Various Avocado Memories Articles and Reviews
Discovered mainly by typing “Avocado
Memories” into search engines and seeing what turns up!
From literaryleaps.com
A heartwarming & hilarious blast from the past: a virtual tour through a Southern California home in the 60s & 70s. You can almost feel the shag carpeting.
From Monkeyfilter.com
September 22, 2004
A bit of California nostalgia Way back in 1996, I found this via Yahoo! Surfers' Picks, which no longer exists. While it centers around suburban Los Angeles memories from the 1960s and '70s, I think the teen age angst and semi-loony parent themes might spark some recoginition in even the youngest of our Monkeys.
Though, maybe the acceptance of out of style memories might take some time for some of you to find touching.
Anyway, this is a minor classic, and I hope you enjoy it.
posted by path at 11:58PM UTC [trackback] (3 comments total)
Woah. Great. Gotta start documenting that "early 2000s house" I live in. Or the derelict part of my appartment builing.
posted by Richer at 02:32AM UTC on September 23
Even though I'm guessing I'm about a decade younger than the target demographic, those photos look awfully familiar to a once-young boy who grew up on the other side of the country, in SE Pennsylvania. Golly, these photos are really fascinating, and just a bit too nostalgia-inducing for the middle of the night... Great link.
posted by red cell at 08:51AM UTC on September 23
Wes Clark's Avocado Memories is a site devoted to documenting his own childhood in Burbank, California, with photos and stories. It's the little details that makes it so engaging: the antiqued avocado desk, the model planes, the fish pond.... Every family has stories like these, but few are so well preserved.
From sizenine.com:
What do you do with hundreds of pictures of your childhood home? Three guesses... This site is much more than that- it's also vivdly told stories of growing up in Burbank in the 60's- when EVERYTHING was painted green. The file of Clark saying "Farouk" is worth a listen, too...
#1: Avocado Memories
There are so many great Web sites out there, and I even ruled out mentioning some of the greats that are already enormously well-known, like Television Without Pity, Metafilter, Crime News 2000 and Romenesko.
That said, my sentimental favorite remains Wes Clark's Avocado Memories. Clark grew up in Burbank during the 1960s and 1970s, and unlike most of us, he was smart enough to have a camera at hand. (I would seriously pay a million dollars, if I had it, for a photo tour this detailed of my childhood home.) Clark was lucky in that his family was both lovable and completely out of their minds, as evidenced by the decor. He also fills out his home tour with fabulous essays about everything from Kraft cheese and great art to Aurora monster models. If Kevin of “The Wonder Years” was real, and if he could write, he'd be Wes Clark.
I found an interesting site that relates to my earlier post about avocado home decor:
Avocado Memories
This gentleman chronicles the interior of his 1960's-70's home through photographs and memories. Quite a read.
I think I would be hard-pressed to remember details like him. If I ever have loads of free time I may get creative and scan some old photos and do something similar. Our carpet wasn't avocado, but it was sky blue.
Posted by Ash at November 12, 2003
The
Web is such a beautiful place. Where else could you find a how-to on cat grooming,
some really raunchy porn and a loving tribute to childhood kitsch all within
mere clicks of each other? The
first two you'll have to seek out on your own, but if you want a pictorial
exploration of suburban Burbank circa the 1960s and '70s, head on over to Wes
Clark's Avocado Memories (wesclark.com/am). Wes
is nothing if not detailed in his chronicling of his father's efforts at
interior -- and exterior -- decorating, his mother's counterstrikes, and his
own awkward development and dalliances with the fashions of the eras. He
describes his Avocado Memories as documentation of "the changes we
inflicted on our little stucco-covered Burbank home," and says he hopes
it'll give his kids a clue about what it was like for him in the lifetime that
predated them. But, recognizing the impossibility of such a nostalgic treasure
remaining private, he adds, "If it's entertaining enough for complete
strangers to wander through, so much the better!" And
let me tell you, it is entertaining. Not
only is Wes good-natured enough to ridicule himself, he describes people,
places and things with such glorious detail you might start to think you were
there. The cast of characters is as good as any you'd find on "The Wonder
Years" -- mom Madeleine, dad Wesley Sr., best buddies Mike and Bob, dreamy
