Downtown Dingburg
Zippy in a dowdy world.
A wood phone booth
From Ephemeral New York, a wood phone booth , complete with phone, in a bar on St. Marks Place.
Censor Breath
From 1936, a joke on Sen-Sen.
Writing on a train
From The Narrow Margin: a train with a writing desk for passenger use.
30-D, three letters
Chicken à la King in a 1957 ad.
Obsolete jobs now obsolete
“For decades, the Social Security Administration has denied thousands of people disability benefits by claiming they could find jobs that have all but vanished from the U.S. economy — such occupations as nut sorter, pneumatic tube operator and microfilm processor. “On Monday, the agency will eliminate all but a handful of those unskilled jobs from a long-outdated database used to decide who gets benefits and who is denied, ending a practice that advocates have long decried as unfair and inaccurate.”
Monday in Manhattan
Laundry on lines, from The Window.
Crusts and chest hair
I like the way the Circus is stuck in an unyielding past. Brown paper bags! Cameras on straps! Landlines! Crusts and chest hair!
Where did the hats go?
What did men on planes do back in the day, when everyone wore a hat? A scene from a movie let me know.
Kubrick Self Service Stores
The Internets will now have one result for “kubrick self service stores.”
G. & S.
A store from the Brooklyn of my childhood.
An Automat documentary
The Automat, a documentary film.
The 1950 census
Daughter Number Three offers ultra-helpful directions for looking up people and places in the 1950 census.
How to Automat
From The Sleeping City (dir. George Sherman, 1950).
Sen-Sen again
Old movie dialogue.
Yow-Zah’s
A Brooklyn model-airplane shop.
A Hamilton House menu
Quite an array of choices, for an earlier American palate.
Giant telephone
From Life magazine.
Eddie’s Sweet Shop
A Queens ice-cream parlor.
What is a straight wire?
People in old movies are always sending their telegrams straight wire.
Candy stores
Picholz’s and others.
“Florsheim cap toes!”
Griffy and shoes.
Cartoon chef mansplains mayo
“Now I’ll explain, ladies!”
Recently updated
Chicken bones and turkey joints.
“America’s flavourite candy”
Chicken Bones. Really.
From the dowdy world
PAYPHONE.
Recently updated
Charge! Now with photocharger news from the Brooklyn Eagle, 1952.
Recently updated
Charge! Now with a link to a film from the Brooklyn Public Library that shows the Remington Rand photocharger in action.
Charge!
In search of lost library technology: the Remington Rand Photocharger.
“Individual meat loaves”
The marmalade cuts the taste of the Prem. The cauliflower and buttered almonds cut the taste of the Prem and marmalade. The french fried onion rings cut the taste of the cauliflower and buttered almonds.