SKULLZ

"Hi STRANGER! ROCK YOU!" Got ¥3990 (or $45.90, at today's going rates)? Then blow it on one of these:


Shelter Bank's Genuine Fake "Human" Skull

Roughly the size of a 6" cube, they come in assorted colors (including glow in the dark!) and probably fit nicely inside any box, stocking, bag, scrap of used newspaper or whatever you might give nondenominational holiday gifts to people in.

Now if only they came in a life-sized version that cost less than $82,000,000.

Guitar Fucker: A One Man Rockin' Ear Assult

Lots of great things have come out of Sweden. Here's a small photo array of these things (because everybody loves pictures and maybe half of my visitors can't actually read):


1950 Saab 92



The Swiss Army knife (helping people remove their own limbs to save lives since 1890!)


Swiss chocolates!


a major graphic design movement & motherfuckin' HELVETICA (which was also pretty good little docu, by the way)



H. R. Giger


Ursula Andress (aka Honey Diver)

Most recently, I found out about this seething, bluesy, one-man rock gem from the Land of the Alps: Guitar Fucker.

Photo courtesy of Guillaume Lederrey via Flickr
And much like the Barbegazi, there's not much information to be found out about this guy. He's signed to Little Records out of Switzerland, a tiny little indie label run by two dudes with a total of four arms. He is a one man band because he's too much of an asshole to deal with other people (being an asshole = greatest mother of invention of all time). He's played with Bob Log III, Zen Guerilla, The Bellrays, and other only semi-recognizable acts. He might have been raised by harmonica-playing wolves.

Maybe this is old hat, maybe some of you have seen him play somewhere in the states (although I doubt that's happened yet). I can only hope he makes it round my way because if there's anything I love more than an angry, socially-retarded, egocentric musical genius, it's an angry, socially-retarded, egocentric musical genius with a foreign accent.

Have a taste of the sweetness...PORN FLAKES...DON'T TOUCH MY CAR

Robert Williams Art Show in NYC

While I was standing in the rain, zombie makeup melting off my face, waiting to be in the annual NYC Village Halloween Parade, thirty blocks north at the Tony Shafrazi Gallery is where I should have been. Much like the rest of October, I found out a week too late that the always bewitching art genius Robert Williams was having a Halloween opening night party at the gallery for his latest showing of work, "IN THE SERVICE OF THE HYPOTHETICAL".


See a preview of the show at Art Nouveau Magazine online.
I found out about the show from my always in the know (somehow) manfriend, Mark who stumbled upon the show on his lunch break just the other day (I'll have to post some pictures when he uploads them off his camera). He and his coworker stopped in and, while checking out the myriad of mindfucking paintings and nine foot tall sculptures, Mark realized that Williams himself happened to be in the gallery at the moment and he got to meet the artist who was integral in bringing together my love for absurdist, surrealist art and hot rods...a major part of how I self-identify today.

And then, I wept a little. (I mean, come on - when I found out I'd missed the Robert Williams opening for a less than perfect Halloween evening in the rain coupled with the fact that I was too sick to go to the Art of Rebellion show put on by Harley Davidson a few weeks earlier, I was, to say the least, pretty devastated.)

Anyway, lucky for me (and you!) the show will be open until January. You can visit the Tony Shafrazi Gallery at 544 West 26th Street, New York, NY 10001 (Hours: Tues - Sat 10-6).

Gangs of New York

©Bruce Davidson/Magnum Photos, New York.
I recently became engrossed in reading about the history of 50's gangs in NYC, which has turned out to be a satisfying little bit of sociological pie to bite into. One day I happened upon a website called Stone Greasers, which extensively chronicles the the history of mid-century teen gangs, specifically in New York, New Jersey, Chicago and Detroit. As you might imagine, what people now associate with the word "gang" is slightly different than what these Greaser gangs had going on...but not much. If you've seen the movie the Outsiders, you pretty much get the idea.

Point is, I think I'm so enamored with the idea of these teen gangs because it's a real-life example of the apex in which several major interests of mine converge: living in New York, mid-century ephemera and history, and counterculture. I can look at a Google Map of all the greaser gangs from the Bronx and it has extra meaning to me because I know where those places are. When I read that The Phantom Lords - a Williamsburg, Brooklyn based gang - were constantly having shoot outs on Bedford Ave., it makes me giggle as I juxtapose that mental image with the one of contemporary, hipster-centric Billyburg. I like hearing stories of miscreants of days gone by. I like knowing there were and will always be those who give a giant middle finger to the status-quo, for whatever reason. It makes me giddy on the inside. It should make you giddy too, because if you're reading my website you're probably a fan of the hot rodding lifestyle, which itself is very much a part of the "low-brow", working class, rebellious cultural history of America. Gangs, cars, porn, rock...all juicy slices of that same big aforementioned cultural pie. Deeeeelish.

Now, I had been trying with all my might to find some images of some of these gang children of New York, using every internet searching trick on every website I could think of, but with little luck. Obviously it's not like people ran around fifty years ago with digital cameras documenting the fuck out of the minutia of their life like we do now.

**Side note: During my scouring of Flickr I found a hilarious set of photos called "My Stepmom was a Celebrity Stalker in the 50's". Quite a hoot.**


Aunt Rita @13 with Jayne Mansfield, originally uploaded by whitesquirrel.

