Welcome to the 28th year of the site.
By the time you’re done with everything here, we’ll be welcoming the 29th year.
There are a few personal sites that have been around this long, and still update. Do they update as regularly, or produce as much original content? I doubt it. A round of sarcastic applause for your host, I suppose: here’s your perseverance award!
The web was different in 1996, to state the obvious - but this site hasn’t changed, just grown. The graphics have gotten better (I hope) and the content has gotten . . . wider, to fit the larger screens, only to run up against the smartphone era. Given what I do here, there’s not much hope of adjusting to the new paradigm, and since I am But One Man, no chance of me rewriting the whole damned thing.
Quick Tip: the Bleat is a Monday-Friday entry, what used to be called a “blog” but isn’t quite. You’ll see. The updates are weekly additions to some selected sites, which are both huge and easily sampled. There are large inert swaths of the site that are left alone in perpetuity, although I may add to the general category. A sub-site called “The 20th Century” will always find space for something new - and indeed, this year I hope to roll out the start of the 1990s section, something I had previously decided not to do.
Overall idea: the internet’s most diverse,
idiosyncratic, and individually curated pop-culture
museum. Note: that’s the last time I’ll use “curated.”
It’s pretentious.
But it’s true! I am pretentious. Also, this site is a
one-man effort, assembled over two decades, its
innumerable sub-sites gathered together under general,
vague rubrics.
Lileks
2024
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What is the
Institute? A good question. It began
as a repository for odd things I scanned - and
by “scanned,” I mean I took pictures with a
video camera, and used a frame grabber to get
the images. Cheap scanners didn’t exist.
As time went on, anything that
was “vintage” or “retro” and could be gently
mocked went into the Institute.
HERE'S
the main page. Some of the popular sites:
The
Gallery of Regrettable Food. The classic
from 1997, it spawned two books. Still updated -
with a
huge addition in 2019, and more coming in 2021.
Interior
Desecrations: bad interior design of the
60s and 70s.
The
Gobbler: the Grooviest Motel in Wisconsin.
Redone in 2019.
The
Art of Art Frahm: the effect of celery on
underwear elastic.
The
Permanent Collection of Impermanent Art:
what if we treated advertising illustration with
the same pretentious analysis we use for museum
art?
And much, much more.
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Yes, I'm taking on the entire century. Except for the 90s. This has been ten years in the making, and the 50s site - the pinnacle of the project, perhaps - debuts this year.
The
Oughts & Tens. New in 2019, and
underpopulated.
The
Twenties. Updated in early 2021. There's magazines covers, and a rather
significant selection of movie
ads from Film Daily magazine, and some spicy - but SFW
- publications.
The
Thirties. More new items coming in 2021 as well.
Sears
1934: 100 pages from the catalog,
scanned, color-corrected, and annotated.
Magazine
ads. I don’t know how many, exactly.
Lots.
Bygone
hooch. A site devoted to brands that
have passed from memory.
A
kitchen brochure. What things looked
like.
Magazine
covers.
Music.
Playlists of the hits of each year.
The
1933 World's Fair. Yeah, we need
another site about this - but it has some
stuff you might not have seen. Also - the 1939 World's Fair!
The
Forties.
Patriotica:
a big collection of WW2
ads, brochures for the
home front, and more.
Childhood
magazines.
Non-war
cultural ephemera, like wallpaper
catalogs, 1941
Gudie to LA, Homemaker's
Guide, and more.
The Fifites. It has begun.
The
Sixties. The Twilight of the Grown-Ups.
You'll find sites with these topics, and more:
Ads.
Of course.
Catalogs.
Huge! Two year of fashion.
Dream
Homes. A collection of rambler art.
LA
Dining 1962
Chain
Store Age. An industry periodical.
World's
Fair 1964. There are bigger sites, I'm
sure.
Circulars.
Meant to be tossed, but someone kept them.
Radio
spots. A few brisk examples of period
shilling.
1961 vs 1969. Dining tips. New in 2021.
The
Seventies. Lots
of brown horrors. We have:
The
Ice Follies. Three years of programs.
The
Faces of Match Game. Says it all.
The
Faces of the Price is Right. The
hairstyles!
Punk 77: how to be a punk
Search.
My favorite show when I was a kid.
Sears
1973: a small selection of fashion.
Sears
1976: Bicentennial styles.
Bad Cartoons: Saturday morning horrors.
Swoon, girls: Odd Bobby Sherman comic.
Radio.
