Category: 50s to 90s

Last week I was looking for something on Google and ended up stumbling across an old picture of Salmiya which I hadn’t seen before. I started digging around looking for a higher resolution version and turned out I had actually posted the photo on my blog back in 2009 with a bunch of other old photos.

My memory is terrible and I’ve published over 12,000 posts so there is no way I can remember everything. I tried to find a higher resolution version of the photo online but everyone else had taken it off my blog so I couldn’t find one. So I decided to go through my emails to see if the source had originally sent me better quality scans. Turns out he had scanned the images in high res but because they were over 160MB he only sent me low res versions. I decided to randomly reply back to that person’s original email 12 years later asking if he still had the high res images. Turns out he did! He sent me a link to all the photos and I downloaded them and just put them up on Flickr and you can check them out here.

Anyway, I wanted to do a before and after comparison of Salmiya and you can view that in high res here. It’s impressive how many old buildings are still there but sadly they haven’t been maintained and are all in a state of disrepair. The whole neighborhood honestly is disastrously mishandled with no sidewalks or parking spots and loads of large open garbage bins that stink up the neighborhood. My neighborhood has so much potential and it’s sad I can’t do anything about it.

Thanks Khalid!

This is such a great video if you’re into racing and the video quality is surprisingly really great. The video is by CiTV Sport who produced a lot of rally videos back in the 80s and is narrated in English and features some rally legends including Saeed Al-Hajri who raced for the Rothmans Porsche team and also a young Mohammed bin Sulayem pictured below.

Even if you aren’t into cars you should at least watch the first minute or so of the video since it starts off with some footage of the old Kuwait Marriott Hotel. The Marriott Hotel was the base of the 1985 Kuwait Rally so all the drivers stayed at the hotel and that’s where the race started and ended.

The 1985 rally was sponsored by the furniture company Mahdi Habib whom I hadn’t heard of until today. According to their website, they’re one of the oldest companies in Kuwait and were established back in 1952.

Yesterday I came across this photo of the Hilton Hotel under construction back in the 60s. I hadn’t seen photos of it during construction before and what’s great about this one is that it also shows the construction of the Gulf Road. The Gulf Road used to be a sandy beach before the land was reclaimed and turned into the coastal road you see today.

Hilton Hotel originally opened in 1968 with the official opening taking place on February 15th, 1969. In 2003 the building was demolished because the structure was deemed unsafe.

via @mmmojil

Yesterday I found out about Charles Cecil, an American diplomat who served in Kuwait back in the 60s. While here he took some great photos of Kuwait including the images in this post of Kuwaiti homes that were newly constructed at that time.

I’m not sure how many are still standing today, I think I recognize 2 but they’ve had their colors changed. You can check out more photos taken by Cecil on his website cecilimages.com.

Back in 1982 during the construction of Entertainment City, two articles were published in the Arab Time supplement magazine with information and photos on the project. The photos and reporting were by the documenter Claudia Farkas Al-Rashoud and you can check them out on twitter in their original size or in a reduced size below.

The Entertainment City was demolished late last year.

via @WafaAlsayed

The photo above is of the first large Al Mailem showroom which they opened back in 1971. Al Mailem if you aren’t aware are one of the largest retailers of tires in Kuwait and they have a whole bunch of locations up and down Canada Dry st.

I’ve actually been trying to find old photos of Canada Dry street from the 60s and 70s but can’t seem to find any and not sure where to look anymore. But, I just thought of an idea while typing this post up of trying and putting together a post with old photos of car dealerships similar to the photo of the first AlBabtain dealership pictured above. If you work at any of the car dealerships in Kuwait please email me!

For those of you who didn’t know this, the first school I went to was called Sunshine School back in the 80s. It only went up to primary and my class was the last one to graduate from it back in 1990, just a couple of months before the Iraqi invasion in August. I still have a lot of photos from back when I was in Sunshine School and over the years I’ve been scanning them then sharing them on the blog.

In 1993, Sunshine School reopened as the British School of Kuwait and a couple of years ago (early 2019) I got approached by them asking me if I had more photos I could scan and share. They were working on an anniversary book and the school themselves didn’t have any pictures from the 80s and so were getting in touch with old students to see if they had any. That gave me a good reason to have all my school photos mailed to me by my sister in Lebanon which is why I ended up scanning so many and uploading them online back in 2019.

It took a while but the anniversary book finally got published and I got my copy a few weeks ago. The book was designed and printed in the UK and is really beautifully done. I’ve got a large spread in the book (pictured above) and although the section on BSK pre-invasion isn’t that large, it was great seeing the other photos they had of the school including the staff photo pictured below. I recognize so many of my teachers in it, I kinda wish I knew where they all are now or what they did after they left Kuwait.

Even though I got my copy of the book a while back I didn’t want to post about it until the book went on sale and it just did a few days ago. If you were a Sunshine School student or BSK student, they have a limited number of copies for sale. They’re priced at KD30 each and contain nearly 200 pages of photos, writeups and information on the school. They deliver internationally as well. The book is really well designed and it’s a hardcover so will look great on your bookshelf. If you’re interested in purchasing a copy then click here.

The other day I posted a video tour of the new Terminal 2 airport. Well in case you wanted to know how our airport looked like back in the 60s, the video above shows a passenger arriving and leaving the airport back in 1965.

