Description: Cult leader and crazy person Charles Manson had a bit of a resurgence in the late '80s, though not as a speaker, writer, or musician. Charlie's mug showed up on t-shirts in head shops and record stores, and were a hit with the alternative crowd. This one featuring a Charles Manson/Jesus mash up that was lovingly recreated in all of its late '80s glory.
Description: When prog rock pioneers Yes released their eighth studio album Going for the One in 1977, they hit the road on a wold tour to support it. With 92 scheduled tour dates, the band kicked things off on July 30, 1977 in Toledo, Ohio, traversed North America, headed over to Europe, and finished their road show on December 6,1977 in Paris, France.
Description: In the late '60s, Mack Jones began fabricating custom exhaust systems for his friends' motorcycles, quickly building a reputation for innovative design and top quality work. The hobby soon grew into a business, and in 1970, MAC Products opened its doors in Long Beach, California. The first part produced by MAC was a set of mufflers for the early CB750, something that, subsequently, resulted in one of the first 4 into 1 exhaust systems. After creating exhaust systems for just about every popular motorcycle on the market, MAC eventually expanded into automotive applications, bringing their legendary high performance gains and craftsmanship to road racing and street driven enthusiast vehicles.
Description: Atco Dragway was built in 1959, with the first racers (Motor Masters Hot Rod Club) started at the top end, racing towards the starting line. The club hosted the official opening day on Memorial Day weekend in 1960, making Atco Dragway the oldest drag strip in New Jersey. The sanctioned track has held more than 250 events in a single year, making it one of the busiest tracks in the country. After 63 years of service, the South Jersey racetrack abruptly announced it's closing in July 2023, canceling all scheduled events and causing waves of upset throughout the drag racing community.
Description: Plaza Garibaldi is located in historic downtown Mexico City. The original name of this plaza was Plaza Santa Cecilia, but in 1920, at the conclusion of the Mexican Revolution, it was renamed in honor of Lt. Col. Peppino Garibaldi. During the Golden Age of Mexican cinema from the 1930s to the 1950s, a genre of movies called "Charro" became extremely popular. These films featured movie stars who would often sing mariachi songs to their leading ladies. On one side of Plaza Garibaldi is the Salón Tenampa, which became a major nightspot in the 1920s when Cirilo Marmolejo and his mariachi band started playing there regularly. Garibaldi Plaza soon attracted other mariachi musicians, who would be paid by gentlemen to sing to their partners.
Description: Austin Hot Wax 505 is a fictional oldies radio station out of Austin, Texas that made a few appearances in the movie Death Proof. In the film, Jungle Julia Lucai works as a drive time DJ for the station. Julia wears one of the station's t-shirts while hanging at a taco bar, and when Tammy is changing her car radio station, she runs across Austin Hot Wax 505.
Description: 835 Washington Street began life as a humble butcher shop and meatpacking plant in the '30s, but after the industry declined in the '50s and '60s, it began a new life. With unassuming names like Cycle, Den, Zodiac, and OK Corral, it was a revolving door of gay bars for years, though in 1976, a long term resident moved in. Mineshaft, a gay BDSM private club, operated here between '76 and '85. With a strict dress-code of denim and leather only, and no preppy outfits, suits, sneakers, or cologne, Mineshaft catered to their clientele desires by ensuring the patrons were all looking the part. Just inside the door was the bar area with low lights and pool tables, but behind a partition was the “action” part of the club on two floors.
Description: Gamma World is a science fantasy role-playing game originally published by TSR in 1978. It borrowed heavily from an earlier TSR game, Metamorphosis Alpha. The details provided change from version to version, but from the beginning, Gamma World takes place in the mid-25th century, more than a century after a nuclear war had decimated human civilization. In the early editions, humanity achieved in creating a high-tech utopia that effectively ended human suffering and reversed man-made pollution. Early on, the setting was focused on finding the long-lost treasures of the fabled Apocalypse Base, but in truth, the setting was open-ended enough for a wide range of adventures.
Description: Smokey and the Bandit is a 1977 American action comedy film that follows Bo "Bandit" Darville and Cledus "Snowman" Snow, two bootleggers attempting to illegally transport 400 cases of beer from Texarkana to Atlanta. While the Snowman drives the truck carrying the beer, the Bandit drives a 1977 Trans Am to distract law enforcement (called blocking) and keep the attention off the Snowman. During their run, they are pursued by Texas county sheriff Buford T. Justice. Smokey and the Bandit was the second-highest-grossing domestic film of 1977 in the United States.
Description: The advent of crack cocaine in '80s America was a huge public health concern, as it was fast becoming an epidemic, with kids of increasingly younger ages getting hooked on crack. As a response, the decade spawned an array of anti-drug public service announcements and campaigns. Some, however, got a little too creative in their choice of spokespeople or were just so hardcore that they missed the mark entirely. From hypocritical celebrity ambassadors known for their excessive drug use to ripped cartoon lions and even politicians, everywhere you looked, someone was telling kids to just say no in one way or another.
