7-4-23 to 7-17-23

Real People With Real Problems – A Different Kind of LP Album Covers

These LPs are all from people who are handicapped, in one way or another. All are from between the 1960s and ’70s, and all are on private labels.
The prevailing maladies seem to be either blindness, dwarfism or lack of limbs. And almost all are about their relationship with Jesus. Most appear relatively happy and excited to be singing for the lord. This isn’t meant to make fun of the handicapped but to show how amazing it was a few years back when anyone could make their own album, individuals, churches, etc.
​https://vintagenewsdaily.com/real-people-with-real-problems-a-different-kind-of-lp-album-covers/

20 Mid-Century Christian Ventriloquism Albums 576
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In the 1950s and 1960s Christian teachers turned to ventriloquism to teach kids about Jesus. They made albums
​​https://flashbak.com/20-mid-century-christian-ventriloquism-albums-52632/

20 Famous Rock Stars When They Were Children

​https://www.thatericalper.com/2015/07/03/20-famous-rock-stars-when-they-were-children/

​Spanish Harlem in the 1980s – in pictures

Growing up in New York, photographer Joseph Rodriguez would take the subway from Brooklyn to east Harlem, where his uncle had a sweet shop, to spend time with the local Latino community (Rodriguez is of Puerto Rican and Venezuelan descent). He spent five years “sitting down at kitchen tables and listening to people’s stories”; the photographs he took are collected in Spanish Harlem: El Barrio in the 80s, published on 21 November by PowerHouse Books. “The only time local newspapers mentioned El Barrio was when crimes were committed,” says Rodriguez. “I knew I had to spend time to try and break these stereotypes. It’s important to show how that era was for people, to show their grit and resilience against social injustice.”
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2017/sep/09/spanish-harlem-in-the-1980s-in-pictures

HE WILD WILD WORLD OF JAPANESE REBEL BIKER CULTURE

Back in the 1970s the term bōsōzoku (or “speed tribes”) was first used to describe Japanese biker gangs that routinely fought in the streets with rival gangs and the police. Often dressed like Kamikaze pilots, the bōsōzoku wreaked havoc speeding through the streets on their illegally modified bikes, blowing through red lights, and smashing the car windows of any motorist that dared defy them with baseball bats. Foreigners were an especially favorite target of the bōsōzoku’s aggression.
The earliest incarnation of the bōsōzoku, the kaminari zoku, appeared in the 1950’s. Not unlike their idols from the films, The Wild Ones or Rebel Without a Cause, the group was formed by the youthful and disenchanted members of Japan’s proletariat, and the gang provided a place for the emerging delinquents to call their own. A fiercely disciplined and rebellious group, the bōsōzoku once boasted more than 40,000 members. By 2003 the bōsōzoku’s numbers had dwindled to just over 7000. According to first-hand accounts from former senior members, the modern version of the bōsōzoku (known as Kyushakai) no longer embody the rebel spirit of their predecessors. In fact, some have returned to homaging their rockabilly idols by donning elaborate Riizentos, a style of pompadour synonymous with disobedience. These days many ex-bōsōzoku parade around on their bikes in non-disruptive groups and enjoy dancing, performing music and socializing in groups in Harajuku, an area well known for its outrageous fashion.
 Many factors are to blame for the demise of the traditional bosozuku. A former leader of from the Narushino Specter gang in the 90s (and one time Yakuza loan shark), Kazuhiro Hazuki recalls that the police were once content to allow the bōsōzoku to run riot and no matter how many times they were arrested, a gang member never had their license revoked. Over the years, revised traffic laws have led to a rise in the arrest and prosecution of the bōsōzoku. Some also point to the inclusion of women as bōsōzoku riders, now a common sight in Japan, and a less than robust economy (many bōsōzoku bikes can cost as much as ten grand) for the drastic reduction in the gang’s
If this post has piqued your interest of vintage Japanese biker culture, there are several documentaries and films based on the bōsōzoku and other speed tribes in Japan, such as 1976’s God Speed You! Black Emperor, 2012’s Sayonara Speed Tribes, a short documentary that features historical perspective from the aforementioned Kazuhiro Hazuki, or the series of films from director Teruo Ishii based on the bōsōzoku that began in 1975 with, Detonation! Violent Riders. If you are a fan of Japanese anime, the story told in the cult film Akira deeply parallels the real world of the bōsōzoku in their heyday. Many images of the bōsōzoku of the past and their mind-boggling motorcycles follow.

