modes for modernes

mystery train

BIRMINGHAMRETRO by PHOTOGRAPHY by Gordon Eightball | BOOK INFO

old clothes a tortured artist do not make

this weekend was definately a bit of a vintage event - i spent yesterday (friday) mooching around vintage shops in town, and of course top banana in kingsheath - where i bought myself a classic A2 flight jacket(brown, and without the fur...), and some unbleached linen converse(very vintage looking).

today - was supposed to to be taken up by waiting for boilerrepairman to come round and sort out our heating with a new boiler(etc...), but they reneged at the last minute, so we suddenly had time to spend.
luckily when i was in top banana, i picked-up a flyer for a vintage fair at the custard factory(even though i didn't think i was going), so we went there instead!
as usual it was in the old library, which despite us arriving within five minutes of opening time, was already filling-up.
there was humourously quite a crush going on, in the aisles(i'm a veteran of the rag market and jumble sales though, so i'm used to it... the trick is not to move out of the way all the time when people cough in your ear, otherwise you will get nowhere! remember YOU bought the ticket.), and i wasn't going to be buying the same stuff as the young hipsters anyway(get thee to urban outfitters, dammit!), so there's no need to worry.
i'm kind-of bemused by the way most people there seemed to just throw the different decades together though, into a sort of pre-millenial mish-mash of 80's and 90's symbolism(very odd)... i came of age in the 80's, and i seemed to have spent most of my time+money in a shop called flip! that sold vintage american clothing(no surprise there)in glasgow, i fcuking worshipped that palce, it was my mecca/lourdes/vatican/whatever all rolled into one(or two if you are counting the basement...).
but some of the ironic 80's stuff i see people wearing nowadays, was only, and i repeat ONLY worn by squares who worked in offices, or skinny boys who thought that tom cruise or the karate kid were role models.... and who spent most of their time fruitlessly chasing the girls i'd hung out with... i remember one xmas night, when i spent the whole evening fending off a square girl, who was wearing a pink denim jacket!
at the fair though - not much in the way of men's clothing(this had been mentioned beforehand, and they are trying to resolve this issue), - but a good cake stall, selling cups of tea and coffee.
admittedly it was a fight for somewhere to sit, but cupcakes were consumed and bought again(in a box to take home), as they were very good.

we visited the regular flea market(which was free to get into, and actually spent most of the money there, at one stall which had piles of 50's exotica( i want to go back to that one!)... plus a fruitless search around a snooty mod section(too many plastic zips on the plaidjackets and strangely a LOT of tweed for my liking).
the living embodient of paulweller/stevemarriot gave H. a really dirty look, which amused me no end, as 1. he was wearing a suit like one i used to wear, back in the 90's, 2. we both wrote mod-fanzines that won "fanzine of the month" in record collector(one month after the other), 3. i once had a long conversation with johnny moke about the whole mod thing, which i can never divulge without fear of a lawsuit 4. i still have a vespa(albeit off the road for the time being - i'd rather have a 650 cc motorcycle these days!, 5. i was born in the damn 60's and - an original revival type(although i was more into the blues+soul than anything)... the first person in my hometown to order a copy of the re-issued my generation album... 6. H. herself is mates with an old rocker who knew steve marriot - need i go on?
thanks to my melungeon head shape though, i never really mastered the paulweller/stevemarriott haircut, i always looked like ronnie lane's taller goofy brother... i look much more comfortable with my hair smothered in grease.

this was a good vintage fair though, bereft of attiutde - but i'd actually forgotten the attitude that some traders (not the ones at the vintage fair, i might add, who were all very pleasant) have towards customers(i think it's a collective insanity brought about by hoarding all this crap that they think is going to be their pension), even though in the past i've experienced stallholders being openly rude(which usually involves yelling that you should be looking at their stall/shop in case you dare to walk past without buying one of their mouldy suede overcoats), and in brighton, one disgruntled shopowner even bellowed down the street to the owner of the shop we WERE heading to(i think it was because we had spent time in his shop the day before without buying any of his mouldy suede jackets!) telling him that he had some customers coming who were going to buy his stuff.
muppet.
i even got a few sideways looks for wearing my A2(i guess some people don't care, that i wear this stuff because i like it, not because i think it's trendy), and my new york hat company gatsby style cap, even got a salacious remark from one sniffy fart... (woah, a clothes snob... but that's "me" isn't it?).
on the whole vintage retailers are nice people, who do it because they like old items and like to sell stuff to people who appreciate vintage, they are always interesting to talk with... funnily enough while on a weekend trip to haworth(a small hillside town that is the home of the brontes) we came across quite a few vintage shops, on the cobbled mainstreet, and wasted a few hours in them, when we should have been soaking-up the literary atmosphere.
at the flea market - our faith in humanity was restored by the nice bloke with the 50's exotica(see pictures), so we left the venue... only to be confronted by a queue heading round the block(they have a facebook group of about 2,000 people, i later discovered, which explains the numbers!), and headed home to enjoy our new old stuff, and imbibe cocktails( i made a cool manhattan).

