Thomas Hawk

VINTAGE NEON: LA 1979In 1979, singer and long time New Yorker Billy Vera relocated to Los Angeles to write songs for Warner Bros Music. After a decade off the charts, his song, "I Really Got The Feeling" had reached number one in a recording by Dolly Parton. "It felt like an omen, like I was back in show business," says Vera today.Hooking up with h...

Forget the jokes about late '70s South Beach being the Yiddish-speaking section of "God's Waiting Room"; yes, upward of 20,000 elderly Jews made up nearly half of its population in those days--all crammed into an area of barely two square miles like a modern-day shtetl. But these New York transplants and Holocaust survivors all still had plenty of ...

Wildwood, New Jersey: thanks to a combination of economics, geography, and chance, this Jersey Shore vacation spot has, for more than four decades, been home to a wealth of immaculately preserved midcentury motels. These jewels of neon and bright colors remained frozen in time until recently; now, a substantial number have been demolished and many ...