Op Shop Find - Sfida Hi Tops

I found these shoes at the op shop yesterday, thought id chuck up some bad phone pics before they get too dirty. I can't find any info about these on the net, but they were in brand new condition, I reckon they must be early 90s. The ankle area reminds me of puma first rounds, and there is a weird chunk of plastic on the back. Also the soles arent very original. They say made in Italy which is pretty cool. The colourway is nice, but they are a bit too big, I don't care, I really wanna wear them cause no one else has them! $9 is an absolute steal, don't you think?

Cool Old Link - Tins

A collection of photos of old tins on the H is For Home blog. I especially like the orange ones shown above.

800k disks.

I probably spent too much money on these last night, but it should lead to some fun. I have a mac se in the garage I can't get to boot, so hopefully I can make some boot disks and get it running. I have a bunch of old ones but they are super old and might be corrupt.

I've been a bit sick but I'll hopefully kick start this blog soon, to anyone who might be reading!

Cool Old Junk - what this is all about (part three)

4. Nerdiness.

There's gonna be another side to this blog besides furniture and design, and that's technology. I collect old computers. Well, sometimes not so old. And they are all apple. I guess it's cause I've always had a mac at home since I was little and now I'm designing I use a mac for work. I guess my collecting start with my friend Mathieu. He had a mac plus in his shed and decided to try to get it working. There was something fun and frustratng about reading up online about how to try to get it running, and going through old system disks. A while later I found my own mac plus in an op shop, and set it up in my room, playing old games and drawing with macdraw and kidpix. It didnt have a hard drive, only used 800k disks, and didnt doing much at all compared to my parent's performa, let alone my Mum's school ibook, but I loved it. I soon was given an se and later a colour classic. The rest is history.

I have a whole bunch of macs in my garage, some working, some not, so I'll dedicated a section of the blog to all things nerdy. Not just computers but old games and systems, the odd toy or radio, and other things along those lines. So old wont just mean "from before I was born" - it's just general obselscence. Stuff people dont want anymore, that's pretty much what this is about. So me showing off my crap to the world, and occasionally linking to other people's crap. Sound good? good. enjoy my blog. Hopefully I'll stick with it!

Cool Old Junk - what this is all about (part two)

Part one here

2.Antiques, furniture shops and home decortating magazines. My mum used to be big on antiques. I think it was an 80s/90s country home type thing. We had old cigarette boxes, old tins, ancient furniture and various other bits and pieces throughout the house. My parents would spend lots of time looking at antiques and furniture shops, and I would usually get dragged along. i think being around old stuff so much rubbed off on me, I just like it now. But probably a slightly different stuff to what my parents were into. I love mid century furniture and homewares. The lines, the patterns, the colours and textures, there's something retro but futuristic about it.

When I was in my last year of highschool my parents were looking for a beach house. I remember going along to look at a cute little house in St Leonards. I didnt care one way or the other about the house to be honest, but the furniture inside sold me striaght away. Fully decked out with original mid century furniture and fittings, tables, chairs, couches (even the water heater). I staked a claim on a deep red vinyl couch and hoped theyd decide this was the right place. They did. A few months later that couch sat in my bedroom, covered in clothes, but mine. I think that's where my love affair with old furniture really started.

Since then my collection has grown and is a mix of vintage op shop finds and ikea. I prefer the op shop finds.

3. Art and Design.

I'm a Graphic Designer so school involved learning about art and design history. Design and art are pretty much the same ideas over and over, and newer isnt always better. Look at old logo design compared to the bubble type and table reflection ridden design around now. There was so much care put into old signs, old typography and old layout. Because it was done by hand. It took a long time so you had to do it right.

The same goes with a lot of older products. You can still find out radios and tvs that work fine, ancient chairs that are still solid, old furniture made to take a beating. Everything is made to break now, so you can upgrade in a few years, and upgrade and upgrade and never have any connection to a product. Nothing has any personality.

Older stuff just stands out. It has some kind of warmth and feeling to it that doesnt exist with a lot of products around now. Maybe that's why Eames furniture is still so popular, why lots of vintage furniture holds its value so well, or why whitegoods went through a trend of looking like they were from the 40s/50s 60s. Or how a bunch of radios came out looking like they were made out of bakelite. Lots of that stuff is super tacky, but it says something about consumers. They dont always want new and lifeless. I certainly don't.

The other side of the whole Art/Design reason is that I like collection old books and magazines for reference, or to pull apart and make into new art. I like making collages and art journals and sticking a bunch of found objects I find on a page together. I love found objects like ticket stubs, old photos, postcards etc. And my favourite place to find cool pics to make collages is in old national geographics. I grab old books and mags whenever I can, and usually have trouble parting with them. They might inspire me one day!

Part 3 soon.

Cool Old Junk - what this is all about (part one)

First things first - I'm a pack rat. My mum says I'll end up on A Current Affair as one of those people with a condemned house with old car part and babies nappies strewn across the front yard and onto the concrete. I don't know why I love old junk, but I think it's a mix of a few things:

1. I don't like wasting stuff. When I was younger my Mum always bought the no name brand stuff and from a young age I op shopped. It's not that we were poor, it's just my parents are into budgeting and not wasting money. I always wanted the rip curl jumpers and expensive sneakers everyone else had, but usually ended up only getting them on special occasions, and the rest of the time I'd wear stuff like old woolen jumpers with weird patterns, work jackets complete with random people's names, ski jackets with zip off arms and "grandpa pants" - usually flared. This fit in with my "punk rock" attitude and also my extreme tomboy-ness (ask my friends if they've ever seen me wear a dress!).

I also never had a discman (although I had a rad boombox with detachable speakers, cd player and two tape decks) and only really got cds as presents (this was the time before cd burners - at least before every man and his dog could afford one) so I used to make a lot of mixtapes. From the radio, mostly, to listen to on my almost hour-long trip to and from highschool every day. My dad had a great sony sports walkman - it was bright yellow and bigger that even the oldest ipods, but it was my main source of music throughout my teenage years. It was covered in stickers and made fun of by my friends, but looking back I wish I still had it (it died).

There's something much more artistic about making a mixtape than downloading an mp3. My tapes were filled with my favourite songs, with radio announcers talking over the start or end of a song, and sometimes only half a song (if I didnt get to the record button fast enough). Id try to put songs on that would impress my fellow bus travellers (the bus driver sometimes let us put tapes on the buses' radio), there was nothing that filled my 13 year old self with pride more than when the year 12 boys at the back asked 'who made this tape?' and started headbanging to silverchair or nirvana. But sometimes it would cause fights- 'why would you stop the tape when it was a weezer song?' 'cause they suck, too poppy' 'you're an idiot!' (I was).

Many of the tapes they were taped on were stolen from music class. I think the school my have had a deal with deakin to get all their old lecture tapes, so they had boxes and boxed of them for kids to record music practise on? (i dunno, I never used them for the intended purpose). I used to grab handfuls of them, take them hope, tape over the edges and record away.
I have a massive collection of old tapes at home, and I can't throw them away. why? cause it's like throwing away a part of myself. I know that's a dangerous way to think, but I sure lots of other people out there feel the same way.

I'm going to split this intro into parts seeing I'm waffling on more than I thought I would. expect more up soon.