Tag: 1980s

Topeka West Holidome

We talked about the Holidomes before. Now, the former Holiday Inn Holidome in Topeka, Kansas, will be torn down and replaced with apartments. This Holidome, located on the west side of town just off I-70, appears to have been built in the early 80s. It eventually became a Ramada Inn but kept much of the Holidome architecture, including the interior courtyard and pool. It permanently closed about four years ago. Photos of the shut-down hotel are at the Topeka Courier-Journal online. Some photos of the hotel in happier times (when it may have already transitioned into a Ramada) are below, by way of Google.

Source: Google/Steve Barton
Source: Google/Rod Bagley

Source: Google/alisarodriguez

Featured Image: Holiday Inn Topeka West Postcard may predate the Holidome expansion.

Flashback 1981: One of the 99%

Whisky is not the vice John DeLorean is usually associated with. Cutty Sark ad from 1981, the first year the DeLorean sports car was sold. In 1982, John DeLorean was arrested for (and later acquitted of) drug trafficking. The DeLorean Motor Company declared bankruptcy the same year. Cutty Sark Scotch whisky was created in 1923 and is still in business.

James Garner and Mariette Hartley Vintage Polaroid Christmas Commercials

When James Garner passed away, obituaries mentioned not only his movies (The Great Escape, Grand Prix) and TV Shows (Maverick, The Rockford Files), but also commercials he made for Polaroid cameras. Polaroid partnered him with actress Mariette Hartley, who had done mainly guest star appearances on TV shows (Gunsmoke, Star Trek, Mannix) up until then.

The ads were so successful that Garner reportedly made over 300 of them between about 1977 and 1983. He and Hartley had such a winning chemistry in the spots that viewers presumed that the two were actually married to each other. They were not.

Here’s a bunch of the Christmas-themed ads that Garner and Hartley did for Polaroid.

Continue reading James Garner and Mariette Hartley Vintage Polaroid Christmas Commercials

Ode to the Holidome

So we were just talking about Holiday Inn (the movie) and now here’s a CNN feature on the Holidome – the indoor pool/amusement park/party center that was a feature of many Holiday Inns (the hotel chain) in the 1970s and 1980s. Yes, the actual hotel chain was named after the inn in the Bing Crosby movie.

Tiki bar, pool, and the other type of pool in South Dakota. Source: IHG/CNN.
Cheyenne, Wyoming: On the route of the Holidomes.

TV Party: Black Flag

No, really, we’ve got nothing better to do. Another one of those songs I had forgotten about (until hearing it on the Friday Night Freakout). Fine, it was supposed to be ironic, but is it really?

Originally released on Black Flag’s 1981 album Damaged, then re-released on their EP TV Party with the actual tv show “Fridays” switched out for “Wednesdays,” for some reason, then included on the Repo Man soundtrack (yeah, I forgot it was on there, too).

That’s Incredible!

Vega$!

Members Only: There is No Excuse Not to Vote

Members Only, the makers of the now-classic 1980s racer jacket, encouraged Americans to vote in the 1988 elections using imagery that probably seemed overly dramatic at the time. The U.S. Constitution, the narrator intoned, “suggested a very simple way to keep fools like these out of our government.” The fools? Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini. The remedy? Voting. Some commercials are timeless.

That jacket is itself pretty timeless:

Members Only Stranger Things

1970s London Archaeologist Culture

Archaeologists on a tea break in London, 1974. Source: Hobley’s Heroes.

Hobley’s Heroes is an online archive that shows something of life as an archaeologist digging in London in the 1970s and 1980s, including dig site photos and an fanzine-like comic/workplace newsletter. Brian Hobley, Chief Urban Archaeologist, was their boss. It’s a fascinating repository that includes some far out field fashion and a glossary of the digger’s argot (“If in doubt, rip it out” was in use at least as early as 1974).

Hobley’s Heroes, Issue 1. 1975. Source: Hobley’s Heroes

Continue reading 1970s London Archaeologist Culture