Vintage Photos Give A Glimpse Into Hispanic New Mexican Life In The '80s

Kevin Bubriski's photographs will take you back in time.
By 
Carolina Moreno
May 11, 2016, 03:32 PM EDT
Kevin Bubriski was 26 years old when he arrived in New Mexico in 1981. The Massachusetts native had spent three years in Nepal with the Peace Corps and another year working in a mountain village before moving to Santa Fe to study film.
But once in the American southwest, he found a burgeoning and vivacious culture and people so far from anything he'd ever known, and he spent the next two and a half years of his life documenting their daily lives through his photography.
"The vitality and beauty of the Hispanic New Mexicans caught my eye, as well as [their] vibrant cultural life," the documentary photographer told The Huffington Post.
Bubriski recently compiled these images of intimate celebrations, casual car rides, romance and friendships into his new book, "Look into My Eyes: Nuevomexicanos por Vida."
"The photographs allow the viewer to encounter this community of three decades ago, quietly 'look into their eyes,' and ideally find a sense of our shared humanity," Bubriski told HuffPost. "The specific take away for me from the experience was a deep appreciation for the Hispanic culture and history of New Mexico."
Bubriski's subjects often gaze intently into his camera lens, indeed offering a look into their eyes and a brief glimpse into their world, which is accentuated by big hair, bold make-up and all the glamour of the early '80s. He says his photographs are a result of the "mutual respect" between the person behind the camera and those in front of it.
"As a new person to New Mexico, I felt that Hispanic New Mexicans were in some ways neglected by the other communities of Santa Fe and Albuquerque," Burbriski said. "I was there for a brief two and a half years, so I did not have a personal history with the place and the people. Maybe that is what gave me a freedom to experience the place with a fresh outlook. I had no preconceived notions of who anyone or any community was. I was young and interested in exploring the variety of landscape and people."
The photographer left New Mexico in 1983, and 33 years later he still remembers how "Santa Fe felt very much like a small town with a sense of casual friendliness." The state, he says, has grown immensely since.
​https://www.huffpost.com/entry/vintage-photos-give-a-glimpse-into-hispanic-new-mexican-life-in-the-80s_n_573237bce4b096e9f092f3d7

Rare Photos of '70s Black Beauty Pageants Celebrate Women Defying Beauty Standards

BY KRISTINA RODULFO PUBLISHED: JUL 8, 2016
When Raphael Albert was photographing West London in the '60s and '70s, racist, anti-immigrant tensions ran high. Albert, from the Caribbean island of Granada himself, gravitated toward the West Indian community thriving at the time amidst discrimination, and used his lens to capture celebrations of black communities.
One assignment he had as a freelance photographer was to cover a local Miss Jamaica pageant for the West Indian World. That sparked three decades of photographing London's black beauty pageants and eventually led to him organizing them himself. Now, his work is being displayed in an Autograph ABP exhibit called "Miss Black and Beautiful," launching today.
Every photograph embodies the contemporary "Black Is Beautiful" movement of the time. Women are documented wearing typical beauty pageant smiles, bikinis, and adornments, but also proudly wear afros at a time when Eurocentric beauty ideals reigned.
According to Renée Mussai, curator of the exhibit and head of archive at Autograph ABP, pageants were organized in the Caribbean since the 1930s but in the U.K., there were no contests for black women. Meanwhile in the U.S., there was a "rule number seven" that prevented black women from entering pageants–the first time a black woman competed in Miss America was 1970. Today, even, there have been less than five black Miss Universe winners in over 50 years.
​https://www.elle.com/culture/news/a37666/rare-black-beauty-pageants-london-photos/

