"state something completely random time!"

[Yharnamresident]

Phantar wins post of the year award.

A good question would be, do you guys believe most of the stuff? like duels were real, just didn't happen every single day as portrayed.

[NeoVamp]

Neh, I never believed the Hollywood version of the Wild West. I think in a way you could compare it to life today.

back in the day people committed crimes, and they still commit crimes today.
back in the day drunk idiots were easily angered into drawing their guns, and.. that still happens today.
back in the day people worked hard, and they still do today.
back in the day people got sick and had to travel to the doctor, and they still do. (and sometimes we still die)
back in the day people could lose their farm and end up poor, and they can still lose their job/lives today.
back in the day prisoners escaped and had to be brought back to prison, and.. still happens today.

So it was still mostly all the same shit we have today, it was just less crowded back then.

So I don't really know how to answer your question, but that might be because Spaghetti westerns were different from U.S. Westerns.

[Crystalpepsifan]

The Hollywood portrayed "Wild West" was in fact much safer than modern day Washington D.C; which is still a more dangerous place than Iraq.

[j_factor]

The Hollywood portrayed "Wild West" was in fact much safer than modern day Washington D.C; which is still a more dangerous place than Iraq.

"Safer" is kind of a vague qualifier.

[Crystalpepsifan]

"Safer" is kind of a vague qualifier.

Well, let's just say that you were statistically less likely to be shot dead in an entire year in the old west, then you would be in say Chicago over the course of this last summer.

[Phantar]

If you want an overview about real, actual gunfights in the West I can recommend the dictionary "GUNFIGHTER" by Bill O'Neill. The Author painstakingly consulted newspaper- and court archives and lists every person (oh whom the name is known) who was involved in at least two gunfights in the Old West between 1866 (after the Civil war) and the 1920s. It paints a surprisingly different, but still very objective light of certain events than the Hollywood Version(s) do (like the famed Gunfight at the OK Corral or the so-called Lincoln County War). It also keeps an index of how many gunfights took place in which state and in what year. The number is surprisingly little.

I believe there might have been the occasional "Duel in the main street", but OTOH, there were probably more gun duels in the old South - particularly in the Virginias - amongst the pseudo-aristocracy there than between low-down cowhands who most of the time couldn't afford a reliable gun anyways (one of my favorite Western movie gunfights in recent years, and probably one of the more "realistic ones", was the saloon shootout depicted in "Open Range" (2003), which was a hectic, chaotic mess with many bullets being fired but hardly hitting anyone).

There were certain hardships people had to endure during the frontier era - particularly in the territories, where an organized government was far away and infrastructures were practically nonexistant, and phenomena like "prairie fever" drove people to depression, which in return could quickly descend into violence. But the "gunfighter" phenomenon is something vastly overblown by Hollywood (and Spaghetti Westerns as well). Even the most famous killers like John Wesley Harding hardly fit the Hollywood trope (he never wore a "Gun belt", but usually kept his Revolver in his coat pocket, and he was such a deadly shot because he usually killed his opponents from a very short distance, like across a table).

[Yharnamresident]

The Hollywood portrayed "Wild West" was in fact much safer than modern day Washington D.C; which is still a more dangerous place than Iraq.

Speaking of that, I can't believe something else.

9/11 happened 13 years ago, but this week is the first time I learned that the Pentagon was also hit during 9/11. I thought it was just the Twin Towers the whole time.


I'm fascinated by Western buildings. They're all packed together like sardines, I wonder why that design stopped being used. Is it because multiple-storey buildings are safer now?

[Blades]

I'm fascinated by Western buildings. They're all packed together like sardines, I wonder why that design stopped being used. Is it because multiple-storey buildings are safer now?

By stopped, do you mean not?

[tryphon]

I had exactly the opposite feeling when I went to the US : everything seemed unnecessarily big and wide, from my cup of coffee to cars or my hotel room.

