Hobbies...your's?

[Haulover]

Current

Cycling (usually around 4,000 miles / year. I'm planning to get back into ultra-distance racing this year.)

Hiking.

Mountaineering (busy training for a big, technical climb later this year)

Music : Progressive rock, progressive metal, avant garde metal. (I used to be a rock music journalist.)

Writing. (Not much Lit output lately - my time has been spent on mainstream writing - mostly, political thrillers

Past

Photography (I joined several photography clubs, and did wedding photography for a while.)

Sailboat racing (I haven't competed for several years, but plan to get back into it when time and budget allow.)

 

[stickygirl]

Lets see... I guess dinghy sailing then big boat sailing are my main ones.
Lockdown pushed me towards some new activities such as making preserves and chutneys from the garden.
Growing summer annuals from seed.
Baking cakes, which I'd never bothered with before.
I play acoustic guitar badly and not enough to be any good.
I've done a little rock-climbing and a variety of sports.

 

[SimonDoom]

I've been reading since I was old enough to read back in the glorious 70's the hey day of Marvel back when comics were fun and exciting. I collected through through the 80's and 90's and in 2002 my wife and I opened a comic book store Shadowland comics because I have a heavy horror theme. We were open until 2008 when the recession hit, but Marvel and DC decided to raise their prices and make every storyline universe wide and people couldn't afford to follow anymore. We quit while we were still making money and since then I buy and flip collections on e-bay and cons. I still collect but at this point its horror only from the 50's and up, the Superhero market has become full of grim storylines, nothing original, just reboots and have become filled with devisive politics so...sadly I dumped that genre long ago.

This was way before my time, but some of the best comics ever were the Tales from the Crypt comics, before they got banned. Great, morbid, but wickedly clever stories, and some of the best comic artists of all time. I didn't know anything about them until 20+ years after they stopped, but I found them in a series of volumes that collected all of them. They're still incredibly fun. The artistry is fantastic. Did you ever sell them?

 

[TertiusHuman]

Hobbies apart from writing

That will be reading, listening to music, weaving paracord bracelets, and dabbling with drawing . . . to name a few

 

[lovecraft68]

S

You got out at the perfect time. The superhero comic industry is cyclical, and I collected and read as a kid, but I stopped around the peak of the Bronze age of comics for several years in the late 90's. Quality was terrible. The aughts were a boom time, so many of the best stories ever came out in that decade, but by 2012 and with the release of the New 52, we were in a down time again.

I feel like 2008 was the peak of the last great era, after that, things slowly got worse and worse, until 2012, when it cratered. Marvel and DC seem intent on just alienating all their fans more and more as time goes on. My local LCS was bought by my comic book store guy in 2002, just like your store was, and he had to close his doors in September of last year. The publishers don't care about the retailers, or the fans, and are quite often, explicitly hostile to them. Writing good stories isn't the name of the game anymore, writing stories that get you a better job than writing comics is now. The divisive politics is absolutely at the heart of it all, and that politics just doesn't sell with fans, but it helps the creators get promoted.

I'm mostly reading retro stuff right now, and catching up on stories from the early aughts that I just missed out on while they were coming out, because of all the good stuff there was to read from that era. If modern superhero comics turn it around, like they did in the early aughts, and become fun to read again, I'll be back.

I wish to high heaven that I had been reading comics at the peak of the silver age in the 70's, like you were. Old-timers I run into at cons always wax nostalgic about that era, and it sounds like it was a blast to be a fan back then. I wax nostalgic about the early aughts, that is the silver age for my generation of fans. I remember being at comic-con in the late 90's, and looking around, and seeing that it was me and 1 other guy there. I remember wondering if we were going to have comic-con the next year. That's not a danger anymore, but it's an entertainment show now, and the comics part of it is dying slowly. I hope and pray the industry is able to get back on track.

Sad to say cons are about everything but comics. You see a few dealers here and there, but its all art, d- list celebs a couple A list celebs charging shameful prices for a pic and those stupid Funkos. Mile High Comics pulled out of Sand Diego comic con...the biggest comic seller in the US no longer does the biggest con in the US. Then there's artist alley with the artists and writers. They call themselves "creators" and many-not all-are so full of themselves its disgusting. I won't mention the name, but I pissed one of them off by using 'creator' in air quotes because there hasn't been a new original character or title in years and all they're doing is picking off the characters from decades ago who were created by people who could actually create.

The movies are booming, but it has done nothing for sales. Diamond distribution-the only comic book distributer-, Marvel and DC left Comic shops hung out to dry during 2020 lockdown and many closed. Its sad to see a medium that was supposed to be for kids and was fun and exciting become pretentious, politically charged-and in DC's case-overly sexualized where the female characters are concerned and writing to adults because they took the kids out of the market decades ago.

