Snippets from America - a different kind of car

On the subject of cars, this is an Oldsmobile, Dynamic 88 convertible, spotted at the Olmsted Point pull-in overlooking Yosemite Valley. It is possible the late afternoon light had something to do with it but it was simply one of the most beautiful artefacts I have ever seen - a relic from a time long gone.

For those interested in details, you might note that it is graced with a fine set of furry dice.

Snippets from America - road manners

Once we get back home from our holiday in the US I can see that we will need to watch our step on the roads - both as pedestrians and drivers - as we have grown accustomed over the past month to American road manners. 

Of course most people, at different times, are both drivers and pedestrians, though to observe people’s behaviour on UK roads you’d never think it. In the UK it’s as if the category of road user you just don’t happen to be right now, suddenly becomes a figure to be feared or despised. When in the pedestrian mode, for example, we loathe drivers who lurch threateningly forwards the instant the lights have changed whilst, as drivers, we become enraged by pedestrians who have the misfortune to get in our way. 

In the US the situation appears to be entirely different. It’s as if the contract between motorists and pedestrians has been rewritten. In towns, cars travel slowly and sedately along wide streets. Pedestrians don’t stray across the road, people wait for the ‘walk’ sign at crossings and in return motorists give way whenever it appears there is any doubt as to the right of way. It’s refreshing, civilised and (I imagine) safer.

Snippets from America - the last of the dinosaurs

As we travel across the American West (and much to Mrs. Wormwood’s embarrassment) I have taken to asking owners of giant cars if I can pose in front of their magnificent vehicles. They are invariably flattered and turn out to be the sweetest of people. 

For those keen on technical facts, the black car above is a 6.7 litre Ford Superduty 350 pickup (fitted with the excursion modification). The elderly owner of this monster was quite small in stature and had some difficulty climbing in and out of the cab. 

Snippets from America - learning from Las Vegas

Learning from Las Vegas is the title of a book published in 1972 by Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour. The three were teachers and research students at the Yale School of Art And Architecture and their book proved to be highly influential in defining architectural Postmodernism. 

The position they took in analysing the Las Vegas is an interesting one. On the one hand, they appeared to be in agreement with everyone else that Las Vegas is the very epitome of artificiality, materialism and bad tasteand yet there was the accompanying view that, in the right hands,and with a generous measure of sophisticated irony the same superficiality and stylistic eclecticism might serve as the inspiration for a new architecture. 

In time, the book came to bear architectural fruit not so much in Las Vegas itself but in the business centres of New York and the City of London. Architects were encouraged to consider crass environments like the Las Vegas Strip, and to distill from them both elements and methodologies that they would go on to apply in entirely different contexts. For an extreme example of this kind of transplantation there is probably no better example than the MI6 headquarters building on the south bank of the Thames. 

During our own short trip to Las Vegas I was impressed by something quite different and that was the degree to which the various hotel-casinos along the strip - each of them representing some fabulous past culture or fantasy: Caesar’s Palace, the Luxor (ancient Egypt), the Venetian, Mandalay, Treasure Island - how, despite the crassness of these representation (where else could you see the Venice campanile, cheek by jowl with the Rialto Bridge?) how despite all of this, they genuinely succeed in creating an environment in which masses of people seem to enjoy something of the same ‘bread and circuses’ escapism enjoyed by the citizens of Ancient Rome. 

So, for me, I am inclined to take Las Vegas on it’s own terms - or preferably not at all. We were there for less than 24 hours and, though it was an unforgettable experience, it was more than enough. 

Snippets from America - National Forest typeface

We’re travelling in the USA and I was intending to write a number of blogs along I the way but there is something wrong with the blogger interface on the iPad which means you can’t see more than one page of text, so, rather than beat my head against a brick wall I have decided to keep my posts short. This will no doubt come as good news all round. 

One of the first things I noticed on our travels was a simple typeface used on signs in the National Parks. When I saw this sign in the Sequoia National Forest it gave rise to a whole flood of memories and impressions. The style of lettering seems so familiar, old-fashioned and oddly reassuring and yet where do these memories originate? Could it have been in old, secondhand copies of the National Geographic magazine, pored over in dentists’ waiting rooms? Or was it in an old film from the 50s? Whatever the answer, it is one that is coloured in hues of Kodachrome.