SF Cribs: The places behind the clothes

Originally Posted by gdl203

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Why is this perfectly fine thread getting ruined by audio-technico bullsh!t ?

Here is a reel deck that makes reference sound. I heard this one at an audio show recently

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Why is this perfectly fine thread getting ruined by audio-technico bullsh!t ?

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Back In Black

By JONATHAN S. PAUL
Published: April 13, 2003

The camera works its way through the living room, cataloging the cold, modern interior. A stack of identical television monitors glows with financial data and a surveillance feed. An all-black RX-series Nakamichi tape deck fills the movie screen. A man puts his finger to the component. In an instant of electronic precision, the machine flips its cassette 180 degrees. Playback begins

Considering the number of kinky sex scenes in ''9 1/2 Weeks,'' the 1986 drama starring Kim Basinger and Mickey Rourke, it is remarkable that some of the film's most provocative moments involve neither Jell-O nor blindfolds. It is the modern Manhattan penthouse, the bachelor pad of Rourke's character, that elicits the most lust -- the serious, material-envy kind -- with its tricked-out yuppie minimalism and sexy black electronics.

Some people are still panting.

The gizmos of the 1980's are attracting a new generation of design fanatics, which is only fitting, since the yuppie obsession with status symbols in the 80's fast-forwarded design in the first place. ''I don't think there was ever a time when there was a greater obsession with stuff,'' says Peter Fiell, a product-design writer in London. ''People became quite obsessed with hitherto unremarkable things.'' Things like electronic pasta makers, treadmills, waterproof cordless phones. When companies recognized the fascination, they poured money into product development. The resulting handful of slick, severe designs with prominent functionalism -- many of them dark and aggressively angular -- stood in sharp relief to the whimsical, fruit-salad creations of Memphis and other purveyors of postmodernism. The more high-tech-looking the product, the better.

Steven Sclaroff, an interior designer in Manhattan, is on the leading edge of this trend, though he's the first to tell you that some things produced in the 80's are better off forgotten. On a recent visit to one of Manhattan's industrial-supply districts, he discovered some boxy 80's-style video monitors and decided to work them into his design for a new Quiksilver store in Manhattan. He plans to arrange them into a gigantic block in the middle of the place, recalling the 1987 film ''Less Than Zero,'' which features a party pad packed wall to wall with TV screens. Sclaroff recently placed the same monitor into the store he designed for Jack Spade, a men's accessories boutique in Manhattan that also sells a few vintage knicknacks, including a silver late-80's Watchman that goes for $200.

Another fan of the redux look is the Los Angeles interior designer Brad Dunning, who puts an analog Braun travel alarm clock at the bedside of ''almost every client.'' Dunning's client list includes the fashion designer Tom Ford. And like Ford, the clocks are dark and handsome -- matte black boxes with white numbers and a shock of yellow and green that accents their utilitarian, military-grade aesthetic. Dieter Rams and Dietrich Lubs designed the first Braun travel model, the AB 20 tb, in 1981. Asked about the little clock, Paola Antonelli, a curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art, exclaims: ''Oh, so beautiful. Really great.'' Though the Braun clock is not part of the museum's design collection, Antonelli says: ''We should have it. It's really quite stunning.''

But for Antonelli, the ultimate status symbol of the 1980's is the Tizio lamp, the ubiquitous cantilevered halogen. The lamp is the emblem of success for Gordon Gekko's protÃ

gÃ

, Bud Fox, in the 1987 film ''Wall Street.'' When Fox strikes it rich, his decorator girlfriend outfits his penthouse with three Tizios in the bedroom alone.

The lamp was actually designed in 1971 by Richard Sapper, but its look has come to signify the following decade. Antonelli explains: ''In the 80's, it was in all yuppie lofts and Gordon Gekko movies. It became associated with a certain show-off-ness.'' The lamp is part of the Modern's collection because its impossible angularity and cold, black skin were ''so aggressive,'' Antonelli says. ''You can't miss it.'' Dunning agrees. He buys the lamp, which is still for sale, for many of his A-list clients.