PSAs and beautiful music from early 70s
airchecks.
Dorcusella:
lingerie from the early 70s
The
Eighties. New in 2019, and one of my favorites.
1986
Sears Catalog.
TV ads. You'll also find trailers and promos
Magazine ads.
And more! Give it a look.
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A study of old newspaper
cartoons, as well as an extensive archive of comic book covers and ads. Contains several
subsites:
Jerry
on the Job, a 1920s gag strip that
used the flip-take a bit too much
Scoop,
the Cub Reporter. From the WW1 era.
Briggs.
Influential and popular 19teens cartoonist.
Through 2019.
Webster.
Beloved, amiable observer of life.
Glyuas Williams. Utterly unique.
Mr.
Coffeenerves, a real bastard. Updated in 2020.
Everett True, another real bastard
Lance
Lawson, a short-lived Minneapolis
you-solve-it strip
High-Pressure
Pete, another obscure 20s strip
Worst
Comics Ever. In my opinion. Includes a
bad Spirit someone was kind enough to show
to Will Eisner.
Abian
Wallgren: his WW1 soldier comics.
King
Features: the entire 1949 line up of
artists and strips. More than fifty!
The Enormous & Needless Comic Book Site
Cover archive
Gee it's Swell: comic book ads from the 40s to the 70s
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The
American Motel. The great signs of the
days before the chains changed everything.
Ongoing throughout the yast half of the year. Hundrds of cards!
Coffee
and Chrome: old restaurant postcards. Updated in the second quarter of 2021.
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Quite possibly the largest collection of matchbooks on the internet, if that means anything. Certainly the most extensively annotated. A history of American 20th century advertising in its most portable form.
The main index is here.
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Also known as Miscellany,
depending on the year. This site began as a
dumping ground for ideas that didn’t fit
anywhere else. It’s grown to rival the Institute
in size. As time goes on, various sites are
moved to places where they fit in a bit better.
The main index page is HERE.
The sites are:
SCI-FI
COVERS Illustrations from the days of
rockets and cheap paperbacks. Updated in 2016.
FRANK
READE JR. A look at the 19th century Tom
Swift.
Grand Hotels: huge old hostels.
Big
Tiny Little: his life in album art.
Cruise Ships of yore: the
SS Lurline: the SS California; the SS Caronia.
The Distant City: a strange trope of comics.
Migny:
a 70s Paris hotel brochure.
A
Girl in NYC: She sent a friend a letter
in the 1920s.
Postcard
Portfolios: The art of the souvenir
brochure
Missing:
ads from people looking for long-lost friends
in the 1940s
Goodbye
to Telegrams: the forgotten art of
telegrams.
Short
History of Swimsuits. Old news-service
photos of bathing beauties.
The
Letters from the Antique Store. A tale
told in ephemera.
Hotel
Stationery. Engravings and current
views, if possible.
1953
Buick: a gorgeous brochure for the
year’s models.
Labels and Caps.
Just that.
Radio promotional books. So
far, just
WNAX.
XMAS
in 1960s women's mags.
And that's just the half of it! Go HERE for the entire list.
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Cities Old and New. Some
of these sites are new; others are in need of
a refresh. We have:
Minneapolis.
It has old views, present views .
New
York. Old postcard views of office buildings and hotels; a look at Times Square; some of my
shots.
Main
Streets. Bygone town centers before
the malls emptied them out.
Malls
of Yore: 1960s mall postcards.
Main
street on Google Street Views. Links
to the ongoing Bleat feature celebrating the
greatest documentary project of the 21st
century.
Modern
Churches: modernism applied to
religious structures.
Ghost
Ads. Faded pictures painted on brick
walls.
Main
Streets at Night: neon!
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I keep forgetting about
this site. It’s a salute to wavy lines in tiny
pictures! It’s odd to forget something like
this, because it has approximately 13
bazillion pages.
Curious
Lucre: the money of other lands. NOTE: Undergoing a rehab; mostly offline until 2022.
The
Gallery of Corporate Allegory. The art
of Stock Certificates.
First-Day
Covers: lots of vignettes of people,
places, and events celebrated by the Postal
Service. It’s not as dull as it sounds.
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The
Diner My old KSTP AM-1500 radio show is
back in podcast form. Over eighty half-hour
episodes available - with some original shows
from the 90s as well.
Bleatophany.
Remixes and compositions.
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Your
Host Bio, family stories
Travel Where I was.
Video What I shot.
Photos What I saw.
Contact Where I am.
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