The Girl Suspended For Wearing Pants – New York City, 1942

By Paul Sorene on April 17, 2019
In March 1942 Beverley Bernstein, 16, was sent home for her Brooklyn NYC school for wearing trousers. A protest ensued...
This great photograph shows students protesting the high school dress code that banned slacks for girls in Brooklyn NYC back in 1942. It illustrated a question in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle newspaper on March 26 1942. As war raged around the globe, readers were invited to consider the burning question: “Should high school girls, particularly students of Abraham Lincoln High School on Ocean Parkway… be permitted to wear slacks to class?”
The article featured Lincoln pupil Beverly Bernstein, a 16-year-old suspended by the school’s dean of girls, Bertha Cohen, for wearing blue gabardine slacks and a “lipstick-red sweater”. “She wore them to school, along with a lipstick-red sweater,” the Eagle reported.
Her rustication sparked a protest movement. The above photo was captioned: “Girls show up in slacks at Abraham Lincoln High School, in Brooklyn, in protest because a classmate, Beverly Bernstein, was suspended the day before for wearing slacks.”
Bernstein’s champions argued that slacks “are better than skirts in the event of an air raid”. Moreover they were vital to “conserve silk stockings”. They circulated a petition.
“The undersigned want to have official permission for girls to wear slacks to school for the following reasons:
a) The United Stated Government advocates slacks for school because they are better than skirts in the event of an air raid
b) They conserve silk stockings
c) They curb sexy clothes such as short skirts. Note: Boys also wish the girls to wear slacks and signing the petition in hope that it will be allowed.”
Presented with such reasoning, Lincoln’s principal shrugged, stating that “if the girls wear them, we won’t get excited about it”.
Slacks for girls was a national concern. Writing for the San Antonio Light newspaper (San Antonio, Texas) on May 22, 1942, Russ Westover, “Famous Cartoonist – Creator of ‘Tillie the Toiler'”, opined:
The girls appear to be winning their battle for the right to wear slacks to school. In Pittsburgh, for example, the superintendent of schools approved, provided, however, the girls do not take to any outlandish fashions that will create a distraction and a disturbance. In New York, when Beverly Bernstein was forbidden to wear slacks to Abraham Lincoln High School, she and fellow students staged a strike for the emancipation of women from skirts. They got up a petition which school authorities couldn’t talk down:
“The undersigned want official permission for girls to wear slacks to school for the following reasons:
(a) the United States government advocates slacks for school, because they are better than skirts in the event of an air raid; (b) they conserve silk stockings; (c) they curb sexy clothes such as short skirts.
Note: Boys also wish the girls to wear slacks and are signing this petition.”
It isn’t exactly true the government is advocating slacks for school. In fact, it’s fearful that unnecessary adoption of the style will aggravate the shortage of wool. However, in scores of other cities, girls have donned pants for school hours, and they’re on their honor not to let the fashion get beyond conservative bounds.
The least captious girls hate their beaux to present a rumpled, unpressed appearance. Let them take this tip unto themselves and keep slacks in press. Washable slacks should be kept at least as fresh as a girl keeps her blouse, her handkerchief. If the tailor stitches down the crease of wool pants, pressing them neatly is then an easy home job, and the crease doesn’t get out of line between pressing.
There has been a great spurt of publicity to get hats onto heads above slacks. And the long-visored cap, the cocoanut straw hat and the felt fedora type have been advocated for the slacks ensemble. The scarf or handkerchief turban is very popular. Another suggestion is the worsted snood.
As for the intrepid Beverly Bernstein, well, we know she was born in 1926, lived at 65 Exeter Street, Kings, New York, sharing her home with two younger brothers, Arthur and Leonard (not the musician), and parents, Russian-born Jacob and native New Yorker Ruth. We’d love to know more. Who were those campaigners in the photo? And what did Beverly Bernstein do next?
​https://flashbak.com/the-girl-suspended-for-wearing-pants-new-york-city-1942-414698/

