This nighttime panorama of Piccadilly Circus circa 1958 is haunting. With the color pulled out it’s a study in simple black and white and amazingly captures four mechanisms for city travel: a London Double Decker bus, an entrance to the Underground, cars traversing the circle, and a bobby on foot. A larger and even more haunting version may be found here.
Last Call indicates the end of Hooniverse’s broadcast day. It’s meant to be an open forum for anyone and anything. Thread jacking is not only accepted, it’s encouraged.
Image: Vintage Everyday
Last Call: Piccadilly Circus Edition
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IMDB says it could be 1959 or 1960, as the movie “Happy Anniversary” debuted in New York in November of ’59, and in Europe in 1960 (though no listing for England is given.) There might have been a sneak preview?
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So, on Monday I arrived at work to find the engine and transmission of a Ford Thunderbird parked very inconveniently close to the machine I operate. It was a 490 cubic inch V-8 with a 4 bbl carb, but other than that I can’t tell you what year Thunderbird if came from.
My boss is part of Survival Research Laboratories, and this machine exists solely to make extremely loud noises. The T-bird drivetrain pushes what you might think of best as a weed whacker. An 8 inch disk with maybe 8 inches of steel cable, 3/8″ thick, sticking out in two strands from opposite sides of the disk. Big f**k-off weed whacker. Eight liters. Direct drive.
Why? The goal was to get the ends of the cables to go supersonic, which they did. Also, there’s the straight to the sky exhaust “system” providing a bass line to the whips.
Something of it can be heard in this video, it’s the part that sounds like a WWII aircraft doing a dive bomb, and in fact that’s exactly what it does. Big engine, straight exhaust, supersonic propeller. Thunderbird. It was one of the few audio components to a very visual and tactile show.
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That’s … Weird.
BTW – The Thunderbird never came with a 490, I don’t think Ford made such a thing. A 390 from ’61-’71, a 428 and a 429 in the late 60s and a 460 in the early 70s. Any of those are sufficiently overkill for a weed whacker.-
I thought 490 sounded unusually large, I knew there was the 460, but hadn’t heard of a 490.
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In continuing preparations for my wife and I’s eventual move, I decided to repair our futon last night (because that’s more important than, you know, painting the walls back to white). It’s probably overboard for what was a free futon, and I should have done it outside with shoes on (now I have brass shavings in my toes), but I like the way it turned out.
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Inspired piece of overkill. I like the layout lines, keep ’em on there.
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Thanks!
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I went down to the ‘dilly, to check out the scene
but I soon ended up on the the old main drag.
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