Connecting Dots

This post is a bit of a departure from all the (uppercase) Gay Pride lately, but I need a diversion and, frankly, my reader could probably use one too.

As you may know, I enjoy the thrill of the vintage hunt, and late last winter I started picking up coffee mugs that had a distinctly 70s or 80s feel to them.  It seems random but don't forget - I had a huge tiki mug collection for like 15 years until I sold it last year.  One day a mug caught my eye, a beige one with a seventies graphic of a cat and the words "Le Chat" on it, which just made me think of "Le Car" and "Le Bag" and the whole "le" trend.  So I snagged it.

I ended up posting it to my Etsy vintage shop, but in the meantime I started using it and really became quite attached, so I was disappointed when it sold all-too-quickly.  It wasn't until later (when I started searching for a replacement) that I deciphered the signature on it and discovered it was part of a series of mugs that came out of a housewares store based in San Francisco in the 70s and 80s called Taylor & Ng.

I know I seem like a cynic most of the time, but when it comes to certain eras I actually get quite caught up, and that period in San Francisco is a real sweet spot for me.  I blame early exposure to the "Tales of the City" books. So I became slightly obsessed with the different mug designs by Taylor & Ng, and once I'd exhausted those Google image searches I tried to learn more about the company. What I learned made me love my lost mug even more.

The company Taylor & Ng was founded by Spaulding Taylor and Win Ng, an openly gay man born and raised in San Francisco's Chinatown.  The company produced housewares featuring whimsical illustrations by Win including mugs, trivets, linens and cookbooks that became enormously popular, and are quite collectible today.  They started with their own small shop and grew into a supplier for Macy's and other major department stores.  Additionally, they are credited with bringing the Chinese wok to the US and making it a common kitchen utensil.  (Those of you of a certain age will remember how popular the wok was when it burst onto the scene in the seventies!)

The company closed their store in 1985.  It is reported that Win spent the period after that focusing on his fine art.  Given that he died of complications from AIDS in 1991 at the age of 55, I'm guessing being diagnosed with HIV led to some rearranging of priorities.

On the one hand this is just another story of a gay man in San Francisco whose life was cut short by AIDS.  There are certainly enough of those.  But I suppose I was struck by the way that my impulse purchase at a thrift store led me to the story of a gay man completely unknown to me who left his gay world just as I was coming into my own gay world. And whose creations - as whimsical as they may be - live on for a new generation to discover.

I'm know I'm reading more into a mere coincidence than is really there, but sometimes I wonder if there isn't something that connects the dots for us, that draws us towards the things we really want to know.  It's certainly a New Age conjecture worthy of 1970s San Francisco.  In this instance, I'm kind of ok with that, because it brought me some knowledge that moved me, and it made me feel connected to an era I love.

And it brought me a different kind of gay pride. A lowercase one.

A Weekend Recommendation, and my new Blog

If you are planning to attend what is possibly Detroit's funnest street fair, the Dally in the Alley, this weekend, then you are a smart cookie.  Not only is it super casual, super fun and super cool, it is also the fair with the largest number of gays - at least in my casual observance.

When I was first looking for the gay community in Detroit it was actually the Dally that gave me hope one actually existed.  I mean, as far as gays go it's no Market Days, but it's more diverse and way groovier.  A September afternoon dallying in Detroit is about as good as the street fair experience gets.

Now, while you are dilly-dallying around you should stop by all the yard sales that will be happening on Historic West Canfield.  That's just one block down from the fair.  You know, that one tree-lined block that is so jarring to drive down, not only because the cobblestones are intense but because the homes are all so beautifully preserved.  Several of those lovely households have grouped together to sell some stuff, and more importantly, I'm joining them.

Stop by West Canfield between Second and Third and see me!  That's right across the street from Bureau of Urban Living, City Bird, Motor City Brewing and Traffic Jam.  I will sell you some cut-rate vintage cool stuff including some Hugh leftovers.  There will be vintage housewares, dinnerware, some barware, tiki mugs, even a Heywood-Wakefield desk.  Plus the usual random extra household stuff that always ends up in these things.

I need to move stuff out because my time as an itinerant has revealed to me that I have a shopping problem.  With no more Mezzanine or Hugh as an excuse to scrounge unlikely sources for vintage coolness, it has become apparent that those businesses were only a means to an end.  My need to score great finds continues unabated, and in fact has intensified since I've become I'm a man of leisure.

