Frank Jump & Kevin Walsh @ Fading Ad Gallery in 2004
Might as Well jUmP! – Reflections on the Color Blue
In early July 1998, I was seated in my office at a well-known direct marketer on Long Island when someone—I forget who—left a New York Times article on my desk. I was enraptured as I read about a man who was just as fascinated by the fading remnants of a forgotten New York as I was and documented his discoveries on the worldwide web, as it was known in those days. His name was Frank Jump, and he ran, and still runs, a website dedicated to the “faded ads” that dot New York City’s landscapes.
The year 1998 was still the wild west days for what we now know as the Internet, but the web was beginning to assert itself as the Number One disseminator of information; where previously, amateur chroniclers had to finance and print up periodicals known as “zines” to get across their obsessions and desires, here was a golden opportunity for a cheap means of getting across what you wanted to say. The word “blog” hadn’t been invented yet, but thousands of mavens were beginning to poke their heads above the muck and make their thoughts known worldwide. Today, bloggers influence elections, elect players to all-Star games and influence the entertainment industry and everything else in every corner of life you can name, but in the late 1990s, it was mainly a hobbyists’ forum.
So it was this incredible Frank Jump photograph of Reckitt’s Blue that prompted me to sketch out on scrap paper what I wanted for Forgotten New York that memorable day in that direct marketing office. The circa 1890 ad for a laundry product manufactured by Reckitt’s known simply as “Blue” was hidden for many years behind a building on Washington Avenue and Dean Street in Brooklyn; when the building was torn down, lo and behold: there it was. Reckitt’s Blue happens to be my favorite shade of blue, by the way—and according to a Forgotten fan who wrote in to inform me, the color of the ad is: C-67.45 percent, M-34.9 percent, Y-7.84 percent, K-1.57 percent, taken from percentages from RGB monitor samples. The original color, considering the fade, may have been closer to C-74.51 percent, M-48.63 percent, Y-23.92 percent, K-10.59 percent.
In May 2005, author and friend Dawn Eden published an article for the Daily News about fading ads [pictured above] on which Jump and I collaborated.
– Might As Well Jump! – Kevin Walsh
CHECK OUT FORGOTTEN NYs NEW BLOGGY LOOK!