Vintage 70s Selfies Show an Artist Discovering Her Sexuality

Playing dress up and shooting self-portraits at her parents' house in the suburbs coaxed Meryl Meisler out of the closet and into herself.
By Miss Rosen
Growing up in Long Island during the 1950s and 60s, Meryl Meisler had the typical suburban life: girl Scouts, ballet and tap dance lessons, and prom. But while she loved her family and friends, she didn’t quite fit in. She quickly realized she didn’t want to be a housewife, teacher, nurse, or a secretary—pretty much the only options available to young women at that time.
As Meisler came of age, she began to discover her sexuality as a lesbian as well as her identity as an artist. “Photography is in my genes,” Meisler said. Her paternal grandfather Murray Meisler, her uncle Al, and her father Jack had all been lifelong practitioners of the art.
Meisler got her first camera in second grade, but it wasn’t until she enrolled at the University of Wisconsin in Madison during the mid-1970s that she became serious about the form while pursuing an MA in Art. During school breaks, she returned to her childhood home, where she staged a series of self-portraits that examined her past, present, and future. At this point, Meisler hadn’t heard of Cindy Sherman, but she had the same instinct. She sought to examine the construction of the female gender, from its rituals to its poses to its personas.
A selection of these photographs appears in Purgatory & Paradise: SASSY 70s Suburbia & The City (Bizarre), while others have recently come to light as Meisler prepares for her next book. Here, she speaks with us about this seminal period of her life, sharing a self-portrait of the artist as a young woman ready to take flight.
​https://www.vice.com/en/article/ne48j8/vintage-70s-selfies-show-an-artist-discovering-her-sexuality?utm_source=vicefbus

Chola Style and Culture: 40 Fascinating Vintage Photos of Latina Gangs in Southern California From the 1970s and '80s

Vatos get the glory, but we all know it’s the Cholas that hold everything down. These fascinating vintage photos from from between the 1970s and '80s that show how influential Latina gangsters were on style and culture in Southern California. The look, the poses, the Germanic blackletter font still used widely, and the camaraderie are consistent in every shot.
https://www.vintag.es/2016/12/chola-style-and-culture-40-fascinating.html?m=1

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Selling Polaroid Portraits In The Bars Of Amsterdam, 1979-80 The Red Light District

Even artists on an idyll in Europe have to make money. Bettie and I found a lucrative gig selling instant photo portraits in the bars and clubs of Amsterdam. Every night we headed out for 4 or 5 hours seeking customers in Amsterdam's entertainment districts. Although at first we were not sure we would succeed, in retrospect I can see our success was virtually assured. Dutch art history is full of portraits done in bars and taverns, but apparently we were the first to update this tradition with instant photographs. Our Polaroid camera was a money machine fueled by alcohol; each photo sold for 6 guilders (approx. $3) and we usually took more than 50 pictures a night. We were soon a fixture of the city's nightlife with many regular customers eager to get new pictures whenever we happened to cross their path.
​https://98bowery.com/idyll-in-holland/amsterdam-prive-part-one

Artist Defies the Black Family Stereotype Using Abandoned Family Polaroids

“What intrigues me when I look at these images is that they show African Americans with a distinct and powerful sense of pride and joy. Despite the fact that these pictures are ‘found’ Polaroids, that power often lingers and transcends their personal subject matter… Many of these frames echo the key purpose of the Father Figure project, a counter-balance to the prevalent visual tropes of absent fathers and dysfunctional black families”.
Photographer Zun Lee continues his work on black male identity with his latest project, “Fade Resistance“, utilizing family Polaroids either found on the street curb or picked up in flea markets and on eBay. A collection he started a year ago of African American vernacular photography that spans from the 1970s until 2000, the Polaroids offer glimpses into everyday family life and, as Lee reflects, “descriptive of universal experiences”.