Description: Aidan O’Connor founded Bonesteel Ranch in the 1940s on the outskirts of Bonesteel, South Dakota. Initially a working cattle ranch, the O’Connor family would eventually become known for the horses they bred to work their ranch. Aidan had no interest in being in the horse business, and turned away many offers to sell horses or provide stud service. That changed when his son Doyle took over the business in the '70s, and began selling off the cattle herd, while simultaneously launching Bonesteel Stud Service. The O’Connor name was soon synonymous with champion horses, and people would bring mares in from miles around to take advantage of the proven lineage of O’Connor horses.
Description: Snow removal is serious business in a lot of places, and one such locale is Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. While municipal snow plows work to clear the main roads, a most neighborhood streets and private parking lots never see them. That's where snow removal services like Pete’s Plowing come in. Running smaller, more nimble plow trucks, operations like Pete's can get in and out of the places the big city plows won't go. They can clear whole neighborhoods, even driveways, and they're just a phone call away!
Description: After making that long, arduous journey to the old wise man's home on the top of the mountain, he tells the traveler that he can ask him just one single question. "What is the secret of the universe?" the traveler asks. To which, the wise man replies, "everyone is completely insane." He then returns to his pipe and no longer acknowledges the traveler before him. While the traveler is initially disappointed in the answer he received, the longer he thinks about the wise man's curt reply, the more the universe begins to make sense.
Description: If you've spent any time in the Midwest, odds are that you've come across at least one giant cowboy sitting on a faux wood fence, waving his hat in a welcoming gesture. These iconic statues were the mascots for Western Pancake House, a chain of restaurants founded by Joe Skaggs in the late '60s. The restaurant's grew to support 36 locations across Ohio, Illinois, and Indiana, and at one point was the fastest growing restaurant chain in the Midwest. Despite his success, Skaggs decided to retire after a heart attack in 1982, and simply closed up shop. This left a lot of folks looking for a place to get a good breakfast, and left a lot of folks wondering for years to come where all these hat waving cowboys came from.
Description: Bent Bike was started in 1974 when four friends began buying and selling used motorcycles and parts out of an old gas station in Edmonds, Washington. It didn't take long before the guys began buying closeout, surplus, and bankruptcy stock and further expanded into new parts and riding gear. Having outgrown the old gas station, Bent Bike built a new building in 1980 just down the road in Lynnwood, and in 1984 opened a second location in Auburn. Despite the new buildings filled with new stock, Bent Bike never got out of the motorcycle salvage business, and continued to sell used parts, as well as used bikes throughout their 42 years in business.
Description: Custom vans were all the rage in the ’70s, and there were shops catering to boogie van lovers from coast-to-coast helping vanners build their dream ride, and one such shop was Calivania Customs. This west coast custom van shop was based in Los Angeles and made sure their signature California style was reflected in every van they built, no matter how wild or mild the project may have been.
Description: East Bay Grease is the debut album by Oakland, California soul and funk group Tower of Power, released in 1970. The record shows the band at an early stage of development, and contains a more ragged, horn-heavy R&B style than subsequent releases. The band tightened up and polished their technique heading into their second record, Bump City, but the notable improvements were in place in time for 1973's self-titled Tower of Power, the group's most successful album.
Description: In 1968, Burt Reynolds bought a 153-acre ranch in Jupiter, Florida with the intention of it being his lifelong estate. He converted the overgrown farmland to his own private hideaway, complete with multiple houses, barns, landscaped lakes, film sets, and even a mausoleum where he intended to be interred. Being an animal lover, Reynolds also had show horses, herds of African antelope, fallow deer, a few waterbuck and even a couple of bison living on the grounds. The ranch even had a working feed and tack store up front, that not only helped keep Reynolds' animals fed, but also served other farms in the area. Eventually, much of the property was open to the public, where they could explore the ranch, and interact with the animals.
Description: On November 8, 1968, classic music station 98.5 FM KXRQ emerged from months of silence as KZAP after being purchased by Lee Gahagan. The new free form radio station quickly found its groove and had an immediate impression on the large college crowd in Sacramento. Playing an eclectic mix of rock 'n roll music, KZAP was a very much a college radio station that appealed to a youth audience that had never really bought into the other commercial stations. The station remained extremely progressive, and was the first station in the United States to air a commercial for condoms and was an early adopter of Stereo Quadraphonic sound technology. When Gahagan unexpectedly died in 1972, KZAP settled into an album-oriented rock format.
Description: S.O.B. or as they are frequently referred, to, SxOxB, (abbreviated from Sabotage Organized Barbarian) is a Japanese grindcore punk band formed in Osaka in 1983. They are considered hugely influential on grindcore bands and the genre of death metal, as well as one of the mainstays of the thrashcore genre.