The movies will follow the same course, more swearing, more violence, more are coming out with R ratings, and of course the identity politics. I'm glad the majority of the MCU movies that led up to endgame were before this started because other than the Sp\ider-Man movies their other movies and those wretched Disney shows are now preaching worse than the comics.

But hey, we have decades of old comics to read either through hunting and paying for the originals or buying the collections of the classics. I'm only 54 but for 10 years now have sounded like a grumpy old man with comics, because today's are trash. But when it comes to the old stuff-other than horror I still proudly say Make Mine Marvel.

 

[lovecraft68]

This was way before my time, but some of the best comics ever were the Tales from the Crypt comics, before they got banned. Great, morbid, but wickedly clever stories, and some of the best comic artists of all time. I didn't know anything about them until 20+ years after they stopped, but I found them in a series of volumes that collected all of them. They're still incredibly fun. The artistry is fantastic. Did you ever sell them?

I collect the EC horror titles. I recently paid $550 for an early issue of Vault of Horror that looks like it went through the wringer because high grade are almost impossible to find-kids read comics then so they were all beat up-and if you did find one you could buy a decent car for what they'd go for.

What I love about them is they have that "moral to the story" for all the bad press they got at the time especially from commie Wertham and his Seduction of the Innocent book which was an attack on comics, the message behind the stories was bad person does a bad thing and gets theirs in spades.

The HBO series was fun and very accurate to many of the comics that inspired the stories.

 

[SimonDoom]

I collect the EC horror titles. I recently paid $550 for an early issue of Vault of Horror that looks like it went through the wringer because high grade are almost impossible to find-kids read comics then so they were all beat up-and if you did find one you could buy a decent car for what they'd go for.

What I love about them is they have that "moral to the story" for all the bad press they got at the time especially from commie Wertham and his Seduction of the Innocent book which was an attack on comics, the message behind the stories was bad person does a bad thing and gets theirs in spades.

The HBO series was fun and very accurate to many of the comics that inspired the stories.

I will never hear the words "Gasp" and "Choke" in quite the same way after reading those comic books.

I agree that they have a kind of moral quality to them, which the critics obviously missed. The bad guys always have really bad things happen to them.

My dad was a fan of them when he was a kid, but of course his mother disapproved.

 

[lovecraft68]

I will never hear the words "Gasp" and "Choke" in quite the same way after reading those comic books.

I agree that they have a kind of moral quality to them, which the critics obviously missed. The bad guys always have really bad things happen to them.

My dad was a fan of them when he was a kid, but of course his mother disapproved.

That's why they're so hard to find, parents would see them and throw them out. Here's some useless comic knowledge for you. The comics code could have been fought by DC and Atlas(formerly Marvel and would be Marvel again in the early 60's) but EC was crushing them, so seeing they would suffer most from the code, they let it go. It did put EC down, however William Gaines got the last laugh when he gathered the former EC artists and writers together to publish Creepy; a black and white MAGAZINE to circumvent the code. These were published under Warren Magazines and Creepy, Eerie and of course Vampirella all had long successful runs, and become even more violent and 'trashy'

Oh, and he also had this kind of obscure comic called Mad...that after a handful of issues he altered to magazine format and it had a sort of successful run. What, me worry?

Great last laugh.

 

[MrPixel]

My hobby? Venn diagrams:

 

[Haulover]

Lets see... I guess dinghy sailing then big boat sailing are my main ones.
...

Nice. I grew up sailing - both racing and pleasure sailing. I spent most of my time on 16 and 18 foot dinghies, but also spent a few months on a 45-footer, crossing the Atlantic.

 

[stickygirl]

Nice. I grew up sailing - both racing and pleasure sailing. I spent most of my time on 16 and 18 foot dinghies, but also spent a few months on a 45-footer, crossing the Atlantic.

I'd love to sail the pond, but I've never been on board more than a week at a time. Well done - not something everyone can say!

Oh... you might like my sailing story then! You can fact check me for nautical errors
Under the Sky

 

[beachbum1958]

Obsessively collecting things: antique German clockwork tin-toys by Gebruder-Bing, Matchbox and Llado toy cars, Hornby train sets, Scalextric and Minic slot-racing sets, vintage GI Joe and Action Man, 1930's, 40's and 50's cameras and microscopes, daggers, bayonets, kukris, Kindjals, Kris-knives, Balisongs, Jambia's, sabres, and dress-swords, Octants and sextants, and one-off intricate little appliances like the combined spoon and fork with fold-out knife made for an ancestor who lost his right arm during The Indian Mutiny, and a pocket-watch cased miniature Orrery I found in a flea market in Marseille. Mechanisms and mechanical watches fascinate me, so I have an extensive collection of manual and automatic watches dating from WW2 to the present day.

I also repair/rebuild/restore 1950's and 60's British sportscars and roadsters, Pooh books in any languages I can find, antiquarian atlases and old ship's charts and navigation maps, preferably printed on oilskin, and, if the inspiration strikes, I even write a little...

 

[Candy_Kane54]

Hybridizing daylilies (Hemerocallis). I actually have one registered with the American Daylily Society.

 

[oggbashan]

I used to collect older film cameras. I gave my first collection to our county museum, then missed them and started again.

But a friend's daughter, studying photography at our local university, made an appeal on Freegle for cameras so I gave her eight large boxes of cameras, mainly Russian Zeniths with multiple lenses from 13 mm to 500 mm, bellows, extension tubes and vintage Kodaks from 1908 to the 1950s. In the past year, she has used all seventy of the cameras I gave her.

 

[Lori_the_Hoosier]

I used to collect older film cameras. I gave my first collection to our county museum, then missed them and started again.

But a friend's daughter, studying photography at our local university, made an appeal on Freegle for cameras so I gave her eight large boxes of cameras, mainly Russian Zeniths with multiple lenses from 13 mm to 500 mm, bellows, extension tubes and vintage Kodaks from 1908 to the 1950s. In the past year, she has used all seventy of the cameras I gave her.

I think you and Will need to sit down over a coffee or two! Will loves the intricacies of mechanical cameras, the clicks and whirrs and little clonking noises, the modern digital things hold no interest for him. He really likes two kinds of camera, well, three really; those great big housebrick-sized Rollei things, chunky, heavy Hasselbald cameras with that flip-up, look-down viewfinder, and those lovely big old Eastman-Kodak bellows cameras. I've watched him repair a tattered one, I guess being a surgeon gives him the delicacy of touch needed to do that, but it was fascinating watching him taking all the little pieces and clips and springs and fitting them back in place and hearing the shutter whirring properly when he'd finished. Putting mechanisms and clockwork motors back together is one of his favorite and most absorbing pastimes.

Back in the family home in Wellington is a Rollei camera that belonged to his Great-Aunt-by-marriage Nancy. She was a novelist back in the 40's and 50's, but she also fancied herself a photograper, and there are more than a few framed candid portrait shots of Will as a small boy signed "Lady", her family nickname dotted around the various drawing rooms. I think Will must have maybe 40 cameras all told; that was as many as he could fit in his study, as I put my foot down when they started popping up in random locations around the house.

 

[oggbashan]

My wife put her foot down when I started collecting ancient sewing machines. I had two treadles - and early Singer and a Wheeler and Wilson, plus twelve other old hand machines. What was the last straw was that I acquired a massive cobbler's Singer standing five feet high. I bought it from our local auction for £3.30. She told me, before I collected it, NOT to bring it home, so I entered it in the following week's auction and sold it for twenty-five pounds.

The rest of the sewing machines went to a charity that supplies them to African women in Rural sub-Saharan Africa. Before they went, I and a friend who had been a Singer mechanic in the 1950s, made sure everyone was in full working order. The two treadle machines went to a rural museum because they were too large to send to Africa.

 

[Lori_the_Hoosier]

My wife put her foot down when I started collecting ancient sewing machines. I had two treadles - and early Singer and a Wheeler and Wilson, plus twelve other old hand machines. What was the last straw was that I acquired a massive cobbler's Singer standing five feet high. I bought it from our local auction for £3.30. She told me, before I collected it, NOT to bring it home, so I entered it in the following week's auction and sold it for twenty-five pounds.

The rest of the sewing machines went to a charity that supplies them to African women in Rural sub-Saharan Africa. Before they went, I and a friend who had been a Singer mechanic in the 1950s, made sure everyone was in full working order. The two treadle machines went to a rural museum because they were too large to send to Africa.

That's so funny, and so bizarre! Will is fascinated by the old Singer treadle machines, especially the fold-down ones that turn into a side-table, but I have neither the space or the patience to put up with huge bulky objects like that cluttering up my house, and the first time he brought one home was the last time, because it ended up in the driveway next to the wheelie bins...

Anything mechanical and intricate fascinates him; he has a 1916 Remington Standard 10 typewriter hanging on the wall in his study, he bought it in the junk market on Brick Lane in East London for a couple of pounds and spent two weeks stripping it down, un-jamming it, oiling it, and reassembling it. When he found a stationer's with a box of new typewriter ribbons he was like a cat with two tails, for weeks he wrote letters to everyone he knew, diligently typing them out on that old machine, and I think he found the very last place in London that still sold carbon paper; I honestly believe, if he could have found a way to submit his stories on paper he would have typed them out on that thing.