gal pal Angela, girl next door Viki, and assorted other supporting players. And
the visuals, well, they just steal it all. The quality of Wes' photos isn't
top-notch, but that's part of the fun. We see the Stratolounger with borrowed
arm protectors, the poolside tiki murals, the homemade fish pond built into the
patio, the portrait of Vlad "The Impaler" of Wallachia painted by
Angela, the one-car-garage-turned-"pool hall" and many, many more
enchanting features of the Clark homestead. It's
so classic, you almost wish you had lived there. Almost. A
cyber-tour will suffice. From http://www.swarthmore.edu/Humanities/tkitao1/artstuff/fotoalbum.html PHOTO ALBUM A family
album is a precious thing. A collection of photographs, it is a record of our
past reserved for the posterity -- so we believe. But a moment of thought reveals a phenomenon far from our
assumption. A photograph of me from my childhood, for example, shows what I
looked like, say when I was seven. Anyone who knew me then will recognize me
and remember what I then looked like; anyone old enough to have lived those
years in the same milieu will also recognize the style of my clothes then in
currency, the objects surrounding me, and perhaps even the particular place
where the picture was taken. When I look at it, I, too, remember what I was
like and also recognize the setting. The photograph, furthermore, brings back
to mind the circumstances in which the photograph was taken -- those bygone
days and various events related to the picture -- a weekend picnic, a day in
the country visiting a grandmother, a New Years Day, or even just another day.
Not only that, an old photograph may trigger a memory of a series of events far
beyond what it shows. Nostalgia is what a family album elicits, and it is
always pleasant. Sometimes the picture shows me at my worst; sometimes it
records an unhappy moment -- like when our car got stuck in the mud out in
nowhere in torrential rainstorm and Mother with that funny hairdo which was so
fashionable then. Whatever the event, the picture evokes a feeling of longing
because it alludes to what is no longer here. I came across recently a wonderful website by Wes Clark that
lovingly comments on his family album from 1970s and substantiates my point.
But here is a curious thing. When we look at a picture in a family album, we
are not looking at a record of the past. The picture does not bring back the
past. Rather, we recreate the past from the vantage point of the present. We
relive a past event looking at a picture but reliving it is never the same as
the actual living of the event that had taken place in the past. When we look
at our childhood picture at fifty, it is different still from we saw in it at
thirty. When we reread a book at fifty that we had read previously, say, in our
youth, it is often a different book, or, I dare say, always a different book.
And so it is with photographs. Even a photographs from a trip taken a few weeks
ago is no longer the same as the actual experience because we are here and no
longer there and that event is no longer here. Nowadays, families are more likely to make videos rather than
still photographs. We may hastily think that videos reproduce the past more
faithfully because the image captures movement and therefore events as they
happened -- life as it was lived. But video images are also photographs which,
when we view them, force us to recreate the events rather than merely observe
them as though we were innocent bystanders just looking. Even if the pictures
were not our own, even if they were pictures of total strangers, like Wes
Clark's photographs, we develop our own stories and recreate the photographed
event in our own way from our vantage point. It is not realism but nostalgia, so it seems, wherein lies the
special power of photography. 20 August 1998 If I had
to take only one book on a desert island, I'd take one on how to build a boat.
If I had to take only one web site along to a desert island, it might just be
this one. Wes Clark grew up in Burbank in the Decade of Ugliness -- the 1970s
-- and he meticulously photographed every avocado appliance and every hideous
shag carpet in his house. Now he shares it all with the world via Wes Clark's
Avocado Memories. From http://gawow.com/lastories/link.html [ 4.10.98 ] This site is one of the most pleasing and creative
that I have come across in a long time and I haven't even finished going
through it yet. Proof positive that it is content which makes a good web site.
It is one man's memories of growing up in Burbank, California, in the 70s. A
really fun site that I'm sure you will get into. It's called Avocado Memories.
