Main St.: American Retro (American Retro)

Rating:
Summary: Missed Main Street, drove up a dead-end instead.
Review: A disappointing half-hearted attempt at capturing the essence of Main Street USA. The book's intro suggests this is nostalgia for Fifties America, Norman Rockwell land, a railroad station, Woolworth's, gas stations, soda fountains, barber shop, movie theatre, Post office, volunteer fire department and more. Plenty of scope for visual material but what is presented (in rather flat color) looks like it came out of a stock photo catalogue, there are even three photos of ghost towns from the old west.

There are a few interesting photos though, pages 44-45 show the Woodstock, Vermont, Town Crier, actually a notice board with the latest goings-on written in chalk, page 26 shows some guys passing the time of day outside a store in Redwoods, California. There should have been a lot more of these sort of photos and some showing the insides of the stores on any Main Street. Throughout the book there are rather dull quotes that are given too much space. The photo and quote credits are given four pages at the back when they should have been on the relevant pages throughout the book.

I have a couple of other books that handle the theme so much better, 'Remembering Main Street' by Pat Ross, which covers ten towns across the Nation and their Main Streets and 'Home Towns' by photographer George Tice, wonderful black and white images of Fairmont, Indiana, Dixon, Illinois and Hannibal, Missouri.