Description: Titan Uranus was an oil tanker built in 1974 by Șantierul Naval Severnav in Severin, Romania. She sailed under the Chinese flag out of Hong Kong as IMO 7614252. About 30 years after setting sail, a snapshot of the 'Titan Uranus' name on the ship's stern was posted to online, and suddenly the ship became internet famous. After a couple of years of being mocked online, Titan Uranus' owners found out they were the butt of the joke (pun sort of intended), and renamed her were issued a new IMO number of 9000895, and soon thereafter renamed her Titan Taurus. The ship would more recently be refitted as an ore carrier under the name K.Cosmos, but she will forever be Titan Uranus in our hearts.
Description: In a desperate attempt to keep Cobra functioning and solvent, Cobra Commander packages Zartan and the Dreadnoks as a heavy metal band called "Cold Slither," proving that there really isn't much mercenaries won't do for money. Baroness explains that her plan is to slip subliminal messages into their album so that Cobra will be able to lull the minds of every listener into supporting them. Of course, like all of Cobra's plans, things don't go as planned, and the Joe's turn the tables on them in the end, making Cold Slither nothing more than a footnote in rock history.
Description: It was in his 1961 inaugural address that John F. Kennedy spoke his famous words, "ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." This use of antimetabole can be seen even as a thesis statement of his speech—a call to action for the public to do what is right for the greater good. This appears to be an elegant rephrasing of Franklin D. Roosevelt's acceptance speech at the 1936 Democratic National Convention: "To some generations much is given. Of other generations, much is expected. This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny."
Description: Jungle Hunt is a side-scrolling action game developed and released for arcades in 1982. It was originally distributed as Jungle King, then quickly modified and re-released as Jungle Hunt due to a dispute over the player character's likeness to another character. Jungle King, along with Moon Patrol released a month earlier, is one of the first video games with parallax scrolling. The player controls an unnamed character moving through horizontally scrolling scenes to rescue a woman from cannibals by jumping from vine to vine, swimming a crocodile-infested river, and avoiding rolling rocks. In the rebranded Jungle Hunt, the player character is an explorer, sporting a pith helmet and safari suit in place of the loincloth-wearing character.
Description: Originally released as The Ghost Galleon, Horror of the Zombies see the Blind Dead from Amando de Ossorio's "Blind Dead" series return to hunt tender flesh on the high seas! In what many fans consider the most surprising of the four films in the series, Maria Perschy (Castle of Fu Manchu) and Jack Taylor (Eugenie) star in writer/director Amando de Ossorio's chilling tale about a boatload of stranded swimsuit models who discover a mysterious ghost ship. This phantom galleon isn't just any old ship, it carries the coffins of the satanic Templar, eyeless zombies who hunt humans by sound. Even if these frightened lovelies can survive their own forbidden desires, will they escape the insatiable hunger of the blind dead?
Description: Despite frequent appearances in the Macroverse, Ludlow, Maine is actually not a fictional town. Like the fictionalized version, the town is in Aroostook County, just west of Houlton. Ludlow has a population of a little over 400, but the Macroverse version of the town has a population of around 1,000. The real town was founded in 1864, where the fictional was founded in 1774. Ludlow, Maine also isn't called 'The Cradle of Maine,' but that certainly plays into making the fictional version a little more intriguing, don't you think?
Description: Apollo is one of the deities in classical Greek and Roman religion and Greek and Roman mythology. Apollo has been recognized as a god of archery, music and dance, truth and prophecy, healing and diseases, the Sun and light, poetry, and more. One of the most important and complex of the Greek gods, he is the son of Zeus and Leto, and the twin brother of Artemis, goddess of the hunt. He is considered to be the most beautiful god and is represented as the ideal of the kouros (ephebe, or a beardless, athletic youth). Apollo is known in Greek-influenced Etruscan mythology as Apulu.
Description: Stàte of Feär (SOF) were a crust punk/hardcore band from Minneapolis, Minnesota. During their relatively short existence, SOF's blistering Scandinavian hardcore sound delivered unrelenting tempo and intensity with explosive riffs that were built to last, and have left an indelible mark on the Minneapolis punk scene.
Description: The roots of Certified Freight Logistics (CFL) can be traced back to 1928 when Arroyo Grande Truck Co. (AGTC) was founded in Arroyo Grande, California. With a fleet of ten trucks, AGTC specialized in getting fresh produce to market. In 1952, AGTC was purchased by Edwin Nelson, an owner operator, and his brother-in-law Edwin Taylor, an Arroyo Grande farmer. The two Edwins grew AGTC by purchasing other trucking companies, and in 1963, merged with Fitzgerald Truck Service, becoming Certified Freight Lines. 20 years later, CFL had grown to 30 trucks and five yards, all while specializing in refrigerated transportation throughout California and the West Coast. As of 2008, CFL had grown to over 150 trucks, and became Certified Freight Logistics.
