Enter the cobbler

[108-13 and 108-17 Atlantic Avenue, Richmond Hill, Queens, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click either image for a much larger view.]

Just a small moment from a day in Queens.

Drop the -ing , and Electric Shoe Repair, like Electric Soup Kitchen, sounds (to me anyway) like the name of a short-lived rock group. Let’s title their one album Lace . O’Sullivan is a name with a stronger basis in reality. Humphrey O’Sullivan, a Massachusetts printer who tired of long hours on his feet, invented the rubber heel.

You’ll have to click for a much larger view to have any idea of what I’m writing about.

A gas station would later occupy this corner. Then nothing. Then a laundromat. The empty corner space is now a parking area.



Related posts
More photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives (Pinboard)

Two Millers

“If it wasn't for President Trump, the United States of America would not exist right now”: Stephen Miller, speaking at Mar-a-Lago yesterday.

Tim Miller, in conversation with Nicolle Wallace: “They’re his two favorite words in the last month, ass and caulk .”

Elaine said the other day that we need to begin speaking in terms of Earth Three. Things around the current occupant are too weird for Earth Two.

*

And now, having written this post, I am reading that the current occupant says that he has offered the job of press secretary to Dana White, CEO and president of Ultimate Fighting Championship.

A postmaster on the job

Or off the job: “He’d arrive late, leave early, play bridge, and work on his fiction — all while losing mail or simply throwing it away”: William Faulkner, postmaster.

Related reading
All OCA Faulkner posts (Pinboard)

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper, by Matthew Sewell, is for me just right — not too easy, not too difficult. I started with an educated guess: 54-A, four letters, “Pickford contemporary.” That must be a woman of the silents, no? And then 50-D, “Delhi dairy drink.” The toughest parts of the puzzle: the the northeast corner and the central south. Ken Paxton and Susan Collins had trouble up and down there too.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

1-D, five letters, “Word from the Spanish for ‘courtyard.’” A giveaway, perhaps, but I learned something.

6-D, ten letters, “Concern of some codes.” There’s great variety in this puzzle’s answers, and here’s one example.

11-D, nine letters, “A number of legislators.” From the northeast corner. I had to reread the answer to make sense of it, and then reread the clue to make sense of it.

14-A, ten letters, “Heroic posture.” See 6-D. This answer is out of the way and slightly startling.

17-A, ten letters, “Experience the real physical world.”Important!

21-D, three letters, “Driller designation.” I wonder how many other solvers thought DDS.

22-A, seven letters, “Where Faulkner went, and was once postmaster.” And it went as you might expect.

34-D, eight letters, “Cheeky monkey!” Does anyone ever say this?

36-A, five letters, “Support for many a retirement.” I took a guess, correctly.

37-D, four letters, “Tenor touring since 1957.” And he still has it.

43-A, eight letters, “Top artisan.” I had to convince myself that the clue fits the answer. It does.

56-A, ten letters, “Evinces indecision.” From the central south. One answer fits; one doesn’t.

My favorites in this puzzle: 52-D, four letters, “Not-quite-last exam” and 53-D, four letters, “Color of piecrust.”

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

Vanishing credits

There’s a clever touch in the opening credits for the British television series Professor T , beginning with the second season (2023). Professor of criminology Jasper Tempest lives with OCD — thus the credits show surgical-gloved hands aligning the items on a desk: hairbrush, record brush, replica brain, crime-scene photographs. Finally, a quick dusting.




[Click any image for a larger view.]

There are five six-episode seasons, all available from the PBS app, with a sixth season in development. The series combines criminology (a different case in each episode) with the private lives of the principal characters. Therein lie familial troubles and, sometimes, deep trauma. It’s a series worth watching.

You can see the opening credits, minus the vanishing names, at YouTube.

Also from this series
A Moleskine sighting : Revising or correcting

EXchange name sighting

[The Night Holds Terror , dir. Andrew L. Stone, 1955. Click for a larger view.]

Another pay phone filling the big screen. EMpire was indeed a Los Angeles exchange name. In other words, it fits the picture, which is set in and around LA.

Related reading
All OCA EXchange name posts (Pinboard)

Nancy rewritten

I’m not a fan of Caroline Cash’s Nancy . The art and lettering are not to my taste. And there’s been some wild revisionism: Aunt Fritzi is now bi, and she has a girlfriend named Phylis. And Phil Fumble, the boyfriend of Ernie Bushmiller’s Fritzi, is living in West Hollywood. Nudge, nudge.

Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)

JB Pritzker on the move

JB Pritzker has released Fighting for Illinois: Day One Agenda , a detailed list of proposals for Congress to undo the work of the current occupant’s regime:

The people of Illinois cannot afford to wait. Our Day One Agenda offers a bold and practical roadmap for governing, including 200 proposals to repair the damage caused by the Trump administration while creating a future where everybody can enjoy the life they’ve worked hard to build.

The PDF is available to download.

HCR on the midterms

In the most recent installment of Letters from an American , Heather Cox Richardson takes stock of Tuesday:

The historic nature of this election cannot be overstated. It is a rejection of Trump, who insisted voters should imagine he was on the ballot. But more than that, it is a rejection of the Republican ideology that has driven American politics since the 1980s: the idea that some people are better than others and have the right to rule.

I suspect that for many voters, “affordability” — the theme that the current occupant unwittingly turned into a boomerang — was foremost. But it’s difficulty to think about affordability for long without placing it in a context: economic difficulty for many, grotesque wealth for a privileged indifferent few. (“Now envision chandeliers all over your ceiling.”) I hope that Richardson is right, and that more than the price of gasoline (“the price at the pump,” as the cliché goes), drove Tuesday’s results.

More than twelve hours

It’s been more than twelve hours since the current occupant’s last social-media post (10:52 EST last night). Too dispirited to “truth”? Poor guy.

11:57 a.m.: He’s now self-soothing by freestyling in front of what C-SPAN calls “White House Construction Site.” Hair flying, microphone buzzing.

12:15 p.m.: “Now envision chandeliers all over your ceiling. Envision marble floors. This will be the most beautiful ballroom.”

Interesting: this event is not listed on the occupant’s schedule today.

[“Truth Social”: as Orwellian a name as “House Freedom Caucus.”]