Category Archives: Street Fashion
Babs .. The shirts that…
Does anyone remember Ben…
Does anyone remember Ben Casey/Dr. Kildare shirts? (Difference was one buttoned up on the left and one on the right – I’ve forgotten which was which). White cotton mock turtleneck shirts with buttons up the side in the early 60s, when there was rivalry going on between Ben C. and Jim K. They were great to wear bopping around the neighborhood with your transistor radio up against your ear. Also, as I recall, shirts that exposed the belly button were not invented in the 1990s. Doesn’t anyone remember those cotton half-shirts with the ruffles that ended somewhere way short of your navel? They were so, so cool – literally and figuratively. By the way, I loved those sunsuits. Had lots of them as a kid. Wish I could still pull that off!
Platform shoes were the…
Platform shoes were the bane of my existence as a youngster. By the age of 13 I was 5’9″, and the guys really hadn’t caught up with me. I soon leveled off at 5’11” and pretty much stayed in my jeans and deck sneakers and sandals till age 18, when finally I started dating someone three inches taller than me who was into all that John Travolta garb when we went out. In his platforms he was about 6’4″, so I could wear whatever shoes I wanted (by then, of course, plain old pumps and flats were back in vogue). Sometimes in high school I would wear clogs (they made a great banging sound on the all-metal staircase running up to the 7th floor tower, where my homeroom was). That was fun. We could all recognize each other by the sound of our shoes, so to speak, and stop to meet and hang a bit in the stairwell on the way up to class.
Born in Brooklyn in 1959…
Born in Brooklyn in 1959 and grew up in Sheepshead Bay around Ocean Parkway between Y & Z (Manhattan Court). I moved to Rochester, NY in 1980 after graduating from college to work for Eastman Kodak. I am 39 now with two kids and my boy is 9 years old. We where home (I still call Brooklyn home) this weekend and I played stickball with my son. The school yard (PS 209) I used to play in is under some kind of destruction/construction so this was just an introduction. It was great to be out there again. Can’t wait until I get my hands on a Spalding though. Pensee-pinkie’s where better. The Spalding’s used to crack in half. I still have my stickball bat from the 70’s so I remembered to bring that along. Remember how many sneakers we used to go through because the toes would be gone from pitching. I remember begging my Mom to buy me PUMA’s when they first came out. I never liked those heavy ADIDA’s. They where $20.00 back 25 years ago. After our little stick ball game I introduced him to PUNCH BALL. We then went home and played “HIT THE PENNY”, “5 boxes”, and “Box Tennis”. I even had a chance to grab a Nathan’s frankfurter and a BAG of fries in Coney Island. I think they still use the same grease for the fries.
My mom let me wear anything…
My mom let me wear anything and everything so I can’t share these stories of deprivation. I don’t allow my daughter to wear those shirts which show her stomach, because I feel it doesn’t look right. On Saturday I was in the park watching my son practice soccer and also watching was a little girl of three or four. She and her mother were having a big fight because the little girl wanted to wear her white patent leather platforms in the mud and grass – the little girl won with the best whining.
Does anyone remember wearing…
Wow. Fishnet stockings!…
Deprived of real fishnet…
Deprived of real fishnet stockings! I wanted fishnet stockings so bad in the 60’s. So when my mother finally bought me a pair but they were not real fishnets! I don’t know where she found these but they were white with some type of opaque material over the fishnets! My mother had a knack for finding stuff that just wasn’t quite cool! The same thing happened with bell bottoms. When my mother bought me a pair they had big orange flowers on them and were horrible! I tried to dye them black but those big orange flowers came thru the dye!
Go-go boots. I had a shiny…
Go-go boots. I had a shiny white pair and a shiny black pair. How I loved those things. I remember my first pair of bell bottoms — red hip huggers — which I wore with a navy blue button down shirt that had large red polka dots. The things we thought were fashionable!! Do you remember the peasant dresses and shirts that we wore around 1970. Shopping for my daughter in the mall this weekend, I found that same style. Guess history does repeat itself.