Vintage Vivant presents:
Forbidden Vices!

This month we’re harkening back to
a bygone era, when illicit substances
flowed more freely – the jazz clubs were
hazy with smoke, and everyone was hopped
up, or laid low. Prepare to enter into a den of
feverishly lush iniquity – the seamy underbelly
of Vintage Vivant awaits you… Do you dare?

Everybody’s got a hole in their bucket,
just depends on what you like to try and
fill it up with – whether your poison is
Kokain, Reefer, or good ole-fashioned hooch,
you can guarantee you’ll hear a song about it!

Sick + Prof. Reese Gray
playing down & dirty tunes about
drugs, drinkin’ & doin’ the do!

Delirium Tremens Burlesque
from
Miss Frannie Brown

Opium Den Decadence
Coco Coquette
Charm School Vintage
and Black Swan Theory

SEE shameless hussies writhe in drug-crazed abandon!
WATCH the wild-mad thrills of eccentric heiresses brought
low by naughty habits! Lives ruined! Virtue soiled!
Let our little broken blossoms be cautionary tale to you!

Vintage fabulousness
available for purchase
from Kittenille Vintage

DJ Shorty Stump will be spinning down + out vintage tunes
about hooch, reefer and that bad ole Minnie the Moocher!

Prepare to have your ensemble immortalized in the fabulous
photobooth from Fun Loving Photos!

Lovingly hosted by Amelia and Angeliska.

$10 – vintage attire
$13 – deadly dull
21+ only please

Women cry for it! Men die for it!

Vintage Vivant presents
Forbidden Vices!
Sunday, November 27th
Swan Dive – 615 Red River
9pm – 2am

Frightful perversions you say? Sign us up!

Perhaps you prefer your vices sipped out of an elegant martini glass…

Or maybe you just slug it straight from the bottle…

I guess it don’t matter, as long as you share!

Just don’t drink it dry – save us a sip!

Is whiskey your poison?

How about a little cocaine, perhaps?

Cocain – (1921) Mondine und Demimondaine Skizzen, von F. W. Koebner, Grotilgo-Verlag, Berlin

French tonic wine made from coca leaves, source of cocaine. Poster by Charles Lévy, lithographer, Paris, 1896.

The thrill that kills!

Cocaine pastille?

Or maybe smoking cigarettes is your shameful habit?

You could always try shisha from a hookah…!

A predilection for the green fairy is understandable…

But beware the wiles of Opium! It’s very addictive, & popular with the bohemian set (or so we’ve heard…)

But we would never!

Steady those nerves, ladies! Mama needs her special tonic!

Follow the house rules, kids – we don’t wanna have rough anybody up,
and nobody wants to kicked out of the Screw Room, am I right? Right!

We loved this couple’s elegant take on noir vintage! Swank!

Colin as the Invisible Man.

Catrin y Catrina

Oren Porterfield, Jordan Moser, and a very pretty Catrina!

Cindy Sparklefingers + Jimmie Jewell

Oh my! The Dark One tried to woo me!

But I chose the Invisible Man, of course! He’s very handsome underneath that hanky!

Amelia & Reese – tee-hee!

Miss Amelia was especially stunning in her golden bird costume.

Miss Stefanie caught in a dangerous pas de deux with some wild swans

Watch out, something wicked this way comes!

Oh, nevermind – it’s just a wild Lau! She’s did the wonderful vintage horror projections from the night. Hooray for RECSPEC!

John Leach & Miss Sassy Delure

Jeremiah Newton set up and shot portraits for the second half of the night: check out his amazing work!

Chad as a Satan’s Cheerleader!

Tolly Moseley of Austin Eavesdropper and her gang of hot witches! They gonna cast a spell on you!

Rachel and Hans Stockenberger – singers from The Vintage 15, our amazing big band entertainment for the evening.
They were so amazing! If you have a vintage-themed wedding or big event coming up, we recommend them very highly!

Tori and Steve, also from The Vintage 15 as the 99% and the 1% – too good! Oh, and they’re married! Love it.

Cuties!

We had such an amazing Halloween Witches’ Ball with you all! We can’t wait for next year!

So many wonderful, talented people in our town got recognition today for their hard work! Angel and I had no idea that we were going to be the cover girls for the Best Of issue. Imagine my surprise when I saw my face grinning back at me while buying my morning cup of coffee!!

Read the full article here, which is a good read, even if you don’t live in Austin. Oh, and here’s our award: Best Reason to Learn the Charleston:
The last Great Depression has this one licked for fashion. So for those of you with steak-house tastes on a soup-kitchen budget, once a month, the retro-chic molls and brunos of Vintage Vivant, lead by mostest hostesses Angeliska (Gadjo Disko) and Amelia (Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School) break out the Dutch caps and fedoras to turn Swan Dive into Austin’s finest gin mill. The bluenoses can pipe down – even if you’re a cement mixer on the dance floor, this is the finest way to hoof away this trip to the poor house.

