Support Metafilter

in Uncategorized | May 21st, 2014

A cou­ple of years ago, I was asked to name the first five sites I vis­it each day. With­out pause, I rat­tled off Metafil­ter, a crowd­sourced blog where intel­li­gent con­trib­u­tors high­light inter­est­ing things and answer each oth­er’s ques­tions. Metafil­ter has been around since 1999, and it’s been the source of count­less posts on Open Cul­ture over the years. Do a search for “via Metafil­ter” on our site, and you will see what I mean.

Two days ago, Metafil­ter’s founder Matt Haugh­ey (see him talk about the his­to­ry of Metafil­ter above) stunned read­ers when he pub­lished a post about his site’s finan­cial sit­u­a­tion. His post begins: “Today I need to share some unfor­tu­nate news: because of seri­ous finan­cial down­turn, MetaFil­ter will be los­ing three of its mod­er­a­tors to lay­offs at the end of this month.” And it ends: “We may have to make hard choic­es in the future as they come up, but the goal will always be towards hav­ing the best place online to share neat stuff, to ask and answer ques­tions, and to have the kinds of thought­ful con­ver­sa­tions that make this place what it is.”

Encour­aged by its read­ers, Metafil­ter launched a fundrais­ing cam­paign today. Through Pay­pal you can sub­scribe to Metafil­ter for $1, $2, $3, $5, $10, or $20 per month or you can make a one-time con­tri­bu­tion. If you’re a fan of Metafil­ter, def­i­nite­ly con­sid­er giv­ing them your sup­port. If you’re not yet a fan, then spend some time at Metafil­ter and con­sid­er giv­ing a hand once you’re hooked.

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Jonathan Safran Foer, Toni Morrison & Steven Pinker Cultivate Thought on Chipotle’s Cups and Bags

in Business, Literature | May 21st, 2014

If you walk into Chipo­tle, order a drink, and look at the cup, you might see the fol­low­ing lit­er­ary text:

TWO-MINUTE SEDUCTION
by TONI MORRISON

I took my heart out and gave it to a writer made heart­less by fame, some­one who need­ed it to pump blood into veins des­ic­cat­ed by the suck and roar of crowds slob­ber­ing or poi­son­ing or lick­ing up the red froth they mis­take for hap­pi­ness because hap­pi­ness looks just like a heart paint­ed on a valen­tine cup or tat­tooed on an arm that has nev­er held a vic­tim or com­fort­ed a hurt friend. I took it out and the space it left in my chest was sutured tight like the skin of a drum.

As my own pulse failed, I fell along with a soft show­er of rain typ­i­cal in this place.

Lying there, col­lapsed under trees bor­der­ing the man­sion of the famous one I saw a but­ter­fly bro­ken by the slam of a sin­gle rain­drop on its wings fold and flut­ter as it hit a pool of water still fight­ing for the lift that is its nature. I closed my eyes expect­ing to dis­solve into stars or lava or a bru­tal sequoia when the famous writer appeared and leaned down over me. Lift­ing my head he put his lips on mine and breathed into my mouth one word and then anoth­er, and anoth­er words upon words then num­bers, then notes. I swal­lowed it all while my mind filled with lan­guage, mea­sure, music, knowl­edge.

These gifts from the famous writer were so seduc­tive, so all encom­pass­ing they seemed to make a heart irrel­e­vant.

Oth­er cups and brown paper bags fea­ture short thoughts by Mal­colm Glad­well, George Saun­ders, Steven Pinker, Michael Lewis, and Sheri Fink, among oth­ers. The ini­tia­tive, dubbed Cul­ti­vat­ing Thought, was actu­al­ly the brain­child of nov­el­ist Jonathan Safran Foer (Every­thing Is Illu­mi­nat­ed and Extreme­ly Loud and Incred­i­bly Close). Years ago, he met with Chipotle’s CEO and posed the ques­tion: why not give peo­ple a lit­tle food for thought on your cups and brown paper bags? Just last week, the Cul­ti­vat­ing Thought Author series was launched, with Safran Foer serv­ing as its “cura­tor.”

