A new round of names added to the Grog N Groc Hall of Fame: What the Pho Bellevue, Washington (John Carlton) Ave’s Taxidermy and Cheese, River Falls, Wisconsin (Sheryl Kostich) A-Furniture Store, Bakersfield, California (Gwen Barnes) Litteral Photography, Bakersfield, California (Gwen Barnes) Bearable Dentistry, Bakersfield, California (Gwen Barnes) Bender Chiropractic, Bakersfield, California (Gwen Barnes) The Lie-N Den Bar, Bakersfield, California (Gwen Barnes) Judy’s Lounge & Liquor, Stone Park, Illinois (Larry Ostgaard: “My friend John & his girlfriend, Judy and I would drive by and invariably John would ask if we wanted to go to Judy’s lounge and lick her.”) Pastry
Continue readingNew St. Eom Drawings
A pair of fashion sketches by Eddie Owens Martin are now included on the St. Eom Pasaquan page.
Continue readingStuff for sale
I’m starting to raid my accumulation of vintage junk for sale on ebay. First up are three Tomy Robo Strux wind-up robots. If all goes well, I’ll follow up with old monster magazines, comic books and more toys. If all goes really well, I’ll dip into the dozens of pulp novels I acquired years ago in Owensboro, Kentucky. The big question is whether I’ll find it worthwhile to handle the packing and shipping.
Continue readingAvenue Vernacular
Some great handmade signs and other sights from one of Chicago’s main ethnic strips.
Continue readingNew Weird Store Names
Just added some great names to the Grog N Groc Hall of Fame: Hotel Mr. Bed City, Paris (me) Wok N Go – “It’s only Wok N Go, but I like it,” Lexington, Ky (Karl Lawrence) The Best Way Inn Motel, Carbondale, Ilinois (rl Lawrence) Holy Sheet! Housewares, Paramatta, NSW, Australia (Aaron T. Slater) King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut (Glasgow, Scotland ) K.L. Cox Thai Me Up, San Francisco (Sandra Madrid) Crafty Beaver hardware store, Chicago (Sandra Madrid) Richard Heads bar, Houston (Sandra Madrid) Fluke Transport & Warehousing, Hamilton, Ontario, “If it arrives on time, it’s a Fluke” (Susan Galbraith)
Continue reading
Vernacular Shop Signs
Read a review of David Clements’ wonderful book of hand-painted business signs from Detroit.
Continue readingAmigone Funeral Home
Someone submitted this one a long time ago to the Grog N Groc Hall of Fame. I stumbled across the sign recently in Buffalo:
Continue readingNominate A Store Name
Know any great store names? Nominate them here for the Grog N Groc Hall of Fame.
Continue readingA Theory of Corporate Incompetence
Even the most brilliant, historically proven governing strategies can come to grief. The Russian czars relied on a track record of dimness, bureaucratic idiocy and stubbornness to create mass fatalism. But that cocoon was breached by the disasters of the Great War. Russians who had put up with their rulers’ incompetence for decades had finally had enough. Now we see our own triumphant incompetent, George W. Bush, continuing to reel from Hurricane Katrina. Sometimes even the most cynical public actually expects performance from its highest leaders. It may be premature to expect actual heads to roll, but it does seem
Continue readingE.T. Wickham’s sorrowful eloquence: Book Review
E.T. Wickham: A Dream Unguarded, Clarksville, Tenn., Customs House Museum & Cultural Center, 2001. Softbound, 9 x 9 inches, 108 pages, 99 color photographs, 21 B/W photographs. Foreword by Ned Crouch, essays by Michael Hall, Daniel C. Prince, Susan W. Knowles, Janelle Strandberg Aieta, Ned Crouch and Robert Cogswell, bibliography. Photographic essays by Clark Thomas and Carol Turrentine. The fate of E.T. Wickham’s historical sculpture park in north central Palmyra, Tennessee, is one of the tragedies of 20th Century folk art. Thirty years of vandalism since his death have left headless bodies where there aren’t stumps and bare plinths where
Continue reading