Astro Lab: Asher Siegal's mid-century den.   (Photo: Danielle Levitt)

The Doo-Wop Fan

As a kid in sixties Providence, Rhode Island, Asher Siegal was enthralled with his grandparents’ fifties stucco ranch: the blond-wood furniture, the painted vertical blinds, and best of all, the floor-model television, a version of the famous Heywood-Wakefield model. That his brothers sold it before Siegal could claim it makes him crazy to this day. It would have been a perfect fit in his one-bedroom apartment, which he describes as “John Waters Land.” With its pink-and-green kitchen (no microwave), boomerang-pattern wallpaper, and drapes printed in that familiar atomic pattern, Siegal’s home is a diminutive tribute to the space-age optimism of the fifties. It’s also the summation of 30 years’ worth of flea-market trolling, vintage-store rummaging, and eBay scouring. “I don’t shop at mainstream stores because they don’t have anything I want, except socks and underwear,” he explains. “Vintage hardly makes it through the wash more than once.”

He makes shakes in a rocket-shaped blender found for $10 at the Chelsea flea market and cooks “the most unhealthy cheese-laden” recipes from period cookbooks in vintage casserole dishes. When Siegel throws one of his frequent parties, he uses the pineapple-shaped pitchers and ice buckets inherited from his grandmother and plays music on the Blaupunkt console—which has a built-in bar, shortwave AM-FM radio, and hi-fi and was purchased from New and Used for $100. “I haven’t listened to a popular-music station since the early eighties,” says Siegel, who is 45. His all-time favorite album is Bobby Darin’s For Teenagers Only; he paid $2 for his gatefold version with a poster insert at a yard sale in Providence. He hit a fifties-aficionado milestone of sorts when he went to Viva Las Vegas, a four-day festival dedicated to the lifestyle of fifties America, and met a mass of kindred spirits. “These people understand that I’m not in costume,” he says with conviction. “This is what I like.”