one of my favorite pieces ever in the shop, here

sweet conjunction of numbers

right now, at 7:16 a.m. on the 8th of March, 2013:
there are 226 items for sale in the luncheonette.
there are 1246 positive feedbacks (thanks so much, everyone!)
there are 2246 total sales

to celebrate, a coupon: lunchforbreakfast 
25% off.

All the books, all the birds, all the words

Headline news around the farmstead:

Really excited about a new project that has to do with that photograph and a whole trove of old cabinet cards, books, maps, and, yes, ephemera. That word. More on that soon. The luncheonette is branching out.

The aim is to finish my own book by early fall. Wish me luck and good writing. Have to thank some of the people keeping me on track. Thank you, people keeping me on track. I promise to not get too sidetracked by the chickens.

Lucy, my main mama hen, has gone broody again, so there will be more new chicks on the farm.

This is what happened to the grey chick that used to like roosting on his mama's back. He's three months here. He's a mutt, but we call him a Speckled Greentailed Nutjob. A new breed. He comes from bird man Barry down High Falls way. Or his egg did. If you want to know about feathered things, visit his site. It's addictive.

The yellow chick is tamer and is probably a rooster as well, but likes to follow me around the pen as I pick up rocks — there are worms under them there rocks. For some reason we didn't try to define this one. It/he/she doesn't seem so novel, so odd. Metaphors and chickens go together so well.

Some plumage on this one. His tailfeathers are starting to flow irridescent green. He has bell bottoms. I know there's a term for leg feathers. Shall look under some rocks for it.

Dept. of semidaily walks

The new dog who is often mistaken for a bear.

The new dog likes her walks. We head up the road and hang a left, trudge up the hill. Dogs will trudge happily. That is perhaps a key distinction between dogs and humans, one I am trying to learn from.

The house we pass every walk. It seems to be empty.

 We always pass the same houses, the same barns, but they never look the same. Not even the grass looks the same from one day to the next. 

That same house. Same tree, post blossoms, different angle. Now the rhododendron is blooming all along the side of that house.

This is perhaps a key distinction between my mother and myself. She used to talk about how bored, how claustrophobic, how trapped she felt when we lived in Leonia, NJ, a tiny little town filled with old houses and rhododendrons and spreading old elms and maples. There was a specific tree, a sugar maple, on the main street as we walked into town. I remember it as a wonder. She remembered it as "There's that damn tree again." Of course she didn't drive so in a sense she was trapped there, as the other mothers motored by in their Buick wagons. Another story entirely.

Xavier's morning routine

9 a.m. 2/16/2012

Rest assured, first of all, that none of this gets into the vintage. Xavier does nowhere near the vintage. He knows not to set foot in the luncheonette, though he will linger outside, possibly jump up and look in the window (he is a dog that likes to see stuff and will stand up to do so). But none of that spit and vigor gets anywhere near the vintage.

It does get into the book if I'm not careful, though. So I'm being careful. Wolves are not like dogs. Xavier's joy is in the Play. Is in the whole tootin ritual we do. Wolves would not think it very appropriate. But Xavier does. Every day. Nine times a day if possible. Or ninety. Ninety times a day chasing a ball for all it's worth, or waiting on a sit-stay and vibrating like crazy until that release, that amazing WOW release as in WOW I CAN GO FIND THAT THING SHE JUST HID SOMEWHERE OUT THERE — that could happen ninety times a day and it would not be enough. But even twice a day, even once a day, it makes him so happy he stands like Rin Tin Tin at a photo shoot, except for all the spit and vigor in his jaws.

And I did not ask or tell him to pose for this picture. That's just how he stands when he's done. Like, yo, I could take Westminster.

Hot Dog Champion shirt featured on Etsy Vintage Tumblr
Today's etsy vintage tumblr was like the 1940s meets the 1970s meets 2011 meets a whole herd of terrific vintage with a coltish western theme. Did I know, to be honest, that there was a vintage tumblr run by Etsy? Not so much. Like I didn't know until yesterday that you can make a kick-ass ice cream soda using mint chocolate chip ice cream and espresso ice cream, so long as you add a bunch of chocolate syrup.

The sweetheart who runs the tumblr thing got in touch with me, and of course I got all grinning palomino about it. The shirt is one of a small band of plaid button-ups and pearl snaps at luncheonette vintage. Lately I've really been into Western shirts. Mostly hanging them up on a 1940s hanger and taking their pictures.

And I'd say button down shirt, but Mom always said that button down referred not to the entire shirt, but merely the collar. Pearl snap I am sure you get, I mean git, the idea. I'm still not sure if she was right. But she would say, Of course I am. Translation: noone knows how to speak anymore.

Some of the other shirts in the barn, I mean shop:

Corn Dog shirt

Breakfast cook shirt

Tickings

1930s tickings advertisement, dewitt co.

ticking market bag lined in broadcloth by bayousalvage

1930s farmhouse pillow with double cover, luncheonettevintage

1930s farmhouse feather pillow, luncheonettevintage

ticking and buckwheat hull neck support pillow by octavi

vintage ticking bolster by enhabiten

microwaveable ticking pillow by the blackstrap

antique indigo striped ticking, theprimitivehome

Not a candlestand

Vintage sometimes presents enough of a hint of its original purpose to contradict assumptions; to steer you away from easy conclusions. Or, simply, I am ignorant. So it was with this, and so it was with me.

I found it while going through a box of castoffs at a thrift shop. It's part of the whole vintage discovery process; first, the shop; then, its threshold: hazy with the dust of old videocassettes evaporating into the stale air; sometimes a radio warbling from overhead; sleepy clerks; that strange gray overcast under the dim charity bulbs. Then, the mining begins. For some reason, I was in a box mood. There was a box, by the LPs that were in their own box. When 27, I would have dug into that LP box as if I were the first to discover Pet Sounds on vinyl. That was so then.

This box was marked Misc. Misc. in vintage can mean a lot of things, but it mostly means mystery. Promise. Miscstery. Promisce. In this box, at first, were just discards: cards of discount earring studs, a cloth purse with a rotten corner, a pleather purse riddled with adhesive gunk, a sneaker (a sneaker with another s on the end is a useless object), rubber-banded jumbles of old pharmeceutical logo pens, unloved paperbacks with ragged ears, a cutoff Fame style sweat shirt and some pinned-together sweat socks that smelled of foot powder. Then, for some reason, I thought of my father, who often tucks fragile things like Leica lenses into his socks. And so I — fondled — the socks. Quietly. Discreetly. There is a fine line between vintage treasure hunter and hoarder of things like singular sneakers, I fear, and sometimes I wonder how easy it is to cross it. But sure enough, tucked into one of the socks was this.

The find.

After the find, there is often the — feign. After you find what may be something amazing, you call upon the karmic treasure gods by not really focusing on it — as if somehow, by calling attention to it, you'll magically alter its price, or its something. So instead you avoid investigation. You gloss. You feign disinterest, lest someone notice you.

You deposit your object in the cart, or the basket, or the bag, as casually as you can, projecting disinterest, and you keep moving. I assumed I had just found a candlestick holder and satisfied enough, header for a fake leopardskin hat that turned out to be late 1990s awful. Hours later, got home. That's where you get to check the take. Do the take check.

I spread it all across the kitchen table (a yard sale find, 1950s chrome legs, flecked green and white formica top with a leaf pattern, heart be still). Put away the sweaters, the skirt, the dress, the coat, the cooking with cheese book. And I took a closer look at this candlestick.

Blue speck on the scenic reprint: what's that? It looked like ink. A blot of ink. Scene reprint: it turned out to be Holland Pier, Rockaway Beach. But when? Gilding, cobalt glaze. Old. Man in hat and suspenders. Men don't stand around in hats and suspenders since a long time ago. There was a Boardwalk Empire on a Sunday afternoon look to it. I googled. Found these:

Entrance to Holland Pier, Rockaway Beach, postcard from 1912

Holland Ave. Pier, Rockaway Beach, postcard sent in 1918

Holland Dock Pier, Rockaway Beach, postcard sent in 1908

The first was clearly The Scene on the candlestick thing. The second seemed a bit newer, but was really taken, originally, from slightly further along the pier. The third had a white instead of a green fence. Still, more proof. I could almost hear the gulls, smell the salt, the water, hear the quiet that must have been then.

So it was old, this candlestick thing with the ink spot on the scene. And it was a souvenir from Rockaway Beach, back when Rockaway Beach was a real resort. And it has a horseshoe, a kind of lucky horseshoe, and I knew from some old file folder in the back left of my brain that back in the 19-oughts, resorts often sold souvenirs with things like lucky horseshoes on them. And they tended to serve 19-ought type of functions. And also back in those days, there were oil lamps and gas lights. Not too many candles. Someone trips on the edge of her nightgown, the candle lands on the lace curtains, and whoosh goes the pier. So this had to be something else.