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Revisit the Golden Age of Max’s Kansas City With Film & Audio From The Velvet Underground, The Ramones, Devo & Talking Heads

in Music | May 21st, 2014

You know the old joke: “if you don’t like the neigh­bor­hood, wait ten min­utes.” New York­ers know it the oth­er way around, too. If you like the neigh­bor­hood, wait ten min­utes; your local haunts will dis­ap­pear. But while the phys­i­cal mark­ers of my own New York era shut­ter one by one, dur­ing said era all I ever want­ed was for it to be the late 70s again, when you could catch such upstarts as the Talk­ing Heads, Devo, the Ramones, Tele­vi­sion, or Pat­ti Smith at Max’s Kansas City. Or even ear­li­er in the decade, when Max’s served as the NYC home base for David Bowie, Iggy Pop, Lou Reed, and even a young Bruce Spring­steen.

Despite Max’s hal­lowed sta­tus in the New York rock scene, pre­cious lit­tle footage sur­vives from its hey­day. The film at the top shows us what pro­duc­er David Weis­man says in voice-over nar­ra­tion is to his knowl­edge the only 35mm, motion pic­ture-qual­i­ty film of “the renowned, leg­endary, unfor­get­table Max’s Kansas City,” where Andy Warhol “held court every night from mid­night till dawn.” Weis­man points out local stars of the Warho­lian scene in the vin­tage film, rem­i­nisces about his own time there, and describes a light­ing sit­u­a­tion that made film­ing in the club very dif­fi­cult. Just above, hear what those denizens in the footage heard: live audio of the Vel­vet Under­ground play­ing “I’m Wait­ing for the Man” and “Sweet Jane” live at Max’s in 1972.

Film­ing at Max’s may have been chal­leng­ing, but clear­ly, as you see above, one could get it right, even in less­er for­mats. Here we have clas­sic 1976 film of the Ramones play­ing “Havana Affair” and “Lis­ten to My Heart” at Max’s dur­ing its post-Warhol sec­ond phase, when the club became sec­ond only to CBG­Bs as the home of New York punk rock and new wave.

The Ramones film may not be 35mm, but the qual­i­ty of sound and image sure­ly excels that of every oth­er doc­u­ment from the peri­od, like the short, blur­ry film above of Devo play­ing their bizarro take on “Sat­is­fac­tion” in 1977.

Yet anoth­er pre­cious arti­fact from the late-70s Max’s scene comes to us with­out any mov­ing images at all, but the audio is quite good and rep­re­sents a for­ma­tive moment in the evo­lu­tion of the Talk­ing Heads, only a trio at the time. Hear them do “Artists Only” above in 1976.

Max’s didn’t only shel­ter punks and strung-out art rock­ers. In the ear­ly sev­en­ties, book­er Sam Hood also secured six­ties folk main­stays like Dave Van Ronk and new­com­ers like soon-to-be wild­ly famous Bruce Spring­steen. See the young Boss open for Van Ronk above with an acoustic ver­sion of “Grow­ing Up” in 1972.

Max’s closed down in 1981 with a head­lin­ing per­for­mance by DC hard­core punks Bad Brains, but it has since reopened in anoth­er loca­tion (1998). The new (gasp!—Midtown) Max’s isn’t Max’s Kansas City in any­thing but name, but its web­site at least pre­serves the mem­o­ry of the old club’s heady 70s days with more live audio and mem­o­ra­bil­ia from The Vel­vets, Sid Vicious, John­ny Thun­ders & The Heart­break­ers, and many more “Max’s Icons.” Also don’t miss this Fla­vor­wire gallery of clas­sic pho­tographs from 70s-era Max’s.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

CBGB’s: The Roots of Punk Lets You Watch Vin­tage Footage from the Hey­day of NYC’s Great Music Scene

1976 Film Blank Gen­er­a­tion Doc­u­ments CBGB Scene with Pat­ti Smith, The Ramones, Talk­ing Heads, Blondie & More

The Talk­ing Heads Play CBGB, the New York Club that Shaped Their Sound (1975)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

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Thomas Dolby Explains How a Synthesizer Works on a Jim Henson Kids Show (1989)

in Music, Technology, Television | May 21st, 2014

We’ve all heard the musi­cal fruits of audio syn­the­sis, espe­cial­ly if we reg­u­lar­ly lis­ten to the pop of the 1980s. But how, exact­ly, does a syn­the­siz­er work? Ask a mod­ern elec­tron­ic-music enthu­si­ast and the answer may come out too tech­ni­cal, and at too much length, to bear. But pio­neer­ing­ly tech­nol­o­gy-mind­ed singer-song­writer Thomas Dol­by, he of “She Blind­ed Me with Sci­ence” (though I’ve always pre­fer his more ele­giac num­bers like “Air­waves”), can give you a clear­er, more con­cise expla­na­tion.