I believe the airport in the video above was the original one located in Nuzha. You can check out photos of that airport in my previous post here.

A couple of weeks ago a friend of mine sent me a link to a book on eBay saying “This is something you might want. American expat cartoonist who drew some funny sketches of life in Kuwait. Also a shawarma guide for the ‘90s.” Literally, 2 minutes later I sent him a screenshot of my order. It was selling for 9KD and it came out while I was at university in Lebanon so I was curious to know what was “in” while I wasn’t here. The book ended up being delivered yesterday and it turned out to be way more interesting than I expected it to be.

It’s 132 pages filled with illustrations, maps, reviews and recommendations of where to go and what to do in Kuwait all written in a humorous tone. It reminded me a bit of the Wizr series but with a lot more illustrations and content. I posted some pages up on my Instagram and pretty much I right away started getting bombarded by people asking where they can get a copy and I honestly have no idea.

There is one for sale on Amazon right now but the guy is asking for like $700 which is obviously ridiculous. At one point it looked like there was a copy available online but that was back in 2006 and the page no longer works. It’s 132 pages so I can’t sit down and scan the book one page at a time.

Until I figure out the best way to share the whole book online you can for now at least check out the few pages I’ve uploaded here.

Thanks Shaheen!!!

I picked up this book online not knowing what it was or the year it was published, but it was selling for around 500fils so figured it was worth checking out. Turns out the book was published in 1964 by the Ministry of Guidance & Information, Department of Culture & Publicity, Division of Tourism. If that wasn’t cool enough it also came with three fold-out maps. I shared some pages yesterday on my Instagram but I also uploaded the photos online in case anyone else is interested in seeing what a 1964 tourist guide of Kuwait contained. These aren’t all the pages, just the ones I thought were interesting. Check it out here.

I recently stumbled on the Lamborghini pre-owned cars section and noticed they had a Lamborghini LM002 for sale. The LM002 was nicknamed the Rambo Lambo and it was and still is such a beast. I called Lamborghini up to ask about it and it turns out the car was sold a few months back for around 70K which is actually a pretty great price since they’re fairly limited with around 300 only ever made. Oddly the website says the car model is 1980 but they were only produced between 1986 and 1993 according to Wikipedia. If you’re into cars you can check out a lot more photos of the car on the Lambo pre-owned website here.

Update: So turns out the person I spoke to at Lambo didn’t have the correct info. The LM wasn’t sold, it’s still available and the asking price is a lot higher than 70K. Also it’s a 1986 model and turns out it was purchased from the same dealer I bought my Alfa from.

Here are two videos of Entertainment City taken in the 80s which I hadn’t seen before. The first video on top was shot in 1984 during the visit of the late Sheikh Jaber Al-Sabah to the park, while the one below is from 1986 and looks like it was filmed during the National holiday.

Also since we are on the subject of Entertainment City, awhile back I read an interesting story on @abdulraoufq8’s Instagram. When Entertainment City was closed down and abandoned, people used to sneak into it and one time a group of kids snuck into the park and went to the Lightning roller coaster ride. One of the kids ended up sitting on the ride and then fastened the seatbelt and it got locked in and he couldn’t unlock it. Scared, the kids called 112 for help and the authorities ended up coming and freeing the kid from the seatbelt.

According to @abdulraoufq8, the ride was eventually sold to a neighboring country. For more interesting tidbits on Entertainment City, check out the highlights on @abdulraoufq8.

Does anyone remember the restaurant with the lobster aquarium in Sheraton Hotel back in the 80s? I think it was called the Hunt Room? It was located in the back, to the right of the telex machines. I’m trying to find photos or info on it but can’t find anything so I’m guessing I’ve got the name completely wrong.

Update: Ok found it, the restaurant was called “Hunt Room” so I was close! I found an old Sheraton matchbook for sale on eBay that mentions Hunt Room (pictured below) and also found a photo of a father and son having dinner there back in 1984. I need to keep digging.

Someone on Reddit found the postcard above that was written and sent by Malcolm X from Kuwait back in 1964. Malcolm X was an African American Muslim minister and human rights activist who was a popular figure in the US during the civil rights movement. Following his exit from the Nation of Islam, he took a pilgrimage to Mecca and during that time, he also traveled to Kuwait, Nigeria, Ethiopia and Casablanca.

The postcard above was one of 16 postcards that were auctioned off in 2016 and were sent by Malcolm to Gloria Owens, who was the secretary at Muhammad’s Temples of Islam where he was a minister alongside Louis Farrakhan. The postcard reads:

Greetings from beautiful Kuwait. Since I’ve seen what a mess can be made of things by narrow-minded people, I’m still traveling, trying to broaden my scope.

Until just a few moments ago I had no idea Malcolm had visited Kuwait. I’ll try and see if I can dig up anything from his trip but for now, if you want to see a higher resolution version of the postcard above, click here.

Thanks Ayr909!

When I saw this photo I realized I haven’t really seen that many photos of the Kuwait Towers under construction. I think that’s pretty weird for such an important building that there aren’t many photos (at least online) documenting the process. The construction of the Kuwait National Assembly building on the other hand which was completed a few years after the Kuwait Towers is well documented and I was even able to buy a book detailing the whole construction process.