It says Germany on the back. I stared at it for a few minutes. The dogs were sleeping, so I could think. I stuck a very standard sized candle in the hole of the well-type part. Candles, amazingly, according to a friend of mine who could be called a wax historian, have not changed that much. Already the idea of it holding a candle was a dimming possibility. And the candle didn't fit. And that blotch in the bowl.

Spot of ink. Horseshoe shape. I googled around and found this.

Souvenir inkwell from early 20th century.

There's the search, the find, the feign, the take, the long think. And then the stumble, the google, the google some more, and finally, the i.d. Germany, it turned out, owned the market for blue porcelain souvenir inkwells with scenes on them. Imagine a guy in shirtsleeves held up with garters, penning his order for 100 porcelain horsehoe inkwells printed with the postcard enclosed, sincerely, Messr. Somebody whose brother posed for the picture in hat and suspenders.

Danke. And you can find the find here.

Luncheonette x Sartorialist

1980s bittersweet boots in the warmth of the studio, luncheonettevintage

same boots photographed freezing outside on the feet of this adorable girl, thesartorialist

Out of line

Catalog cover: Carin Riley, Belinda (2010), Out of Line. Slag Gallery, NYC

Writing the catalog essay for the spring drawings show at Slag Gallery in NYC was a blast. These are anything but prosaic works on paper and the artists are tremendous. I grabbed the bit and ran with it.  An excerpt, or read the whole essay.

Before we are taught to perceive a line in terms of letters and words, we respond to line as pure line: scrambles, curves, loops, straights. Each shape has a different hum, a different vibration, character. Molly Stevens’s giant ink drawings on paper (Ink Mountain, 2009) have that primal quality, have palpable personas. In an elemental motion, the line surges from the bottom to the top, hovers up there, then plunges down to the baseline. Tall as humans, a pair of lines double each other, one awkwardly spooning the other. These are giants entreating, murmuring, humming. Stevens draws them with a brush attached to a stick in one continuous motion from beginning to end, placing herself at a distance from the page, a distance that allows for accidents, for change. There are countless attempts, but only occasionally does it resonate. There’s one in a heap of them in which the lines make the right sound.

.

Nearly 4 weeks old.

Vintage weekend afterburn

Timber wolves by Frederick Remington, vintagesuburbia

 There was a lot going on this weekend that had nothing to do with vintage. It was supposed to be that way. There was grocery shopping. There was writing. The landscape in my novel suddenly had to change. Or so I thought it should. I wanted to turn the bowl-shaped valley that the wolves live in into a hollow, or a clove, something that seemed more jagged and less tyrolean. That set off all sorts of revision-hell alarm bells. Consistency rebricked across all those pages could be the death knell, so after toying with it, I temporarily gave up.

1960s rat pack tuxedo, fabgabs

There was work. I interviewed a haberdasher for an upcoming article. I love interviewing haberdashers. He said, "Men no longer want a big silhouette. They want that slender, throwback, lean and mean fit." He said, "Black is the new black."

Colette in a suit, being brilliant back then

And I had to finish editing a kind of magnificent, far-reaching text by someone who is clearly, and I say this with no irony, brilliant. And clearly, in a slightly wild-haired way that somehow reminds me of Colette, of his own mind. And I had to query him, in English, through a few intermediaries, and hope the answers would somehow sieve out of German and back into English in a way that I could then blend them, a la Smitten Kitchen, deftly back into the batter, so to speak. And it worked, in the end, into a smooth, kind of peppery mix.

1970s-1980s pumps, and not the ones that smell that I talk about below. These ones don't smell at all. The ones that smell I wouldn't photograph. Somehow it might show up in the image, like a yellowish haze. These pumps are an unscented size 7.

As I write this I am sitting with a pair of old pumps on my lap that smell like stinky old shoes. I have been inhaling shoe stink somewhat unconsciously, until the last few moments, when it got — profound.

Just 5 of the pulp stack, a small fraction of the lurid cache. Coming soon to the luncheonette.

And just to the left of the laptop, towering behind the screen in a kind of tawdry jumble of type and color, is a stack of pulp mysteries and crime novels from the 1950s with names like Night at the Mocking Widow and Dardenelles Derelict. I'm going to sell them in the luncheonette for a friend. We had a blast going through the titles, the covers, the luridness of it all. And next to them is a stack of vintage cookbooks I am obsessed with, which have instructions like, place in a quick oven and bake, and be sure to save the drippings in a can for later: a thrifty kitchen is a practical kitchen!