In fact, he gets it sim­ple to the point of child-friend­li­ness — so sim­ple that he gives it on a chil­dren’s tele­vi­sion pro­gram. The Ghost of Faffn­er Hall, which ran in late 1989 in Eng­land and Amer­i­ca, taught lessons about music with a gallery of famous per­form­ers — Bob­by McFer­rin, Joni Mitchell, James Tay­lor, Mark Knopfler — in a pup­pet-rich set­ting. Those pup­pets, the denizens (liv­ing and dead) of the tit­u­lar Faffn­er Hall, came built by Jim Hen­son’s Crea­ture Shop, known for their mas­tery of Mup­pet craft.

Dol­by’s illus­tra­tion of a syn­the­siz­er’s oper­a­tion involves an unusu­al work of Mup­petry: a fly in a match­box. “A syn­the­siz­er con­sists of two things,” he says, “an oscil­la­tor and a fil­ter. The oscil­la­tor con­trols the pitch of the sound, and the fil­ter con­trols the tone.” Out, then, comes the box and its slight­ly unwill­ing (Mup­pet) inhab­i­tant. “I want you to imag­ine the fly is an oscil­la­tor, and this box is a fil­ter.” Dol­by shakes the box, rep­re­sent­ing elec­tri­cal cur­rent through an oscil­la­tor, which makes the fright­ened fly buzz. “The hard­er I shake the box, the high­er the pitch!” To demon­strate fil­tra­tion, he opens and clos­es the match­box, harshen­ing the fly­’s wail (until, indeed, it turns into a cry of “Help!”). If you’d like to hear Dol­by talk more about the inter­sec­tion of his art and his tech­nol­o­gy at a high­er, albeit Mup­pet­less lev­el, have a lis­ten to his appear­ance last year on the Nerdist pod­cast. He long ago, in anoth­er con­text, stat­ed his goal of teach­ing peo­ple that syn­the­siz­ers “don’t have to sound like a crate of mori­bund wasps” — an inter­est­ing thing to accom­plish with a match­box and a super­in­tel­li­gent fly.

via That Eric Alper

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Buzz Aldrin and Thomas Dol­by Geek Out and Sing “She Blind­ed Me With Sci­ence”

Meet the Dr. Who Com­pos­er Who Almost Turned The Bea­t­les’ “Yes­ter­day” Into Ear­ly Elec­tron­i­ca

All Hail the Beat: How the 1980 Roland TR-808 Drum Machine Changed Pop Music

Mr. Rogers Intro­duces Kids to Exper­i­men­tal Elec­tron­ic Music by Bruce Haack & Esther Nel­son (1968)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Jack Kerouac’s Poems Read by Patti Smith, John Cale & Other Icons (with Music by Joe Strummer)

in Literature, Music | May 21st, 2014

Jack Ker­ouac was cool before it was cool.

Kerouac’s break­out nov­el, On the Road, influ­enced gen­er­a­tions of artists, writ­ers and musi­cians. His prose was vital and messy and new. He wrote frankly about sex, drugs and spir­i­tu­al yearn­ing. He was young and movie star good look­ing. And he was a friend with just about every oth­er lit­er­ary rock star of the era – William S. Bur­roughs, Allen Gins­berg, Gary Sny­der and Neal Cas­sady — many of whom end­ed up char­ac­ters in his books.

Though Ker­ouac was best known for his nov­els — Dhar­ma Bums hap­pens to be my per­son­al fave — he also wrote poet­ry. His poems read like dis­tilled ver­sions of his prose – freeform, flow­ing and musi­cal, laced with themes of death, drink­ing and Bud­dhism. He once wrote that he want­ed his poet­ry “to be con­sid­ered as a jazz poet blow­ing a long blues in an after­noon jazz ses­sion on Sun­day.”

So it isn’t sur­pris­ing per­haps that back in 1997 some very cool peo­ple like Hunter S. Thomp­son, John Cale, Joe Strum­mer and Michael Stipe got togeth­er to record the spo­ken word trib­ute album Ker­ouac: Kicks Joy Dark­ness (down­load on Ama­zon or iTunes), which sets his poems to music. Or hear it below on Spo­ti­fy.

Pat­ti Smith, the god­moth­er of punk, reads his poem “The Last Hotel” accom­pa­nied by music from Thurston Moore and Lenny Kaye. You can lis­ten in the video above and read along below.

