Comments on: Interior design hell

By: david tiley

david tiley — Sat, 10 Dec 2005 06:43:47 +0000

It’s the totality. I can imagine the individual bits being worth money, but the complete cocoon explains why the woman in no 13 is leaning forwards screaming in disbelief.

Either that or the doll in a couple of them has just walked in the door and vomited ectoplasm.

By: joe heath

joe heath — Fri, 09 Dec 2005 15:46:47 +0000

I remember when that stuff looked cool. The challenge is to remember that most of what you see now is going to look equally bad 30 years from now.

By: Jeremy Osner

Jeremy Osner — Fri, 09 Dec 2005 13:51:36 +0000

I have no idea … why the child is lifting the woman’s mini-skirt in #11

Wouldn’t you?

By: Jacqui

Jacqui — Fri, 09 Dec 2005 01:22:54 +0000

Ah! My eyes! Good find :D

By: Matt

Matt — Fri, 09 Dec 2005 01:19:21 +0000

Man, what sort of dancing were those bands playing music for? Not the kind the burns calories from the looks of some of them, or the kind that might attract girls. But, I suppose ABBA makes more sense now.

By: clew

clew — Fri, 09 Dec 2005 01:05:17 +0000

“hülstad Arkansas” – the immortal and universal name of style.

I thought some of the all-shiny modernism held up. I personally don’t like it, but I don’t think it’s stupid.

By: garymar

garymar — Fri, 09 Dec 2005 00:43:51 +0000

Except that Sweden was neutral in the war, and suffered very little damage to its cities or population. You’ll have to look elsewhere for an explanation.

Yes, but are all these interiors in Sweden? I saw some Swedish printed on them, but also some German as well. (Leben Sie Transparent.) I thought these were Euro interiors. But in any case, I take back part of my original statement. I only looked at the first 6-7 pictures before posting my original comments (slow connection), and those interiors were pretty bland; some were even bearable. But the second half of the exhibit was much wilder -- a combination of Austin Powers and the Brady Bunch. The sofa in #14 made my eyes water.

By: Ginger Yellow

Ginger Yellow — Thu, 08 Dec 2005 23:48:30 +0000

Oh, and should I be worried that I think the Gobbler looks pretty cool in a really, really kitsch way? It’s a bit absurd for Lileks to accuse it of “jaw dropping banality” when you consider how boring 99% of motels are. Sure it misses its goal spectacularly. But it’s still spectacular.

By: Ginger Yellow

Ginger Yellow — Thu, 08 Dec 2005 23:45:00 +0000

The second and third ones are quite good, especially for the time. Although the phone on the floor in the second one is a bizarre touch.

“The second interior (not counting the one on the ‘front page’) reminds me vaguely of some of the rooms in the Merton graduate centre, though rather worse …”

It’s the undergraduate interiors you’ve got to watch out for at Merton, particularly in Muir.

By: Anderson

Anderson — Thu, 08 Dec 2005 23:05:53 +0000

“Man, I went crazy thinking of all the hot Euro chicks I could have picked up in those sweet pads.”

One of them was pictured as having taken her clothes off in anticipation, I believe.

Great site. No historicization needed (pace Jameson). Some things are Just Wrong.

By: FMguru

FMguru — Thu, 08 Dec 2005 20:59:51 +0000

It took decades for many parts of Europe to recover from the war’s devastation, and maybe these garish interiors spoke a hopeful message to their proud owners.

Except that Sweden was neutral in the war, and suffered very little damage to its cities or population. You’ll have to look elsewhere for an explanation.

By: eweininger

eweininger — Thu, 08 Dec 2005 20:10:46 +0000

You heard it here first: a lot of that furniture and a lot of those fixtures would command top dollar in the East Village. TOP dollar.

By: Brock

Brock — Thu, 08 Dec 2005 20:01:02 +0000

it is indeed hard to imagine interiors much worse than these, even in 1974.

You’ve obviously never been to Graceland.

By: blah

blah — Thu, 08 Dec 2005 19:47:39 +0000

Man, I went crazy thinking of all the hot Euro chicks I could have picked up in those sweet pads.

By: jacob

jacob — Thu, 08 Dec 2005 19:31:11 +0000

That Gobbler Motel seems to me an American version of one my favorite places in the world, the Hotel Thermal in Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic. In the middle of fin de siecle Carlsbad is this Russian monstrosity. The lobby is like something out of a 1960s spy movie: red vinyl seats, low ceilings, signs in Russian, a black and white movie running in the corner showing the brave Czechoslovak workers and peasants. The pictures on the website www.thermal.cz, alas, don't really do it justice; I imagine it's been renovated since I was there seven or eight years ago. One of my lasting regrets is not having a camera with me that day.