© Frank H. Jump
| Broadway & West 107th Street Upper West Side, Manhattan – taken December, 2002 |
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False Memories II – Olympia Theatre. |
This False Memory has an interesting story. I had heard about this sign from my friend Linda Bahoritsch who lives around the block from it. It is the winter of 2002. I’m standing on West 107th and Broadway, peering down an alleyway trying to figure out how to get the best photograph of this fading sign through a chain link fence. There was snow on the ground and a huge dumpster was blocking the view. Nearby I saw a police barricade which I quickly dismantled from its horse and started shoving under the fence to move the dumpster away from my nostalgic subject. Vincenzo waited patiently in the car. When the dumpster was pushed far enough away from my line of focus, I wedged the blue wooden plank under one of the casters so it wouldn’t roll back into view.
At this point, a Puerto Rican building superintendent from a nearby six story walkup shouted out to me, “Great thing what you are doing. That’s history!” He obviously figured out my plan. Almost immediately afterwards, an erudite Upper-West Side Jewish woman in her late fifties exclaimed:
“It’s a fake. They painted it a couple of years ago for that movie about Orson Welles- what was his name again? You know him- Susan Sarandon’s husband? Oh yeah- Tom Robbins. No Tim! Yeah. What the hell was the name of that movie again? The Hand That Rocks?… no, no, THE CRADLE WILL ROCK! That’s it. Yeah. It’s a fake. But you may as well take a picture of it anyway. They’re tearing the building down next week.”
Hence- the false memory.
“High Class Photoplays”
Where Spitzer will spend out his days!
Oye Vay!!!