viva las vegas

ah - i noticed this on a flickr contact's page - the bloke in the video is wearing the t-shirt of the vince ray poster we have framed in the lounge above the tv... it's a very familiar image now!

reel around the fountain

well, a fine day out - a last minute decision to head north, and i'm listening to buddy holly on the train looking over stockport... feeling like i'm in a 50's film (thanks to the never changing scenery).
we were intending to do some serious vintage shopping in manchester - and of course started off at afflecks palace, which is/was how quiggins used to be in liverpool back in the early 90's(a maze of stalls selling vintage clothing and contemporary antiques), just before the spectre of gentrification tried to kill off it's individuality... lots of little shops on many levels, selling clothing and stuff that appeals to the hordes of emo-kids... it used to be a bit more individual, but there seems to be a trend now for lots of stalls selling branded alternative wear(£20 for a labelled wallet?) and the actual vintage stuff being sidelined and priced way above it's value(you aint gonna sell it if it's a lot cheaper on ebay, y'know)... still it's always worth spending a few hours in afflecks as the remaining vintage clothing stalls are filled with pure gold and we ended-up having lunch in the top floor cafe... then off to american graffiti, a vintage shop selling mainly ornaments and women's wear, but i thought it was a bit too fancy dress hire(which they sold), so sidled out and into rockers, which sells a lot of stuff that gets sold in the other-half's shop... i did eye-up some lucky 13 t-shirts, out of the piles of black clothing, but nothing in my size... then over the road to cafe pop, which always throws up a good selection of vintage goodies in clothing and furniture(but again, £300 for a vintage dining table that may be repro..?), we had a good look around and i spotted a shirt-jacket i had been after in a certain flannel pattern(the exact one!), but it was way too big, so back on the racks it went...
there was a young hipster girl handing out flyers on oldham street, for blue rinse, so i spotted the sign for tib street, and we were in like flynn... very basic inside, racks with vintage clothing everywhere, no attitude and just more racks of stuff... reminded me a lot about how a clothes shop like this should be... good prices too, and although mostly 80's revival casual clothing, there was a fine selection of denim and hunting jackets(where i picked-up an early version of the Woolrich Lands End hunting coat, for £20... a bargain!).
see photo below(this is the modern version, virtually the same except that the jacket i got is shorter, with a zip and side pockets...), been after one of these items for a good few months now, and i wish i'd had one over this freezing cold winter(i would've had it with me in spain!).
but i liked it in there - thumbs up.
so that was that - a good day's shopping over(the other half got some wool, so happy), and we went off to urbis, for a toilet break and a well-earned cup of tea... and sat in the great little cafe with a plate glass wall that afforded views of yet more groups of emo-kids, all looning about in the mild weather in the open square...
this is a good gallery, and i cant recall having been here before... saw a baulleaqxy exhibition by some lad who had gone to all the trouble of taking urbex shots very expertly with a good looking camera set-up, which he then proceeded to warp and fork around with, spoiling the shots... pity - could've been good.
then downstairs to the middle foor for a look at the art of emory douglas - i liked his stuff, he was Minister of Culture for the Black Panther movement, and his work was very reminiscent of Ben Shahn, who was himself a bit of a revolutionary, who in turn was copied by almost everyone, most especially david stone martin, who did all the great artwork on the early blue note covers... now i used to read straight no chaser and often bought it more for the artwork than the writing(which was usually about some gig in london that about 5 people in the know attended), but at their very best, i can see they drew a lot of inspiration from the art of emory douglas...
so, that was good, discovering how it all ties in with jazz and emancipation...
nice gallery, plenty of indoor space to chill-out in, and i wish we'd gone there for lunch as well, a plate of chips and two teas for £6 in the city centre..?
madness!

be bop a lula

i have to admit, today was one of the better days of shopping for retro goods...
in the birmingham market, i purchased a levi's corduroy chore coat(fleece lined and with press-studs) in immaculate condition, a snap-fasten western shirt, a big jar of black+white orange pomade and a bottle of special DAX shampoo(vegetable based and specially formulated for washing-out pomade)... finally a crisp new edition of raymond chandler's the big sleep.
been a good weekend for robert mitchum oddly enough, having watched the legendary rockabilly film thunder road last night, and having been blown away by it...
thunder road of course, has the awesome keely smith playing bob mitchum's paramour(she is one interesting woman)
this month's uncut has a good cover cd of "outlaw blues, murder ballads and prison songs" - featuring among others johnny cash, bo diddley and the handsome family... although i was most impressed to discover charlie louvin... damn i fancy get the band together to perform some of these songs!
the video below off gods own tv channel(aka youtube) features a young man getting an outrageous quiff on...
which reminded me of how we used to see this odd bloke around town(who frankly looked a bit french), with the same woody-the-woodpecker hairdo and an affected yankee accent(at the weekend a friend carey(who is from kentucky and knows these things) said my american accent sounded like foghorn leghorn!)... but anyway, we saw him in town talking to some community cops saying to them(in fake southern voice) why sure ah loves elvis, everyone loves elvis...
cringe...
he's disapeared nowadays, haven't seen him in a long time(french rockabillies had a reputation for having big long quiffs, and he always seemed to get hassle in the street whenever we'd see him strutting along, so maybe he's gone back to france...).
i wish him well.

