There are lots of un-ironic reasons to love the 1970s, but most of them are musical—the punk explosion, No-Wave/mutant disco, Motörhead, Thin White Duke era Bowie, those really kickass King Crimson albums with John Wetton, and on and on and on. But the eye-bleed aesthetics that the normals embraced in that decade sure had moments, too, and outside of menswear, rarely did those aesthetics find purer expression than in the decorating flair of people with way more money than taste.

A choice example exists not just perfectly preserved, but frozen in time—this North Royalton, OH home for sale is so fucking ’70s you can still smell the heady aftermath of key parties just by looking at the pictures. Built in 1949, last sold in 1971 for a modest-seeming 85K, it can be yours now! The lucky buyer gets a 13-acre lot with an in-ground pool (kidney-shaped of course) and a 6,300 square foot museum of glorious tackiness. Pea-green tassled curtains; check. Wood paneled kitchen that’s an affront not just to trees but to the idea of trees; check. Fully equipped, shag-carpeted gym with floor-to-ceiling mirrors; check. Log-cabin den; check. Audibly red basement lounge with a vinyl-upholstered bar; check.
 

 

 

 
It keeps getting better and better, after the jump…

 
At 9:30 PM EST exactly 33 years ago, New York City’s five boroughs suffered a massive power outage that changed plenty about the United States and the Western World. It took a little more than 24 hours for the ’77 blackout to end, but not before 1,616 stores were damaged in looting and rioting, 1,037 fires were responded to, and 3,776 people were arrested. The event and its effects are still under study at places like George Mason University in Virginia.

Here are Grandmaster Caz, Disco Wiz, KRS One, Annie Sprinkle and others reminiscing from the street perspective…
 

 
…and below, leave it to the BBC to credit post-welfare-state neo-liberalism for saving the Big Apple:
 

 
Thirty-eight years ago today, on June 14 1972, West German police raided the house of Fritz Rodewald, a teacher who’d been habitually sheltering German-based U.S. Armed Forces deserters in his Langenhagen home. This time, they were after the two young German strangers who’d appealed to him for accommodations. The cops had already apprehended armed and wanted Red Army Faction terrorist Gerhard Mueller at a public phone, and Rodewald had tipped them off that Mueller’s comrade Ulrike Meinhof was inside.

It had been a busy couple of years for Ulrike the activist/journalist. She’d left her job at the leftist magazine konkret and—sometime soon after the interview below—entered the realm of armed revolutionary struggle in what was then one of the richest democracies on earth.  This clip must have been recorded just before she helped break out RAF leader Andreas Baader from his detention in a research institute in May 1970. Twenty-four months of bank robberies and bombings later, she was in prison, where she would be found hanged under dubious circumstances. Later it was speculated that a 1962 operation to remove a brain tumor might have played a tragic part in her violent fate. Regardless, along with Patty “Tania” Hearst, Meinhof had become one of the most well-known female terrorists of the century.

Following the interview is part one of the BBC’s documentary on the RAF, Baader-Meinhof - In Love With Terror.