vintage mural ads & other signage by Frank H. Jump & friends
Click on the logo above for the full posting. Here’s an excerpt:
Jump’s documentation of Americana is more than just the result of an obsessive-compulsive collector’s impulse. He explains in his blog that he is inspired by the symbolic parallels between objects that outlive their expected life span and stories of human fade-outs. For Jump, a fading ad is an urban testament to survival, the advertising equivalent of a flower growing in a crack of the sidewalk. STEPHANIE HEISE
© Frank H. Jump
My niece Rosario Dawson has campaigned for the VOTO LATINO group she co-founded as well as for P-FLAG.
© Frank H. Jump
Happy Earth Day!
Vincenzo (my partner in life and love) has the tendency to uncover interesting ephemera while doing demolition on the apartments he renovates. Here are two bits dating back to the early 1960’s- Rubin’s Delicatessen with the GRamercy-3 telephone exchange (Gramercy Park got its name from a corruption of the Dutch “krom mesje” or crooked little knife) and the Schaefer Beer Can, which brings back fond memories of the 1969 World Series and my father watching television. I remember watching the men landing on the Moon and wondering how they had already gotten there to set up cameras.
My first Earth Day – which was THE FIRST EARTH DAY – was in April 1970. I had done a report in fifth grade about the Food of the Future: Soy. I predicted that soy burgers would one day become popular with the American public. I also predicted that the United States would be slow to convert to metric – which was supposed to occur that year. If only my prescience could have extended to future Lotto Numbers…
Read more about Campbell’s Soup’s attempt to be green.
“For here am I floating ’round my tin-can
Far above the Moon
Planet Earth is blue
And there’s nothing I can do”
David Bowie – Space Oddity
© Frank H. Jump
Yada, yada, yada.
Ma nishtana ha-laila ha-zeh mi-kol ha-leilot?
Why is this night different from all other nights?
Passing moments as these under an ample dusk moon
And under other holy rollers.
Today, I received an e-mail from my friend Larry Kramer and I am reprinting this letter with his permission.
Mr. Michael Roberts
Executive Director
PEN American Center
533 Broadway, Suite 303
New York, NY 10012
Dear Michael:
I am in receipt of PEN’s program for your “PEN World Voices: The New York Festival of International Literature.” It is shockingly deficient and upsetting. It is particularly upsetting that you, a gay man, would sanction such an exclusionary undertaking. Have you no sense of responsibility to your people to equal the sense of responsibility you are obviously extending to others? It is equally sad for me to note that my friend and fellow gay activist, Michael Cunningham, is on your board. (Shame, Michael, shame.)
Of the 180, repeat 180, “World Voices Participants” I can recognize a scant few as gay or lesbian or transsexual, perhaps six or seven.
Of the 82, repeat 82, scheduled presentations (over 6, repeat 6 days and evenings from April 29-May 4) listed in your program, and devoted to every other conceivable concern, I can locate not one single one that is devoted to lesbian or gay or transgender issues, our art, our culture, our writers, our (precious few) triumphs and our horrendous tragedies. I can find no discussion of the worldwide plague/holocaust of HIV/AIDS. I can find no discussion of the never-ending powerlessness of the lesbian, gay, and transgender populations (writers most definitely included!) everywhere in the world. I see no discussion of the increasingly rampant and sanctioned hatred of gay people, particularly the murder of young gay men, in numerous countries, including (to name but a very few) Iran, Iraq (since the invasion), Russia, Poland, Latvia, Jamaica, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Zimbabwe, Uganda, and America.
Indeed I can’t even locate the words “gay,” “lesbian,” or “transgender” in this entire 60, repeat 60, page program—not in any description of any of these 82, repeat 82 events, or, worse, in any biography of the 180, repeat 180, participants, a few of whom can surely be numbered as one of my people. It is almost as if this program and every single word of its prose have been put through a mangle to extract these dirty words lest they soil that laundry which you have selected to air. I have never seen anything quite like it from an organization that pretends to speak for us all.
This rampant homophobia goes back a long way in PEN’s history. When I returned to America in 1970 I joined PEN, happily and proudly. After several years I resigned in disgust because of its complete non-inclusion of anything that represented that which is most dear to me. Later, when we became friends, but to no avail, I discussed this with PEN’s great member, supporter, and president, Susan Sontag, whose own lesbianism, by her own adamant refusal to discuss it herself, has only been allowed to be discussed openly after her death. (Indeed I was, and quite rightly, criticized by fellow gay activists for my own refusal to confront this issue; because of my respect for her greatness in other areas, I did not pursue this with her.) The specter of her internalized homophobia obviously still lingers in your genetic history, where so many of the “great” writers that you constantly champion were her discoveries and friends.
In this day and age it is shocking, pathetic, and ineffably sad that this program that PEN is presenting as “international” is so shamefully exclusionary. It seems to me it is time for you and your membership to put PEN’s house in order, please.
Sincerely,
Larry Kramer
Larry Kramer (born June 25, 1935 in Bridgeport, Connecticut), is an American playwright, author, public health advocate and gay rights activist. He was nominated for an Academy Award, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and was twice a recipient of an Obie Award. In response to the AIDS crisis he founded Gay Men’s Health Crisis, which became the largest organization of its kind in the world. He wrote The Normal Heart, the first serious artistic examination of the AIDS crisis. He later founded ACT UP, a protest organization widely credited with having changed public health policy and public awareness of HIV and AIDS. “There is no question in my mind that Larry helped change medicine in this country. And he helped change it for the better. In American medicine there are two eras. Before Larry and after Larry,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci. Kramer currently lives in New York City and Connecticut. – Wikipedia
Port Arthur, Texas is a gritty, oil refinery town best known as the place where Janis Joplin grew up. The Procter Street downtown business area has sadly faded away along with Janis’ powerful voice. I hadn’t visited downtown in years, so I went there on February 11th with my Nikon N-90 film camera and three rolls of film.
These scenes convey the despair of downtown Port Arthur – which once thrived with department stores, office buildings, hotels, restaurants and night clubs. The area comes to life once a year for Mardi Gras weekend and then returns to its vacant ambiance. In the early 1990s, elaborate murals of historic scenes were painted on building walls, but these too are disappearing due to the relentless sun and rains of southeast Texas.
But some hope of economic redevelopment is stirring. The World Trade Building on Austin Avenue, an impressive structure built in 1928 with fine architectural details, is slated for conversion to a 170 unit apartment complex. And the Hotel Batiste is being considered for an adaptive reuse such as a school. The refineries in town have announced several billion dollars of expansions which will create jobs and give the local economy a boost. The gasoline you use in New York is most likely refined here.
– Robert Baptista (www.colorantshistory.org)
Civil War Wall Mural – Racial Harmony – Pt. Arthur, TX
Civil War Mural – Robert E. Lee – Pt. Arthur TX
Port Arthur City Limits – Kress Building – Proctor Street
Coca-Cola, Proctor Street
Derelict Hotel Batiste
Golden Light Social Club – Houston Avenue
Derelict Golden Steer Restaurant – Houston Avenue
Derelict Hotel Sabine – Proctor Street
Jet Taxi – Houston Avenue
Loans – Proctor Street
Meat & Bait – Ripped Apart by Hurricane Rita
Reckless Driving Billboard – Proctor Street
Texaco Station – Proctor Street
Verna’s Club – Proctor Street
World Trade Building c. 1928 – Austin Avenue
© Robert Baptista
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