SUITS PRESSED

[1441 Broadway, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

The white arrow (barely visible) on the address sign points to the large building, the Bricken Textile Building. The New York Times noted its January 20, 1930 opening. The building still stands. What I like in this photograph though is the small stuff: those clashing planes of signage. I can decipher almost everything in front of LIQUOR:

[SUITS PRESSED / while you wait / FRENCH DRY CLEANING / SKILLFUL TAILORING / We guarantee to / (?) CLOTHES / (?) SPECIAL PROCESS / CURTAINS & DRAPES / for home office (?) / QUALITY DRY CLEANED / BERGER SERVICE / 151. Click for a larger view.]

Aha: Berger Service Cleaning & Dyeing Corp. has listings and advertisements for Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Queens locations in the 1940 telephone directories. And there’s 151, at 151 West 41st Street. “E. of Broadway,” says an advertisement that runs across the tops of three columns in the Manhattan directory.

[Click for a larger view.]

[Click for a larger view.]

Alas, there is no tax photograph for 151, at least not that I can find, and no tax photographs of adjacent addresses. So this glimpse of the sign is the only glimpse I’ve got.

Yelp lists one address for Berger Service Cleaning & Dye Corporation — 4 W. 63rd Street — with three reviews, the most recent from 2018. Google Maps has the same address, with the most recent review from last month. In other words, there’s still a Berger in Manhattan, apparently in an apartment building.

As for other details in the photograph:

The light-colored car says RADIO — it must be a cab, no doubt yellow. The van alongside it: METROPOLITAN NEWS CO., a distribution service for newspapers and magazines. Robert B. Cohen acquired the company in 1985. Cohen also ran the Hudson County News Company, precursor of the now-ubiquitous Hudson News outlets. Which brings us back to the present.

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December 26: A reader suggests that the words below “CURTAINS & DRAPES” might be “for home office.” Thanks, reader. And then there’s a third word. What? Related reading
More photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives (Pinboard)

[Hudson County: a county in northern New Jersey. My dad grew up there, which brings us back to the past.]

The Times investigates Hallmark and Lifetime movies

Stuff like this makes me want to just ditch my subscription and read for free through my university’s site license: “Just How Formulaic Are Hallmark and Lifetime Holiday Movies? We (Over)analyzed 424 of Them.”

One writer, seven people researching.

The short answer, per our household: pretty derivative.

[Our one Hallmark movie this year: Friends & Family Christmas. It’s a lesbian love story, with fake dating, painfully intrusive parents, a Brooklyn art lab, and “travel grants for innovative thinkers.” We watch one Hallmark movie a year.]

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper is by the puzzle’s editor, Stan Newman, constructing as himself. So the puzzle is not Lester Ruff, nor is it Ova Lee Ruff. Yes, Ova is a girl’s name. The puzzle looks daunting, with stacks top and bottom, fourteen–fourteen–fifteen, fifteen–fourteen–fourteen. But the daunt is less than I imagined. No, daunt is not really a noun.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

1-A, fourteen letters, “Late fourth-quarter flora.” My first thought was “something ending in PLANT.” What do I know?

7-D, seven letters, “Mental bloc.” Heh.

15-A, fourteen letters, “What ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ begins.” I love it.

16-A, fiften letters, “Common interview settings.” At least it’s not HOTELROOMS, the at least semi-creepy settings for MLA interviews of yore.

18-A, seven letters, “Cause to ride on the wrong carousel.” A quietly clever clue. Film noirs made me imagine someone saying “Sorry, pal, I’m getting off this merry-go-round.”

22-A, five letters, “What fills some dumplings.” See 44-D.

28-A, eight letters, “They raise sunken objects.” So that’s what they do?

30-A, three letters, “‘He who slings ___ loses ground’: Adlai Stevenson.” Would it were so.

32-D, eight letters, “Current event.” Maybe a familiar clue for the answer, but new to me.

35-D, six letters, “Oil source for thousands of years.” No drilling allowed.

44-D, five letters, “Source of tones shaped like 22 Across.” Another quietly clever clue.

