The most beautiful little photos of Berlin

Die schönsten Kleinfotos von Berlin ("The most beautiful little photos of Berlin")

Here are scans of a pack of 10 baseball-card-sized photos of Berlin, probably purchased around 1962. The photos seem to be from circa 1945–1960. Published by Klinke und Co.

Berlin, Ausstellungshallen am Funkturm

Berlin, Brandenburger Tor

Berlin, Englischer Garten mit Siegessäule

Berlin, Funkturm und Messehallen bei Nacht

Berlin, Kurfürstendamm Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche

Berlin, Kurfürstendamm

Berlin, Olympia-Stadion

Berlin, Platz der Luftbrücke

Berlin, Schillertheater

Berlin, Zentral-Flughafen, Flugsteig

1974 Lincoln Logs Frontiersman Set #858 idea sheet

If you were an American kid in the 1970s, there's a good chance you had Lincoln Logs, or knew someone who did. They were kind of underwhelming, in terms of what you could make with them, but they really felt good to play with. They were made of real wood!

Here is what I am calling an "idea sheet" that came with one of the sets introduced in 1974:

 You can also download this as an OCR'd PDF (10 MB).

Internet porn scandal, 1994

The turn of the New Year brings a new post in this sad little archive. Here's a CNN clip I've been sitting on from around July 13, 1994. Back then, Headline News really was a news channel with talking heads, not the "HLN" network of today whose programming consists mainly of celebrity gossip and lowest-common-denominator editorial panels desperately trying to compete with FOX News. Yet as you will see, this doesn't mean its mid-'90s reporting wasn't rife with sensationalism and general cluelessness.



A downloadable, higher quality transfer is also available.

The funniest part is just the idea that this was newsworthy at all. Someone uploaded some soft porn and pirated software from USEnet newsgroups onto an FTP site in a government-funded lab, and somehow this was a major scandal. This was before there were very many private websites, Gopher servers, or file servers whatsoever. There were roughly only 20 million people on the entire Internet! Man, those were the days.

In the Aug. 4, 1994 issue of Toronto's Eye Weekly, K.K. Campbell lampooned CNN's sensationalism:

Couple of weeks ago, California nuclear research facility Lawrence Livermore Labs discovered one computer held some dirty pictures. An employee gave away a password. Someone used that access to store the images. People could connect and get them. Nothing was hacked. Big deal. But on July 13, CNN reporter Don Knapp swooped in to whip up hysteria. Doom was clearly imminent. 'Computer security specialists were surprised to find what may be the largest computer collection ever of hardcore pornography at the nation's top nuclear weapons and research laboratory,' Knapp intoned ominously. Almost 2000 megs! Gol-ly! (Incidentally, 99 per cent of it was individual shots of nude/semi-nude women, no sexually explicit acts. Playboy stuff.) CNN rang Wired magazine writer Brian Behlendorf and woke him at home, excited about 'a big break-in at Laurence Livermore.' Hackers and porno! If CNN was lucky, the hacker was a child molester. Behlendorf consented to an interview. CNN immediately asked him to 'find some pictures of naked women on the Net for us.' Behlendorf recounted the incident: 'I really wasn't interested in doing that. I don't know of any FSP/FTP sites offhand anyways, and really didn't want to be associated with pictures of NEKKID GRRLS.' But amiable Behlendorf slid over to alt.binaries.pictures.supermodels and grabbed a picture of a model in a swimsuit. He also picked up a landscape, a race car and a Beatles album cover "to show that other images get sent over Usenet as well," naively thinking this point would be made -- though he stresses he by no means condones distributing copyrighted images, "clean" or otherwise. Behlendorf was then made to sit beside a terminal displaying Ms String-Bikini throughout all his comments. 'They made me keep returning to that damn bikini image ... over and over.' But intrepid reporter Don Knapp assured us all is well -- for now. 'Spokespeople for the national laboratories insist that at no time were the pornographers, nor the software pirates, able to cross over from the research network into the classified network. The labs say that, while they are embarrassed, national security was not breached.'

Hypertext: coming soon

In July 1990, Spin magazine ran this little blurb about something called Hypertext:

Altern 8 photos from 1992

By special request, here are some Altern 8 photos from the July 1992 issue of Select magazine:



Click the image for a full page of candid photos.

Raiders of the Lost Ark publicity sheet

Here's a Raiders of the Lost Ark publicity sheet that arrived in my mailbox soon after I joined the Star Wars Fan Club back in 1980. It appealed to my love of graph paper, and it had angled photos and drop shadows, concepts 9-year-old me incorporated into my own "artwork" for years to come. The movie's release date seemed to be so far into the future!


