My wife's uncle said he had some old pictures of Minneapolis, taken in the early 1980s for a promotional effort. Would I like them? Oh, my, yes! Bring 'em over when you come for Memorial Day.
He brought two boxes. They weigh 95 pounds.
Let me back up a bit. You know that vinyl records are hot and hip, right? Right. It's fun to get a turntable, haunt the thrift stores for some vintage LPs ("Cha-Cha to the Moon," "Jack Jordon and his Five Jacks" or "Vaguely Parisian Songs" by Jordon Jacques) and play them for friends some night while you're having Old-Fashioneds and wishing "Mad Men" was still on.
It's a form of cultural dress-up, and if the end result is appreciation for the middlebrow hi-fi pleasures of the mid-century era, I'm all for it. People laugh when I say I have the complete works of the Jackie Gleason Orchestra — until they hear it. Suddenly you want to be wearing nice clothes, smoking, and half in the bag, because it seems like the epitome of adulthood.
Instant cameras are popular again, too, because they bring back a relaxed, carefree time when instant gratification took a minute. My daughter was interested in the medium for a while, and I felt compelled to give a history lesson. "You know why we had film that developed right away? Because we thought the Soviets would nuke us at any minute. You send them to the drugstore for developing, you might never get them."
I applaud the real-photo movement. Kids spend untold hours swapping pictures on Snapchat; their entire life is documented to a degree previously lavished on heads of state, and they don't save any of it. I think the sole evidence of my existence in 1964 is a picture of me holding a dead pheasant by the neck.
Unless, of course, you count the slides.
Are slide projectors the next old tech to find a new home with the vintage enthusiasts? Will this be the next trend you'll read about here, as people in their early 30s hold "Carousel Parties," where they sit around in dark rooms while someone splashes Kodachromes up on a screen? I can write the obligatory feature story before it happens: