If you find yourself in Soho any time soon, stop by the Jack Spade store on Greene Street—they've got a bunch of vintage model rockets on display.They wouldn't let me take pictures in the store so I grabbed these images off the web. (It's kind of annoying. On the one hand, Jack Spade has a cool aesthetic and fashions itself as a place for regular American dudes with a heightened sense of design. Judging by the old things they collect and display, I would say that it's as close to my point of view as any store out there. On the other hand, they're pretentious as hell, and the majority of their own products—the things they actually sell—are way too pretty. If you understand the inspiration, you also realize that the products that inspire Jack Spade—Klein tool bags, army surplus, Brooks Brothers, real messenger bags—are still available, are much less expensive, and probably better made. It's a case of the inspiration being cooler than the outcome.)

Still, the inspiration is sometimes mind-blowing, and that is definitely the case with the great colors and modern, sleek design of the model rockets they're currently showing.When I was younger my dad, my brother and I built a lot of model rockets and launched them in the field next to my grandma Dessie's house in Marysville. They go up really high and then they come back down on a little parachute that deploys when the burner is spent. Truthfully, my dad did it all, but we got to pick out the rockets, hold them, press the button, stuff like that. We were obsessed with space and it was fun. Here's a picture of us (Sky, me, my dad) in I'm guessing 1979, about to launch.Photo by Lee Woodfin, aka "Mom." Note the patches on Sky's jeans—she used to make these really cool patches when we'd wear through our pants.

Rocket images courtesy Sky High Hobbies.