I was there 25 years ago. It was posing. It's a look that been around since the first school of higher learning.
I never felt so cool as I did in my '49 Lincoln after it was all chopped and one color... Just found this picture from the late 90s when I was still rockin' a chain wallet and big-ass cuffs. This was probably a year or two after we started Billetproof and the 'scene' was still growing in the Bay Area. Good times!
Is this supposed to be funny? I'm the exact right age to remember when that WAS really cool. I know of a couple of well know Houston hotrodder/rockabilly guys that used to tear up the roller rink way back when. That is still cool. Breakdancing has come a long way, but that was dazzling stuff back then
Amen brother. I've been into cars a while, but never played dress up. If it makes someone else happy that's fine too. I grew up surfing, by myself if I could find some elbow room. I've always tried to be too busy having a good time to notice if anybody was looking. My life is my kids and wife. Although I do watch Maury.
Agreed! Also, do what makes you happy. For me it's been the whole "Greaser" thing for nearly three decades. Very few of the people around me get it, but I don't do it for them, I do it for me. My "mid century" life makes me happy and to me that's cool.
The only time I was the coolest in school was in the 6th grade 1971, I was the first one to wear real button fly swabbies (sailor pants). It was all down hill from there. My favorite part of this thread was the NACHO link. Adam Patch made the perfect animated video for that joke ... amazing vision and talent.
the time from 1964 to 70..there will never be another block of our history quite like it..the music, the fashion, the drugs, birth control pills, the cars, the young people, everyone united against a war..it was cool, your friends were cool, the art you were creating was cool, your lime green 55 Chevy at the dragstrip was cool..you were cool and you stayed cool, its just like riding a bicycle or swimming, you don't forget, it stays with you man...Long live cool!
I thought you were automatically cool if you spelled it with a K? Posted using the Full Custom H.A.M.B. App!
Cool? I've known a lot of very cool guys in my life and they all shared the same trait . . . they didn't think, try or strive to be cool and just did their own thing regardless of what others might have thought. On the other side of the coin, if someone actually tries to be cool or thinks that they already are . . . well, they just couldn't be farther from the harsh truth!
When I was a very little guy (3-4 years old) in '60 - '61, we lived in a big old two story house in Rochester Michigan, just a block off Main Street. The house had been made into a duplex. We lived on one side, and the owners of the house, Clarence and Alice Nedro and their kids, lived on the other side. Mr. and Mrs. Nedro had 3 teenaged sons and a teenaged daughter. The boys were definitely greasers. And even though I hadn't yet heard the word "cool" or knew what it meant...I thought they were soooooo cool. Seriously...they were like gods to me. And it clinched it for me, as far as how "cool" relates to this hobby we call hot rodding and the greaser style, when one day while the men were at work and my mother was visiting Mrs. Nedro...sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee...and I was toddling around the kitchen. All of a sudden, there was a loud roar of an unmuffled engine being revved just outside the house. Vrooooom!!! Vrooooom-vrooooom!!! I immediately rushed to the kitchen door window and pulled the curtain aside to see the youngest of the 3 Nedro boys (Joe) and a couple of his pals bent over the engine bay of a late '40s Ford coupe. Wow...cool!!! I think my mom was worried that I'd be negatively influenced, and she nearly yelled, "Ricky!!! Get away from that window!" Too late...I was hooked. That was my first exposure to greasers and hot rods. And now I knew what cool was. And for a few short years, I watched for and saw other instances of it. Guys with greased hair rumbling down the street in loud, rumbling, badass hot rods. I have to add here, that of course, all eras seem to have their good and bad aspects. That particular time was fraught with many teenaged deaths due to car accidents. Fast cars, drinking and no seatbelts was a bad combination. And sadly, the Nedro kids became victims as well. All of them except for Joe. That was not cool. It wasn't long after, and musclecars and the Beatles showed up. And all of a sudden, that became the personification and the epidomy of cool...for myself and so many others. It was cool as far as I was concerned, and I still look back with fondness for it...the cars, the music, the hair, the "flower power" and "peace and love" attitudes. And yet again...that era had its sad and stressful times. It was a time of many changes. The hot rods changed too. Actually, for a short time, they almost went away completely. But there was always still a part of me that held onto that first impression of what cool was. Then the Beatles broke up and suddenly it wasn't all peace and love anymore. It sorta lingered a bit into the '70s, but that was mainly just the hair and the drugs. By the '80s, there was a new smell in the air...and I sensed that I wasn't gonna like it. People became more selfish it seemed...the "me" generation. "New wave" and "punk rock" music. And front wheel drive pieces of crap. And then "rap" and multi-colored hair...and shaved heads...and exposed male butt cleavage...and the ever-popular gang-thug "gangsta" styles and attitudes...and tattoos up the ying-yang. But hey...we've got computers. Cool! I now live in a small town that's kind of off the beaten path. It's an old farming community, with a lot of old-timers around. It's the type of town that's somewhat a haven from the ever-encroaching outside world. But just today, I saw a young man walking down the street with his girlfriend. I aint kiddin...he looked more like a girl than his girlfriend did. (I'm very aware that I'm sounding like my dad did in the '70s...lol) But I aint just talking long hair here. His hair was multi-colored, (and I've gotten pretty used to that) but in a definite style of something you'd see on a female in the early '60s...kind of a flip or something, ??? with bangs...hard to explain...harder to look at. Kind of Donna Reed-ish. He was tossing it around like he was proud of it. I'm sure he thought it was "cool", but I sure didn't...it kinda creeped me out. It was a very "wtf" moment for me. The other day, I was in the local gas station, and there were 3-4 young men in there, hanging out and kind of "touching" and hugging each other...you know...like they were boyfriends. One was actually laying his head on the other's shoulder and rubbing his back. Another "wtf" moment. Was it "cool"? Even though I consider myself to be non-judgemental type of person, I didn't think it was cool at all. Please, Mr. Wizard!...Help me Mr. Wizard!...Get me outa here! Take me home...back to the days of greasers and traditional hot rods and customs! Heeeeeeeelp meeeeeee, Mr. Wizarrrrrrrrd!!! I've always thought that Ryan pretty much nailed it when he made the cutoff for the Hamb...1964. I gotta say...thank you "Mr. Wizard".
