Street Life in London, 1876. I love the hats and the clay pipes. Taken from How to be a retronaut
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I have quite a few passions in life, a side from sipping Laphroaig and smoking pipes, I guess my main 5 would be: photography, Araceli (my other half), clothes, guitars and music. I really don’t need more suit jackets, waistcoats or boots but I just can’t stop buying / collecting stuff. Most is second hand or bought cheap so it’s not really a money issue, it’s more of a space issue. We have two walk in closets and both of them are starting to get pretty packed, especially since Araceli is quite good at collecting clothes as well. I tend to get a bit obsessive and take the whole collecting thing a bit too far. At the moment I’m obsessed with my new Stetson hat and can’t stop wearing it. I also ordered a second Stetson in brown, just in case even though the last thing I need is more hats. The most pointless collecting mania in the last year must have been my pipe obsession. I stopped smoking cigarettes last summer and replaced them with an old straight billiard pipe that I found in a drawer in Uppsala. It’s a neat little Italian pipe that I bought when I started smoking back in 1994, at the time I worked weekends in an tobacconist and got really in to smoking. This new found or re-found pipe interest resulted in me buying 8 pipes within a month and getting quite obsessed with the Danish brand Stanwell and with Dunhill’s pipe tobaccos. Araceli has said that I’m not allowed to talk about pipes with strangers since they normally don’t share my fascination for Stanwell, neither the history or how well they smoke, I didn’t get that at first.
I also like to collect guitars. I’m not the best guitar player in the world but I really like to have them, ideally to have them all. I think I have about 10 electric and 5 acoustic guitars, most still in Sweden. Again, nothing fancy, some from the 1970’s that plays great but aren’t really worth much. They all feel different and they have their unique sound so I guess that’s what the collecting thing is about, to have a new sound or something that feels different. About 10 years ago I bought an Epiphone Sheraton II second hand but didn’t really understand what I gotten in to until about 5 years later. I guess I bought the Epiphone because of it’s beauty,dark tobacco sunburst with gold hardware, but at the time I preferred Telecasters and never really played it.
Then when I was back in Sweden for Christmas about 3 years ago I took it out and played a bit and something had changed. I had changed, my way of playing was different and now this was suddenly me. I brought it back to London and my obsession with semi-hollow bodied guitars was born. I realised that a lot of the musicians I listened too was playing big old bulky guitars and I guess this is where the dream of owning a Gretsch White Falcon came from. I saw that not only Neil Young but the whole Crosby, Stills and Nash was playing Gretsch White Falcon, I think Stills got his own signature model now as well. I need one and in an feeble attempt to save 3000 Euros I bought a cheap copy on E-Bay. It’s a white Vintage VSA850WH that some chap in Edinburgh had modified to look like a White Falcon. It has Gretsch pick guard, tone knobs and logo but it doesn’t feel like a Gretsch White Falcon. It just feels bulky and cheap. However, it feels good to have something to look forward too, something more to collect. One day I will have an 3000 Euros to spare and I can get my beloved Gretsch White Falcon. Until then, I will have to do with my Hagstrom Viking that I bought recently in an spontaneous fit. I like to collect things.
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