Stingray Afternoons

Jane’s Pick: Stingray Afternoons by Steve Rushin

Nice easy summer read – especially if you grew up in the 70s. Although technically a coming of age story, this book reads more like a stream of conscious nostalgia ride through various pop culture artifacts of 1970s Americana. Rushin hops from one item to the next, leap frogging with just a bare minimum of segue or connection between subjects. The connection comes from how Rushin writes – with warmth and humor and how he evokes being a child in that particular time and place. Rushin’s family bond is strong and the characters jump off the page as the reader jumps back into time. I got an additional kick out of the surreal feeling of seeing how similar his family photos look to mine from that time.
This book is not spine tingling or edge of your seat storytelling, no, the real fun of this book is taking a cruise down memory lane – on a Radiant Coppertone Schwinn Sting-Ray, of course!

“I’m a product of the 1970s. Like other products of that age—the Boeing 747 and the Schwinn Sting-Ray bicycle—I was conceived in the ’60s but fully flowered in the decade that followed, when I saw my first Sting-Ray through a heat shimmer on West 96th Street in Bloomington. It was electric green—called “Flamboyant Lime” in the catalog—with “ape-hanger” handlebars and a banana seat bedazzled with glitter. These were little silver flakes embedded beneath a rubberized clear-coat, so that a Sting-Ray seat shone like the kitchen linoleum in a Mop & Glo commercial.” – Steve Rushin Stingray Afternoons