1957 Buick Special Riviera Coupe, Mickey's Blue Haven, Johnson City, NY, 1987
From the series Dinosaurs and Dreamboats
Vintage type-c contact print
8 x 10 in
August 29th, 2022
"Dinosaurs and Dreamboats" was the name Bruce Wrighton gave to his series devoted to photographing classic American cars in Upstate New York. The series could easily have been subtitled Made in the USA for the way that the automobiles are situated in front of locales that express the essence of Americana: diners, drive-ins, and this unpretentious but charming tavern: Mickey’s Blue Haven. The 1957 Buick Special was the entry level automobile in the General Motors line of luxury cars so, seeing it parked in front of this working class bar, it reads as an embodiment of the American Dream and the mid-century promise of upward mobility. Wrighton himself wrote in 1988 that the “dinosaur cars…remind us of who we are and from whence we came.”