Over the last year, the collectors Paul Sczurek and Jay Hanson have noticed a surge of interest in their collection of 1970's and 80's Walkmans, boom boxes and digital watches. Japanese and European collectors have contacted the duo via their Web site, pocketcalculatorshow.com, a virtual museum and boutique for bygone gadgetry. Judging by the inquiries they receive, many collectors are simply looking for beautifully designed objects. Sczurek says the ''slim, ultrasmall, well-designed'' Walkman models, made by Sony, are the hottest. One unit, which Sczurek calls a holy grail, is the Boodo Khan Walkman, a sexy, all-black metal unit.

In 1987, the Boodo Khan, a reference to the Tokyo concert hall Budokan, was Sony's top-of-the-line product, intended for audiophiles. It was the first Walkman with a bass-boosting function. Its simple design echoes the styling of the Tizio lamp and Braun clock, but the diagonal logos and Japanese lettering on the unit's facade give it a more complex technological aesthetic -- an exotic futurism that recalls the 1982 movie ''Blade Runner.''

Hanson says many collectors have a nostalgic connection to these products. ''They want to recapture some kind of emotion or feeling they had,'' he says. ''I talk to a lot of people on e-mail who really relate to what they were doing back in the early to mid-80's. These things were either out of reach then, or maybe they managed to get one.''

Not surprisingly, another holy grail for audio collectors is a tape deck made by Nakamichi, the brand fetishized in ''9 1/2 Weeks.'' The company's most fabled unit, the Dragon cassette deck, was released in 1982, and it is legendary among audiophiles for its excellent sound and the degree of scientific complexity involved in setting up and maintaining it. The machine had a radically technical appearance with four rows of buttons, knobs and readouts on its black, brushed-metal face, giving it the look of aircraft instrumentation. The Dragon is so desirable that refurbished secondhand models regularly sell for $2,000 or more.

Throughout the 80's, in fact, the high-end audio market was at the center of sleek home gadgetry. In 1982, Proton introduced its first table radio, a two-unit all-black steel system that weighed 35 pounds and was wildly expensive at $430 (almost what people bid for it now on eBay). It became the ultimate accessory for the corporate corner office. Reinhold Weiss, who designed the radio, took the functional look he had created for NAD, another high-end electronics company, and invented this DeLorean of table radios. He also designed all-black television sets for Proton at a time when Sonys were either gray or silver.

''To me, black always had the connotation of quality and precision,'' Weiss says from his home in Evanston, Ill. He obsessed over the details, like the slightly beveled corners on many of his Proton designs. He worked hard to eliminate redundancy in the controls and to make the engineering intuitive and ergonomic. Although he no longer works for either company, NAD and Proton continue to make products that emulate Weiss's designs.

Dave Wasserman, a veteran salesman of high-end audio, fondly remembers the 1980's as the golden age, when a giant, macho amplifier ''was the emotional thing that got the customer going.'' Those days are over. Ever since the rise of home theater, ''everything has to disappear,'' he says. ''Most people are guided by their wives, their significant others, their designers, their architects,'' Wasserman continues. ''They can't have these big amplifiers sitting in the middle of the floor with humongous speaker cables lying on the ground. That's just completely out.''

Decorators today routinely try to hide home electronics as much as possible, usually stashing them behind cabinet doors. If they don't hide them, they reckon, a room will look like a Best Buy store. And audio companies have also changed. Many have begun to abandon black for gold, silver or Champagne-colored products. Today, products sold under the Nakamichi name, which no longer even includes cassette decks, are mostly silver, designed to blend in with the furniture.

But the lesson of ''9 1/2 Weeks'' (if the movie teaches anything) may be that sex and electronics are inextricably linked -- and covering up is no way to get your audience hot and bothered.

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Originally Posted by gdl203

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Why is this perfectly fine thread getting ruined by audio-technico bullsh!t ?

Originally Posted by Artisan Fan

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Originally Posted by gdl203

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You have your own threads about styrofoam cables and monster cups. This is a crib picture thread, not one for dissertations about ohmage and impedance levels!!!

Originally Posted by iammatt

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Do you guys like my Styrofoam house?

Originally Posted by shoreman1782

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