That Newspaper Sure Knows Its Stuff...

While getting the room ready for our impending arrival we decided to put a fresh coat of red paint on the mirror from my room when I was a kid. I grabbed a bunch of the Inqy out of the recycling basket and masked it up:


After screwing up the first coats and asking my professional painter/artist brother-in-law for help we brought the mirror inside and sanded it down. It was at this point I noticed the article that was on the front of the masking newspaper:



You know what? A splash or dash of red really does spice up home accessories.

Ghost Signs: Philly Part 1

I finally got a new cell phone after about 5 years with my previous one. Did you know they come with cameras now?

That would explain why I started taking pictures of the ghost signs on my way to work in Southwest Philly. These are all along the Woodland Avenue shopping corridor:



Around about 55th and Woodland



Near 60th and Woodland
Obviously not much of a ghost sign as it's still in good shape and the company is still in business. Not a big fan of the slogan at the top though, for obvious reasons.



64th and Woodland
Looks like the sign may have been for a place called George's, much like the present check cashing place. Interestingly as well, it looks like there was more to the present George's sign as well at one point, as you can see by the remnants of the wooden framework still there.

UPDATE: After driving by again today, it is actually an ad for "Celotex." A quick Google shows that Celotex is a bankrupt asbestos insulation manufacturer.



67th and Woodland
Right near my office, a long gone meat market. Not even 100% sure if the store in there now is even open.

These signs are even more important since the entire area is vastly different than when it was a thriving shopping area.

A Chicago Disappearing Act

One of my favorite foods is the simple hot dog. And I think I like them simply because they hold mustard and ketchup and relish. People frown when you eat these things straight from the jar.

I knew while I was in Chicago I was going to have to try a hot dog, Chicago-style. A dog with yellow mustard, relish, chopped onions, tomato wedges, a pickle spear, peppers and a dash of celery salt was in my proverbial wheelhouse. I was warned beforehand NOT to ask for ketchup.

During one of my wanders around the city I came across this place:



And here's where the disappearing act happened.

I sat down with one of these:



And within about a minute and a half I had this:



Pretty cool magic trick, huh? Though absolutely delicious it was surprisingly the only one I had during the entire trip.

Ghost Signs: Chicago

My grandfather sold men's clothes. He worked for a company based in North Carolina, and travelled throughout the coal region of PA selling to mom and pop stores in the days before the big chains and the malls destroyed the Main Streets of Forty Fort, Shamokin Dam, Mahanoy, Milton, etc.

He had a showroom in a "mart" in center city Philly at 8th and Arch. One of my favorite things to do when he'd take me and the Malagan down to his showroom was to look around at all of the faded advertisements painted on the buildings.

Here are a few from our Chicago trip:



Clearly this is the well-known Brunswick Corporation. According to their website this logo was adopted in 1960 when the company changed its name from the Brunswick-Balke-Collender Company. Not sure if there was a bowling alley here or just an ad.



This appears to be the Carl Whitinger Company, a floral supply business. According to the American Floral Endowment Annual Report for 2004, the company was a contributor. Other than that, I got nothing.



Gotta be the W.W. Kimball Piano Company. At the bottom of the sign is a section that appears to say "piano" and "organ." The original Kimball factory was at 26th and Rockwell Streets in Chicago in the early 1880s. See The Encyclopedia of Chicago for more detail.



From Chicago Architecture, this building was built in 1910-1911, is 265 feet tall, and has 512,000 square feet of floor space. The Chicago Architecture website has some great pictures of the building from the front, to get the full effect. I was more interested in the rear top and the idea that the giant pipe running in front of the sign could be carrying the People's Gas.

Any time I see a Ghost Sign, I think not of the product sold, whether still with us or long gone, but about the guy that painted the sign. Did he expect it to last forever? Did he bring his kids to see it? Did he brag to the ladies that he painted that particular sign? As the sign faded away or the buildings got torn down did he feel the loss? Could he ever imagine some guy with a free website would be taking pictures of his creations and trying in a small way to preserve his work?

The Definitive 1000

We are going to be counting down the Definitive 1000 things. Why are they Definitive? Because The Friendly Friends have deemed them as such.

963 - The Cloud Gate/Chrome Jellybelly

The coolest giant jellybean in the world

I know that this thing has been around for a while, and I'm sure that there are some well written, well thought out artistic type reviews of it floating around the Internet.

All I can offer, what with no art knowledge whatsoever is that this thing is AWESOME.

Me and the missus got to spend about 4 days in Chicago in October and I spent probably about 4 hours over two days sitting in the park staring at this thing and watching other people do the same. It is truly an amazing piece of work.

I walked around it, through it, sat close to it, sat far from it and I couldn't take my eyes off it. Or stop taking pictures of it. I'll only bore you with three or four from my vast library.

The side view

I don't know what it's made out of, I don't know what it means (I don't want to ruin my own ideas about it with some artsy doofus meanings) but I know that I really really REALLY like it.

