How often have you told someone, "I wish I hadn't thrown out that old such and such, because now it's a collector's item. I could probably get big bucks for it."

True, if you could put every trendy thing you've ever bought into a time capsule for 50 years, you'd have a pretty handsome retirement fund. No matter how cheesy a thing seems in retrospect, it eventually rises again -- just look at the current renaissance of pink plastic flamingos and Plymouth Valiants.  more...

As Berkeley, Calif., goes, so -- eventually -- goes the nation. As frightening as this may sound to some, it's a fact borne out by history. Opposing the Vietnam War, spearheading ecological concerns, mandating energy-efficient buildings, banning smoking in public places, demanding equal access for the disabled -- these causes were all dismissed as "Berkeley radical thinking" in their time. Today, they've all long since been integrated into mainstream America.  more...

One bright morning, my kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Gibbs, led us all out into the play yard. There, chalk in hand, she marked the edge of a shadow being cast by a nearby roof. "The sun," she carefully intoned in kiddyspeak, "looks like it's standing still, but it's actually moving all the time."

After absorbing this statement without much effect, we filed back into the classroom again to play, forgetting all about the little mark until Mrs. Gibbs marched us back out a few hours later. This time we were all astonished to see that the shadow was now far away from the chalk mark.  more...

Nothing grabs people's attention or draws crazed male wolf calls quite like the sight of some old Las Vegas high-rise hotel being imploded. While Americans may never again view such events without eerie flashbacks to 9/11, bringing down a large building predictably, and above all safely, ironically remains a calling that demands both skill and finesse.  more...

The names of architectural styles are often invoked, but seldom used precisely. Even people who should know better conflate styles, whether intentionally or not. In real estate listings, for instance, nondescript old piles are routinely elevated to Victorians, Bungalows or whatever else happens to be selling. Architects aren't immune from such stylistic confusion, either: Many of us bandy about terms such as Tudor, Elizabethan and Half-Timbered, or Mission, Mediterranean and Moorish without really knowing how they differ.  more...

I often hear people say of some old house, "Wow, they don't build 'em like this anymore." To which I'm often tempted to add, "And it's a good thing, too." There's a lot to be said for the aesthetic of older homes -- I've said a good deal of it myself -- but on the technical side, houses are far better built today than they were just 30 years ago, let alone 60 or 100 years.

For one, we know a lot more about protecting houses from all the bad things that can happen to them.  more...

American traffic laws tell us pedestrians have the right of way. If you believe that, try walking across your city sometime. The way we lay out our roads, our shopping centers and even our houses makes it clear who's really boss. It's good old Otto Mobile.

Given that the car is king -- for the time being, anyway -- it's up to us lowly bipeds to demand at least a token of respect from our planners, most of whom are fixated on catering to motor vehicles, and who treat pedestrians as an incidental annoyance. To that end, I offer a pedestrian's Bill of Rights:  more...

The U.S. Department of Transportation tells us that, as of 2004, there were more than 243 million passenger vehicles registered in the United States. That's very nearly one car for every man, woman and child in the nation. In fact, it's some 13 million more cars than there are licensed drivers to drive them.  more...

America is a big country, and we think big. We've always been enormously proud of our very biggest things, whether they're works of nature such as the Grand Canyon or manmade ones like the Empire State Building. Bigness is a defining quality of our nation.  more...

The other day, as my car juddered over constellations of potholes, past tenuously maintained schools and bus stops done up in graffiti, I got to wondering. The California county where I live has some of the highest taxes in the nation. Our sales tax is 8.75 percent. It costs $4 to cross the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. Yearly property taxes can easily reach five figures -- and no, I'm not including pennies.  more...

Which do you prefer, shiny finishes or matte ones? New-looking finishes or old? Granite, glass and chrome, or brick, wood and iron?

All of these have gone in and out of fashion over the years. We tend to think that any finish that's popular in our own time is the ultimate word in good taste, but we couldn't be more wrong. No matter how outdated a finish may seem today, you can be sure that it, too, was the height of good taste in its own time, and that sooner or later it'll be chic all over again. So, you haters of Harvest Gold appliances -- beware.  more...

Recently, in the midst of a remodel that's left lots of holes in our kitchen walls, we had an uninvited guest -- a dark-brown Norway rat who, on the first night alone, helped himself to a pretty impressive chunk of watermelon and also carried off the rubberized lids of my toddler's sippy cups.

Taking the easy way out, we decided to move all the edibles into the dining room for the duration of the project. That worked for a while, until one day we noticed some big holes gnawed in a bunch of bananas. Somehow, our friend had invited himself in.  more...

Traveling the United States has, among other things, gently tutored me that the residents of Wilkes-Barre, Pa., pronounce their town's name WILKS-bree, not Wilks-BAR; that the good citizens of Vermont call their capital MontPEELyer, not MontepeLEER, and that that lovely town in southern California is called LaHOYA even though it's spelled La Jolla. These are nuggets of everyday wisdom that book learning can seldom impart, but that being on the spot can teach one in a hurry.  more...

In the early 1930s, the Pennsylvania Railroad hired the famed industrial designer Raymond Loewy to restyle its exceedingly ugly electric locomotives. True to form, the Parisian-born Loewy came up with the GG-1, a stunningly fluid design sheathed in streamlined steel. The railroad gamely built a prototype, stitching it together with thousands of rivets in the usual manner of the time. When Loewy was first presented this real-life embodiment of his concept, he demanded in his strong French accent: "What are all those buttons?"  more...

Nowadays, it's routine to pay bills, transfer funds or buy stock solely by electronic media. Both faxed and electronic signatures are widely accepted as valid. Yet in the midst of such digital expedients, submitting plans for a building permit remains a process right out of the Middle Ages.   more...