The last hotel
I can see the black wall
I can see the sil­hou­ette on the win­dow
He’s talk­ing, at a rhythm
He’s talk­ing, at a rhythm
But, I don’t care
I’m not inter­est­ed in what he’s say­ing
I’m only inter­est­ed in the last hotel
I’m only inter­est­ed in the fact that it’s the last hotel
Deep, dis­cor­dant, dark, sweet
The last hotel
The last hotel
Ghosts in my bed
The goats I bled
The last hotel

Per­haps Kerouac’s best-known poem is “Bow­ery Blues,” which com­bines Bud­dhist notions of “sans­gara” (aka sam­sara), the karmic cycles of birth and death, with a very Beat-like dis­gust of con­tem­po­rary Amer­i­can cul­ture. You can imag­ine this being absolute­ly spell­bind­ing when read out loud in a smoky cof­fee shop. Lydia Lunch’s read­ing is above. The text below.

The sto­ry of man
Makes me sick
Inside, out­side,
I do not know why
Some­thing so con­di­tion­al
And all talk
Should hurt me so.

I am hurt
I am scared
I want to live
I want to die
I do not know
Where to turn
In the Void
And When
To cut
Out

For no Church Told me
No Guru holds me
No advice
Just stone
Of New York
And on the Cafe­te­ria
We hear
The Sax­o­phone
O dead Ruby
Died of Shot
In Thir­ty Two,
Sound­ing like old times
And de bombed
Emp­ty decap­i­tat­ed
Mur­der by the clock.

And I see Shad­ows
Danc­ing into Doom
In love, hold­ing
TIght the love­ly ass­es
Of the lit­tle girls
In love with sex
Show­ing Them­selves
In white under­gar­ments
At ele­vat­ed win­dows
Hop­ing for the Worst.

I can not take it
Any­more
If I can not hold
My lit­tle behind
To me in my room

Then it’s good­bye
Sangsara
For me
Besides
Girls aren’t as good
As They look
And Samad­hi
Is bet­ter
Than you think
When it starts in
Hit­ting your head
In with Buzz
Of Glit­ter­gold
Heav­en’s Angels
Wail­ing

Say­ing

We’ve been wait­ing for you
Since Morn­ing, Jack
Why were you so long
Dal­ly­ing in the sooty room?
This tran­scen­den­tal Bril­liance
Is the bet­ter part
(of Noth­ing­ness
I sing)

Okay.
Quit.
Mad.
Stop

And final­ly, you can lis­ten to Ker­ouac read his own poem “Mac­Dou­gal Street Blues” set to some beats laid down by the late, great Joe Strum­mer.

Writ­ten in Jim Hud­son’s win­dow lookin’ out on Mac­Dou­gal Street
Sum­mer of 1954, when he left me his whole apart­ment
He went away with his girl some­place:

Parade among Images
Images Images Look­ing
Look­ing -
And every­body’s turn­ing around
& point­ing -
Nobody looks up
and In
Nor lis­tens to Samantab­hadra’s
Unceas­ing Com­pas­sion

No Sound Still
S s s s t t
Seethe
Of Sea Blue Moon
Holy X‑Jack

Mir­a­cle
Night -
Instead yank & yuck­er
For pits & pops

Look for crash­es
Pic­tures
Squares
Explo­sions
Birth
Death
Legs
I know, sweet hero,
Enlight­en­ment has Come
Rest in Still

In the Sun Think
Think Not
Think no more Lines -
Straw hat, hands a back
Classed
He exam in atein dis­tinct
Rome prints -
Trees prurp
and saw

The Chess­play­ers Wont End
Still they sit
Mil­lions of hats
In under­wa­ter foliage
Over mar­ble games
The Greeks of Chess

Plot the Pop
of Mate
King Queen

- I know their game,
their ele­phant with the pil­lar
With the pearl in it,
Their gory bish­ops
And Vital Pawns -
Their devout front­line
Sac­ri­fi­cial pawn shops
Their state­ly king
Who is so tall
Their Vir­gin Queens
Pree ing to Knave
The Night Knot
— Their Bha­gavad Gitas
of Igno­rance,
Krish­na’s advice,

Com­ma,
The game begins -

Jean-Louis
Go home, Man

- So tho I am wise
I have to wait like
Anyother­fool

Lets for­get the strollers
For­get the scene
Lets close our eyes
Let me instruct Thee
Here is dark Milk
Here is Sweet Mahameru
Who will Coo
To you Too

As he did to me
One night at three
When I w k e i t
P l e e
Knelt to See
Realit ee
And I said
‘Wilt thou pro­tect me
for ‘ver?’

