

Thrill to the sight of old favorites like: The Oxford Scholar Vacationeers! Natural Unplucked Beaver Woman! The Very Touchable Welsh Moleskin Smock! And of course, This Guy:




I love him and wanted to have an excuse to post him again.

Buying the New Yorker 1976 - page 60

The ads are frequently not scanned with the same care as the rest of the content. I might be the only person on the planet who cares about such things - and to be fair, if they upped the quality of the ads to the level that I would enjoy, there would be a need for perhaps another DVD-Rom or two. So it's completely understandable to treat the ads with less care so the cost of the set can be fifty bucks cheaper.

But it's times like this that make me wish that I could get a better look at the ad, just to have a better sense of the pattern. In the text, we are asked to pay attention to "the scoop neck and the tie." I've spent more time than I really want to looking for any evidence of a tie, either a necktie or anything that might be used to cinch this garment together. I'm stumped.

It would be marvelous to see this in color, particularly in the green and white, but the ad is in black and white, so we can't fault the New Yorker people for that.

I also wish I had a better idea of what the hell was on her head.

Buying the New Yorker 1976 - page 59

"Seeing everything wonderful and being seen looking wonderful wherever you go."

Who cares about the pull-on polyester pants and snappy print shirt? It's that sentence that just makes the ad over-the-top amazing.

Bonus: She seems to be standing in front of some sort of a cartoon duck.

Buying the New Yorker 1976 - page 57

And now the new style for 1976, it's 1961!

Buying the New Yorker 1976 - page 54

The Ritz-Carlton that is being advertised here is now the Taj Boston. Around the corner from the Taj Boston is the Ritz-Carlton Boston Common. When I Google "Ritz-Carlton Boston" I get four addresses.

1. 15 Arlington St. This is the old Ritz-Carlton/current Taj Boston. (This is where Boston Red Sox outfielder Manny Ramierez lives/lived depending on how happy he is at any given time.)
2. 2 Avery St. This is the address of the Ritz-Carlton Boston Common.
3. 172 Tremont St. I had to go to the satellite to figure this out. This is the back entrance to the Ritz-Carlton Boston Common. But this is an important address, as it is, unlike the main entrance/address, actually on the Common.
4. 6 Newbury St. This is/was the car wash in the parking garage of the original Ritz-Carlton. I don't know which is more swank: getting your rental car washed while you are on vacation, or driving downtown to get your car washed at the Ritz.

I think you need to get a suite to have a fireplace in the Ritz-Carlton Boston Common and the Boston Taj.


In 1976 the Dominican Republic was coming to the close of the presidency of Joaquín Balaguer. As a means of holding the Communist influences of Cuba in check, Balaguer's tenure was marked by "a repression of civil liberties."

On the plus side, folks who responded to this as in January would have had the chance to get themselves to the Dominican Winter Baseball League title series. There's always a trade off.

Buying the New Yorker 1976 - page 52

In the seventies, families didn't include women.

Buying the New Yorker 1976 - page 50-51

Apparently, in the seventies, different sorts of Volvos meant that you thought in different sorts of ways.

Now, if you drive any sort of a Volvo it's pretty much a given that you are a nasty dirty hippie that eats sprouts and watches the Daily Show.

The best laid plans of mice and car manufacturers gang aft aglay.

Buying the New Yorker 1976 - page 49

Nostalgia:


In 1976 NBC changed its logo. This was a big deal. I remember this because NBC spent a lot of money explaining how this was a big deal.

To sum up -- the last logo was a peacock. The reason that NBC chose a peacock was because it had made the jump to color television. As everything was broadcast in color in 1976, NBC decided that "Hooray! We're in color!" as a branding theme had run its course.

So a new logo.

Unfortunately there were a few snags:

1. The period from 1976 to 1980 saw NBC in last place in the ratings. (The 75-76 season that this ad is appearing smack in the middle of was particularly dismal).
   
2. The new "N" logo was distressingly similar to the logo of Nebraska Public Television, naturally leading to a lawsuit.
   

By 1979 the "N" was recast with the peacock superimposed on it, and in 1986 the "N" was removed and the peacock was once again the logo, as it has remained to this day.

You will be astonished to learn that there is a page on Wikipedia about the history of NBC logos.

Buying the New Yorker 1976 - page 47

No.