That's me, posing as a silly tourist taking a zoomed in picture of a silly tourist wearing his hometown baseball team shirt in Chicago.

I do know that I wore my Phillies shirt, since the playoffs were starting the same week we were there. In fact, we watched the first Brewers-Phils game here:

Not generally a fan of the Worldwide Leader, but sitting next to two Brewers fans who couldn't stop squirming when Mrs. Jewbacca would cheer the Phils made it all better.

The second Brewers-Phils game here:

Why yes, that is a giant Weber grill! That place was in our hotel, was the only reason I wanted to go to Chicago and will be enshrined shortly in the D-1000.

And the third at a bar about 100 yards from here:

Man did we piss off a lot of Cubbies fans when we wouldn't give up our table after the Phils-Brewers game.

We had a blast in Chicago, and I'll have more on that later (even though it was 5 months ago), but since I still can't get over how cool The Cloud Gate is in person, it is well deserving of its place in the Definitive 1000!

Minor/Major

Minor niners.

Major niners.

Chapter IV: A New Beginning

Well, not really. Just a new generic blogger template. I thinks it's easier on the eyes.

Maybe some of our thousands of daily readers can let us know in the comments if that's true or not?

Daaaaamn

Sometimes it is just amazing when people are good at what they love.

These two guys in the bowels of NYC are proof. The sweet spot is when the rail announcements are running behind them like a layered track. I only wish this was longer.

Check the cellist and flute-breakin' loops on these guys and give it up to YouTube for more Greg Pattillo and Eric Stephenson at Union Square flavor.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMUlhuTkM3w

Damn.

Possible Top Three Random Moment of My Life

January 14, 2009

9:22 a.m.

"You Be Illin'" by Run-DMC on WXPN.

Seriously.

A New Year, An Old Jewbacca

[RANT]

I am constantly annoyed by things in this world. At least eight times every trip to work in the morning and probably close to double that on the way home I feel the urge to kill rising in my gut.

What troubles me so? The lack of awareness and respect that seems to pervade every part of society.

And this morning, I saw in living color on my very own television something that drove that point home. It was a show called "Parking Wars." It was (is?) filmed in my fair city and follows the employees of the PPA (Philadelphia Parking Authority) on their appointed rounds.

Having been the victim of their ticketing on several occasions I am familiar with their special brand of handcrafted day-ruining (though there was a time when it was cheaper to let your meter expire and get the ticket than it was to park in a garage). But I also know that if I let my meter expire I am going to get a ticket. Same if I double park, park in front of a hydrant, or park in a handicap spot. I accept the fact that there are rules for a reason and that there are people who's job it is is to enforce those rules. Heck, I WROTE parking tickets in college.

This morning I was watching this show over breakfast and was regaled with the tale of the young woman whose friend double parked, blocking a lane of travel in Center City Philadelphia. Simple, no? Double park, block morning traffic, get a ticket, grin sheepishly, pay the fine, move on....right?

Wrong. Accost the ticket writer, scream about the unfairness of it all, use the "2 seconds" argument, use the "my friend is from New York and didn't know better" argument, rally the passers-by, accuse the ticket writer of malfeasance, scream into the camera about how unfair it all is well after the ticket is given. That's how she chose to handle it.

Why does this person not see what they did is wrong? Ignorance and nil respect for the people around her, that's why. And in a nutshell, everything that is wrong in the world today..

Interestingly enough, when I opened the paper at lunch today (yes, opened the paper...the actual paper...delivered to my home every morning) and turned to the "Style and Soul" section to read the comics (a daily tradition since 1982) these two articles greeted me:

Double-Parking? Age Cheating? Who Cares?

which was directly below, in the print edition this gem:

A Flash of Celebrity

The latter article is about a company you can hire to send out three idiots with cameras to follow you around for three hours, at $1000 a pop, to make people think you're famous. $1000. For. Your. Own. Paparazzi. The very thing actual famous people want outlawed. You can hire them. To follow you around. I...

And the former article is an interesting essay into why people cut corners and break small laws. In short, why people are ignorant and have no respect for their fellow humans.

Probably because they are too busy hiring their own paparazzi. And it only hurt my heart and brain all the more when I read that the paparazzi company got its start following around U of D students while they were bar hopping. I don't mind U of D students bar hopping (have you ever been to Newark?), but I feel a stabbing pain in my alumni pride when I find out they gave credence to this d-bag idea.

So, in the space of roughly 5 hours I got to see, crystallized in front of me once on a flat screen and once in a "dying" medium, why this world is F'd up. And why its important for me to raise my soon-to-be-here child with the following simple credo:

Do the Right Thing.

If everyone did the right thing, I would not spend a good portion of my day in a blind rage planning a kill-crazy rampage. And there would be less ignorance and more awareness and a lot more respect.

[/RANT]