Not from the back of a cookbook, no. You're right.

The point is that a weekend that was supposed to be very much not about vintage became a weekend in which vintage held me in thrall, in all its enigmatic impossibility, its time warp, its fragility, its other-time-ness. It called to me as I worked, cooked, ran. It created conundrums and commotion. It busted a little hole through the real-time sky.

At a barn sale one town over, I found an old 1950s lace cocktail gown, strapless, with peach-colored lace so delicate it threatens to fall apart at a lady's exhale, and dove grey trim around the bodice that has an unsettlingly mottled look over one side. It is, of course, tiny, and yet the chest is made for someone on the Jane Russell side. And on Beulah it does nothing, just hangs there limp like it's about to play bass at a Hole show in 1996. 

This is a beautiful dress, but it's beautiful more like bleached out Edward Gorey than like the hell-cat curvaliciousness of a thriving retro frock. In other words, it looks anemic. It makes Beulah look like a Greek statue in drag.

I have to figure out what to feed it to bring back its bloom. How to treat it. How to write about it. How to photograph it so it doesn't look like a dress stuck on doll parts, because on Beulah it looks, just, sad. So this is perhaps the crossroads dress that will finally make me forsake Beulah, in all her flea-bitten rickety wonder, for a more sleek, vanilla-linen-covered dress form that doesn't maw apart at the ribs or crack open at one rear hip panel. A Wolf? A Baumann? Would that I were so lucky.

Beulah was built about a hundred years ago and does not entirely resemble so much as confound the contours of a woman's body. She is probably more like the Victorian, bustled, chest-forward, corseted ideal of a body. With a hole in its skin and that smell, like pie. Better, I suppose, than the shoes, which I'm about to de-scent using my secret recipe, gleaned from an old cookbook, actually, written for clueless young brides.

Happy Sunday.

Vintage as a black and white cookie

Glaser's Bake Shop black and white cookies

This week, like nearly all of them, has not gone as planned. The chicks are doing marvelously but the camera makes them panic, so pictures are forthcoming once they are more used to the giant black spectre of a digital SLR in their midst. The chicken coop has arrived, brought on a Ford F350 and a pneumatic hydraulic superflexible trailer, driven by a man wearing an FD hat and sweatshirt and ghillie-toed logger boots. And levi's. It made me think, the sight of those big macho boots (he had big feet) with the frou-frou, snaz-ola touch of the kiltie toe. A functional part of the boot's design with a purpose: to block embers, protect the upper from chafing from laces. But they look fancy, regardless. They do.

The toe in question, called a Kiltie, looks fussy but has a purpose.

Same toes, not the same purpose. Vintage Italian Bruno Magli loafers.

Why do people wear what they wear? Why do they pick what they pick? Which me straight to the revelation of the black and white cookie.

Glaser's Bake Shop. 87th Street, First Avenue, NYC.

The point is, the black and white cookie is a flexible entity that can be savored and considered in many ways (Seinfeld, etc). 27 people might have one and noone will eat it the same way. And, incidentally, it started as a way to use up leftover cake dough — waste not in ye olden days. It is at least 108 years old: Glaser's, a famed old world bakery that happens to be in my sister's neighborhood, has been making them since the opened in 1902. Which makes it bona fide vintage.

Manning the ovens at Glaser's, some years ago.

And that fondant icing, made of simple ingredients, adds up to more than the sum of its parts. Like great outfits. Like a great piece of vintage, that emanates something far more than a piece of cloth with seams. We all know the phrase: a Peggy dress,

A Joan dress.

Means a world. Come to think of it, how many times do we see Joan in a black and white dress? Doesn't suit her. There's nothing really black and white on her surface, though there is,
I think, on the inside. Her curves have their own morality.

All from Simply Vintage treasury by cabinwindows

The thing about black and white cookies, which belong to the honored category of Food That is Vintage, is that they are stark and yet they are delicious. They are geometrically divided, they are round, and yet they have that warm, crumbly potential you can taste before you start eating. Vintage is that way, or can be. In black and white, it can look even more luscious. The forms come out, the lines, the retro, old-school, antique mechanics. You can nearly see the drafter's pencil at work, the giant shears at the tailor's. Cabinwindows is the etsy moniker for a biologist and anthropologist who made the treasury excerpted above. Black and white. She grew up watching biology filmstrips, lives in a haunted cabin, and she gets the black and white cookie of it all.