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December, 2011:

Daily Dimmick Gives Fading Ads Walking Tour of TriBeCa!

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Stephen Dimmick is a:

Forty-three year old Brisbane native, makeup magician & TriBeCa local.

Loves: My husband, dogs and makin’ women beautiful. Humour, compassion & history tickles me and I cry at the drop of a hat. I was once at a very short-lived musical theatre production and cried- not because it was bad but because people were there doing what they loved, living there dreams.

Dislikes: Cruelty, assholes & bad (typically New Jersey) drivers speeding through Manhattan (this is my neighbourhood not a thruway).

Fave motto’s: Success is preparation meeting opportunity.

Philosophy: I am loved and hated and everything in between. So “judge” for yourself at the end of the day I’m happy with who I am.

Fave joke: Too dirty to tell. LOL!

Uneeda Biscuit – Bridge Plaza Court – Brooklyn, NY

© Frank H. Jump

© Frank H. Jump

The Perfect Soda Cracker © Frank H. Jump

Varying the hue and saturation – then deleting the color information yield different aspects of this turn-of-the-century wall sign. Whitewashed quite a few years back, I was always able to faintly discern this was a Uneeda sign but finally the whitewash is fading and the old girl is beginning to shine through.

UPDATE: Vintage John V. Lindsay for Mayor Painted Billboard – Revealed After Over Forty Years – Flatbush, Brooklyn

An AH Villepigue Outdoor Ad for Lindsay On Bedford and Flatbush intersection - © Frank H. Jump

Some of my earliest memories of political graffiti was a “Dump Lindsay” scrawled on an overpass going south on the Van Wyck near the Atlantic Avenue exit in Queens. My recollections of his terms were dotted with strikes and riots. I was bussed a couple of miles from my house to another school in Springfield Gardens in an attempt to integrate the schools. I was not welcomed with open arms by either the parents or students. These were turbulent years but formative ones. My best memories were of the music.

This find was gotten from a tip by Sheepshead BitesRobert Fernandez. Can’t believe I’ve passed this everyday and never noticed it. I’m trying to discern if this was from Lindsay’s re-election campaign or his first election.

UPDATE DEC 29, 2011 @ 3:40PM

Upon closer inspection today during a photo shoot with the Brooklyn Paper – Courier-Life, I can see there was a billboard covering this that was recently removed. I tried to gain roof access to get a better shot and was invited into the apartment of a gentleman by the name of Ja’Mella God Allah, who remembered the former mayor Lindsay fondly. Ja’Mella, Chief of Public Relations for the Universal Black Family Awareness, Inc.,  and a student of the teachings of his mentor named Allah– a Black community activist during the Lindsay administration – told me about Lindsay’s efforts on keeping the Black community “together” after the assassination of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King. Then just fourteen, Ja’Mella heard the teachings of Allah and the “Five Percenters” (also known as The Nation of Gods & Earths – NGE) who worked closely with Lindsay in keeping the community focused on moving ahead in a positive direction of peace and prosperity. This alliance was documented in the legendary New York Magazine article Special Report: The City on the Eve of Destruction by Gloria Steinem and Lloyd Weaver which featured Allah and his Five Percenters movement. The New York Mag cover showed a split Empire State Building with Lindsay on one side and Allah on the other. I couldn’t find an image of this cover but did find a slideshow of notable New York Magazine covers.

Another person in the Lindsay administration that Ja’mella remembers fondly is Barry Gottehrer, an award-winning journalist whose “newspaper series City in Crisis helped elect John V. Lindsay mayor of New York in 1965 and who then joined the administration to help defuse the subsequent crises the city faced.¹

Allah with former mayor Lindsay aide Barry Gottehrer - courtesy of Ja'Mella God Allah

Ja'Mella God Allah in front of his building proudly wearing his Five Percenters pin © Frank H. Jump

Ja'Mella claims these were produced by the Lindsay administration for this organization.

Ja’Mella said that the billboard that covered this Lindsay campaign painted billboard came down several weeks ago. You can see it was protecting the sign and there was some washout near the name of Kreindler.

UPDATE FRIDAY, DEC 30, 2011 12:03AM

According to reporter Eli Rosenberg of Courier-Life / The Brooklyn Paper, this was from Lindsay’s first-time-run for Mayor of the City of New York “when both Luigi Marano ran for Borough Prez and Timothy Costello for Council Prez, which they both lost.”

