A current thread here in The Lounge reminded me of this story:

In the 60s I was sent by my company to Livermore CA to help with the installation of a large scientific computer at a Sandia Corp. facility. Livermore was a small town with two large employers: Sandia Corp and Lawrence Radiation Lab. Both did nuclear research and were staffed with scads of engineers and scientists.

Nearly all drugstores in that era had a large magazine rack. In the 60s Playboy Magazine was so popular that there wasn’t room on the rack for the monthly allotment, so they were usually set in a big stack beside the rack.

The drugstore in Livermore had such a stack beside its magazine rack, but it was a stack of Scientific American rather than Playboy. I chuckled when I saw that.

BTW - In that era Scientific American was a wonderfully good magazine. I still have many articles cut from them in my file cabinet.

You're right, Scientific American was great back then.

I only bought Playboy for the articles, though (cough, cough).

Learned english reading the articles.

Yes, there were people actually reading the articles!!!!

As a kid, used to read a bunch of comics in Spanish. When i ran out of magazines in Spanish i picked Mad Magazine and Cracked (?). Later moved to Playboy and lastly to Penthouse. Eventually i picked my first paperback and here i am.

Have never spent over 10 days/year in an english speaking environment. I believe i’ve done pretty well.

0-0

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Originally posted by 0-0:
I believe i’ve done pretty well.

Based on what I’ve seen here (and not only your posts), I would say you have not only done pretty well, but better than many native English speakers.

Nick and I had lunch one day and his English is better than my Canadian

I am from Livermore

I used to go in to the little liquor store on East avenue and Hillcrest. I’m thinking that’s the store since it was the closest to the Lab ?

I would get candy bars and sneak peaks at playboy…

If I recall correctly, back in the seventies, both publications were (almost) apolitical. We didn't know how good we had it.

I used to annoy the hell out of my college roommates by thumbing backwards through the newest current edition, reading the cartoons first.

I was a subscriber to PB for years. And I read the articles! The interviews were very good. It seemed to me that it slowly lost direction over time as Hefner aged or seemed less involved with it.
Hefner pretty much created Marilyn Monroe.

I credit the recreational mathematics column in SA for my interest in computers, which led to my eventual career path. SA was a wonderful resource before they "got woke," can't even scan through it now.

quote:

Originally posted by YooperSigs:
I was a subscriber to PB for years. And I read the articles! The interviews were very good.

Same here and yes, they were. ISTR good short-story fiction in it, too?

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Originally posted by YooperSigs:
It seemed to me that it slowly lost direction over time as Hefner aged or seemed less involved with it.

I no longer recall when it was, but, at some point Playboy got less interesting. I don't mean the photo spreads, but the articles, humor, etc. Somewhere along the line it lost... something. It was then I let my subscription lapse.

Had dinner and drinks at the Playboy Club in Chicago while Playboy was still in its heyday. That was cool

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Originally posted by ensigmatic:

Had dinner and drinks at the Playboy Club in Chicago while Playboy was still in its heyday.

Back in the 1960s, dinner was as little as five bucks at the Playboy Club in NYC.

My mother and I were going to a concert, so we had dinner there first. Mom asked me, "Do the girls have rooms upstairs, where they take their customers?"

Articles????

I read a description of the overall theme of Playbody, Penthouse and Husler...

Playboy.... featured the girl next door.
Penthouse ... the girl you heard about from other guys...
Hustler... the woman standing on the street corner downtown

Yep... There were some good short stories in PB, too.

quote:

Originally posted by Flash-LB:

You're right, Scientific American was great back then.

The centerfold, with "Scientist of the Month" was usually pretty hot.

Martin Gardner's "Mathematical Games was great. Later when Doug Hofstadter took over the column, he retitled it "Metamagical themas", which is an anagram of the original.

Also enjoyed "The Amateur Scientist"; sometimes things were simple enough a grammar school kid could do them, like make an astrolabe to estimate velocity of a satellite (IIRC).

In the late 60's I had a subscription to Playboy while in high school. Yes, my parents were pretty liberal so it was no big deal. It was a great magazine back then. My wife on the other hand had a subscription to Scientific American while in school.

Instilling teenaged boys with a highly developed appreciation for the human female form for more than 6 decades...

The last time I bought a Playboy magazine was when I was in the military in 1970. I don't remember reading many articles, but the joke page & the cartoons were pretty good.

But jokes & cartoons wasn't why I bought it either.

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Mom asked me, "Do the girls have rooms upstairs, where they take their customers?"

In St. Louis those rooms were in the basement.

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I had a subscription to Playboy while in high school

At the age of 16 I had to have my mother call me out of school for the day. I had scored my first contract with (we will call it Playboy even though it wasn't) and had to meet one of their Playmates at the airport.

I had always hoped that I would meet Mr. Hefner one day, but it never happened.