Boneshaker

Cherie Priest's new novel Boneshaker is now out, and sounds like it might be a pretty good read.

The author herself describes it: "It’s an alternate-history steampunk setting wherein the Civil War has been going on for 20 years, and the west has not yet been won".

Amazon's description says:

"In the early days of the Civil War, rumors of gold in the frozen Klondike brought hordes of newcomers to the Pacific Northwest. Anxious to compete, Russian prospectors commissioned inventor Leviticus Blue to create a great machine that could mine through Alaska’s ice. Thus was Dr. Blue’s Incredible Bone-Shaking Drill Engine born.

But on its first test run the Boneshaker went terribly awry, destroying several blocks of downtown Seattle and unearthing a subterranean vein of blight gas that turned anyone who breathed it into the living dead.

Now it is sixteen years later, and a wall has been built to enclose the devastated and toxic city. Just beyond it lives Blue’s widow, Briar Wilkes. Life is hard with a ruined reputation and a teenaged boy to support, but she and Ezekiel are managing. Until Ezekiel undertakes a secret crusade to rewrite history.

His quest will take him under the wall and into a city teeming with ravenous undead, air pirates, criminal overlords, and heavily armed refugees. And only Briar can bring him out alive."

Caufield's Hearse

Photos of the most excellent Cadillac Superior hearse parked outside of Caufield's Novelty Shop in Louisville, KY. We're envious of the propane-powered flame-throwers connected to the mouths of the metal skulls - this is a feature that'll come in handy when zombies start crawling over your car.





See our Unusual Kentucky blog for more images of this sweet ride.

Copperplating at Home

Recently saw an old post on the Home Chemistry blog about a simple and effective way to do copper-plating of small objects, using salt, vinegar and pennies. Has anyone else tried this?

The Lindy Hop

There is no dance that better sums up our zeitgeist than the Lindy Hop.

You've seen endless variations of it in 1,001 Hollywood films set in the first half of the 20th century, from Barton Fink to The Cotton Club to Malcolm X. You can also see actual period footage of it in old films such as After Seben, Rock Around The Clock, Hot Chocolates, The Girl Can't Help It, Hellzapoppin', A Day at the Races, That Certain Feeling, Keep Punching, Symphony in Black, Radio City Revels, Stompin' at the Savoy, and Killer Diller.

There's also a short-but-excellent 1988 documentary, Call Of The Jitterbug, which contains extensive archival footage, and includes interviews with Norma Miller, Frankie Manning, and Dizzy Gillespie.


The Lindy Hop seems to run like an infinite silver cord along the entire length of time. Kids today see it done at Rockabilly festivals and assume it's a 50's/60's thing. Then they start to realize it was already a pre-existing dance when 50's kids were doing it in old rock and roll movies like Don't Knock the Rock. Then they discover it was a dance craze of the 1920s and 1930s. And then, digging back even further, we find the key moves of the Lindy Hop (the Swingout/whip/turn) were previously called The Breakaway, and that this in turn was derived from The Texas Tommy, circa 1900-1910. The Lindy Hop also encompasses The Charleston, which was popularized in 1923 but goes way back before that.

Before that, it's almost a certainty that these dance moves existed in the 19th century, before the activities of African-American culture were well documented. I'd bet money that some of them go back to antiquity.

The Lindy Hop has always been here, and always will be. It is ever shifting, mutating, sidestepping like Billy Childish's allegorical crab to avoid dilution. No flies on it. Long may it wave.

Wall Sconce Electric Fan

This "Old Havana" Wall-sconce fan sure is nice-looking, but $563 is just stupid. (And it's on sale, marked down from $940!) I could make one myself that would be much more interesting - and I probably will this winter when I get snowed in and have more free time for such projects.

Etsy find: Great Airport Mystery Purse

I'm going to give "retrograndma" benefit of the doubt that she didn't fuck up a perfectly good 1st edition copy of the Hardy Boys book The Great Airport Mystery. I'm going to tell myself she found a copy at a Goodwill that had a great looking cover but ruined pages, and thus decided not to let that cover go to waste.

Bob Basset

Ukrainian artisan Bob Basset makes the most wondrous masks you could ever want, just the thing to wear when cruising in a modified tank across deserted streets in a post-apocalyptic radioactive landscape with your space-pirate buddies.