Zun Lee’s work is heavily influenced by his own personal family history. Born and raised in Germany, Lee didn’t discover until he was in his 30’s that his biological father was black, rather than the Korean father he had been raised with. He turned to photography to come to terms as well as to explore the concepts of fatherhood in black families – and to counteract the stereotype of the “deadbeat” black father figure, as he did with his earlier project series called Father Figure. “I hope this work can help question preconceived notions and present a broader context of black fatherhood. Perhaps it can serve as a counter-narrative to humanize black men as present and competent fathers in a media climate that largely continues to deny this possibility.”


Zun Lee will be presenting “Fade Resistance” at the upcoming Magnum Foundation’s Photography, Expanded Symosium. With over 3,000 collected Polaroids, Lee hopes that they will be reunited with their families over the course of this project and expects to lead the collection into an interactive online space to assist with not only identifying them but also to allow for the public to interact with the photographs and contribute their own family photos. “My hope is, at the very minimum, to give the vintage Polaroids a new ‘virtual home’ in a present-day context but with a revitalized meaning and contemporary significance.”
http://1world1family.me/artist-defies-the-black-family-stereotype-using-abandoned-family-polaroids/

Found Photos: One Woman’s Love Affair With Her Married Boss

Between May 1969 and December 1970 unmarried secretary Margret S., 24, and her German businessman boss, Günter K., 39, were engaged in a clandestine love affair.
Günter kept records of the romance, hundreds of color and black-and-white photographs showing Margret S., samples of her hair (head and pubic), her fingernails, empty contraception packages, a blood-stained napkin, hotel receipts, movie and theater tickets and sexually explicit diary entries. More than thirty years later, the records were found, locked inside a briefcase.
Veit Loers notes:
“In September 1970, the diary entries set in, with precise descriptions of what happens during foreplay and then of the sexual act itself, but also mentioning all kinds of things happening besides. All this is meticulously typed, in red and black ink, as by a bookkeeper of his own obsession. The couple go on ‘business trips’ in Günter’s Opel Kapitän, stay at spa hotels and visit the casino in Wiesbaden. Then the trysts begin to take place in an attic flat in Günter’s store building. Nobody is supposed to know, but people must notice something. Margret prepares roulades and redfish filets with cucumber salad. They drink Cappy (orange juice) with a green shot (Escorial, strong liquor) and watch ‘colourful television’.
Margret dresses for him in the clothes he has bought her. He, the perfect lover, in truth is a macho man who wants to have everything under control. She enjoys his attention, his generosity, is happy to let herself be manipulated, is jealous, becomes pregnant despite the pills, and has an illegal abortion − for the third time in her young life. Just before Christmas 1970 the reports and photographs break off. The relationship appears to be at an end. Margret is scared. She tells him that ‘after Christmas the fucking will be over and you will not dance at two weddings anymore’. He gets involved with other women. These are no love stories, though, just obsessive sexual romps, chronicled nonetheless in hundreds of grotesque documents testifying to the stuffy German milieu in the early years of the Kohl era.”
Does Mrs K suspect? Yes:
Monday 7.9.1970: At lunch Leni [Günther’s wife] says to Margret: Madame, you are a lesser character, you are disrupting a good marriage.
Tuesday 8.9.1970: Around 10 a clock Margret says to me: You let this insult from your wife against me pass? No more sex, you can jump on your own wife. Whatever you do, you are not allowed to jump on me anymore.
Later, my wife has to apologize to her at lunch on 8.9.1970.
The loves retire for sex. He later adds:
Devil salad is eaten. Everything is okay again.
The photographs are extraordinary. They are also racy and NSFW. We do get to see Günther in one picture. It the part of him that did his thinking.
https://flashbak.com/found-photos-one-womans-love-affair-with-her-married-boss-53673/

Meet Hilda, The Forgotten Plus Size Pinup Girl From The 1950s (10 Pics)

You’d be pretty accurate when saying that the media in the 1950s was promoting the image of a woman’s beauty that was skewed towards the curvy slender models like typical pinup girls. But it wasn’t all like that as the illustrator Duane Bryers (1911-2012) proved with Hilda, a plus-sized pinup model.

