Past Paper: The Mystery of the Vintage Magazine

07/25/201607/21/2016 cladriteLeave a comment

On a recent visit to a paper ephemera store in our hometown of Oklahoma City, we came across a vintage magazine called The Oklahoma Whirlwind. Dated 1928, it was tightly sealed in plastic and the crusty proprietor of the shop wasn’t willing to let us to peek at the publication’s contents, but we found the cover illustration intriguing.

Was it even remotely possible that in 1920s Oklahoma, there was a magazine that was marketed to—or, heck, even friendly toward—the gay community? Surely not, but here was this cover, plain as day, right before our eyes.

As you’ve already guessed, we broke down and bought the vintage magazine, ripping open the plastic as soon as we stepped out of the shop. We quickly ascertained that The Oklahoma Whirlwind was a college humor magazine, published by students at the University of Oklahoma. The material is pretty typical of the era and of limited interest (though a few of the advertisements have appeal). No mention is made of the illustration of the cover.

But a closer inspection of the illustration revealed a couple of details that suggest the cover wasn’t so gay-friendly, after all. The tiny depiction of a rat chasing a mouse and a bird giving the go-by to a willing-to-be-eaten worm (see below) suggests that the point the artist is making is that a gay couple canoodling on a park (or campus, perhaps?) bench is against nature, or something along those lines. As depictions of homophobic sentiments go, this one’s pretty mild, thankfully, and perhaps even crosses over to good-natured.

A mouse chases a cat A bird refuses a worm

Los Angeles’ Bunker Hill, Then and Now

07/21/201607/21/2016 cladriteLeave a comment

The Bunker Hill neighborhood in downtown Los Angeles was once a fashionable area where the many of the city’s elite resided. By the late 1940s, the Victorian homes those well-to-do families had occupied had been transformed into boarding houses and apartment buildings, and the people who called them home were decidedly not high society.

Today, the neighborhood would be all but unrecognizable to those who lived there in either the good old days and the bad old days, as is demonstrated in this film by Keven McAlester, which juxtaposes 1940s footage (shot, we’re guessing, as background for some of the many films noir of the day that featured scenes shot in the neighborhood) with contemporary footage of the same streets that are captured in the earlier footage.

It may come as no surprise to you that, given the choice, we’d opt for the Bunker Hill on the left in a heartbeat.

A Plethora of Vintage Pinball Machines

05/24/201605/24/2016 cladriteLeave a comment

We experienced a true national treasure yesterday during a brief jaunt to Asbury Park, New Jersey. On the aptly named Ocean Avenue (which runs roughly north and south just inland from the beach) resides the Silverball Museum and Pinball Hall of Fame.

The name might make one think this establishment leans to the stuffy side—a museum for pinball, really? What, are the machines protected by velvet ropes with electronic alarms at the ready should anyone reach across?

They are not. Instead, the Silverball is filled with literally dozens of vintage pinball machines (and a dozen or more early video arcade games, for good measure) from the 1950s, ’60s, ’70s and ’80s, all there for the playing after you pay a very reasonable entry fee at the door. No quarters needed—just hit the “new game” button and you’re ready to go. It’s like an all-you-can-eat buffet for pinball buffs.

Naturally, we were drawn to the oldest of the machines—surely you’re not surprised to hear that—and the granddaddy of them all was Knockout, a machine that debuted in 1950. Not only did it feature the typical flippers, bumpers, bells and lights, but if you hit the right doodad at the right time (we never did figure out exactly how it happened), a pair of tiny tin pugilists duke it out in a ring right there in the middle of all the pinball action (there’s a referee there, too, to make sure the Marquess of Queensberry Rules rules are observed).

Other games from the 1950s that we took a crack at included Hawaiian Beauty (1954), Lightning Ball (1959) and Rocket (1959).

But our most thrilling moment of the afternoon was when we came across El Dorado, a game we spent hours (and untold quarters) playing in college (it was the lone pinball machine in our dorm center). We were convinced back in the day that it was a really old game, but no, it turns out it was only two or three years old at the time, having debuted in 1975. After more than 35 years, encountering this game again was like reuniting with a dear old friend.

If you find yourself within an hour’s drive of Asbury Park—heck, within two or three hours’ drive—and you have even a passing interest in vintage pinball machines, you owe it to yourself to spend the afternoon at the Silverball. Believe us, you will thank us for the recommendation.

Meet Us at the Campus Theatre!

05/13/201605/13/2016 cladriteLeave a comment

We’ve long had a great affinity for old movie theatres—we can think of no public spaces of which we’re more fond—and though we don’t think we’ve ever acknowledged it in this space, we get a great kick, too, out of venerable business establishments with “Campus” in their names. So when someone near and dear to us sent us this photograph of the Campus Theatre in Denton, Texas, our old heart went pit-a-pat.

The Campus, situated in downtown Denton, opened for business in 1949, intended to serve the students, employees and faculty members of a pair of nearby colleges: The University of North Texas and Texas Woman’s University. The first picture to screen at the Campus? I Was a Male War Bride, starring Denton native Ann Sheridan and Cary Grant.

It continued to be a going concern until 1985, when it was shuttered. A few years later, the theatre was purchased by the Greater Denton Arts Council, which operates it as a community performing arts center. We checked the calendar on their website and see no signs of motion pictures being exhibited there, which is disappointing, but perhaps we just didn’t dig deeply enough.

It’s a pet peeve of ours when classic theatres are preserved and restored, but their original reason for existing is ignored. By all means, play host to concerts, plays and high school talent shows, if you must, but if you’re not showing a movie (preferably a classic film from the Golden Age of Hollywood) at least once a month, you’re not doing right by that old bijou, we say.

Echoes of the Automat

04/15/201604/13/2016 cladriteLeave a comment

There’s an oft-quoted passage from a Joan Didion essay entitled Goodbye To All That that reads, “I still believed in possibilities then, still had the sense, so peculiar to New York, that something extraordinary would happen any minute, any day, any month.”

Ms. Didion may have stopped feeling that way about New York somewhere along the way, but we haven’t. In fact, the enduring sense that something extraordinary (and/or strange, serendipitous, surprising, wonderful) could happen at any time is one of things that hooked us but good on this city more than 35 years ago and keeps us engaged with New York even today.

One can live here for 34 years (as we have) and still step out your front door and encounter something you’ve never seen before.

Our day’s tasks on a recent Saturday found us at the corner of 38th street and Eighth Avenue in Manhattan, less than a mile north of Cladrite HQ, when we spotted, to our surprised delight, a painted ad on the side of a brick office building just east of the avenue.

These hand-painted signs are sometimes called “ghost signs,” in part because they are virtually all painted many decades ago, they often advertise products and establishments that no longer exist and they are frequently only discovered—uncovered, really—when another building, built more recently, is razed, revealing the long-forgotten advert. The newer, now-demolished building had hidden (and thereby preserved) the ghost sign all those years.

That wasn’t the case with the sign we spotted on Saturday. It peeks over the roof of a four-story commercial parking garage, so while it might once have been concealed by another building, it has been, for at least as long as the parking garage has been there, hiding in plain sight.

That the sign was for an Automat once in operation on the building’s ground floor made all the difference. We love all these old signs and always get a kick out of spotting examples we’ve never noticed before, but an advertisement for an Automat? For our money, it gets no better than that.