1964 World's Fair - Festival of Gas!

More from the 1964 New York World's Fair! Apparently the American gas Association had a pavilion and decided that The Festival of Gas. Exit polls revealed that, among thirteen year old boys, the name was "the most disappointing at the fair".

And here is a postcard of a model of the Festival of Gas! Super cool and spacey? Check and check! It featured such exhibits as "House of Energy", Theater of Food", and "Restaurant".

There was this "ferris wheel of appliances", which, uuh, showed you what appliances looked like riding a ferris wheel. Want a ride on the ferris wheel? Sorry, kid. Appliances only.

Despite the displays of questionable interestingness, I could hang out in the Festival of Gas all day, just because it would feel like I'm in the future. People back in '64 probably felt they had a right to expect that everything would look like this in the post-two-thousand world. The ordinaryness of our 2013 buildings is even less whelming than a ferris wheel of appliances.

So what's there now? The Festival of Gas was at B15 on the official '64 World's Fair map, which is now "field 3" - a soccer field, see?


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Restaurant, with Giant Floating Gas-Powered Hair of the Future.

Please enjoy this footage of the Festival of Gas, featuring a disorienting jazz soundtrack of uncredited authorship. Someone is apparently so proud of their jazz that they won't let us embed the video. Lawyers are fun.

Excuse me now while I go back to imagining I live in the future of 1964.

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