Al Kawakeb is an old ice cream and dessert shop in the city which you’ve probably passed by a number of times on your way to Vol.1 or Street (AlMakan) for dinner. The place has been open since the 50s and their display is filled with old nostalgic sweets.
BROWNBOOK have published a great article on the history of Al Kawakeb along with some great photos. I had no idea the shop was that old and I’m definitely going to appreciate it a lot more now that I’ve read this article. So check it out on their website [Here]
The picture above was emailed to me a few days ago by a reader who grew up in Kuwait in the 1950s. It was taken at the Anglo-American School in Ahmadi in the early 1950s. The headmistress was called Miss Ussher while he’s the little kid in the bottom right in the white shirt and shorts (Norman Young). Next to him are his classmates Ian Hickman, David Tristram and Marcia Brown.
Anyway, it’s been awhile since I’ve posted an old video of Kuwait, but they’re pretty hard to come by. I’ve decided to share two videos below, one is of Kuwait in 1977 while the other is of Kuwait in 1997. Is 1997 considered old? I’m not sure anymore. Below are the videos and their timelines in case you want to skip through them:
Kuwait – 1977
0:09 Old port
0:47 Al Sabah Hospital
1:12 Gold market (looks like Souk Mubarakiya)
1:50 Fahad Al Salem Street
2:20 Sheraton Hotel
2:25 Kuwait Towers under construction
2:33 Villas under construction
2:52 Arriving at persons home
3:50 Gas station
3:55 Car dealership
4:39 Gas station
Kuwait – 1997
0:00 Seaside – Bnied Al-Gar
1:27 Cityscape
2:45 Green Island and the sea
5:21 Old Salmiya
6:07 Al Salam Building
6:32 Old Salmiya
7:47 Hungry Bunny
8:32 Entertainment City
I’ve seen this building a bunch of times and always wondered what it was. The below was taken from archofkuwait:
Bait Ghaith Bin Abdullah Bin Yousif was built in the 1930s. It is located in Sharq, near the Museum of Modern Art, which was previously Al Sharqiah School for Girls.
Bait Ghaith is one of the old Kuwaiti houses and represents social, economic and cultural features of Kuwaiti society in the past. The house features an intertwined architectural layout typical of the original urban structures in old Kuwait City, particularly in terms of its empty space, its multifunctional features and the way it was built.
The house is located on a 280 sq.m. of land and was adjacent to several stores and houses including the Rashid Al Omer, Humoud Al Mutawa’, and Abdullah Al Madhi houses. The house of the late Ghaith Bin Abdullah Bin Yousif comprised a backyard, two rooms, a store, a bathroom, a kitchen and an upper room for his privacy. The house also contained a cistern to store water.
Ghaith bin Abdullah Bin Yousif was a merchant who used to buy goods and merchandise such as fruits, crates… etc. from ports and ship it to various countries by boats.
Today the Ghaith house maintains its characteristic architectural features, such as the wooden ceiling, the beams, and some of the wooden doors. In addition, the rooms still present the original construction of walls made of sea rocks. The National Council for Culture, Arts and Letters refurbished and maintained the building as an example of the old Kuwaiti architecture.
A couple of weeks back I posted about how Shaab Park was shutting down for good and that I had memories and photos of the park from back in the 80s. Well I ended up finding one picture, I’m guessing taken around 1985 since I look like I’m 7 or so I guess? (I’m in white). The park back then was literally just a park, it wasn’t fenced up or anything, it was just a large green area with a handful of rides and play areas.
The building in the background was the Abdullah Al-Salem School which was demolished back in 2014 to make way for they new Abdullah Al-Salem Cultural Centre that’s opening up next month.
For a higher resolution of the photo, click [Here]
Someone tagged me on this short video the other day that shows parts of the ice skating rink arcade area during the early 90s. If you used to hang out at the ice skating rink back then like I did, then you’ll appreciate this.
A friend of mine sent me a link to an article in Bidoun magazine on the history of The Sultan Gallery and the art scene back in the 1970s. I already knew the gallery had an interesting history and I remember I wanted to post about it but I don’t know why I never did.
If you’re into art or historical articles on Kuwait, then you’ll definitely like this article. [Link]
Last week I started getting comments under an old post of mine on life in Kuwait back in the 1950s (links at bottom of this post). When I went through the comments I found something incredibly cool, kids who grew up in Kuwait together in the 1950s were reconnecting in the comments under the posts. Not only that but other people who grew up during the era were also leaving their stories under those posts. How amazing is that?
If you haven’t read those posts before I’d recommend you do, and once you’re done reading them just go through the comments to read the conversations and other stories from that era. Here are the links:
The other day while trying to get more information on the new Jazeera Airways terminal I checked out the website of the architects behind the project and ended up finding some old photos from really old projects they had worked on. One series of photos I liked was of a gas station they had designed. I couldn’t find any information on this project but I’m assuming it was completed in the 50s or 60s. You can check out all the photos by clicking “read the rest” below or visit their website for photos of their other projects [Here]
Mark Lowey (AbuJack), a construction project management professional and an amateur photographer lived in Kuwait between 1985 and 1988. The past few months he’s been scanning and posting some of the pictures he took during his time in Kuwait (and KSA) on his twitter account. I’ve taken a few of his photos along with the captions and shared them here but you can check out more photos on his twitter account @molowey
High technology in 1987?
A man and his dog, Mangaf Beach, Kuwait in 1988.
Shopping in Fahaheel, 1988.
Jack bin Mark and neighbor friends in Mangaf, Kuwait, 1988. (One cool kid has a sling-shot.)
Toshiba power plant at Mina Al-Zoor in southern Kuwait. Under construction in 1985; nearly completed in 1987.
