18 November 2010

Spruce veneer bathing suits

"Spruce Girls" in spruce veneer bathing suits at the beach playing in the surf, probably near Hoquiam, Washington, ca. 1929"

Clearly a publicity stunt (another photo here), but what catches my eye is that they seem to be cavorting on the beach next to a lumbar vertebra from a dinosaur. (?!)

Addendum:  two readers have pointed out that it's probably a whale vertebra.  I've been away from the ocean too long...

From the Flickr photostream of the University of Washington Libraries Digital Collections.

5 comments:

  1. Mine too. The morphology looks like a whale vert.

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  2. Thanks, guys. Info added to the post.

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  3. But what about the spruce veneer? Can you enlighten us further?
    Are we to expect the plywood bikini any time soon?


    By the way... I once knew a guy who had a glass-topped coffee table sitting on three sections of whale vertebrae.

    Further. some four miles from where I live, and some sixty miles distant from the sea, is "Jaw-bones lane", Rothwell.
    http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl=en&q=jaw+bones+rothwell&rlz=1B3GPCK_enGB345GB345&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wl
    The bones were brought from north america by the son of the local landowner, They've been replaced, but are still a local landmark.

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  4. Yes, this is a whale vertebra. All beach photos of the Spruce Girls taken in 1929 were at Pacific Beach, Washington as part of a comedy newsreel filmed by MGM in Los Angeles. These gals are our "mascots" for the 4th annual Chocolate on the Beach Festival this weekend.

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