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Five Ways Camel Cigarettes Are Good For You
Are you aware that Camels are made from finer, more expensive tobaccos than any other brand? And that they stimulate digestion, taste great, and will make you a better swimmer? Failing to teach your kids to smoke Camels is virtually child abuse! All true, according to the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. We've compiled five of the most outrageous claims from classic Camel ads of the 1930s-50s, from the peerless archive at the Gallery of Graphic Design. Read them and be educated. Do it for your "T-Zone!" More »
from the archives
Fighters As Humans: 10 Portraits Of The Boxers Of Old
Harry Winkler was an old-time boxing photographer who lived in California and spent most of the 1920s and 30s taking iconic photos of boxers. His collection is notable for capturing the humanity of professional fighters, picturing them less in the ring (though there is some of that) than in their everyday lives—on the rowing machine, at the ball game, shooting dice. For his full archive of thousands of photos, see here. We've selected ten of the best examples of his collection, which can be found after the jump. More »
from the archives
Consumer Reports' Wondrous Tests Of The Past
I once wrote a story about Consumer Reports that involved a field trip to the timeless, servicey magazine's headquarters and labs. They're an amazing sight, and certainly the most fun place to visit in Yonkers. They take their work very seriously. Testing washing machines, for example, involves counting individual strands of frayed string off test items that have been washed hundreds of times. Their audio testing lab is a free-floating, echo-proof room that looks like a Star Trek set. This is my anecdotal way of introducing the fact that Consumer Reports has posted a selection of its classic testing photos, and after the jump you can find the five most amusing—one for each decade from the 1930s to the 1970s. Back to the future! More »
new york times
Newspapers, now suffering a technological inferiority complex, weren't always so apologetic. The New York Public Library has a wonderful collection of confident posters, promoting newspapers such as the Sunday Herald and the New York Times, from the turn of the century. The issue of the Times here featured offers a selection of stories with a definite air of its current Sunday Styles section—except for a fascination with British aristocracy now superseded by Hamptons plutocrats. The pitch for a story about the market for heiresses in Britain—A Matrimonial Slave Mart—is more lascivious than the uptight Times would now allow. After the coverlines comes an awesomely cocky pitch: "Many Other Features Equally Good."
In Happier Times
Newspapers, now suffering a technological inferiority complex, weren't always so apologetic. The New York Public Library has a wonderful collection of confident posters, promoting newspapers such as the Sunday Herald and the New York Times, from the turn of the century. The issue of the Times here featured offers a selection of stories with a definite air of its current Sunday Styles section—except for a fascination with British aristocracy now superseded by Hamptons plutocrats. The pitch for a story about the market for heiresses in Britain—A Matrimonial Slave Mart—is more lascivious than the uptight Times would now allow. After the coverlines comes an awesomely cocky pitch: "Many Other Features Equally Good."
from the archives
Dead Poets: Poetry Hazardous to Lifespan
Being a poet might mean you die young. In fact, writing in general is not good for your lifespan, James Kaufman writes in his study of 1,987 authors from different cultures. Published in 2003, it's titled, "The Cost of the Muse: Poets Die Young." It isn't the first study to make such claims! The Education Guardian reports, "a 1975 study found that poets tended to die younger than fiction writers." More »
from the archives
Black Monday: A Brief History of Crisis Headlines
So this Bear Stearns thing is awkward. I know there's a bailout from the Feds and J.P. Morgan bought up all of Bear Stearns at $2 a share, which seems bad. But the way I really know it's bad is that the New York Times put it above the fold on A1 with an all-caps headline. But how bad is this crisis, in relative headline terms? I went to the archives to find out. More »
lower east side
The Lower East Side, a Manhattan quarter now overrun by bars for hipsters and drunken yuppies from Murray Hill, was once an authentic working-class neighborhood. And it had even more lager dens and other drinking establishments than it does now, as demonstrated by this 1882 map of New York's "liquordom". So shut up already about the ruin of the Lower East Side. [via Time Out]
Nothing Ever Changes
The Lower East Side, a Manhattan quarter now overrun by bars for hipsters and drunken yuppies from Murray Hill, was once an authentic working-class neighborhood. And it had even more lager dens and other drinking establishments than it does now, as demonstrated by this 1882 map of New York's "liquordom". So shut up already about the ruin of the Lower East Side. [via Time Out]
from the archives
Who Is Bear?
"As I have mentioned, the Bear and I were introduced through Sam, perhaps as a means to get me off his (Sam's) back, but I suspect more as a goodwill gesture toward Bear, whom even Sam kissed up to. More »
from the archives
From the Los Angeles Public Library's collection of 1920s and 1930s travel posters, newly released to the web: the ocean liner from Le Havre to New York. Note the awning to shelter rail passengers from Paris as they embark.
Classier Than Flying In To JFK
From the Los Angeles Public Library's collection of 1920s and 1930s travel posters, newly released to the web: the ocean liner from Le Havre to New York. Note the awning to shelter rail passengers from Paris as they embark.
from the archives
Pat O'Brien's Dirty Messages
To mark The Insider host's return to rehab, we remember the man he once was: drunk, high, and horny. Here is one of the few remaining copies of the TV gossip monger's rambling voicemail, left for an unidentified woman, in which he suggests a threesome. (O'Brien had been linked romantically to Access Hollywood's Shaun Robinson.) O'Brien's latest story was, ironically, the death of Heath Ledger. The Insider, like many gossip shows, jumped to the conclusion that the Australian actor's death was connected to the use of illegal drugs; and was to have run video showing Ledger at a drugged-up Hollywood party, until other stars threatened to boycott the show. The sleazy Insider host, however, doesn't have such clout, or sympathy.
from the archives
Speed Not As Novel As Believed
Why does Diane Keaton have to kill our trend story? Adderall was looking good as the pill of choice of a new creative generation. And then the 62-year-old actress, who made her name opposite Woody Allen in moves such as Manhattan, spoils it all. On the Letterman show, on CBS, on Friday, she was reminiscing about the debut of her acting career, as part of the original cast of the musical, Hair, in 1968. Keaton, who was supposed to be promoting her new movie, Mad Money, blurted out that forty years ago she and her fellow actors received injections of a methamphetamine drug, much like Adderall. And we so hoped there was something new in the creative pharmacopeia. (In another of Allen's movies in which Keaton starred, Sleeper, at least the future had some medical advances, such as the orgasmatron.) After the jump, the clip from the Letterman show. More »
from the archives
The lost art of flattery
The best nugget from Norman Mailer's personal correspondence: Tina Brown, the English editor of Vanity Fair and the New Yorker, asked him to provide a reference for her green card bid. (It couldn't have hurt to have an endorsement from America's best writer, or someone who considered himself that.) For someone with such a reputation for pugilism, Mailer's letters are masterpieces of flattery. The writer, who died last year, produced the requisitely over-the-top letter to include in Tina Brown's immigration application, and appended an even more cloying cover note: “Don’t believe a word of this. You are too attractive ever to let your head swell.”
Talk about noticing things tardily—but look how gorgeous the Esquire page design and illustration was in 1960! Holy mackerel. I would buy the holy hell out of that magazine. (Except the Gawker 1960 version would probably be all like, "Oh my God, who is this tired James Baldwin, selling out Harlem to the gentrifiers? And what is with all this white space? OMG, 'white space,' get it?" Sigh.) [Esquire.com]
Sometime in the year 2050, you'll be able to explain to your gay husband's adopted children's adopted children that there once was a newspaper called the New York Times and also show them the documents that explain exactly how it went down the tubes. [NYT]