And he in his throat­less
deep moth­er hole
Replied ’ H o m ’

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jack Ker­ouac Lists 9 Essen­tials for Writ­ing Spon­ta­neous Prose

Pull My Daisy: 1959 Beat­nik Film Stars Jack Ker­ouac and Allen Gins­berg

Jack Ker­ouac Reads from On the Road (1959)

Jack Kerouac’s Naval Reserve Enlist­ment Mugshot, 1943

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

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David Bowie Remembers His Ziggy Stardust Days in Animated Video

in Animation, Music | May 21st, 2014

When you think about Zig­gy Star­dust this week, you’ll prob­a­bly think first about the sto­ry mak­ing the rounds — that Cana­di­an astro­naut Chris Had­field­’s cov­er of Bowie’s “Space Odd­i­ty” has dis­ap­peared from the web, thanks to a copy­right claim by David Bowie. Bowie gave Had­field per­mis­sion to use the “Space Odd­i­ty” track for a year. The time is now up. The viral video, gone. We mourn. But not for too long. Yes­ter­day, Blank on Blank released the lat­est in its series of ani­mat­ed videos. Based on an inter­view record­ed by Joe Smith in 1988, the video (above) ani­mates Bowie’s reflec­tions on his Zig­gy Star­dust days, from whence “Space Odd­i­ty” came. He recalls how Zig­gy was “half out of sci-fi rock and half out of the Japan­ese the­ater.  The clothes were, at that time, sim­ply out­ra­geous. And sim­ply… Nobody had seen any­thing like them before.” We have much more on Bowie’s Zig­gy Star­dust peri­od in our archive. See the posts below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Bowie Recalls the Strange Expe­ri­ence of Invent­ing the Char­ac­ter Zig­gy Star­dust (1977)

The Sto­ry of Zig­gy Star­dust: How David Bowie Cre­at­ed the Char­ac­ter that Made Him Famous

David Bowie’s Final Gig as Zig­gy Star­dust Doc­u­ment­ed in 1973 Con­cert Film

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Philip K. Dick’s Favorite Classical Music: A Free, 11-Hour Playlist

in Literature, Music, Sci Fi | May 20th, 2014

Image by Pete Welsch

What did Do Androids Dream of Elec­tric Sheep? and A Scan­ner Dark­ly author Philip K. Dick, that vision­ary of our not-too-dis­tant dystopi­an future, lis­ten to while he craft­ed his descrip­tions of grim, psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly (and some­times psy­che­del­i­cal­ly) har­row­ing times ahead? Mozart. Beethoven. Mahler. Wag­n­er.

Yes, while look­ing tex­tu­al­ly for­ward, he lis­tened back­ward, sound­track­ing the con­stant work­ings of his imag­i­na­tion with clas­si­cal music, as he had done since his teenage years. As Lejla Kucukalic writes in Philip K. Dick: Canon­i­cal Writer of the Dig­i­tal Age:

After grad­u­at­ing from high school in 1947, Dick moved out of his moth­er’s house and con­tin­ued work­ing as a clerk at a Berke­ley music store, Art Music. “Now,” wrote Dick, “my long­time love of music rose to the sur­face, and I began to study and grasp huge areas of the map of music; by four­teen I could rec­og­nize vir­tu­al­ly any sym­pho­ny or opera” (“Self-Por­trait” 13). Clas­si­cal music, from Beethoven to Wag­n­er, not only stayed Dick­’s life­long pas­sion, but also found its way into many of his works: Wag­n­er’s Goter­dammerung in A Maze of Death, Par­si­fal in Valis, and Mozart’s Mag­ic Flute in Do Androids Dream of Elec­tric Sheep?

At his Forteana Blog, author Andrew May cred­its Dick with, giv­en his pop-cul­tur­al sta­tus, “a decid­ed­ly uncool knowl­edge of clas­si­cal music.” He cites not just Wag­n­er’s Der Ring des Nibelun­gen in the intro­duc­tion to A Maze of Death, Beethoven’s Mis­sa Solem­nis in Ubik, or the part of The Game-Play­ers of Titan where “a teenaged kid forks out 125 dol­lars for a vin­tage record­ing of a Puc­ci­ni aria,” but an entire ear­ly sto­ry which func­tions as “(in my opin­ion) a pure exer­cise in clas­si­cal music crit­i­cism.” In 1953’s “The Pre­serv­ing Machine,” as May retells it, an eccen­tric sci­en­tist, “wor­ried that West­ern civ­i­liza­tion is on the point of col­lapse, invents a machine to pre­serve musi­cal works for future gen­er­a­tions” by encod­ing it “in the form of liv­ing crea­tures. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, as soon as the crea­tures are released into the envi­ron­ment, they start to adapt to it by evolv­ing into dif­fer­ent forms, and the music becomes dis­tort­ed beyond recog­ni­tion.”