46-A, four letters, “Andy Griffith played one on his sitcom.” The middle letters make this one tricky.

52-D, three letters, “Two-time connector.” Pretty Stumpery.

A quibble: 11-D, three letters, “Where an applause meter starts.” No, I say.

A quarrel: 12-D, six letters, “Topper back in style circa 2007.” Back? It’s never gone out of style. Ask Elaine.

An enigma: 29-D, three letters, “Private property.” I have no idea what the answer means.

My favorite in this puzzle: 51-A, fifteen letters, “What ‘My Girl’ is sung with.”

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

“Some novelty among the stars”

In the city of Andria “every street follows a planet’s orbit, and the buildings and places of community life repeat the order of the constellations and the position of the most luminous stars.” The city’s daily doings correspond to that day’s sky, “and thus the days on earth and the nights in the sky relect each other.” And yet — the city is always changing, older structures being removed, new ones being built.

Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities, trans. William Weaver (New York: HarperCollins, 1974).

Related reading
All OCA Italo Calvino posts (Pinboard)

Iggy Pop and Tom Waits play records

“Echoing their famous joint appearance in Jim Jarmusch’s Coffee and Cigarettes, the show sees Iggy and Tom pump the Confidential jukebox full of nickels and dimes”: Tom Waits joins Iggy Pop on Iggy Confidential (BBC Radio 6, via Austin Kleon).

Raise your hand if you know Captain Beefheart’s “Bat Chain Puller.” (Raises hand.)

Related reading
All OCA Tom Waits posts (Pinboard)

[I just started listening: in the first couple of minutes they mention the bassist Larry Taylor and Canned Heat. Iggy Pop: “Canned Heat were killer.”]

Tea, saving lives?

From the BBC, “How Britain’s taste for tea may have been a life saver”:

Economist Francisca Antman of the University of Colorado, Boulder, makes a convincing case that the explosion of tea as an everyman's drink in late 1700s England saved many lives. This would not have been because of any antioxidants or other substances inherent to the lauded leaf.

Instead, the simple practice of boiling water for tea, in an era before people understood that illness could be caused by water-borne pathogens, may have been enough to keep many from an early grave.

Orange Crate Art is a tea-friendly zone.

Related reading
All OCA tea posts (Pinboard)

Mystery actor

[Click for a larger view.]

Leave your guess(es) in the comments. I’ll drop a hint if one is needed.

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10:06 a.m.: The mystery is solved. The answer is in the comments.

More mystery actors (Collect them all)
? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ?

An “over and over”

Bill Griifth explains the “over and over” (the page is gone):

Zippy spouts words like jazz musicians play riffs. One of his favorite wordplay activities is the “over and over.” Zippy fixates on a series of words that just beg to be repeated as pure sound. Readers are always suggesting new ones.

I have one: “pickleball infrastructure.”

I heard the phrase on All Things Considered last night and immediately thought “Pickleball infrastructure! Pickleball infrastructure! Pickleball infrastructure!”

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Yes, I sent “pickeball infrastructure” to Bill Griffith, and it made an appearance in the February 8 Zippy, going up against “Tyvek, Tyvek, Tyvek!”.

Related reading
All OCA Zippy posts (Pinboard) : “Brick and mortar!” : “Eaton’s Corrasable Bond!” : “Golden creamery butter!”

[Where but on NPR would you hear about pickleball infrastructure?]

Recently updated

Words of the year Now with a second hallucinate and a “vibe of the year.”

“Without fear or favor”

John Kasich, former governor of Ohio, on MSNBC just now:

“Think about the implications, think about the implications of what could happen across this country if in fact we start saying somebody can’t get on the ballot.”

And I immediately thought of a passage from the decision barring someone from the ballot in Colorado:

“We do not reach these conclusions lightly,” a four-justice majority wrote, with three justices dissenting. “We are mindful of the magnitude and weight of the questions now before us. We are likewise mindful of our solemn duty to apply the law, without fear or favor, and without being swayed by public reaction to the decisions that the law mandates we reach.”

See — they did think about the implications, and they did not swerve. And: what about the implications of letting an insurrectionist remain on the ballot?