Strap on your skates, today's #DavesCarIDService is here to examine the noble and sassy history of... the car hop!
These talented gals are whisking $0.40 chili burgers to a 1952 Mercury (left) and a 1953 Oldsmobile (right).
It might seem incomprehensible to those who have lived exclusively in the drive-thru era (since circa 1975) that roadside fast fooderies once employed waitstaffs to carry, or skate, orders to the cars of customers. But, true story, and not just a nostalgia movie fever dream.
With the ascendancy of widespread car ownership came the roadside restaurant, bringing with it a problem to be solved: how to get the food between the kitchen and the cars? The obvious solution was a team of perky uniformed gals (and initially guys). And Southern California was unsurprisingly an early hotbed of restaurants using this model. #1, a 1932 publicity photos of the hops at Carpenter's restaurant in L.A.; in #2, film comedian Monte Blue chows down in his electric toy car with another car hop in 1933 at an unidentified LA drive in.
In the late 1940s other solutions were being tested, like the bowling alley style chutes of the Motormat in LA (#3), or literal drive-thrus; in #4, Ye Market Place in Glendale 1949. A grocery store, believe it or not, but a few restaurants were trying this system at the time as well.
But the distinction of first drive in, with the first car hops, belongs to Texas. Yee Hah! In 1921 Dallas businessman J.G. Kirby said "let there be drive ins" and opened the Pig Stand, complete with Flapper Era car hops. It became a popular chain in Texas; #2 shows Pig Stand #2 in South Oak Cliff, complete with pagoda roof.
I bet Bonnie & Clyde might've eaten at one after a bank job once or twice.
So if I understand this correctly it's my fucking money, except I can't fucking check the fucking account balance, or fucking borrow against, or use as fucking collateral, or fucking leave to my kids, or fucking touch until they say so
Think of it paying 15% of your income for 50 years for a life insurance policy that names the government as the death beneficiary
In honor of May 1, International Commie Day, I say let's seize the means of production from Apple and let Minister of iPhones Lutnick develop a 5 year plan for the Patriotic Peoples National Smartphone Works using the principles of scientific socialism
So if, I'm understanding this correctly, there were 119 million fentanyl junkies waiting around on American street corners for their pushers to deliver 22 million fentanyl pills that they were going to split 5 ways into 119 million deadly doses
Thanks to the quick action of the White House the pills were intercepted, sparing the nation the tragedy and smell of a 100 day corpse count 50% higher than World War II in its entirety
Once again, this is an example of Simpson's Paradox at work. States like CA and NY have overall reading & math scores above MS and LA, but when adjusted for socioeconomic factors - school lunch eligibility, family income, race - Southern states are now outperforming.
Classic example of Simpson's Paradox: in baseball, batter A has a higher batting average than batter B, yet batter B has a higher average than A against both left handed and right handed pitchers.
A happy belated License Plate Day to all who celebrate from #DavesCarIDService! On April 25, 1901 the state of New York became the first to require license plates on automobiles. Oddly, though, it did not *issue* those plates; it merely required registrants to display one prominently on their vehicle, bearing the owner's initials.
Material and construction was up to the registrant - metal, wood, leather, whatever, it didn't say. Cars were still rare enough that the initials were though sufficient to track any car down. But within a few years numbers were added, and other states quickly followed suit. Most of those very early pre-1905 license plates nationwide were of the homemade leather variety.
The first 2 photos are of extremely rare surviving 1901 NY license plates; #3, a 1902-03 NY plate with number and owner initials. In #4, a 1904 Iowa leather plate. Iowa became the first state west of the Mississippi to require license plates that year.
The distinction of the first state to *issue* its own license plates goes to Massachusetts. In 1903 Masshole car registrants receive a uniform state plate, #1 going to Frederick Tudor, descendent of Boston's famed "Ice King" Frederick Tudor, who made his fortune shipping ice from the frozen north to the American South, the Caribbean, even as far as Calcutta.
The 1903 plates themselves were quite spiffy and durable, porcelainized iron plates in Navy blue and white. And worth a pretty penny today. The pair in #1 were issued to Joshua Sears of 12 Arlington St. Boston, and are the lowest number 1903 MA plates known to exist.
Within a few years states adopted the time-honored medium of sheet aluminum, stamped by a hardworking state prison convict working his way to rehabilitation. While the 1903 MA plates are quite valuable, the most expensive American plate on record is #2, a survivor aluminum 1921 Alaska Territory, which fetched $60,000 at auction.
And with that, state license plates were off and running. And to me, some are among the finest examples of graphic design ever. I submit to the jury exhibits A, B, C, and D: