See How the Other Half Lived

Recently, a friend gave me a box of 35mm slides he acquired a while back. Their exact provenance is a bit of a mystery – they’re Kodachromes, they were processed in Canada in June of 1972, and the box they’re in is marked “U.K. 1972″. Since I’m a sucker for old photos, I figured I’d post a few here, for your entertainment…

Regent Street, in London – Veeraswamy is still there, thirty-five years later; the Stork Room (which was apparently a cabaret) and Gary Elliott of London (the “Mens Fashion Centre”) are no more. I can’t figure out what the place next to the Stork Room was; even in higher resolution, the fairly illegible sign is, well, illegible…

A closer look at the fellow standing outside Veeraswamy.

The interior of a store, oddly enough. Not your usual tourist snapshot, I admit. The 1970s were not a good decade for fashion…

A London street scene, complete with Big Red Bus and lovely sunny weather. The signs in the foreground are advertising a “lost property sale” on Oxford Street (“Sale of lost property, second-hand goods, and discount lines, etc”); among the items on sale were umbrellas, “cabin & metal trunks”, “seatsticks anglers & golf umbrellas”, and “tennis, squash, and badminton rackets”. Go figure…