The main reason hair was greasy back then is because that's what was used to keep your hair in place. Then came masculine hair spray. Some of us recall vividly the Gillette campaign and the jingle, "Long live the Dry Look from Gillette". Denim and boots are still the "uniform" of choice for home builders, and the other choice to avoid the greasy look was the brush cut or flat top. Look through the old pictures and you see lots of that too. Imagine laying under the car at a race track or on the salt, then get up and have dirt and gravel glued to your skull. I didn't grow really long hair until the mid 90s. I guess I generally seem to have a desire to go against the norm, and when I decided to let it grow most were going shorter and shorter, and even more than ever shaved heads became popular. As usual, not me. I did eventually get tired of rolling over it with the creeper, but there were 2 more reasons I lopped it off. One was when I'd overheard someone saying how intimidating I looked. I didn't care for that too much because I rather be a badass when I have to be than simply "look" like one. The other was as I was planning a FED build. Naturally I shagged every magazine and book related to that endeavor, and there was this picture. Some very worn and old dude, really long grey hair (like mine!), tired looking and appeared generally beat up by life. He's sittin on the slick of a FED with a smoke hanging off his lip and leaning on the cage. Mrs Highlander loved my super long hair as well as all the other ladies in the salon, but it had to go. I took the picture with me and said, "Sorry babe, I know you like it but I can't be this. Time to go...". As our dear sweet friend began, "Jocko, are you sure? I can't believe..." "I'm sure. Way too young for this, make it go away." I thought she was gonna cry. I was 40 and that dude had to be 70+, and the look wasn't much different save for a lot more miles on his face. While I applauded the still present rebellion in his persona, I also still had a customer base to serve and represent, and it wasn't the best logistical choice for what I was doing back then. I wish I could find that picture...
Don't shoot the messenger, but it is definitely not cool to be talking about hairstyles and what we were thinking when we cut it or grew it. No disrespect, sir ^^^, I think YOU are cool. We all have probably traveled a long and winding "this is how I look" road.
TFATF is the last direction I would have expected this thread to turn....wow. They're great movies in the way that a Jack in the Box ultimate bacon cheeseburger is great. You know every single thing inside it is horrible and fake and very very bad for you...but sometimes you just have to have one. What I thought was cool in high school was my El Camino and Car Craft magazine. I listened to Disturbed, watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and wore Jnco khakis so baggy I could fit both legs through one side. When I found "traditional" hot rodding around 19-20 and started slicking back my hair instead of having it hang over my face, it saved my life!
Scientists have identified and isolated the DNA genome for the "cool" trait and concluded that "coolness" almost always skips a generation. If a man's father was inherently cool, then his offspring is doomed to a lifetime of being mundane, but don't fret because the cool trait always returns for the following generation.
Ryan, I was reading your original column in this thread, and thought to myself, "The way you write, I'm glad you decided to do with your life what you decided to do with your life".
When our family moved into the house I live in now, back in '74, there was a Gulf service station up the street from me. Now, this part of Houston was considered the "sticks" back then, so there were a lot of farm roads in this area. And there were street races. The Gulf station was owned by a scrappy old guy and his son. My dad liked to have one good mechanic to work on his cars, when it was something he wasn't clear on doing himself. Anyway, when we went to the station, my dad would be talking to the old man and I'd talk to the son. He was a few years older and he was cool. He had a HEMI 'Cuda and was always under the hood. His 'Cuda was the first time I'd ever seen or heard a Hemi and he'd start it up just so I could stand there mystified and jaw locked. He was always greasy, wore a manufacturers T shirt advertising something related to cars. A cigarette pack stuck in his T shirt sleeve. It would have been very cliché, except he dressed and talked that way forever. His sentences were usually one word. "Yup" or "nope". He'd tell me how he'd smoke the tires for half a block when he got of work and I witnessed it a few times. Sadly, if he was around and still tried to be as he was, he WOULD be mistaken as poser. I think cool gets tossed around too much now. So much so, that it doesn't have the same mystique it used to. Kinda sad.
i've never been cool. when i found myself coming close, i'd back off to stay just outside that bunch. i'm an under-achiever
The Jalopy Journal
