Halloween Research

Seems as if I succeeded last week (as described here) in discouraging my trainer from the idea of a Fixie Boy Halloween costume this year. Too bland and predictable, it seemed to me, as I looked at images like the one above.

Now he has come up with some spin-off alternatives. What about a Fixie-Girl? Since these are relatively rare in real life, there would be more freedom to elaborate – plus all the natural costume-advantages of doing drag.

The internet predictably failed to yield much in the way of female fixie riders.



So I broadened the search out to girls-in-general riding bikes-in-general, rather than one specific type of girl on one specific type of bike.




I got quite a few retro-fashion girls on bike with brakes.


And a great wealth of "babes-on-bikes" – but nothing that seemed to be channeling any Halloween messages. Even the bumble-bee arm-warmers failed to emit any creative sparks.

So I moved on to the second possibility that had been opened up for discussion: Female Roller Derby.




But my trainer was already thinking far beyond run-of-the-mill Roller Derby drag. What about Eighties Roller Derby drag?

Now at last, fortune began to smile. It turns out that just last month photos were disseminated around the world from the streets of New York where shooting is presently ongoing for the second Sex and the City movie. And it contains an Eighties fashion sequence that was clearly conceived with drag queens in mind.




So now all we have to do is merge the Roller Derby pictures with the Sex and the City pictures and that version of the costume will just sort of magically make itself.

Home Life

I think it is no secret that the Spencer Alley flat is something of a dump. To me the place has many more upsides than downsides. Some of the good things are that 1) it is big & 2) on the top floor & 3) gets lots of sunlight – both of the morning variety and of the afternoon variety – & 4) has high ceilings & 5) good neighbors & 6) a great San Francisco neighborhood surrounding it, yet is 7) hidden away from street noise and as quiet as a woodland retreat, an illusion that is abetted by the presence of 8) mature trees (redwood, birch, eucalyptus) growing outside the loose-fitting, wood-framed windows. Best of all, 9) the rent is not even half the prevailing market rate, thanks to an ancient lease and citywide rent control.

On the other hand, a worn and shabby air envelopes the entire building. The paint and carpets and fixtures and cabinets and countertops were cheap and dull to start out with and are increasingly decrepit. The landlord (via the management company) does no more than the bare legal minimum amount of maintenance. Tenants make do and seldom complain.


Last night the water in the toilet tank wouldn't stop running after the tank had refilled. Then when I started poking around among the wet and rusty bits of gadgetry, a little rubber hose leaped away from its moorings and a jet of cold water zapped me in the face. After I wrestled the hose back down, I tried to adjust the float so the tank-water would stop running. All I did was make the problem worse. In fact I made it so bad that the only solution I could think of (on a Friday night, at midnight, when creative energy was certainly not at its potential peak) was to grab a big aluminum mixing spoon from the kitchen and use it to jam the float up out of the water, as pictured above.

Experience has shown that this is the type of problem the management company responds to. Six months ago when the faucet on the bathroom sink decided to transform itself into a geyser, a plumber did indeed show up in response to the immediate frantic phone call, and the plumber installed the shiny new faucet pictured below.


But the faucet geyser timed itself more kindly than the toilet tank. In this present case nobody will answer the phone at the management company until Monday. So for the duration of the weekend the spoon contraption needs to be dismantled and reinstalled every time the toilet needs to be flushed. "Cheap rent," I mutter to myself. "Incredibly cheap rent."

Phoebus-Palast

Found a new source (or fairly new, published last year by Thames & Hudson) about my personal favorite among graphic designers of the past: Jan Tschichold : Master Typographer : His Life, Work & Legacy. It includes a chapter by Martin E. Le Coultre about early work in Munich.

The posters for Phoebus-Palast cinema were Tschichold's first large commission and one in which he was given much latitude to experiment. In late 1926 the Phoebus-Palast was opened with great fanfare as a branch of the Berlin company Phoebus AG. It was the largest cinema in Germany at that time, with seating for 2,174 movie patrons. An orchestra of fifty musicians was available to accompany the films. (It would be some years before the arrival of the "talkies.") ...

Tschichold seized the opportunity to create for the cinema what today would be called a corporate identity: posters, newspaper advertisements, and programs all formed a unity. Just as the posters stood out in the streets, the ads were prominent in the newspapers. This was vital exposure, since the illuminated advertising used by cinemas in other cities was forbidden in Munich. ...

In the short time between the announcement of the film and its screening (sometimes only a week), it was impractical to design a decorative poster, have it transferred to stone and then lithographed. By sheer necessity Tschichold worked from small sketches that he further developed on site at the printers.

The examples below were all issued in 1927.

The Night of Love

The Beloved Rogue

Napoleon


Prince Louis Ferdinand


The Woman Without a Name


The Pair of Trousers

Kiki


The General


Sins Against the Child


Ivan the Terrible


The Three Nobodies

Customized

Freshly painted door on 16th Street between Sanchez and Church in San Francisco.

Evening Out

This is the present my daughter found for me at Powerhouse Arena during the recent New York trip she made with her husband. They were able to see the Kandinsky show at the Guggenheim, which I missed by one day on my trip last month. I probably bored the group at dinner, pumping them for every single Kandinsky/Guggenheim detail they could recollect, but at least I ended up that way with a vivid second-hand impression. The tiny wooden sedan was designed by Patrick Calello.


After dinner we all repaired to Herbst Theater, where Margaret Atwood was making a San Francisco appearance to "launch" her new novel, The Year of the Flood, a dystopian sci-fi sequel to Oryx and Crake. What admirable technique she has developed over the years for overcoming the inherent difficulties of the required Q&A session with the audience. Like a polished politician Atwood invisibly slides away from the actual question and delivers a long amusing answer to a more congenial question similar to but not the same as the one that was asked. Wrapping up each of these "answers" she beams at the entire crowd and innocently asks, "Does that help at all?" Her own question is then invariably answered by applause.


Above, color woodcut of the author, represented by Lisa Brawn as a stained-glass Saint of Literature.

Sabado

Sign attached to parking lot fence at Rainbo Bakery on 16th & Folsom in San Francisco. It will be interesting to observe little Honduras taking on the giant USA inside one small bar on Mission Street.

Texture

The autumn sunlight in San Francisco is capable of sending down a blessing on absolutely anything – as demonstrated above on a single-family house in the Mission embellished according to the taste of its builders back in the 1950s.

Castro Street Fair

On the San Francisco calendar the first Sunday in October means the Castro Street Fair.



I was there with a friend in the late afternoon doing my best to keep the sun behind the camera. But had also been around earlier, during morning set-up.






I was pleased and proud to see my own alumni association represented, the poor beleaguered UC system is looking for whatever support it can get as the State Government trashes it.