What’s in your garage? Cars? Bikes? A lawn mower? How about an authentic plane interior? For Anthony Toth, the garage is an escape back in time, since he’s built a precise replica of a first-class cabin from a Pan Am World Airways 747, the kind airline passengers would have seen in the late 1970s and 1980s.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Toth has spent more than 20 years and $50,000 transforming the garage of his 2-bedroom condo in Redondo Beach, California into the replica, which includes pairs of red-and-blue reclining seats, original overhead luggage bins and a curved, red-carpeted staircase.Visitors can sip beverages from the old airline’s glasses, served with Pan Am logo swizzle sticks and napkins, plus salted almonds sealed in Pan Am wrappers. They can even open a set of plastic-wrapped, vintage Pan Am headphones and listen to original in-flight audio recordings from the era, piped in through the armrests.
Toth, 42, is a old global sales director at United Airlines. Why is he so obsessed with Pan Am, which folded in 1991? “The brand was so powerful,” he says. “They had this uncompromising standard of service.” He hopes one day to turn his creation into a museum.
Cool or crazy? Lots of people are collectors, but this is pretty intense. It’s not really a surprise he hasn’t had time to find a date.
Comments
Reuben Gathright ~ Computer Analyst
October 28th, 2009 - 9:58:49 AM
Hey! Leave Anthony Toth alone! I want to see someone make fun of a family that spends $65,000 for a new pool in their backyard. We all know pools are expensive to maintain and do little for resale value. Yet, we encourage them and say nothing negative about the financial burdens. ~sent from ASUS 1005HA netbook http://bit.ly/44CHFm