Puffed Up Productions

On September 6 of 1917, Alice sent a postcard showing the lobby of Chicago's Grand Pacific Hotel to Mr. Henry Heinks in Eden, Idaho. This is what she wrote, in blobby once-black ink that has faded to sepia in the 96 years since the nib of a pen siphoned it from an inkwell: Dear friend, I rec’d your card a long time ago and was glad to hear that you got home all O.K. I have been in Chicago for almost two weeks some place alright. from Alice Next to the one cent stamp, and above the addressee, the words “Post” & “Card” are printed in a green slant of open face type. The top curve of the capitalized “C” is slashed by a weedy dingbat, which is somewhere between older, more florid Victorian swashes and the sleek efficient accents influenced by post-WWI assembly lines. The front of the card is glossy, and when held sideways to the light, a fine craquelure enmeshes the central photographed image of eight tufted black leather club chairs arranged around the perim...

"Puff of Smoke:" Peter Pranschke's latch hook and velour confection is a masterpiece of psychometry. Because you know some old lady once smoked a lot of ciggies on this sofa. "HYPE:" Tim Meehan's paint-by-numbers message gets down to brass tacks! The following piece of pure puffery is from last March! Talk about upcycling!  I'm not sure why I have such a grudge against "upcycling." I've even made money off it: once, when I was selling my Junk Dungeon overflow on Etsy, I unloaded a large box of old cotton sheets onto a paying customer who subsequently spent hours and hours ripping the fabric into strips, and then braiding those into ugly rugs. Does this world really need more ugly rugs, or a cheese grater turned into a wall-mounted pencil holder? Upcycling always reminds me of the crafts suggested by that old Sunday Comics salt, Cappy Dick , my favorite of which was to make an ashtray out of a saucer by glueing neon-brite aqua...

When They Who Name Places spun the Wheel of Fortune, Benld, IL lost a vowel. Actually this mumble was invented by combining the town founder's three names, way back in 1895: Ben(jamin) L. D(orsey). Benld is famous for its coal, its Russian and Italian coal miner descendents, its meteorite , and its dinosaurs, made by an amazing artist named Charlie McGrady (whose studio we plan to feature at a later date). Al Capone opened a dance hall here, to entertain his goons who hid out with the local Italian diaspora when things got too hot in Chicago: The Coliseum, which burned down a few years ago. The best way to enter Benld is through the back door, from the North. Take Lake Ka Ho Road (also spelled Ka-Ho and Kaho) past big old oak trees, down hills, over creek bridges, through fields that suffuse the air with corn dust, like blonde hair streaming sunlight and diffuse notions of "America." Raptors! People in Argentina will pay over 50k for a dinosaur from Benld, m...

Uncle Ugly portrait by Virgil Elliott. Thanks to a splendid write-up by Nicki Dwyer about Joe's Cafe Gallery — which you can read @ Nicki's Central West End Guide here  — we were contacted by a former habitué of Gaslight Square, the artist Virgil Elliott , who now lives and works in California. He was most interested in the photographs by Thelma Blumberg, with captions written by O'Connell's legend Jack Parker, and provided this additonal information about the photograph of the Boneshakers. The bikers in the "Boneshakers" photo are Paul Stearns (standing) and Dennis Brannaker (sitting on the steps). The location of the shot is the porch/steps of The Exit, the coffeehouse at the corner of Boyle and Westminster. This was the summer of 1968.  Dennis Brannaker drove a cab for a living, and at some point acquired the nickname of "Uncle Ugly," after being known previously by some people as "Dirty Denny."  But since there was another guy nam...

Don't burn your fingers in the painted orange flame. S’mores once required a conflagration of some sort, either in a fireplace or out-of-doors. Here’s how a child’s introduction to the making of this sweet treat might have gone in the old days: A demolitions expert, who works for the Army Corps of Engineers and plays with dynamite for a living, leads a jeep brigade to the gravel bar of a remote Ozark stream one moonlit night, with the promise that "Kids, you're about to learn the single most effective way to make a campfire." The adults have crammed into the front of the rusty open vehicles, while the children ride in the back, the lucky ones standing up and holding onto roll bars, the unluckier clutching the bouncing sides as their shins get banged by heavy metal beer coolers and lawn chairs. Mist rises through the bottomland fields, white and weed-scented, while the whippoorwills quit their whipping, disquieted by the passing roar. At water's edge, yo...

Wheels not meant to rotate! Cotton candy is the intangible fusion of sweetness and light, transubstantiated into sugar and air by the calliope pipings of merry-go-rounds, three-ring circuses, and Ferris wheels. The preferred diet of radiant beings like Tinker Bell and My Little Pony, it is formed in the magic circle of centrifugal force. The mechanics of cotton candy making are always the same: Heat up some sugar and spin it. But untangling the history of the machinery involved is as sticky as eating the substance under discussion. Wharton and Morrison, a pair of candy-makers from Nashville, patented their "fairy floss" maker in 1897 and peddled the resultant sensation at the St. Louis World’s Fair of 1904. Patton sold his patented device to the Ringling Brothers circus in 1900, where the insubstantial filaments it blew forth became an instant crowd-pleaser. Lascaux, a dentist in New Orleans, came up with the actual name “Cotton Candy” in 1921 when devising a gizmo t...