Patty Barker – Licensed Cosmetologist
Patty looks to me like the epitome of the swinging sixties. The pale pink lipstick, the heavy eyeliner and probable false lashes, the sunglasses perched jauntily on her beautiful, raven, back combed hair, all suggest a go-getting 1960s girl about town. What I love about this photo is that surely this would have been Patty’s image for a very short period of time? I can imagine all her future incarnations, as styles of hair and make-up changed. She would have been blown about on every new trend, as an example to her clientele of what was “in” at that moment. Maybe she was the creator of some new styles herself, working hard on the professional competition circuits?
Pat looks to be in her trainee uniform and has a chain around her neck with a pendant that spells out a word, which I cannot make out, even with a close zoom. No matter, that too was a very trendy look at the time.
Maybe Patricia is still working? This item comes from a large lot of similar licenses that were sold on eBay recently. All had photobooth photos of different styles attached. Given there were so many together, I would imagine it came from the records of the Division of Licensing in the State of New York. It is a peculiar thing that in the USA, so many of these documents are allowed to make it into the public domain. I am not complaining, as I love these wee slices of history, but maybe Patricia and her cohort wouldn’t be so thrilled.
Photobooth Journal 
LOL. let’s see…..I would have been 20 when this lass was in training. I so remember that time (well some of it) and girls that looked like this. I’ll confess to kissing a few.
The really interesting thing is if you see shows like Jersey Shore you’ll see that many of these girls are kind of stuck in a time warp, and could just walk right into 1969 without being out of place.
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Haven’t seen Jersey Shore. Should I?
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No! It is real trash and a total waste of time. I have only seen snippets which were plenty.
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I agree with m5son (above comment). It’s always amazing how styles like this recycle (if they ever really go away). By the way, I doubt it was the state licensing bureau that would have sold these on eBay, or even allowed them to be sold. More likely it was somebody rummaging through the unshredded trash to make a quick buck, with the overworked and underfunded state agency not having the resources to stop it. At least this document doesn’t contain personal information like her home address or her Social Security number, so there’s less of an incentive for anybody to crack down on these transactions. But I agree, as much of a violation as this may be, for those of us without malicious intent it is still pure gold.
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Hi Matt
I didn’t mean to suggest that the department would have sold them, more thinking along the lines of what you described. I suppose I am surprised they are not shredded but very pleased that they are not. This type of document and police mugshots etc just never appear on eBay anywhere in the world except the USA. I have looked many times in various languages! I think somehow future historians will be cursing the shredding of similar documents in the UK, Australia etc as I have a feeling these “hard copy” items may be all that is left of many 20th century archives as old computer files are discovered to be unreadable due to deterioration or not being transfered to newer platforms.
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