You Can Leave Your Hat On
I was in a barbecue joint for lunch today, one of those places that has old advertising signs on the walls for atmosphere.
One of the ads got me thinking. It was for Stetson hats–not the cowboy kind, but the kind gentlemen wore back in the day (or, from the look of this ad, around 1950). The ad said “every man needs three hats. One for business, one for formal wear, and another for sporting events.”
All three hats in the ad looked the same to me, the snap-brim felt hat we associate with old Jimmy Stewart movies, but the copy was adamant that a man was practically naked without an assortment of homburgs and fedoras to choose from. Which is what stopped me: when was the last time you saw anyone wearing a formal men’s hat (other than weirdos or alt-rockers trying to make a statement)? That once-vital industry is gone, long gone, and is not even a memory for anyone under 35. Just like the Polaroid camera. And those little film-developing huts you used to see in mall parking lots. Along with VCRs, videotape, cassettes and 8-track tapes. Also disappearing during the last 20 years or so are tieclasps (men used to wear them to fasten their ties to their shirts. you can see it on Madmen). Suspenders. And little gadgets like bottle openers, and matchbooks. Ask for a book of matches in the next dive bar you go into. Nobody smokes in bars anymore, so those little matchbooks with quaint, local advertising on them have also disappeared from the landscape. (Artist Tony Fitzpatrick has amassed an amazing collection of vintage matchbooks, featured prominently in his painting/collages. Check his work out: www.tonyfitzpatrick.com.
You know what else you don’t see anymore? Milkmen. TV repair shops. Travel agents. Marbles. Fountain Pens. Home perm kits. Moustache wax. Garter belts (at least not in the joints I visit.) And sheet music. I’m told that at the turn of the century the only way to get your hands on the popular songs of the day was to buy sheet music. Now you just google a bunch of Tab sites and learn it while it’s still playing on the radio. Which is another dead icon. The radio. I laughed two weeks ago when Obama staged his rally in Chicago. The local radio stations encouraged people to bring a portable radio with them to listen to the speech. Do you know a single 20-something who has a radio? A portable radio??! 10 years ago there was a radio in everyone’s cubicle. Try finding one now.
I wonder what’s going to disappear next, besides the newspapers. Batteries? TVs? Cameras? Shoe polish? Baked Alaska? DVDs? Babushkas? A woman stopped me in the lobby of our building the other day and asked me where the pay phones were. I actually paused and looked at her, not comprehending exactly what she was asking. A pay phone? The kind you put a quarter in for a couple minutes of talking, and then the operator cuts in and asks for more money? Then I got all existential on her and demanded of her, “Where ARE the pay phones? Where indeed?”
(She backed away. I don’t think she was a big fan or irony.)