(200-dpi scans also available)

This was already posted on Neato Coolville last year when the 4th Indiana Jones movie came out, but I had already made the scans of my own copy before I found it. Doesn't hurt to have more than one out there and Google-able.

If you're a Raiders of the Lost Ark fan, you may also be interested in this transcript of George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, and Lawrence Kasdan brainstorming ideas for the Indiana Jones character the film's plot:

· 6 MB PDF (indirect link)

This was in 1978, back when their creative juices were still flowing. It's a fascinating read. Thankfully they nixed the idea of making him a Kung-Fu master. And apparently it was George Lucas who had all the good ideas. Spielberg and Kasdan sound like idiots half the time.

At one point, George Lucas says "And we want to spend our money on stunts. We want to have 'Wind and the Lion' action. Spend it all on stunt guys falling off horses, rather than one crowd scene with sixteen thousand extras for one shot...it's much better to have a terrific stunt than to have a scene with eight thousand extras. I don't think we need lots of crowds."

So what happened with those Star Wars prequels, then, George?

It seems just about every movie this decade has been all about computer-generated hordes. In the rare times when there are stunts, they're all done with effects, with no real appearance of danger. Nothing approaches that guy hanging off the train in that one scene in Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome.

Anyway, thanks to Cinematical and my friend Jenni for posting about this transcript!

Criminal Records dance music record store, Dayton, Ohio

Criminal Records was a dance music record shop run by John Bard and Todd Robinson in Dayton, Ohio, from late 1988 or early 1989 until sometime in 1990, when I was in my late teens. This shop changed the lives of many who visited it, and to my knowledge, there hasn't been anything quite like it since.

John and his partner had a living space in the back of the tiny converted warehouse/machine shop. The front had all the walls lined with records in metal racks. A low DJ booth faced outward. Customers were welcome to sit at the booth's custom metal barstools and chat with the proprietors, who would play anything in the shop except the sealed remix service records. The rest of the floor was open and custom-decorated, like the booth & stools, with spattered paint. I believe there were many private parties held there.

Going to Criminal Records was an adventure and education in electronic music. The proprietors were very friendly and were eager to figure out exactly what their customers liked. At the time, I liked extended remixes of mainstream pop music, and I liked moody, melodic instrumentals from Italian and Belgian artists, and I liked my longtime favorites The Art of Noise. John made sure I never left the store without something I loved in-hand, even if it was something he couldn't stand, himself.

I once phoned him on a Sunday morning and said I was in town "with a wad of cash and itchin' to buy". He agreed to open the shop for me, and indeed met me at the door, hung over and wearing a bathrobe, hair mussed since he clearly just rolled out of bed after a late night of partying. Scratching his head, he put on a pot of coffee, and started playing some records while I browsed. Before long, he was full of energy, bobbing and pumping his head as he started selecting and mixing more tracks he thought I might like. He didn't care if I bought them or not; he was having a great time just playing records and exposing me to music. Despite his best efforts to get me to buy some Italo Disco, I walked out with Janet Jackson's "Alright". I don't regret getting Janet, but man, I really wish I had his entire Italo section now.

Since I was a teenager living an hour away with no money, I was only able to visit Criminal Records less than 10 times before it closed. I probably only bought about 10 records there, total.

My friend Dan Smith in Springfield, Ohio, told me sometime around 1995 that he had run into John at some point, somewhere else in Ohio. When Dan suggested reopening the store, John said "No way! I lost a fortune on that thing!"

I've tried in vain to find John or evidence of Criminal Records ever having existed. All that's left is memories, apparently. Until now. Here's my complete Criminal Records ephemera collection.

1. Part of a letter from a friend, telling me about the shop. He taped a newspaper ad to the front of the envelope.



2. The ubiquitous Criminal Records yellow flyer distributed with newsletters and tucked into shopping bags throughout 1989.



3. The December 1989 Criminal Records newsletter. Page 1 was a late-1989 feature from the Dayton Daily News. Page 2 was "background investigations", an overview of new stock.

Page 1: HTML version (recommended)
Page 2: 816x1056 PNG

Alternative versions of page 1:
1000x1138 PNG · very large 2.7 MB TIFF (for printing)

4. The May 1989 Criminal Records newsletter.

Page 1 · Page 2 · Page 3 · Page 4 · Page 5 · Page 6
(816x1056 PNGs only, for now)

5. The June 1989 Criminal Records newsletter.

Page 1 · Page 2 · Page 3 · Page 4 · Page 5 · Page 6

6. January 1990 sales charts.

816x1056 PNGs: Page 1 · Page 2

Do you have any more info, photos, or other ephemera related to the Criminal Records record shop? Please leave a comment if you do!