Though no doubt an astute spec­u­la­tor, Dick seems not to have fore­seen the fact that our era suf­fers not from too few means of music stor­age but, per­haps, too many. None of his visions pre­sent­ed him with, for exam­ple, the tech­nol­o­gy of the Spo­ti­fy playlist, an exam­ple of which you’ll find at the bot­tom of this post. In it, we’ve assem­bled for your enjoy­ment some of Dick­’s favorite pieces of clas­si­cal music. The songs come scout­ed out by Gal­l­ey­cat’s Jason Boog, who links to them indi­vid­u­al­ly in his own post on Dick, clas­si­cal music, and May’s writ­ing on the inter­sec­tion of those two cul­tur­al forces. Lis­ten through it while read­ing some of Dick­’s own work — don’t miss our col­lec­tion of Free PKD — and you’ll under­stand that he cared about not just the anx­i­eties of human­i­ty’s future or the great works of its past, but what remains essen­tial through­out the entire human expe­ri­ence. These com­posers will still appear on our playlists (or what­ev­er tech­nol­o­gy we’ll use) a hun­dred years from now, and if we still read any sci-fi author a hun­dred years from now, we’ll sure­ly read this one.

The 11 hour playlist (stream below or on the web here) includes Bach’s Gold­berg Vari­a­tions, Beethoven’s Mis­sa Solem­nis and Fide­lio, Mozart’s The Mag­ic Flute, Wag­n­er’s Par­si­fal, and Mahler’s Sym­pho­ny No. 2 (Res­ur­rec­tion). If you need to down­load Spo­ti­fy, grab the soft­ware here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

33 Sci-Fi Sto­ries by Philip K. Dick as Free Audio Books & Free eBooks

Robert Crumb Illus­trates Philip K. Dick’s Infa­mous, Hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry Meet­ing with God (1974)

The Penul­ti­mate Truth About Philip K. Dick: Doc­u­men­tary Explores the Mys­te­ri­ous Uni­verse of PKD

Philip K. Dick The­o­rizes The Matrix in 1977, Declares That We Live in “A Com­put­er-Pro­grammed Real­i­ty”

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The First-Ever Look at the Original Disneyland Prospectus

in History | May 20th, 2014

disneyland prospectus

Thanks to a bene­fac­tor, Boing Boing has post­ed the orig­i­nal Dis­ney­land prospec­tus, draft­ed in 1953. These “extreme­ly high-res­o­lu­tion scans,” Boing Boing says, “were made from one of the three sets of pitch-doc­u­ments Roy and Walt Dis­ney used to raise the mon­ey to build Dis­ney­land.” The doc­u­ment isn’t long. It runs 12 pages from front to back. And it imag­ines some of the first parts of the park. Of course, there’s Main Street, but there’s also “True Life Adven­ture­land,” “Lil­liput­ian Land” and “Fan­ta­sy Land.” These imag­ined parts of the park were meant to enter­tain young­sters. They were also meant to edu­cate. (The last page of the Prospec­tus sums things up by say­ing, “The idea of Dis­ney land is a sim­ple one. It will be a place for peo­ple to find hap­pi­ness and knowl­edge.…, a place for teach­ers and pupils to dis­cov­er greater ways of under­stand­ing and edu­ca­tion.” And, as Cory Doc­torow notes, they were meant to make mon­ey. (In “True-Life Adven­ture­land,” says the Prospec­tus, “mag­nif­i­cent­ly plumed birds and fan­tas­tic fish from all over the world… may be pur­chased and shipped any­where in the U.S. if you so desire.”) These days, the edu­ca­tion­al mis­sion of Dis­ney­land isn’t much in evi­dence, while the “mer­chan­tain­ment” side remains. But that does­n’t stop me from enjoy­ing it. You can find the Prospec­tus on Archive.org in dif­fer­ent for­mats. Or see it below.

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dis­ney­land 1957: A Lit­tle Stroll Down Mem­o­ry Lane

How Walt Dis­ney Car­toons Are Made (1939)

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