Retro or Nutter?
by Iain on February 12, 2009
This old school Sony Walkman was sitting on the train table in front of me this morning (with its original stickers still in tact). Without even looking up at the owner. Half of me thought: “woah, like, totally, retro, cool, man”. And the other half thought: “move seat, move seat, you are quite obviously sitting opposite a certifiable mentalist”.
One of life’s marvellous contradictions.
14 comments
What I love about this post Iain is the fact that you clearly wanted to take a photo of this beautiful piece of 90′s memorabilia, yet you didn’t want the owner to realise. Therefore you appear to have faked taking a picture of your laptop, whilst carefully ensuring you fitted in the walkman so you could crop the photo later on.
Am I right? I may be terribly wrong ;-)
by andy tyler on 12/02/2009 at 11:52 am. #
100% busted
by Iain on 12/02/2009 at 2:38 pm. #
Excellent work.
I wish there was a way of taking photos of people’s stuff without making yourself look like some kind of fruitcake! But alas, there is not. Oh well, we’ll just carry on doing what we’re doing!
by andy tyler on 12/02/2009 at 4:07 pm. #
No doubt it cost £100 from some specialist shop!
So both retro and nutter!?
by matt on 12/02/2009 at 5:34 pm. #
I think it’s the pristine stickers that just tip them over into the mentalist category. Then again, who knows, if they found it on ebay – awesome, but if they’ve kept it box fresh since the days of Live & Kicking – not so cool. The other possibility is, of course, that they’ve just escaped from an elaborate Goodbye Lenin/Blast from the Past style prison, and mp3 players are just too terrifying to contemplate.
by Phil on 12/02/2009 at 5:47 pm. #
Without sounding like a closet Sony fan the fact that it has the latest ‘Walkman’ logo on it implies that although the technology is three decades old the device isn’t. This suggests one of two things; 1) they have old audiotapes they can’t bear to be without or 2) they managed to buy the last stash of TDK90′s in the world when Woolies closed shop. Either of which probably classes the individual as dangerous.
If you fancy one… a bargainous £17 @ http://tinyurl.com/bdzvel
by Tom on 13/02/2009 at 10:07 am. #
wow, it’s massive.
by Mike Laurie on 13/02/2009 at 1:24 pm. #
I’d say he’s retro rather than mental, Walkman owners are the cool side of edgy.
On the other hand I saw someone using a Minidisk player the other day… I distanced myself at swiftly as possible.
by corblimey on 14/02/2009 at 4:58 pm. #
I still have my old sony walkman at home, but it’s in some what desperate need of repair… I can’t believe any normal person would still have one in prime condition, this person should probably be considered dangerous!
by Simon Corry on 15/02/2009 at 2:10 pm. #
Not a vintage walkman, this is the current incarnation of the walkman logo.
by Georgy on 16/02/2009 at 11:28 am. #
Wicked post. I remember having one of these, used to love it.
Infact I used mine when I had a paper round when I was younger :)
by Matt on 16/02/2009 at 2:12 pm. #
My dad still has a white one with orange foam headphones. It’ amazing. And like, I imagine a lot of older people do, pronounces Sony like sonic with a y on. Love it. BTW my instant thought on this was not if a retro loving nutter but an old person listening to language/classical tapes?!
by Jonathan on 18/02/2009 at 12:05 am. #
I vote mental. Shift seats. Don’t make eye contact.. My first ‘walkman’ was an aiwa that could record, which I thought was amazingly cool at the time.
by hobart65 on 18/02/2009 at 1:11 am. #
No doubt it cost £100 from some specialist shop!
So both retro and nutter!?
by matt on 25/01/2010 at 3:41 am. #