Congrats to our friends & local haunts: Coco Coquette, Charm School Vintage, Swan Dive, Dennis Campa with Adventures in Sound, East Side Show Room, Minor Mishap Marching Band, Justine’s, and Queer Bomb for their wins & for keeping Austin so special!

Our next party is on October 30th, featuring music from The Vintage 15 and burlesque by Sassy Delure.

On Sunday, August 28th, join us for a very special evening, as Vintage Vivant teams up with the Alamo Ritz theatre for dinner, a silent movie and dancing. It’s a perfect night for a date!

Reese Gray, Stride pianist

At 7pm, the Alamo Ritz in downtown Austin will play the silent screen classic, “It,” starring Clara Bow, and featuring accomplished stride pianist Reese Gray providing live accompaniment to the film. Gray is a member of The White Ghost Shivers and the East Side Dandies, and his technique harkens back to the New York style of the ‘20s and ‘30s.

Reese Gray playing Tiger Rag with the White Ghost Shivers

If you look very closely in the back, you can see Reese playing piano among the muppets of Sesame Street with the Squirrel Nut Zippers!

Immediately after the film, join us just down the street at the Swan Dive: 615 Red River, corner of 7th and Red River. This month’s theme: Vamps n’ Tramps: A Black and White Ball, celebrating stars of the silent screen.

We mean “Tramps” as in Charlie Chaplin, The Little Tramp - but if you wanna show up looking like an old-time floozy, it’s no skin off our rumps! Of course, you could always take your inspiration from the original vamp, Theda Bara!

The evening features live music and diversions, including cello accompaniment from Barbara Anndrea Arriaga of Reverend Glasseye, with silent film projections from Lau of Recspec. DJ Shorty Stump spins the hits of the era.

Prepare to be immortalized in the fabulous photobooth from Fun Loving Photos - $5 gets you a 4×5 black and white polaroid of your very own. Vintage attire is encouraged!  Be sure to peruse our inspirational posts for ideas of what to wear. RSVP ici, s’il vous plait! 

“Je ne suis pas un photographe-écrivain-peintre, je suis empailleur des choses que la vie m’o ff re en passant “

“I’m not a photographer-writer-painter, I’m a taxidermist of things that life offers me on the way.” - Jacques Henri Lartigue

Jacques Henri Lartigue (1894-1986) is considered to be one of the leading photographers of the twentieth century. Born just outside of Paris, he began taking photos in 1901, at age seven.

This photo of an automobile race in the 1910s was taken when he was just 18 years old. When I was a young pup in photography school, this image perplexed me. How can one feel such speed from a still photograph? How did he capture the torque of the wheel at 60km? Imagine energy captured at this speed in 1912 – almost unthinkable!

What I wouldn’t give for a time machine and a little courage to strap myself into this protoplane.

Getting down to business (you’re not really here for an art history lesson, after all), here are some Lartigue images that may provide some fashionable fodder for the next Vintage Vivant theme.

Cupid bow lips, dark eyebrows, rhinestone buckles

Parasols, tilted hats, pearl beading on collars

Sculpted finger waves, netting, tilt hats, fur collars Dark, sweeping eye makeup and penciled eye brows.

His muse, beautiful Romanian model, Renee Perle:Posing with an armful of bangles and a 1930s style manicure

For sculpted spit curls like these, cut tiny sections of the hair and sculpt them into place with strong hairspray, secure with hair tape while they dry.

Lartigue was a painter as well.

Lillian Gish is our patron saint and silent film star inspiration for this month’s Vintage Vivant,
as no other starlet could look quite so beautiful when smudged and dust-blown as she was
in the 1928 classic directed by Victor Sjöström. If you’ve never seen it, I highly recommend that you do!

I think that we should look to dear Lillian as our guide this month, and aim to retain our daintiness of face, despite the
hardships we must endure! Keep those cheeks rosy, and those cupid’s bows neatly penciled, even though you may be
fainting from hunger, or your corset stays straining with the effort of the back-breaking work that you do!

The film tells the story of a sheltered woman named Letty, who lives in Virginia and moves to West Texas to live
at her cousin’s ranch in Sweet Water. On her way, she is constantly bothered by the never stopping blowing wind.
Wirt Roddy (played by Montagu Love – what a name!) notices and seduces her in the train. He scares her by saying the
wind usually drives women crazy…. We won’t give away the plot of this fantastic film for you, in hopes that you will see it!

In hunting for images for this month’s Vintage Vivant poster, I came across the work of a talented photographer
named Chadwick Tyler. He’s fond of shooting smudge-faced nymphs, dandelion-headed starving street-urchins,
feral gamines and broken blossoms. I love his stuff. Here’s some pieces that I think were definitely inspired
by Miss Gish and the Great Depression Era. Lost waifs and Dust Bowl dollies! Inspiration for us, anyways! And how!