I was on the ground floor of the vintage lifestyle/retro art movement in San Jose,California during the early 1980’s. There was a pod of about thirty people or so, mostly punks, skaters and allies of mine who routinely shopped the goodwills and thrift stores in search of the coolest items and clothes from the 50’s,60’s and 70’s.

I remember walking down the street in my plaid Bermuda shorts, sporting a white T-shirt under a cool olive green cardigan sweater, that I scored for fifty cents, with some Chuck Taylor low cut white tennis shoes and a freshly mowed flat-top hair cut, hand and hand with my girlfriend Beth wearing a 1950’s cocktail dress and heels with a Marilyn Monroe platinum blond, tease-up hair-do and smeared make-up for that just molested look, the general public looked at us like we were aliens. That kind of reaction resonated with me.

When the 1990’s roll around and retro for the most part wasn’t cool anymore, I kept practicing the art of vintage. I was always interested in taking a special time, place and energy, a fashion, an art, an architecture, a certain verbiage or even a morality from one time and putting into another time.

The Rebel Yell

America is a young country and a throw away society. We are so ready to discard our fashion, art and sometimes our own souls when moving forward on the fast track to the next big thing, never taking much time or consideration to look back, define and hold onto what is genuinely classic Americana. Rockabilly is one of the retro movements that has remained a constant over the years, preserving the birth of the rebel yell and holding on and never letting go to one of America’s great gift’s to the world: “Rock n’ Roll”.

Today we see vintage in our daily contemporary lives, from the guy down the street working on his ‘57 chevy and the re-birth of car clubs, the preservation and restorations of turn of the century Victorian homes, to professional sport teams wearing their throw-back jerseys. Retro is certainly the new paradigm when defining American art, fashion, culture and architecture.

Remember, it’s easier to know where you’re going when you know where you came from.

Welcome Home America.

Until next time,
Peace and Love, Joe