 

[Haulover]

I'd love to sail the pond, but I've never been on board more than a week at a time. Well done - not something everyone can say!

Oh... you might like my sailing story then! You can fact check me for nautical errors
Under the Sky

Cool! I'll read it this weekend. (Need to download it into the Android app first.)

 

[oggbashan]

That's so funny, and so bizarre! Will is fascinated by the old Singer treadle machines, especially the fold-down ones that turn into a side-table, but I have neither the space or the patience to put up with huge bulky objects like that cluttering up my house, and the first time he brought one home was the last time, because it ended up in the driveway next to the wheelie bins...

Anything mechanical and intricate fascinates him; he has a 1916 Remington Standard 10 typewriter hanging on the wall in his study, he bought it in the junk market on Brick Lane in East London for a couple of pounds and spent two weeks stripping it down, un-jamming it, oiling it, and reassembling it. When he found a stationer's with a box of new typewriter ribbons he was like a cat with two tails, for weeks he wrote letters to everyone he knew, diligently typing them out on that old machine, and I think he found the very last place in London that still sold carbon paper; I honestly believe, if he could have found a way to submit his stories on paper he would have typed them out on that thing.

My eldest aunt, born in Victoria's reign, was a 'lady typewriter' in 1910. At the time it was a very high-tech position and well paid. She had learned typewriting and shorthand. In her day both were considered for male secretaries only. She eventually became the Company Secretary (board member) of a large national charity. Throughout her life she outearned her younger brothers even though they became very senior civil servants.

 

[TadOverdon]

Dining out.

 

[NC_Coastal]

Fishing, growing plants, playing harmonica.

 

[Comshaw]

Obsessively collecting things: antique German clockwork tin-toys by Gebruder-Bing, Matchbox and Llado toy cars, Hornby train sets, Scalextric and Minic slot-racing sets, vintage GI Joe and Action Man, 1930's, 40's and 50's cameras and microscopes, daggers, bayonets, kukris, Kindjals, Kris-knives, Balisongs, Jambia's, sabres, and dress-swords, Octants and sextants, and one-off intricate little appliances like the combined spoon and fork with fold-out knife made for an ancestor who lost his right arm during The Indian Mutiny, and a pocket-watch cased miniature Orrery I found in a flea market in Marseille. Mechanisms and mechanical watches fascinate me, so I have an extensive collection of manual and automatic watches dating from WW2 to the present day.

I also repair/rebuild/restore 1950's and 60's British sportscars and roadsters, Pooh books in any languages I can find, antiquarian atlases and old ship's charts and navigation maps, preferably printed on oilskin, and, if the inspiration strikes, I even write a little...

I have a 1962 Triumph TR4 sitting in my garage, in pieces presently pending a frame off rebuild. It has a 4 digit VIN number (in the 4000s). I bought it in San Francisco in 1972 and have had it since.

Comshaw

 

[Lori_the_Hoosier]

I have a 1962 Triumph TR4 sitting in my garage, in pieces presently pending a frame off rebuild. It has a 4 digit VIN number (in the 4000s). I bought it in San Francisco in 1972 and have had it since.

Comshaw

Nice; there's a TR4 club who show up regularly at my local track, Circuit Paul Ricard, on track days, historic meets, and club events. On those days, I take my 1973 Triumph Stag along so everyone can go over her, listen to that supercharged V8 that Will tuned and rebuilt, and get behind the wheel and throw her around the track. Will loves TR4's, he hasn't got one because he hasn't found a suitable candidate locally for restoration yet, but he will, and when he does, it's mine...

I'm trying to negotiate with the authorities to allow my 1976 MGB GTV8 through as a personal car, so I don't have to pay the extortionate import duty and road tax the French charge; so far no luck, when we moved here in 2016 I brought my Jaguar XK120 and my Jaguar F-Type SVR and the French have decided that I've had my lot as far as 'personal use' importation; after Brexit they've tightened up considerably on bringing any cars over that don't fit inside the 'personal use' brackets, mostly to do with intrinsic value and potential for resale within France, so anything that doesn't have a declared depreciation (like any new car but not classic or collectible cars) is barred unless one wants to pay the truly horrifing import penalties, which can be anything up to twice the assessed market value of the vehicle in question.

 

[TadOverdon]

Writing goofy sex stories, of course.

Yeah, I forgot to mention this one. LOL

 

[SexualisPhantasia]

Firearms, hunting, fishing, camping.
Video games, 3d printing, painting, tabletop gaming.
Music, movies, writing, journaling.

Basically I'm a geek that loves guns.