Up until recently I've worn hem for years, and I still very, VERY MUCH NEED THEM, bu they are broken and I live in America on disability and food stamps and can't afford a new pair. But I actually *prefer* wearing them. I am a geek and I love my "brainy specs".
I was supposed to wear glasses as a teen, but never liked any I got, but then in 1989 I finally HAD to get a pair for school and work, and in an old (now closed) glasses shop I found an *AWESOME* pair of glasses...all metal...gold roundish metal frames, with *cords*, and real glass never used, in their *basement* stockroom (Old Bisbee, Arizona is an old Western copper boom town and THEY major stagecoach stop between St. Louis and San Francisco until the mine closed in the early 1900's and it became a ghost town until the hippie counter-culture squatters discovered it in the 60's...and today it is a historic tourist and film-production and artist and university town) - ANYWAY, and they were only $110!!! The catalog he had for the frames and lens types listed them as "John Lennon Glasses", but they were actually "ArtCraft ArtBilt FulVue glasses", and if you want to know what they looked like, they were the exact same style that James Spader wore in the film Stargate as the original version of the character "Daniel Jackson" (only he copied *me*) - [SEE PICS BELLOW] I loved them and I work them for almost 2 decades, because anytime they broke, I could just have a jeweler fix them. But unfortunately the dozens of small repairs added up (I sit on things a lot.) and it got impossible to find the correct lenses, and eventually I was told by countless glasses outlets that "They don't make them anymore"....but truth is they DID ArtCraft ArtBilt Ful Vue frames, (well, *sort of*, back to that is a minute) but you just had to find an independent shop that wasn't part of a chain and could order outside of their own limited stock - or wasn't an independent overpriced "fashion" place that only sold $300+ frames....because in 2010 the catalog and online shops listed them as STILL only *$110&*! So in 2010 I finally ordered a new pair form an independent small town mom and pop shop where I used to live in in Illinois...and they came...and I discovered the awful truth. Same company, Allegedly same make and model - very same name. But not metal anymore.. Plastic. Very cheap plastic. And I sit of things, so....instead of lasting a decade, they barely lasted a year plus a few months. I actually got luckily and kind...stole...a pair of frames and lenses that fit me and had the same prescriptions as mine (or damn close) and didn't look too bad that I luckily found poking out of a Lion's Club donation box at the local library, and knicked them when no one was looking. (Hey, they were meant for poor people like me anyway I figured.) But then eventually one day I sat on them, *of course*, and then my kid's dog at them. So for over a year now I have had no glasses and can't see more than a few feet in front of me.
I have a friend trying to help collect money for new glasses fro me, and get me in touch with the Lion's Club, but her husband (my old college roomate) is in late-stage cancer, so I'm not bugging her about it right now...and there is this event in town once a year where you can line up over night, "HopeFest" to supposedly get help with either glasses or dental or clothes (pick *one*)....because you HAVE to live up over night even though every year they tell people NOT to do it, and tell the press to tell people not to do it, and 1000's line up, sometimes days early, but few are helped. I actually need replacement partials, an since dental is something I could NEVER afford in AZ (Illinois Medicaid has limited dental, no here in Republicanville) I have lived up the past 3 years trying to get one of the limited denture slots. The irst two times I listen to what I was told by the organizers and came in the morning, an hour before the line was suppose dto start, and *1000's* were there ahead of me. Last year I learned my lesson, and camped out over night (right under the HUGE "No Overnight Camping" sgnes with everyone else....and even though I was only *10th* in line, 2 of the volunteer dentists didn't show up, so after over a day in line, I went home with no dentures, no glasses, and crying...again.
I have a small face and I like a lot of kids frams and can wear them...but even the places that advertise "2 pairs for $99 - Free Eye Exam" - by the time you get all the extras like frames that won't instantly scratch, and have UV coat, and are bifocals, etc, etc, etc...it's more like $350 to $500."
(Back in Illinois, Medicaid paid for glasses and the exam and I even get the frames I waned paying a bit more and even an second pair of sunglasses. But not here in AZ. But I have S.A.D. and the cold depressed me and made me suicidal...and can't deal with the clod up there...and I hated it because there was nothing to do and no one I had anything in common with...and when I *had* the glasses and dentures I did volunteer educational outreach work for UofA Science, the Flandrau Planetarium, UofA Sky Center, Kitt Peaks, Kuiper Circle, SEDS, etc...to make up for being a tax-leach on welfare...but can't do any of that now. And so I am blind and depressed and can't eat solid food.
And my library computer time is about to time out, I will add the glasses picks in an EDIT...so I don't lose this rant.
James Spader in Stargate with the exact same frames as I used to have (he so wanted to be like me, poser!
)
My and my (now) ex-wife (who I still have a ting for an sorta am dating...ish...again) and our fetus, Alexandria (in her tummy) - I was 25 and she was 21...and the glasses...(both sets of glasses even had the exact same bridge work detail...but I could never find the cool sunglasses clip-on's he had in the film...
Man I LOVED those glasses. Still have the frames somewhere, but may have misplaced them in a recent move, and the frames screws are now kind fused to the frames...