Norton Commons

One from our Unusual Kentucky blog:


A steampunk/retro enthusiast's wet dream, Norton Commons is an amazing community that, just a couple years ago, was a desolate field. Now it's a self-contained city unto itself, composed of all manner of antique architectural styles, giving one the strange and wonderful feeling they're on an elaborate movie set, or that they're Remote Viewing another point in time.





Their website says: "Imagine the convenience of a market, restaurants and other shops all within walking distance of your home. Retail stores in Norton Commons add the charm of village life that’s missing from suburban living. Sidewalks draw residents who appreciate the convenience and quality of these amenities. For visitors, the streets provide easy thoroughfare and ample parking. Businesses in Norton Commons become an integral part of a loyal community."









Stores are mixed in amongst the homes just like in an older neighborhood, and apartments are often placed above retail locations, as it used to be back in the day before the deadly dull postmodern ideas of zoning. The styles of the buildings are a total mish-mash of different time periods, just as it would be on an actual century-old street: there's Colonial, Federal, Italianate, Prairie/Foursquare, Victorian, Folk Victorian, Queen Anne, Craftsman/Bungalow, and even plain ol' depression-era-industrial ugly (which I find beautiful).





It's hard to find - I usually take Westport to Chamberlain, or you can get there via Wolf Pen Branch, or Brownsboro, or the Gene Snyder.

Gelato Gilberto is located out here, and it's worth the drive. It's the place to go for Gelato in Jefferson County, especially now that Café Glacé on Frankfort Avenue is gone, and - what was that other place that used to be on Bardstown Road? Whatever it was, it's gone too.

Victorian Square

At the corner of Broadway and Main in Lexington, KY, there's a wonderful block of antiquated once-crumbling buildings called Victorian Square. The Webb Companies, rather than tear the structures down completely (which is what they've done to almost every other cool old building they've ever gotten their hands on), they combined all these places into one huge connected labyrinth and retained the gaslght-era urban decay look of it all.

Too bad the Webbs didn't do the same thing for their insane and universally hated construction project CentrePointe in Lexington. (You know, the place they tore down the original locations of Buster's and The Dame for, so they could put up a penis-shaped downtown hotel in a city that already has way too many downtown hotels.)


Other cities, take note: Victorian Square is exactly how to utilize old buildings while preserving their integrity.

eBay find: 1920s radio headphones

An eBay find: Vintage steampunk radio set headphones, 1920s. It wouldn't take much to rehabilitate these into functioning headphones, perfect for use with a modified mp3 player.

Flakorn, Cuplets, Flako

I eat Flakorn, Cuplets and Flako in my household every night while listening to the latest Rudy Vallee records.

Monkey-picked Tea and Weasel-chewed Coffee

There's a great British company called Edible, which sells some serious hard-to-find international products that make Iron Chef concoctions seem bland by comparison.

There's Monkey-picked Tea, about which Edible says:

"This rare chinese tea is carefully picked by specially trained monkeys in a remote mountain region of China. Legend has it that monkeys were first used to collect tea ten centuries ago, because upon seeing it's master trying to reach some tea growing wild on a mountain face, the monkey climbed up the steep face and collected the tea growing there and brought it down to his master. This wild tea was considered so delicious that other people began to train monkeys to collect this rare wild tea. Nowadays the practice of monkeys picking tea has all but died out, except in one small remote village where they still continue this remarkable tradition."

And even tastier-sounding, they offer coffee beans pre-chewed by Vietnamese weasels:

UNIQUE VIETNAMESE COFFEE! EATEN & REGURGITATED BY A WEASEL! RICH CHOCOLATEY FLAVOUR!

This Coffee is first eaten by Weasels which then regurgitate it, no one knows why they do this but it is then collected by locals in remote forest areas and then cleaned and roasted.

It has a unique rich chocolatey flavour and is best served as an espresso with a dash of condensed milk, just as they do in Vietnam.

Actually, the animal in question is an Asian Palm Civet, which is slangily sometimes called a Weasel in Vietnam, especially when attempting to translate to English. Kopi Luwak is the official name of the coffee made from the Civet-masticated beans.

Meanwhile, in the Phillipines, there's Motit Coffee, which is prepared from coffee beans harvested from the feces of the Civet. It costs USD $1400 a pound, so don't expect to see it in Starbucks anytime soon.