From http://classic.sacbee.com/smile/webby/webby_091599/webby.html Children of the avocado era find a home If you remember
"Dark Shadows" and stretch-necked Pepsi bottles, you were most likely
a product of (or at least cognizant in) the '60s and '70s. Today, Webby
takes you back a couple of decades to a typical stucco home on Lincoln Street
in Burbank, California, with Wes Clark's Avocado Memories. As you travel
through this site, a combination of a family scrapbook and a personal diary
open to all, you may recognize much of your own childhood -- if only your
childhood had witty narration: “The picture on
the wall illustrates the founding, heyday, abandonment and ultimate corruption
of a Western Gold Rush town. We got it at a yard sale. What did it have in
common with anything else in the room? Nothing. It did, however, have the same
attraction some women have for some men: It was available. (One time, Mom
bought a plastic lemon with plastic daisies growing out of it sideways at a
yard sale. “This item was
placed on the table in the patio and, for a time, provided the lemon yellow
color inspiration for the seat covers and other items in the room, not to
mention Mom's collection of Jean Nate toiletries. Did the lemon yellow go with
the avocado? No, but items of that color were available.)” In the kitchen
you'll meet up with Harvest Gold paper towels. In the yard, there's that pond
project that never quite worked out, and of course, tiki lamps. If your parents
had a Martin Denny L.P. collection and plastic furniture protectors on the
Stratoloungers, come on home. At worst, you'll get some insight into the era. At best, pick up
some timeless decorating tips. From The
Minneapolis/St. Paul Star Tribune Published
Mar 19 2000 Wes Clark grew up in Burbank in the Decade of Ugliness -- the
1970s -- and he meticulously photographed every avocado appliance and every
hideous shag carpet in his house. On his wonderful Web site, "Avocado
Memories," he's used those photos to painstakingly reconstruct an entire
house and, by association, an entire era. Touring through his site feels like
paging through an old family photo album you've completely forgotten about. The
Clark family didn't have a ton of money, or, as Wes will be the first to admit,
a heap of design taste. In short, they were like most families of the time,
when shag carpeting was mod and avocado was the new black. If Avocado Memories was just a batch of one man's photos, there wouldn't
be much reason for anyone who doesn't know Wes Clark to surf through it. But
it's more than that. It's a time machine. Not everyone's father tried to carry
out a Polynesian theme in the back yard, or framed and displayed Old Spice
labels, but all of us are carrying around some cherished memory of bad décor.
(Except maybe Martha Stewart's daughter.) Maybe we didn't think it was bad at the time, but looking back …
why did they put orange-and-red shag carpeting in my room? Were those pink
plastic daisy stickers in the tub really necessary? Did avocado really ever go
with anything? If the photos on Avocado Memories don't stir up
recognition in your brain, you probably didn't live in America in the 1960s and
1970s. Clark never over-Hallmarkizes his memories, but there's no doubt
that he enjoyed his childhood, and loved his family. His fondness comes through
in the short copy that accompanies each photo as well as in a set of essays
about his childhood, covering everything from reading comics at the drugstore
to his mother's own individualistic way of speaking, which he dubs
'Madeleinese'. I've probably surfed through more Web sites than any person should
be allowed to, but I always come back to "Avocado Memories" to see
what Clark has added, or to just let his photos and memories take me back to my
own. The Clark house -- and my own house -- would never have been featured in
Architectural Digest. But if your memories of that time are good, avocado can
be beautiful.
