Paul d’Orléans photographs and writes about this 1929 French Majestic motorcycle at his blog: Vintagent.
Fair Park, Dallas, built in 1936 for the Texas Centennial Exposition. The planning and architecture were designed by George Dahl, with Paul Cret as a consultant. It’s amazing that it’s survived the vagaries of architecture fashions, and that its Art Deco frescos and sculptures have been conserved and repaired, when the suitability of nudity in public art periodically suffers attacks by people with puritanical sensibilities.
The beauty and vigor of the figures on the buildings not only points to the optimism that Texans had in 1936, despite enduring the worst years of the Great Depression, but also to the allure of the big city, the big D, and its possibilities for exploration, both cultural and sexual. Samuel R. Delany, in his Nevèrÿon saga, writes about how the appeal of an ancient city wasn’t just commerce, or self defense, or centralization of power. Simply the main appeal of a city was sex. Ancient cities didn’t grow out of prehistoric villages from merely economic reasons , but instead developed out of primitive fairs for trading among nomads and villagers. And what they were trading most importantly was DNA, enhancing their genetic variety, increasing their ability to withstand disease. And along with the sex, came the trade of ideas, and goods. So it’s not “Sex in the City” but rather “Sex is the City”.