Someone posted an interesting query in the Kuwestions section, what is the oldest restaurant in Kuwait? One reader suggested Mais Alghanim which is possible since its been active since 1953, but I’m curious if there is anything older that is still around and active?
The two photos here were taken from the Mais Alghanim photo gallery [Here]
Just digitized this video taken at the Kuwait Ice Skating Rink back in April of 1995. 1991-92 is when I frequented the ice skating rink mostly and back then the music was amazing with hits like Snap – I got the Power and Soul II Soul – Back to Life. Still, the video above should bring back memories and if you look closely you can even spot the arcades in the background.
Like with the pager in my previous post, while going through old boxes at my parents place I also found a bunch of old Video8 camcorder tapes. Luckily I also found my old camcorder and although the battery no longer works, the camcorder still functions properly when plugged into power. So last night I decided to digitize some old tapes.
If you want to digitize your old videos that are on VHS tapes or camcorder tapes, its actually not that complicated to do so. I’m using the Elgato Video Capture which I bought around 7 years back and it works on both Mac’s and PC’s. The way it works is also pretty simple:
1) Plug the Elgato device into your computers USB port
2) Connect your old VCR or camcorder to the Elgato just like you would to your TV
3) Run the Elgato software on your computer and press record
4) Press play on your VCR or camcorder
5) Thats it. Once your’d done click stop and the software saves the file
So if you’ve got old tapes lying around it’s really not that hard to digitize them and if its important stuff, I’d try and get it done as soon as possible. Here is the Amazon link to the Elgato video capture device I use [Link]
Yesterday while going through some old boxes at my parents place I found my old pager from high school (circa 1994/1995). I didn’t know I still had it so was pretty surprised to find it. I looked around the device to see what kind of charging cable I needed but I couldn’t find a charging port. Then I remembered it used regular batteries so I popped open the battery cover and inserted one AA battery and lo and behold, the pager turned on!
For those of you too young to know what a pager is or how it works, it was basically a device that was used before mobile phones when you wanted to talk to someone. Every pager had a phone number and when you called it, the number you’re calling from would display on the pagers screen. The pager owner would then call back the number when they were near a phone to see who called. When you would call a pager, the automated answering system would also ask you if you wanted to leave an optional 3 digit code. That 3 digit code would show up on the persons paging device when you called. So usually you would assign different codes to different friends, so say my best friend would use “666” that way when I get a page and I see “666” after the phone number, I know it’s my best friend trying to get a hold of me. If you left “010” it basically meant fuck you, “911” meant it was urgent and I’m sure there were other numbers that also had other meanings.
What I also remembered was how when you got a page you’d go looking for a shop that would let you use their phone so you could call back the number from. I mostly ended up using the phones at baqalas but it was also an issue the other way around. Sometimes you would use the phone of a shop or a baqala to page a friend, and then you’d just wait at the place near the phone for your friend to call you back.
The pager model I had I think was the most popular (Panasonic EK-2097), but I think there were only ever two models of pagers available to choose from back then. There were no private telecom companies, the pager I have was from the government operated Mobile Telephone Systems Co. (K.S.C.) which I think later became Mobile Telecommunications Company (M.T.C.) which later became Zain. If I’m wrong, let me know in the comments.
Yesterday I mentioned I found an old copy of a Kuwait TV Guide from 1989, what I failed to mention is that I bought it from an antique shop. I thought I had posted about these antique shops before, but when I searched through my blog, I couldn’t find anything about them. There is a basement in old Salmiya near Marina Mall filled with shops that sell antiques.
I passed by there last week since I needed to pick up a few items to use as props for a clients photoshoot, and thats when I got the old TV guide and a few other things. The shop I was in actually had a whole bunch of old TV guides along with a whole lot of old magazines and newspapers (even books) from the 50s and 60s all the way up to the 90s. I ended up buying a few things, a copy of “Majala Al Kuwait” from 1975, two 8-track tapes, the old TV guide and most importantly, a 7-inch vinyl record for the song “Haydoo – Our Camel, Lovely Camel”. If you aren’t familiar with the history of this song, I posted about it back in 2006 and its still an interesting read today. Here is the [Post]
Off of my head I think there are around 8 shops located in that basement all of which sell old memorabilia. There is one store that specializes in old records and another in old coins and rare bank notes, but most sell stuff you grew up with as a kid. In between all this randomness you’ll also find some super odd things like Nazi memorabilia.
The opening hours of the shops are pretty random since from my experience the owners are rarely there. But the building caretaker has the keys and will let you in if the shops are closed. If you find something you like he can take a photo and whatsapp it to the owner to get you a price but it also makes haggling more difficult. If you’re interested in checking these places out, the shops are located in the basement of a corner building near Marina Mall. The ground floor has shops that sell hair products but the basement is all antique stores. Here is the location on [Google Maps]
I recently found a copy of Kuwait TV guide from August 1989 and figured I’d scan the KTV2 section and share it on the blog. For those of you who grew up in Kuwait during the 80s you’ll probably remember we had only two channels, KTV1 in Arabic and KTV2 in English. On good days we could also pick up the English Saudi channel and on rare occasions the Bahraini one. KTV2 used to only start at 6PM and then close down by midnight. Much simpler times.
1989 was a good year for TV, going through the guide I came across a lot of my old time favorites including:
Starman
Bionic Six
Charles in Charge (My childhood crush > Nicole Eggert)
Danger Bay
Simon & Simon
TV Bloopers & Practical Jokes
Silver Hawks
Miami Vice
Moonlighting
If you want to flip through the TV guide, I’ve scanned it and uploaded the pdf [Here]
