Things happen pretty fast in the Internet era, and the “old days” really aren’t that long ago. One of the things about the old days of the world wide web was interesting personal websites — constructions by just one person that could be deeply fascinating, and weren’t just links to three other giant websites.
One of those sites, at least, is still alive: http://www.lileks.com/ (you can tell how old it is by its use of “http” instead of “https”). It’s the work of James Lileks, who is also still alive, and celebrating his 65th birthday today. Or at least it IS his 65th birthday; I can’t say for sure whether he’s celebrating it.
Lileks lives in Minneapolis in the US, where his day job is journalism. He writes columns for the Minneapolis Star Tribune and the National Review. He’s also worked in radio and podcasting, and is currently delivering monologues for Minnesota public broadcasting.
Lileks’ website includes his blog, called The Bleat, which he’s been maintaining for 25 years straight (!!) as well as departments including The Institute of Official Cheer (a potpourri including everything from The Gallery of Regrettable Food to The Art of Art Frahm, which is mildly unsafe for work. There’s also The 20th Century, which contains a huge collection of advertising samples from various decades.
If you visit Lileks.com, you’ll even get a chance to reset your thoughts about what “the old days” means — he even has a gallery of photos taken by his grandmother in the 1920s. He still has the camera.