Here is an image from Google images Rosenberg took as a screenshot verifying that the billboard was covering this ad this summer:

© Google Images

AGAIN! I thank Robert Fernandez of Sheepshead Bites for the tip on this sign!

© Frank H. Jump

New book ‘Fading Ads of New York City’ chronicles ghost signs as street art – NY Daily News

NYDailyNews.com

New York

New book ‘Fading Ads of New York City’ chronicles ghost signs as street art

Author/photographer Frank Jump captures long-faded advertisements painted on building facades decades ago

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Monday, December 26 2011, 2:11 PM

 	Author Frank Jump in front of one of the “ghost signs” on Archer Ave. in Jamaica, Queens that he writes about in his new book, “Fading Ads of New York City.”

Pearl Gabel for New York Daily News

Author Frank Jump in front of one of the “ghost signs” on Archer Ave. in Jamaica, Queens that he writes about in his new book, “Fading Ads of New York City.”

Mr. Peanut stands, white-gloved hand on shell-covered hip, in a fading ad painted on a brick building in Ridgewood.

At first glance, it seems like a wonderful remnant of a bygone era, perhaps from the 1930s, sure to stoke nostalgia among straphangers at the nearby Seneca Ave. subway station.

Frank Jump knows better.

The Queens-raised shutterbug, whose photos form the new book “Fading Ads of New York City,” is adept at tracking so-called “ghost signs” — and spotting the fakes.

Jump, who will sign his tome at the Queens Historical Society in Flushing on Jan. 26, pointed out a few problems with the Planters sign.

First, it faces the rising sun but still seems remarkably colorful. And Mr. Peanut doesn’t look as lanky as in other early Planters ads.

Conclusion: The ad probably dates back only to the 1980s, when it was created, some believe, for the movie “Brighton Beach Memoirs.”

No minutiae about such ads escapes Jump’s analysis.

His work is valuable to urban historians due to the fleeting nature of ads he photographed years ago. Many of the buildings on which they were painted have since been demolished.

“I’m just glad I caught some of them when I did,” said Jump, a Far Rockaway native who grew up in Belle Harbor, Laurelton and Howard Beach.

Jump began pitching a book on ghost signs after a 1998 exhibit of his photos at the New-York Historical Society garnered attention from literary agents.

Random House came close to offering a deal before a top executive shot down the project, Jump said. He eventually signed the contract for “Fading Ads of New York City” with the History Press.

The book provides insight into what drives Jump’s seemingly obsessive quest to document ghost signs.

When Jump was diagnosed at age 26 with AIDS, he became “acutely aware of himself as a body that might disappear,” anthropologist Andrew Irving wrote in the book’s foreword.

So Jump photographed ads that seemed, like himself, to be slowly fading.

Jump, who teaches technology at a public school in Flatbush, Brooklyn, snapped many signs in the book by climbing fences and walls.

The hardcover features a mix of fading ads across the city. Jump said he may compile another book devoted to Queens given the strong appeal of his work.

“It hits people on many different levels,” he said. “It has a broader audience than people who are just interested in New York.”

nhirshon@nydailynews.com

Twitter.com/nickhirshon

Lyric Theatre – Carrizozo, NM – August 2009

© Frenzo Jumposa

Someone was living in the Lyric Theater when I saw it last about 21 years ago. It was a small white stucco building and still had its “Lyric” sign. Carrizozo is a quiet town in central/southeast New Mexico.The Carrizozo Theater was opened in 1916 as an Opera House. It was screening films by 1918. By the 1930’s it had been renamed Crystal Theater, and was renamed Lyric Theater in the early 1940’s, when the seating capacity was listed as 319.

The Lyric Theater was closed in 1979, after problems & protests over the screening of “The Excorcist”[sic]

In 2010, there are plans being prepared to renovate the Lyric Theater. – Don Lewis for Cinema Treasures

Jack’s Trading Post – Carrizozo, NM

© Frank H. Jump

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2011-12-25

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Camera Mart – Midtown, NYC

Camera Mart—10th Ave & 456 W55th St.- August 1999. Ad circa 1960s. From Fading Ads of New York City -History Press © Frank H. Jump

Videography Magazine - November 1980

Carrizozo Trading Co – Carrizozo, NM

© Frank H. Jump

Coca-Cola Enamel on Tin Sign – Carrizozo, NM – August 2009

© Frank H. Jump