QC Archives | Quite Continental

Throwback Thursday: Elephant in the Room

14/03/2013 § 2 Comments

For today’s Throwback Thursday selection, I give you one of my most favorite pictures of my paternal grandfather – and I hope you will please excuse the whole “picture of a picture” situation, but when you take a good look at all this awesomeness, I think you will. I actually never met my grandad, as he passed away when my father was barely a teenager, but the few photos my father has of him and the stories I have heard, manage to make me miss him. Here he’s pictured at his work bench at RCA (interestingly both of my grandfathers worked with radio/technology after they were in the service), and his work clothes are definitely rad, but my favorite bits in this picture are the Barry Goldwater election sign and the inexplicable elephant hovering above his head. Do we think my grandad was a fan of elephants? Maybe he won it at a fair or had recently visited the circus with the kids? Or perhaps he was just a staunch Republican?

I suppose it is a mystery for the ages…

McQueen Trumps All

09/01/2013 § 2 Comments

Last weekend like a proper New Yorker, I attended a brunch of the “all you can drink” variety and the service was so efficient that it proved impossible to keep track of how many glasses of champagne we actually had. And as half-full glasses were filled over and over, the conversation slowly and predictably degraded from such high-minded topics such as art, current events and important life decisions to…the most attractive people of all time. I hear this is a common side effect of champagne.

While my initial choices were cast aside as a bit conventional and surprisingly boring (my deepest apologies to Jon Hamm and George Clooney), when I mentioned Steve McQueen there was a murmur of immediate approval — here was someone who everyone agreed upon. The next time when I’m faced with this question, I’ll just go ahead and play my trump card early.

From the February 1965 issue of Harper’s Bazaar, a trifecta of icons:
Steve McQueen, Jean Shrimpton, and Richard Avedon.

Via TFS.

Throwback Thursday: Little M on Xmas

21/12/2012 § 3 Comments

Me! Since this is the last Thursday before the holidays, I thought I might share a gem from the family archive taken on my second Christmas. Now, there is almost too much awesome in this photo, but I’m going to attempt to parse it: First, that face I’m making was taught to me by my Godmother, and in most pictures of me around this age I don’t smile, preferring instead to pull this face. Second, I’m standing in front of our red Ford station wagon, a car whose vinyl seats are one of my earliest memories. Third, I’m holding a Sesame Street Christmas record. RECORD. Fourth, my lace-trimmed — and quite possibly velour — hoodie getup. And last, but definitely not least, the little Chucks I’m wearing and the bells my mom tied onto them so she could keep track of me. Priceless.

May your holiday season be filled with wonderful memories, both new and old.
xoxo. M.

Throwback Thursday || There Will Be Breweries (and Beards)

24/10/2012 § 6 Comments

From the family archives: an amazing group portrait — which you must click to enlarge — featuring my great, great-grandfather Peter Joseph in New Orleans, sometime after the Civil War. A veteran, a civic leader and a policeman, he somehow also had the time to serve as foreman for a brewery built on Canal Street, and here he is pictured with his crew. You can find him either by the arrow penciled in on the photo, or you could just search for a masterful beard…

QC Archives || Grandma’s Hands

25/09/2012 § 3 Comments

A trip home to Los Angeles is never complete without a wander through my grandmother’s photo albums, now kept by my mother. While not exactly a scrapbooker per se, my Grandma did like to make collages with her pictures over the years — sometimes organized chronologically, sometimes completely nonsensical, sometimes accompanied by scribbled entries identifying who people are and where they might be, sometimes not. The purist in me instinctively wishes that she hadn’t cut up so many of the pictures, but I always take it back when I think about her lovingly laboring over her creation. I know how lucky I am to be able to hold in my hands something that she made with hers.

I took a few pictures (yes, of pictures) so I could share them with you.
Definitely click on them for a closer look.

My grandparents are the ones wearing sunglasses. Obviously they are the coolest.
With friends on Chesapeake Bay, 1946.
And can we please talk about what the women are wearing? Can. We. Talk.