Every place I go, I love to buy postcards (like most people) and inevitably I end up not sending them because I can’t get organised enough to buy foreign stamps. So I carry the cards home in my backpack and then wonder what I should do with them.
After moving a stack of postcards around my desk for the 10th time, I decided to buy a proper organiser box (I got a stack of them from Paperchase) and at least keep them all together.
Looking at them like this, a few themes emerge:
- I love postcards whose imagery has obviously been kicking around for a decade or two, with special appreciation for those that include pictures of people in markedly dated clothing.
- What about those postcards — conceived from misplaced boosterism — that feature drab buildings, underwhelming attractions and ugly vistas? Is anyone tempted to visit because of them? No. But I will take one home as evidence.
- Retro typography. Really, I just can’t get enough.
To celebrate these postcards, every Wednesday I’ll be posting one from my collection. I hope you’ll enjoy it. If you blog, please join in and post your own Wish Your Were Here postcard from someplace you’ve been and a postcard you’ve brought back.
This week’s is this fab Times Square postcard. I’m going with my children for the first time to my old hometown.
Obviously this was taken in 1988 — the year that the film Big came out, as evidenced by the billboard. The colours so have that big-shoulder pad, Bonfire of the Vanities feel. The typeface screams Melanie Griffith in Working Girl. I don’t think they even make this shade of pink anymore.
New York’s a lot different now. I love how it’s changed. But it’s good to remember that it once was a place where the dream didn’t have anything to do with cool Williamsburg neighbourhoods or pop-up restaurants. It was all about getting a job in Manhattan where you got to wear a suit and have your own secretary because personal assistants hadn’t been invented yet.
Love this idea, Jen. I will have to see what I can share, but I usually buy fridge magnets instead of postcards.
I do remember as a child buying postcards from Spain which showed Spanish dancers with little wisps of lace and fabric attached to the card to make the skirt.
What a good idea. A couple of years ago, I visited our local flea market. The stalls were covered in stuff taken from dead people’s houses. As well as decent collections of books and furniture, you could rifle through collections of old photographs and postcards. And buy them. At the time, it seemed a bit nuts. But I was tempted to buy a box of family photos and make up stories about the people in the pictures. Maybe I’ll go down the postcard route instead….thanks for planting this idea in my head!