Tiny Town: 1939-40 NYWF

Longtime readers of this blog may recognize my interest in "tiny towns." Typically these are miniature exhibits designed for touristic or educational purpose. And now that City Ubiquitous is out, I find myself reflecting on how I might shift my research to an article or book on tiny towns.

To that end, I thought I'd share a photograph I purchased on eBay a few years back. This image shows an unknown artist working on the Democracity exhibit at the 1939-40 New York World's Fair. Democracity was a "tiny town" depicting the world of tomorrow: 2039 [here's an artifact].

Here you can see a garden city design, the prototype for the American suburb. You can see the optimism of central planning and geometric order. And you can witness the pleasure of tiny towns: the power to enclose the world in one god's-eye view.

Learn More: Check out another blog post I wrote that summarizes a fine essay by Paul M. Fotsch about the 1939-40 NYWF's Futurama exhibit, with some attention paid to Democracity: Magic Motorways: Fotsch reads Futurama at the 1939-40 NYWF

(Photographer: Dmitri Kessel)

Dingbat Architecture

Updated! Scroll down for links to recent pix...

One of the delights of living in California is the proliferation of moderne architectural styles available to the casual historian.

The Golden State is, after all, home of the future - at least, it was.

So there's plenty of deco and streamlined styling to be photographed around here. And for postwar buffs, lots of international style too.

For a while now, I've been fascinated by an offshoot of the international style: Dingbat architecture. I thought I'd share an example and a little background.

Dingbat is built for a car-centric society, designed for the automotive gaze. It's also cheap and seemingly ubiquitous in the sunbelt.

The quintessential 50s or 60s-era dingbat is a "shoe box" building - say, an eight unit apartment built on narrow supports upon a parking area. The stucco facades are typically painted in a bland color, presenting large rectangular planes. Sometimes the doorway will be aligned with some faux-rock, suggesting a midcentury googie influence. But the building is generally pretty boring.

That's where the dingbat comes in. A "dingbat" is a typesetting ornament - kind of like a "special character" on your keyboard. It might be a star or a check mark or a pointing finger (remember those from nineteenth century broadsides?). On paper, they're pretty small. But on a dingbat building, they're huge, large enough to fill some of that empty space. Dingbat buildings therefore include ornaments such as diamonds or amoebas or - the moderne fantasy - atomic symbols.

Along with the the ornament, dingbat buildings often feature a name or a number, sometimes both, is some fancy script. The name provides some personality for the otherwise nondescript building, something arty like "Elysian Apts" or "Royal Arms." The number refers to street number. It's almost always a large set of digits, some set at jaunty angles. But sometimes the street number is spelled out. After all, everything is classier if it's spelled out, right?

Los Angeles is the world capital of dingbat architecture, and I hope to set up a shoot sometime in the next few months. In the meantime, I wait for blue skies and free time to investigate the dingbat buildings closer to home.

May 27, 2009 follow-up: Check out photos from my early-summer L.A. Dingbat Tour. I merely scratched the surface, but I managed to find some awesome examples.

• L.A. Dingbats - Part 1 (an afternoon visit to the land of Sputniks and Starbursts)

• L.A. Dingbats - Part 2 (a foggy morning visit to Tiki Apartments on Redondo Beach)

• L.A. Dingbats - Part 3 (featuring The Hauser - the most iconic Dingbat that I've seen thus far)

January 7, 2010 follow-up: Here's an addition to the Dingbat Tour.

• L.A. Dingbats - Part 4 (more amazing Dingbats, including some goofy names)

• My Favorite Dingbat (there may be a better one, but this is tops for me)

(Photograph by Andrew Wood - Location: 230 E. San Salvador St., San José, CA)

Jim Cramer: pwnd

Last night's Daily Show face-off between earnest, angry Jon Stewart and dew-eyed, who-me? Jim Cramer was a remarkable pop culture moment. We saw both an attack on the empty euphemisms used to explain the world's financial mess and a reminder that the failures of journalists to, you know, check their sources helped produce much of this current meltdown.

Now let's be clear: television and newspaper reporting, clinging to Woodward and Bernstein-like gravitas, is hardly dead. Even now, somewhere in Cleveland or Albany, some paunchy, ink-stained wretch is poring over musty courthouse records or transcribing scrawled notes from a deep-background interview, preparing to blow the lid off some long-hidden scandal. Our Fourth Estate will always produce meticulous hounds and dogged pursuits, thank goodness.

