The future is old

The first Star Wars film introduced a new concept: the starship flown by Hans Solo was a clunky old space freighter. Something old , junky, in the future.

The Hans Solo starship was a stylistic idea that generated grunge and shaped many notions of the future.

I have a connection to that first seminal space ship. When I opened the Briarpatch office for the first time in June 1974, a number of small hippy business people came by for advice.

One fellow came to the office (on Pier 40) and asked me to come down to his car; which I did. The car was a 1940s Buick. The fellow opened the trunk which was lined in black velvet. Filling up nearly all the trunk was a masterpiece created by a hippy on amphetamines.. a precise and infinitely detailed construction of a model space craft that the whole world would later know as the Hans Solo spaceship.

My business advice was simple, and correct. I told the fellow to keep driving South to the corner of Sunset and Vine in Hollywood and open the trunk.

He did.