The Zine!

What period could ever give us cultural passing floats like World's Fairs and its permanent off-spring Disneyland; the music of Burt Bacharach, Martin Denny and, for the hyper active, the maestro Equivel! (yes, spelled with a exclamation point); an urbanrama sprawl that created its own paradise of decorated backyards from other Polynesian countries, funky shopping centers and almost every corner of Main Street U S of A that had a lounge/bar brought a little extravagance and flare to everyday life. Even the goofy little word & became an architecture term.

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All of this unchecked unabashed optimism and cultural fun would obviously be seen as a cover-up to all the realities of the era like assassinations, the 'industrial war complex' Eisenhower warned about and social upheaval that forced a realization of America's underbelly. However, as George Carlin demonstrated in the title of one of his books, the reach of human nature can create the wonderful (Silly Putty) and the dreadful (Napalm) with everything else falling in between in its valley like a bottomless pit. Pop culture serves as a wallpaper to take the edge off the reality and, if done well, help you understand it, too.From the early 50's to the late 60's, the future, or at least, the one we were told about was just, as one of the rides from that Space Age epicenter, the 1964 New York World's Fair, sang endlessly 'only a dream away'. It was't until the 70's and Watergate that everybody slowly began to realize that the New Frontier jig was, more or less, over and the last gasp of the Space Age, disco, was greeted with jeers as we were rolling into the self-conscious 80's and Ronald Reagan.