But traditional journalists must give props to comedian Jon Stewart who managed to crystalize America's rage and confusion about the collapse of our financial system before upending one of its beloved cheerleaders. How? Not with mere clever commentariat posturing but with a systematic dismantling of the intellectual infrastructure that has supported a multi-trillion dollar transfer (or disintegration) of wealth from producers of things to producers of nothing.

Jim Cramer, typically viewed as a straight-shooter and populist insider, was - in gamer parlance - pwnd by Stewart's mix of damning video evidence and live moral clarity. If you haven't seen the interview yet, you really should.

Here's a link: Unedited Interview

Exhibiting the 3G Family

Note: This post is inspired by an original essay by Theresa Walsh Giarrusso (cited below). Her piece was published before mine, and I explore a number of themes that she first raised.

Sprint's new "3G Family" ad celebrates the ways in which mobile phones allow us to drift off into our own little enclaves, ignoring places and people around us.

Maybe you've seen it. The ad portrays a nuclear family walking through some sort of natural history museum, you know, with dinosaurs and lions and such. Nothing's real. Everything's a fake.

Perhaps it's a trick of camera framing, but the group appears at first to walk closely together.

Then we see a sideways view, the mother walking backward while aiming her camera phone at the family. They ham it up, waving at her. The little boy twirls for the camera.

"If your family were a 3G family you could post your trip on YouTube before you even get home."

Ah, great. Another unedited, self-absorbed, look-at-me YouTube video.

Then the scene shifts. The mother is pointing out something on display while the father hides around a corner. Is he downloading porn? There's something creepily self-satisfied about his smile.

"Or surprise your wife with tickets to a broadway show."

OK. It's not porn, probably.

The little boy is now peering into a display for a stuffed tiger. He roars at the animal before shifting his gaze onto the phone screen. Spielberg's framing a shot.

"Email grandma a T-Rex one second and a tiger the next."

The family hasn't visited Grandma since last Thanksgiving, or was it the one two years ago? But that's probably for the best. Grandma smells kind of funny and her "candy" is a bowl filled with tooth-shattering peppermint nubbins that have congealed into a sold mass untouched since Reagan announced Morning in America.

Of course, the boy's sister is text-messaging the entire time, keeping her head down, tapping on those tiny keys. Something like, "OMG! IM soooo BORD!" (That's my generic example for all text messages. Sorry).

"All at 3G speed."

The end of the spot shows the family departing the scene. Each member is spaced further apart from each other than we saw in the establishing shot. The girl is still texting her silent frustration at being stuck with these losers and the boy appears to be left behind. He stares at the painted lions on the wall.

The 3G family needs to ditch the phones and go to a park.

Theresa Walsh Giarrusso's original essay: I don't want to be a 3G Family

Newspapers circling the drain

24/7 Wall St.'s Douglas A. McIntyre shares a list of ten major newspapers likely to shut down or go all-digital by the end of the year. The list includes The Minneapolis Star Tribune, the Boston Globe, and the San Francisco Chronicle.

Read the entire story: The 10 Most Endangered Newspapers in America

Steve Wozniak: Soul of a Dancer

I've never watched a full episode of Dancing with the Stars, and I don't imagine I ever will. But I've long held some fascination for ubergeek Steve Wozniak, a dude whose awkward girth and scary brain has inspired a generation of wannabe hipsmart kids who just don't make time to go to the gym as much as they (ah, hell: we) should.

That's why I had to chuckle in amazement at the discovery of yet another Wozniak talent. This guy is fearlessly willing to look foolish on the dance floor. And, oh yeah, he's pretty good. I'll say no more and simply invite you to feast upon a timeless vision, a celebration for all the nerds who never dreamed they could be this cool.

Steve Wozniak: Dancing with the Stars

Immobile America

One of the five basic components of the omnitopian framework is mobility. And yet not everyone experiences freedom of (or inclination toward) movement in the same way.

To illustrate, I recently came across a web news item citing a Pew Social & Demographic Trends survey. Headline results? 57 percent of Americans say they have never lived outside of their current state and 37 percent report never leaving their hometown. In contract, 15 percent of Americans surveyed have lived in four or more states.

Read More: American Mobility: Movers, Stayers, Places and Reasons