There are several kid of high buildings in europa, skycrappers for business centers (and they still make some), and social homes for poor people, especially in suburbs. The latter is stopped in France, because of the social problems coming from gathering too much poor people in a small place. The trend now is to not go higher than 4 - 5 stores, and to destroy too high buildings.

[Yharnamresident]

By stopped, do you mean not?

Like this:


Oh yea I guess theres no room for parking lots.

[Phantar]

I'm fascinated by Western buildings. They're all packed together like sardines, I wonder why that design stopped being used. Is it because multiple-storey buildings are safer now?

Pretty much. Just think of the fire-hazard for example. A fire breaking out in one single building could easily devastate pretty much the entire town that way. (They loved to do this in the early western movies, by the way: Build an entire frontier town somwhere in the desert, and for the final scene, burn it to the ground in one take. Try to get your hands on Hell's Hinges, a 1916 film). Also, these buildings weren't durable at all when it came to storms etc. And have you tried sleeping in one of those kind of buildings? I have, and they are drafty as heck.

Funny enough, when German settlers came to the US between the late 1860s and 1880s, they usually were among the few who created brick and stone buildings instead of wooden or Adobe structures. They mostly settled in regions like Ohio or Texas - and if you visit those regions today, you can see that the oldes buildings dating back from that era that are still standing were those exact houses. Wooden structures may have been easier to come by, but the sure as hell didn't last long.

[j_factor]

Pretty much. Just think of the fire-hazard for example. A fire breaking out in one single building could easily devastate pretty much the entire town that way. (They loved to do this in the early western movies, by the way: Build an entire frontier town somwhere in the desert, and for the final scene, burn it to the ground in one take. Try to get your hands on Hell's Hinges, a 1916 film). Also, these buildings weren't durable at all when it came to storms etc. And have you tried sleeping in one of those kind of buildings? I have, and they are drafty as heck.

Funny enough, when German settlers came to the US between the late 1860s and 1880s, they usually were among the few who created brick and stone buildings instead of wooden or Adobe structures. They mostly settled in regions like Ohio or Texas - and if you visit those regions today, you can see that the oldes buildings dating back from that era that are still standing were those exact houses. Wooden structures may have been easier to come by, but the sure as hell didn't last long.

The opposite is true in California. You see a lot of old Victorian houses made of wood, but the brick buildings from that time didn't survive the earthquake of 1906.

[Yharnamresident]

Pretty much. Just think of the fire-hazard for example. A fire breaking out in one single building could easily devastate pretty much the entire town that way. (They loved to do this in the early western movies, by the way: Build an entire frontier town somwhere in the desert, and for the final scene, burn it to the ground in one take. Try to get your hands on Hell's Hinges, a 1916 film). Also, these buildings weren't durable at all when it came to storms etc. And have you tried sleeping in one of those kind of buildings? I have, and they are drafty as heck.

Funny enough, when German settlers came to the US between the late 1860s and 1880s, they usually were among the few who created brick and stone buildings instead of wooden or Adobe structures. They mostly settled in regions like Ohio or Texas - and if you visit those regions today, you can see that the oldes buildings dating back from that era that are still standing were those exact houses. Wooden structures may have been easier to come by, but the sure as hell didn't last long.

Those must be some high-budget films, if I understand it correctly.

The opposite is true in California. You see a lot of old Victorian houses made of wood, but the brick buildings from that time didn't survive the earthquake of 1906.

Thats why my house is made of wood, even though I live no-where near a tectonic plate boundary.

[Phantar]

Those must be some high-budget films, if I understand it correctly.

Not necessarily. The towns weren't big and mostly made of plywood and canvas. But then again, it was a risky Business at any rate: not only was setting the set on fire dangerous for both actors and Crew, but if they botched the take, the entire movie was worthless: they couldn't reshoot the scene, and the companies usually couldn't afford rebuilding the set.

[NeoVamp]