FLIP

i used to worship this shop... no word of a lie. there was one in glasgow, just down the street from the MOMA, and across the street from the rock garden pub(where sundry glaswegian popstars would get very, very drunk... even although the cool indie stars would be a few streets away in the griffin, but i digress), don't know when it opened but i was there in the 80's, gleefully chucking money at them for all manner of stuff.
it was in FLIP that my love of old clothing really took shape, where i finally honed my skills in choosing a look that i was comfortable with...
it all started with my schoolfriend jim, taking me to my first ever oxfam shop back in 1981, when i discovered that if you spent enough time trolling around the thrift shops on a regular basis, you could amass a wardrobe that looked not too shoddy.
luckily for me the 50's mobile urban dodger look(as defined by the then very streetwise i-D magazine) was in fashion, so i got sucked into levi jeans and plaid shirts... whilst worshipping books on US custom car culture.
i can't remember who first took me to FLIP, or which year it was exactly.
all i have is this impression of "red river rock" blasting out over the PA, with row after row after row of jeans, check shirts, bomber jackets, cord car-coats, badges, patches, raybans... you name it, i bought 'em... i remember the smell of stale hamburger that emanated from the jackets that had obviously once belonged to poor working class americans, who never would have dreamed that their cast-offs were so revered in a far flung colony of americana... once i bought a cord jacket and was delighted to find cinema tickets to some sleazy NYC cinema in a pocket.
my fascination with the cafe racer motorcycle jacket was also stirred around that time... and i used to fantasise of owning one of FLIP's brand-new NYC police jackets.
ironically today, i own a nice old battered and lived-in police motorcycle jacket, which cost me the same price now as those ones cost back in the 80's

sure enough, not all my friends shared this fascination... who would want to go shopping with me to the great mecca of glasgow, when all i did was hang around in the basement of some old clothes shop, greedliy sifting through piles of workshirts or sorting through tie-pins shaped like one of the US states...

eventually fashions changed - but i kept right on going there, even when the main floor became slightly mainstream(and the staff had despaired of the little JD's coming in all day...) with the vintage items being relegated to the basement, it was still the highlight(and more often that not, the only point) of a trip to glasgow, besides the bookseller i knew who sold old copies of jack kerouac books(i wasn't a poser, i loved this stuff!)...
even though i had to move away to attend college, i snuck back one summer, and tried to blag a vacation job in the shop... but the manageress with typical glaswegian suss didn't want to hire and train some goon for a few weeks, only to see him disapear when the leaves turned brown... one of life's regrets i suppose was that i didn't chuck in my course and move back to glasgow to work there in my dream job... but it wouldn't have been the same, the staff were a bit clubby by then and mostly resented having to play old rock'n'roll records.

that's me in the mid-80's wearing a jacket from FLIP with some friends out partying

so it was a missed opportunity to work there, even though i discovered the newcastle branch(in chinatown?) back in 1989 when i was living in carlisle but was way too skint from being at college to do any damage to their stock levels.
at the arse end of the 80's, vintage clothing was on the way out, new age threads and early hiphop styles started to come into fashion, grown men wandered about in floppy tracksuits with silky perms, like it was 1982 all over again... which meant of course that all the retro outlets started to shed deadstock 50s' and 60's clothing like no tomorrow... so there i was in the early 90's, back in the shops like birmingham's Razors Edge(now moved from hurst street and called Yo-Yo, but still selling fine vintage clothing)and retro markets like Quiggins in liverpool - which had miles of suede jackets, gleefully buying all the same old styles that i'd seen back in the 80's, only now it was a fraction of the cost.
i'm still buying this stuff... i was in the famous Rag Market in birmingham last weekend, and bought myself a mustard coloured baseball jacket with letters and leather sleeves... needed a dryclean but scrubbed up nice enough.

styles came and went, the grungers bought up all the plaid shirts in the early 90's, the fashion became very 70's for a while, then everyone wanted to live in the 60's and and now i help the other half to run our own mail-order retro clothing shop, we've got piles of old stuff around the house and FLIP is still going strong in it's newcastle shop.
and i'm still a vintage obsessed throwback who owns too many jackets to be practical.
it's hard to stress just how cool these vintage shops were back then... for the time being, you can wander about in camden and find plenty of outlets for retro clothes, but at the time, up north, places like this were very few and far between.
FLIP was a very important shop for me, it fed my passion for the clothes i needed as a retro obsessed vintage geek and kept me sane through the bad fashions of 80's excess, so i salute you Mr FLIP for all your hard work!
this one's for you:

good times and great clothes...
i wanted to be that guy in the jeans advert, who goes into the laundrette to wash his jeans... except of course i always looked more like buddy holly than nick kamen.