Published 4/27/2000 Star Tribune Avocado Memories: I've raved about this site before. Wes Clark grew up in Burbank
in the 1970s in a house that looks horribly, fondly familiar to anyone who
remembers avocado appliances and orange shag, and his online photo album pays tribute
not only to a lost time, but to a warmly remembered childhood. From First Person Particular: Listen. I really didn't mean to go off on this
high school reminisce; I think it must have been brought on by reading Avocado
Memories yesterday. What a family. I couldn't help but think that someday
Jasper will write something like that to amuse the masses with his own weird
upbringing and his family's strange decorating sense. My only consolation is
that he doesn't take pictures. While I was reading, I couldn't help but
remember my own mother's obsession with an avocado and gold decorating scheme
and resin grapes and macramé and various craft projects. His parents were
charmingly loopy, though, while mine were, well, not. From Fruits and
Nuts: I'm dizzy from spending the last few days in
the 1960's, completely absorbed by the magic of
Wes Clark's Avocado Memories, a web site that pays homage to the decor and
lifestyle of suburban living during that wonderful time. I'm sure it has a draw
for children of all ages, but the author and I were born a year apart, and his
outlook isn't far from my own. Add to this the fact that he and I are both only
children who grew up within 40 miles of each other, and you may get some idea
of why his site has been so mesmerizing for me. Go check it out. From PopCultureJunkMail TOP TEN POP-CULTURE WEB SITES Something special for my birthday. I'm listing and discussing my
top ten pop-culture Web sites. Ever. Of all time. The ten pop-culture Web sites
I would take with me to a desert island if -- um, wait. Scratch that. Anyway,
some of them have been mentioned here before, some haven't, some will be
familiar to anyone savvy enough to wield a mouse, others may be new. They're
all stunningly well-written or well-conceived, and I'd like to thank their
creators for all the work and love they put into them. Note: Sites are in
alphabetical order, not order of preference. 1. Avocado Memories: Wes Clark grew up in Burbank in the Decade of
Ugliness -- the 1970s -- and he meticulously photographed every avocado
appliance and every hideous shag carpet in his house. I've thought a lot about
why I love this site, and I think the very completeness of it -- how he has
reconstructed an entire house and, by association, an entire era -- tugs at my
heart. It helps that Wes's family didn't have a ton of money, or a heap of
design taste. In short they were like most families of the time, when shag
carpeting was mod and cool and avocado was the new black. In addition to the
wonderful house tour, Wes includes a variety of well-written essays (best
title: "The Death of Ferro
Lad in the Corner Drugstore") about his times in the house. If you read only one page on this site, read: "The Patio Culture and the
Promise of Joining the Adults' Club." From Trudy's Wicked
Wicked Web Avocado Memories One man's tale of family atrocities committed with avocado paint
and an antiquing kit in Burbank. While I'm sure he loves his parents, what has
been wrought is inexcusable, especially know that some misguided fools seek to
remember and pay hommage to this troubled time through their modern dress and
decorating style. In the immortal words of someone or another - it didn't look
good back then and things haven't changed. Now sculpted shag carpeting is
something completely different...
From rsiemers.com:
Wes Clark's Avocado Memories. A Large Site that can Devour your Entire Afternoon.
Wes Clark's Avocado Memories is probably the greatest personal website I've ever encountered: the guy has plenty to say about growing up in Southern California on the nerdy side of the tracks. Perfect for anyone with any working memories of the 1970s.
From Paramecium Parachute, (Thursday, May 15, 2003):
Sweet and Sentimental Avocado
If you knew me well enough, you would know that I’m a total 80s freak and that my favorite slice of life was 1978-1985. You would also know that I like writing about my experiences during that favorite slice of life. You would also know that I can’t stand avocados, because as a kid, we had a huge avocado tree in the backyard, and that I stepped on decaying, smushy avocados constantly while playing out there. But here’s an avocado that I truly enjoyed biting into. Wes Clark has done a great job of compiling his experiences growing up in Burbank, CA in the 60s and 70s. He names it Wes Clark’s Avocado Memories. After reading through a few pages, you’ll understand why he named it so. Yes, it is chock full of faded, old photographs of late 60s / early 70s life and living. Quite a tasty complement to my Big Mac combo. Perhaps some day I can do the same with my late 70s / early 80s photos and memories. Truly inspiring.
From Let the Finder Beware
Tuesday, November 30, 2004 - Avocado Memories: "I was born in the mid 1950s, so I can especially identify with Wes Clark's Avocado Memories: Growing Up in Burbank, California in the Sixties and Seventies. This guy has tons of family photos— a meticulously documented childhood— and a colorful way of writing. You can spend hours at his site, wandering down Memory Lane."
From Fray.com
From Pop Culture Junk Mail
From Mishmash
Seeing Green
by Anne Crump,
The San Francisco Examiner, 10/01/2002
From http://rctemp2.usinternet.com/august.htm
August 27
-- Dorian Francel, sacbee
staff
From http://www.philly.com/volt/winners/winjuly98.asp
Avocado Memories
How
amazing the Web can be. Wes Clark is just some guy who, like millions of
people, took pictures of his room, his neighborhood, the family cars and his
parents as he grew up in the '60s and '70s. This site celebrates the Wonder
Years as Clark experienced them at his house on North Lincoln Street in
Burbank, Calif.
http://www.wesclark.com/am
What color are your memories? Some are avocado
Star Tribune