The 1964 film A Ballad for the Fair gives a tour of the 1964 New York World's Fair, with a heavy emphasis on communications technology. Produced by Bell System, you are even treated to a taste of the Bell System ride. You can watch the entire film below or just check out the futurism aspects at Paleo-Future.
And did we mention the folk singing? Oh, the folk singing!
The DVD set 1964 World's Fair at Extinct Attractions contains the film.
9 comments:
But not older than I :)
I was seven years old when my father took me to that fair and I remember it still. Thanks for putting up the video which helped recall a few things I'd forgotton. Can you imagine the wonder of a 7 year old child when she rode those cars into the chrysler (?) building? Or took that helicopter ride around new York. I'd forgotten the helicopter until you reminded me of it again :) .
You'll appreciate that the ballad singer is Canadian Oscar Brand who has hosted “Oscar Brand's Folksong Festival” every Saturday at 10 p.m. on WNYC-AM 820 in New York City for over 60 years.
He is also famous among some for his Bawdy Ballads which he recorded during the period that he was among those listed in the Red Channels (black list for supposed Communists and Socialists).
He has quite a song to sing and a story to tell.
Not only am I old enough to have been there, I worked there!
After dropping out of college, I spent the months from May to August 1964 running a motorized rickshaw to transport very wealthy people (it cost $15/hour-that's 1964 dollars when a gallon of gas was about 25 cents) around the fair. It was a very good paying job, $8/hour.
Oh, and when I had evenings off I worked as a folksinger in several coffee houses in Greenwich Village. Meeting from time to time, Oscar Brand, who I'm sure has no memory at all of me. With the Fair in progress, we made very good money from the tourists. Of course, we made it by passing a basket around the audience after each set.
All in all, it made for a very lucrative year. Of course, not a penny was saved living a double life.
I hope you all see the clip and try to understand what a time it was. JFK had been killed less than a year before. And, the Fair, among other things, helped to heal some of the pain.
The war in Viet Nam was a minor story on the back pages of the New York Times.
Rick York
I recently purchased a book by Bill Cotter and Bill Young called Images of America The 1964-1965 New York World's Fair. The Port Authority Heliport that was shown had a scale model inside of the upcoming construction of the World Trade Center. Unbelievable what happened to it when the theme of the Fair was Peace through Understanding.
So much optimism! What ever happened to that?
"So much optimism! What ever happened to that?"
Please stop. Last gasp of *traditional* optimism indeed. Welding, literally. Better welding. That's the future.
The recently discovered how to mine TITANIUM much better. Wasn't really in the news. But metals are not news any more.
It's ideas that are now king, once again. Computers 1000X faster? Would they really change your life? No. They'd be 1000X faster at being dumb servants. Cant you type 1000X faster now? Get a girl or boyfriend 1000X faster? No? I didn't think so.
But ideas, like blog comments, a guy in a lonely NYC art studio like me, here I am. Until it become 45,000 instead of 4 comments. Then we are back to square one, except we can look up who Leadbelly was and freely download his music (originator of the blues).
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