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Klenosky! Now with a second mayoral campaign and musical samples!

Tie cleaning in New York

In New York: A Serendipiter’s Journey (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1961), Gay Talese describes New York as a city in which “a former adman, Stuart Bart, has made a fortune by cleaning only ties.”

Stuart Bart was the subject of “Expressing the Id,” a New Yorker “Talk of the Town” piece (April 10, 1954). In 1954, Bart was the vice-president of Stuart Bart Advertising (founded 1939) and the president of Tiecrafters, Inc. (founded 1952). In 1954, Tiecrafters, located on East 57th Street, was cleaning 7500 ties a month, at fifty cents a tie. A 1961 New York Times article reported that the company had five Manhattan locations. Today Tiecrafters is still in business on West 29th Street, cleaning ties and scarves and doing alterations. “Tie slimming” is a real thing, though it sounds like a premise for a Bob and Ray sketch.

The “Talk of the Town” item has some choice observations from Bart. For instance:

“A tie represents not only your personality but your mood. What I call the Visible V — the triangular area between coat lapels — offers a modern businessman his only means of expressing his id sartorially.”

And:

“You should place your tie under your collar before getting into your shirt.”

So I’ve been going about it all wrong. Not only do I wait to put tie under collar; I don’t even get into my shirts. I put them on.

Also from New York: A Serendipiter’s Journey
Chestnuts, pigeons, statues
“Fo-wer, fi-yiv, sev-ven, ni-yen”
Klenosky!
Leeches, catnip oil, strange potions

“What’s an Election?”

A new song from our son Ben. There are more songs at Ben’s YouTube channel.

Walls

On the news, a Trump surrogate, speaking to a crowd a few minutes ago: “We’re going to build a wall to protect us from everyone who means to do us harm.”

But where do we build a wall to protect us from ourselves?

The Bridge , continued

A highlight of my December stint as a prisoner of Hallmark Movies and Mysteries: The Bridge , or, rather, Karen Kingsbury’s “The Bridge.” At the gooey center of this TV-movie is a cozy, pseudo-magical bookstore/café (that would be The Bridge) whose owners (the old marrieds) are always helping their loyal customers (including the book-hungry students seen below). If Thomas Kinkade had run a bookstore, it would have looked like The Bridge.

As I watched, I wondered: how will they wrap up this story with only fifteen, ten, five minutes to go? They didn’t: the movie ended with the words To Be Continued — in December 2016. My faux outrage was real. Other viewers were genuinely upset. The Hallmark Channel issued an apology. And now comes the announcement that Karen Kingsbury’s “The Bridge Part 2” will air on March 20.


[Bookstore of light. All new!]

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March 1, 2016: “Book-hungry students”? Now I’m not sure. They buy coffee, which they drink while they study, but I’m not sure they ever buy books. They do already own books, which serve as props for studying.

Related posts
Hallmark ex machina
I am a prisoner of Hallmark Movies and Mysteries

[Beware any work of the imagination whose title includes the maker’s name. Other bridges: Hart Crane’s and Sonny Rollins’s.]

Van or van

I finally noticed: our Penguin paperback The Letters of Vincent van Gogh switches between Vincent van Gogh and Van Gogh . The Chicago Manual of Style explains. Section 8.10 in the sixteenth edition (2010):



Note: “usually capitalized.” One can find both Van Gogh and van Gogh in recent books about the artist. The Art Institute of Chicago exhibition Van Gogh’s Bedrooms follows the Chicago Manual ’s recommendation: Vincent van Gogh, Van Gogh.

Van Gogh's rec room

From George Bodmer: Van Gogh’s rec room.

[Context: an Art Institute of Chicago exhibition.]

Recently updated

Sanders at Chicago State The school has sent layoff notices to its 900 employees.

Henry Book

[Henry , February 26, 2016.]

Department stores used to have a section called Book. Even more exotic: Stamp and Coin.

My first store-bought (not school Book Fair) books came from a department store. Abraham and Straus? Macy’s? I don’t know. But I still have the books: Great Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe and A Tale of Two Cities (45¢ each).

A reader could even find Shakespearean criticism in a department store: this receipt at least strongly suggests that was the case.

Related reading
All OCA Henry posts (Pinboard)

Sanders at Chicago State

Bernie Sanders, speaking at Chicago State University last night: “Why is anybody in the world talking about shutting down colleges?” And: “Where are our priorities?”

Illinois has been without a budget for nearly eight months. The state’s higher-ed crisis is beginning to attract national attention: the Chronicle of Higher Education , CNN Money , NBC Nightly News , and The Washington Post have taken notice. And now a presidential candidate has said something.

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12:48 p.m.: From the Chicago Tribune :

Chicago State University sent layoff notices to all of its 900 employees Friday, yet another sign of the escalating budget crisis for the Far South Side public institution that stems from the state’s own budget impasse.

The university, with about 4,500 students, declared a financial emergency this month to make it easier to fire tenured faculty, eliminate academic programs and take other extreme measures.