That's good for the general public on two fronts - first of all, periodically (like this weekend) I'll need to unload the things I don't want to keep.  And secondly, it has inspired me to try out a new blog.

The new blog is called Joe's Addiction, and all it does is feed you a daily photo of one of my vintage finds.  They might be things I keep, they may end up online at some point, possibly they will be Christmas gifts.  Who knows?  I don't.

I only know that every morning at 7:30am Eastern time a new photo pops up.  It might be something amazing, or it might be kind of pedestrian.  It'll be a surprise, and that's always part of the thrill, right?  Think of it as your scheduled, watered-down shopping experience - a methadone clinic for your little vintage-loving heart. I hope you like it!
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You'll Go Bananas

Uncle Bruce was more than an Ad Man ...

I've been reviewing a bunch of vintage Playboy magazines for a project I'm working on (no really, I read it for the articles), and I will tell you there are some great gay moments in those old issues.

I don't know if people just didn't pay attention or if it was a sly wink from a gay ad exec, but I am starting to suspect that "Mennen" isn't just a name, it's also a verb.

Done and done.

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Vintage DAC Beefcake

My grandfather was a member of the Detroit Athletic Club his entire professional life. When he passed away in the early '90's I drove by his house and saw boxes and boxes of magazines sitting on the curb for trash pickup. I stopped to see what they were (garbage-pick my own recently deceased grandfather? You bet.) and it turned out to be 30 years of National Geographic and DAC News magazines. I grabbed a handful of the DAC News from the sixties because I thought, well, there must be something cool in there.

I turned out there was a TON of cool pictures from DAC events as well as ads from Detroit at a time when downtown was still the business and retail hub of the region. And a shit-ton of automotive supplier ads. The car was still king! I should have grabbed way more, although I guess I'd have been stuck moving them around for the past fifteen years. Although I'd love to have some from the seventies ...

For those of you not familiar with the Detroit Athletic Club, it was, until 1987 or so, a gentlemen's club. You know, one of those old boys' clubs where women couldn't be members and men smoked cigars and drank scotch.

The lovely and architecturally significant Detroit Athletic Club, circa 1967.
(click to enlarge)

Today the club admits women and even Jewish people as members. How progressive! It's still pretty conservative and business-oriented, but a great place to have a three-martini lunch. And their facilities really are lovely. I do try to take advantage of the memberships of family members and friends whenever possible.

In one issue from 1968 I discovered a feature on the new athletic equipment. I thought maybe it might brighten up more than one day if I posted these photos of sixties conservative businessman beefcake. My apologies in advance if I am objectifying anyone's father.

"1, 2, 3, 4 ..."
(reminds me of this number from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes)

Whether you like 'em beefy...

... or lean and mean, there was something for everyone at the DAC.

OK, that's what I'm talking about. Wow.

"Ready to hit the steam room guys??"
(The steam room in which, as a young boy, I saw my first naked adult male.
Funny how those precious moments stay with you.)
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"House Beautiful" is right!

After I wrote about Hawkins Ferry and his impact on the overall fabulousness of SE Michigan, I heard from a couple readers who had some additional info on him. One regular reader tipped me off to the fact that Ferry's home had been published in House Beautiful back in 1969, and was even so kind as to give me a mimeograph of a page of it that had the house floorplans.

Obviously that was not enough for me and I had to see the entire feature, and recently my ebay searching bore fruit. Turns out Hawkins not only had a feature, he was the cover story. Naturally. Man, I've got a lot of catching up to do.

All this AND a feature called "Swing to Leather!"

It's a great spread and you get to see all the awesome furniture (hi, have a little Knoll) and art. I LOVE that he had a Giacometti in the living room, and in one photo you can see the awesome Bertoia sculpture "The Comet" that was only recently removed from the house by the Detroit Institute of Arts for restoration. And those upstairs porches outside the bedrooms are a verrrry nice touch.

Because I am a giver, I have taken the time to scan in the feature and I am posting it here. House Beautiful of that time was oversized and my scanner is normal-sized, so I had to perform unspeakable acts on the spine of that magazine and piece together two scans per page to get it, so please forgive the occasional obvious line where two images were joined. It looked fine in my graphics program but something about the conversion to jpg messed it up. Deal.

Each picture links to a larger version, and if you would like a hi-res PDF of the feature you can download it here (it is 30MB).
 
Ooooo and I got a little gossip too. I found out that Hawkins indeed had a boyfriend, a fellow who was Grosse Pointe gay. I have his name, but if you want it you'll have to ask realllllly nicely.