Ahead of his talk with Toby Mott at the ICA, the founder of the legendary Sniffin’ Glue fanzine shares his thoughts on punk in the 21st century

Jessie Pink
“You start off by kicking down the doors, then you end up at Butlins!’ quips writer and musician Mark Perry. He’s recalling his experience of the punk scene, where he situated himself front and centre after founding fanzine Sniffin’ Glue in 1976. “I just felt there was a need to have a magazine that was devoted to punk rock so I had the idea to start my own fanzine,” he explains over the phone. “That’s why it was important at the time, because it was the first UK fanzine to write about punk rock.” Inspired by The Ramones, Sniffin’ Glue quickly became an authentic outlet for punk in the 70s. Writers included future NME scribe Danny Baker, and were supported by photographs from Dennis Morris – otherwise known as ‘Mad Dennis’.
As punk celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, Perry and punk historian/cultural archivist Toby Mott will go head to head on May 11 at the ICA in London, where Perry will also perform with his band, Alternative TV. Ahead of the event, we caught up with the writer, musician and publisher to talk about the historic Sniffin’ Glue, as well as punk’s place in the digital age.
https://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/30999/1/mark-perry-tracing-the-beginnings-of-the-punk-fanzine

What About Gay Bob?

What About Gay Bob?
The First Openly Gay Doll (for everyone) Was a Trailblazer Toy
In 1977, Gay Bob came out of the closet. 
Thirteen inches tall and plastic, Gay Bob was marketed as the first openly gay doll and made his retail debut in mail-order catalogs. He was sold in a cardboard box designed to look like a closet. Gay Bob's packaging proudly (and wordily) explained what “coming out of the closet” meant:
"Hi boys, girls and grownups, I’m Gay Bob, the world’s first gay doll. I bet you are wondering why I come packed in a closet. ‘Coming out of the closet’ is an expression which means that you admit the truth about yourself and are no longer ashamed of what you are... A lot of straight people should come out of their 'straight closets' and take the risk of being honest about what they are. People who are not ashamed of what they are, are more lovable, kind, and understanding. That is why everyone should come out of “their closet" so the world will be a more loving, understanding, and fulfilling place to live. Gay people are no different than straight people. If everyone came out of their closets, there wouldn’t be so many angry, frustrated, frightened people... It’s not easy to be honest about what you are; in fact it takes a great deal of courage. But remember, if Gay Bob has the courage to come out of his closet, so can you!"
At face value, Gay Bob’s message about the merits of coming out seems earnest, espousing the values of courage, honesty, and living authentically; however, the branding and design of the Gay Bob doll are brash. Gay Bob’s story is deceptively complicated and intertwined in toy and LGBTQ+ history. 
THE CREATOR - WHO MADE GAY BOB?
Gay Bob was created by an advertising executive named Harvey Rosenberg. Rosenberg put $10,000 of his own money into getting Gay Bob manufactured through his company, Gizmo Development.
While Rosenberg did not identify as gay, he stated that he had created the doll to liberate men from traditional sexual roles. According to Rosenberg, regardless of a person’s sexuality, Gay Bob could serve as an example for having the courage to “come out of the closet” and be your true, authentic self. During a press blitz for the doll’s release, Rosenberg also indicated that Gay Bob was a spoof of other “amorphous, sexless dolls,” which was undoubtedly a reference to Mattel’s KenTM and BarbieTM. He had plans to release additional dolls that would have made up the rest of Gay Bob’s family (a mother, father, and two brothers); however, the other dolls were never produced.
Gay Bob dolls were sold via mail-order advertisements in gay magazines and a few boutique shops in New York City and San Francisco. 
"Does God Ever Speak through Cats?" is a book about Christian spirituality and cats. When David Evans moved into a new house in Los Angeles, he unwittingly embarked on two strange new journeys. One involved a totally new relationship with God. The other was focused on a stray cat that was living in the backyard. To David's great surprise, he discovered that these two very different journeys were related to each other and had a lot in common. This is the book he wrote to tell that story.
https://nhm.org/stories/what-about-gay-bob