After cursing the existance of the virtual universe for twenty minutes or so (my patience has clearly been adversely effected by the internet age), I eventually found the name of a photographer, Bruce Davidson, who actually spent a summer following around Brooklyn gang, The Jokers, and documenting a season in the life of teen rebellion when he himself was only 22 :

From an NY Times article on Davidson: The photographs today portray a lost world of stickball and boardwalks, of Vaseline hair and rolled sleeves, Kent Filters and Karl Droge Big Squeeze Ices, basement dances and Susie the Elephant Skin Girl at Coney Island. The atmosphere was tight and intense, filled with flinty looks and an almost accidental glamour, where tattoos were more a fierce indoctrination than a calculated lifestyle choice.

Davidson's photos so eloquently capture the innocent rage of teenage years; such a specific emotion yet one that transcends time or place. I identify with them in many ways. They are just plain beautiful.

...I guess at this point I don't know what my original point was. Having been sick for basically the last month, my brain-power is at an all time low and at the risk of ruining what has so far been a pretty good attempt at an intelligent post, let me sum up what I'm trying to say: "Look at how cool these greaser hoods from the 50's were! Awesome! And these photos are so cool! And we name our car clubs and bands after them! Wowzers! They probably all came from shitty, poor immigrant families where they were emotionally and physically abused which is what makes kids band together in their misery as a tough-guy gang, but hey! They look so cool!"


Savage Skulls of the South Bronx
That's all, folks.

Happy Halloween

Hope yours was fantastic.


Nurse Kustom Kitten wishes you a happy Halloween

Metal Flake: It's a Beautiful, Beautiful thing

Call it what you want, it's still totally just glitter for boys.


Triumph gas tank my friend Peter is painting


'62 Chrysler New Yorker wagon


Yes.


"Trixie Tee" bucket


Cadillac at the Billetproof NorCal show in 2008


Artist Trading Card (or ATC) by Mel Kolstad






Protect yer noggin'



1940 Pontiac Deluxe Coupe



1964 Gretsch 6118 hot rod

And in case you want to fake your flake, the dudes at the H.A.M.B. have some good photoshop tips.

From Tiki Townhouse to Mid-Century Mansion

While cruising around the web for some good images of vintage wallpaper, I ended up on the Apartment Therapy blog, an interior design blog I happen to be familiar with on several levels already (they frequently mention the company I work for and used an image I'd taken at the semi-annual Brimfield Antiques Show in Massachusetts for a post they wrote on the fair and all the amazing junk therein).

The Apartment Therapy post I was honing in on through my search was about two people who I now am insanely jealous of - David "Duke" and Amy Carter - former Chicago residents of McKinley Park and proprietors of Pegboard Modern (a mid-century modern furniture showroom). Their old two bedroom apartment featured in the interview from 2007 is quite possibly the mid-century dwelling of my psychotic retro dreams.


David & Amy's living room (all photos taken by David & Amy)


An assortment of interior photos, mostly of their immense tiki collection.

From these few photos (there's more in a slide show on the Apartment Therapy site), you can tell they created an urban shrine to their retro religion. Not surprisingly, they also wrote a book on their collecting habits, Tiki Quest: Collecting the Exotic Past, documenting their tiki obsession in full four-color glory.

As I continued to look for more info on this admirable design duo, I found another feature on their abode, this one from April of 2009 on the Strange Closets website. By now they have moved to quaint Munster, Indiana with their son and have filled an entire cruciform (that means shaped like an X, basically; four square rooms that intersect in the middle), mid-century modern house with their fab furnishings.




(Photos by Tate Gunnerson from Strange Closets)


Seeing all this stuff makes me excited to finally have a place of my own one day (which is coming soon enough). Having lived with roommates for the majority of my life has made it difficult for me to have full control of the interior designing of my residency, which can be a super huge bummer if you are as emotionally conjoined to your surroundings as I am. It can also be a blessing, because god knows if I'd been living in a house I didn't have to move out of for the last ten years, I would have amassed a wealth of junk courtesy of my antiquing addiction. At least living in expensive, cramped apartments in New York that I have to move out of every two years or so has tamped down my hoarding of vintage knickknacks. For now.

The Carter house also makes me wonder what I must be like for a kid like theirs to grow up in a house like that. My parents never really had any collecting habits, outside of my Dad's brief obsession with Happy Meal toys when we were kids, when he insisted one day they'd be worth "something". (I hope they've all been sacrificed to the yard sale gods over the years.) I firmly believe that this has something to do with the fact that both of their parents had some particular obsessions of their own: my Dad's mother decorated the house with early American antiquities - horse hair couches, marble claw-foot tables, electrified gas lamps - and my Mom's Dad was a photographer, obsessed with cameras, musical instruments and vintage radios, and set aside his entire basement for tinkering and storage of his techno ephemera.

Once, when I came home during high school with a carload of beautiful vintage "junk" (Dad's words) I'd scored that day at an auction, I was excitedly having show-and-tell with Dad, who was making lunch in the kitchen. When it became clear to me he was feigning interest in my score, I confronted his apathy. "Look, Katie. I grew up in a house filled with antiques. It smelled like old people, the couches were uncomfortable, I wasn't allowed to touch anything. I thought it was completely stupid. Why fill your home with old, breakable things when it makes it impossible to live in?? I wish I could share your enthusiasm for "antiques" but I just can't. They make plenty of good dishes and tables nowadays. And if you break them, no big deal."

My Dad works with computers. Not much of a surprise, I guess.

At any rate, I look forward to my residential future, and to one day have a place that serves as both a gallery and an meticulously designed, comfortable living space...but one I can still hula hoop in without fear of ruining anything.