Saving Big Blue

Feeling lucky?

According to today's Times, the U.S. Postal Service has reported a $5.2 Billion loss in just the last quarter. That's a lot of stamps. There are plenty of reasons for this, of course--private carriers, email, probably not bicycle messengers--but the big one is the 2006 coup de tête passed by the Republican Congress to require the USPS, and solely the USPS, to prefund future retirees' health benefits. Result: Default.

The BTB Research Bureau has been working overtime on this problem, and we believe we have come up with a solution that capitalizes on a core USPS asset: ubiquity. Let's turn sidewalk mailboxes into mobile lottery ticket dispensers with the proceeds reverting to the Post Office to pay off its debts (and keep those cards and letters coming). Not only will this save the Service, it will ease traffic in the bodegas for the newspaper, beer and Twinkie-buying public. Win-win.

Bad Hair Day on the BQE

"How long do we have to hang around this dump?"
(Photo NYC Municipal Archives)

While we're opening up the vaults, here's a shot of the City's top politicos touring the BQE and surrounding neighborhoods in 1978. Why? Who knows. Left to right: John Lecicero, Tony Ameruso, Mayor Koch, City Council Majority Leader Thomas Cuite, Brooklyn B.P. Howard Golden. In the background: Harvey Schultz, Denise Scheinberg, and Unknown Guy in Trenchcoat. Location not identified. Maybe Cobble Hill or Sunset Park. Best hair in the picture: The Winston Lights Dude.

Memento Muri

Human Support (Kit Sailer)

Another 1980s gem from the Cityarts Workshop. This one from 1985 plays well with its location: under the viaduct from the BQE to the Williamsburg Bridge at Havermeyer Street & S. 4th St. Is there a moral (as well as a mural) in the title, "Human Support" (you can just make out on the crosspiece)?  Remember, you drive on the backs of giants? Or, in the words of our president, "You didn't get there on your own?" Or, simply, you never know what you'll find beneath the bridge?

Blackberry Power!

NYC subway poster, August 2012. This image of the African-American youth could be right off the cover of Richard Wright's 1945 Black Boy: disaffected, disconnected, disenfranchised.

Not to worry: the power he's missing isn't political, economic, cultural..., it's cellular (Duracell, to be precise):

Advertising motto: We never met an image we couldn't (ab)use.

Immurality

Tango (Pamela Shoemaker)

I know what you're thinking as you look at this mural at Junction Boulevard and 37th Avenue: Hey, there's a parking space! Note the now antique meters (not to mention that cool luggage rack). It's 1986: You're looking at Jackson Heights a quarter century ago. The mural was part of the Cityarts Workshop, whose mission, back in the day, was to bring together artists and communities. According to a 1988 New York Times piece about the project, the mural was on the side of a supermarket. This morning, I took a sweaty stroll down to check out the site. There is a supermarket at the intersection but it offers no obvious wall space.

 Another candidate is the Rite Aid Pharmacy:

But that fronts a bus stop. Did it in 1986? Who knows? In any case, there's no mural there now. And no parking spaces either.

When Two-Tone Was the Rage

(Photo: Carnegie Arts of the United States Collection)

The Burroughs Adding Machine Company, Plymouth, Michigan, 1938. Must have been good work (especially in a depression): Just have a screw at all those two-tone beauties in the parking lot. The company was founded by William Seward Burroughs in the 1880s as the American Arithmometer (hard to say) Company. Along with IBM, it became one of the eight largest computer manufacturers in the world. If the founder's name sounds familiar that's because it was the money his company coined hand over fist that allowed grandson William S. Burroughs to do his thing with the typewriter (and other gear) rather than with the adding machine (or arithmometer). It wasn't always enough to keep up with his habit, though; Burroughs often pawned his typewriter to make ends meet.

Lekcja on 35th Street

How's your Polish? Thanks to Innovative Window & Door Systems, LLC, you can brush up without breaking a stride. Here's Lekcja (Lesson) 1:

Okna=Windows
Drzwi=Doors
Naprawy=Repairs
Instalacje=Installations

I am not sure there are any Polish-speaking potential customers who wouldn't know the English for these basics. So it must be for pedagogical purposes. One drawback: they can show you what drzwi looks like on the side of a van, but they can't tell you how to pronounce it. Try this: D’ZHVEE.