The Story of “Wipe Out,” the Classic Surf Rock Instrumental

in Music | August 20th, 2020

“Not all gen­res in music are self-explana­to­ry,” writes Mark Stock at The Man­u­al. “Just ask baroque pop or post met­al. With surf rock, how­ev­er, it’s pret­ty much as adver­tised.” This obser­va­tion gets at what makes surf rock so refresh­ing. Its “wavy gui­tar sounds” and rol­lick­ing beats are a musi­cal ono­matopoeia for the thrills of a sun-drenched sport. From its niche ori­gins, surf rock invad­ed garages around the world. It found its way into the Pix­ies and the B‑52s. Waves of indie surf bands con­tin­ue to wash ashore.

Surf rock meld­ed with hard­core punk, anoth­er genre that does what it says and has scored many a board sport. Where hard­core is aggro, surf is mel­low and joy­ous, even when it’s sin­is­ter and dan­ger­ous; hard­core thrives on bash­ing three-minute attacks, surf shows off its tech­ni­cal chops, even when it sticks to three chords, as in the Sur­faris’ clas­sic “Wipe Out.”

The song, a 12-bar blues dri­ven by Ron Wilson’s drum solo, pro­duced “the yard­stick for every aspir­ing young drum­mer in the ear­ly 60s” and beyond. At the time of its record­ing, Wil­son wasn’t even old enough to dri­ve.

Accord­ing to gui­tarist Bob Berry­hill, the Sur­faris formed in 1962 while the mem­bers of the band were still in high school. (Their sax play­er, Jim Pash, was 12 when he joined.) They played teen dances and tal­ent shows, and by Jan­u­ary the fol­low­ing year, they had an orig­i­nal, “Surfer Joe.” They had their par­ents dri­ve them to a stu­dio owned by a man named Dale Small­en.

We met at a place in the Cal­i­for­nia desert called Cuca­mon­ga, and record­ed Surfer Joe. In those days 45’s required a B side so Dale asked us to play anoth­er song. We had not writ­ten a song before Surfer Joe so I sug­gest­ed a drum solo type of song with sim­ple gui­tar breaks. Ron­nie start­ed play­ing the famous Wipe Out solo and in about 10 min­utes we had the song togeth­er. We need­ed a gim­mick intro­duc­tion so my Dad broke a plas­ter soaked board close to the mic and Dale Small­en let out a laugh and screamed wipe out. We gave Dale the mas­ter tape and he took it to Hol­ly­wood, and by July 1963 it was #2 on the Bill­board top 100. 

Before they knew it, the teenaged Sur­faris were tour­ing Japan, Aus­tralia, and the U.S. with Roy Orbi­son, The Beach Boys, the Right­eous Broth­ers, and The Ven­tures, a bril­liant instru­men­tal rock band who were one of the biggest things going in the ear­ly 1960s.

The Ven­tures took “Wipe Out” fur­ther into the reach­es of drum­ming leg­end in their cov­er (see drum­mer Mel Tay­lor attack­ing the skins like Gene Kru­pa in a live per­for­mance in Japan from 1965, above). Then, in 1966, the Sur­faris broke up. The Bea­t­les had wiped them off the charts, or as Berry­hill puts it, some­what bit­ter­ly, “The British Inva­sion changed music to focus more on the intro­spec­tive needs of the ‘Me Gen­er­a­tion.’” Surf lost its hip appeal, but it was not for­got­ten.

“In 1980,” Berry­hill says, “the punk/new wave move­ment revived ‘Wipe Out,’ which gave it a new audi­ence.” It popped up in com­mer­cials, The Fat Boys teamed up with The Beach Boys for a rap cov­er, even the Mup­pets had a ver­sion. Surf rock “became a sponge,” surf gui­tarist Jason Lough­lin says. “In the 80s through the 90s [it] soaked up influ­ences from punk music and alter­na­tive rock.” Bands like Man or Astro-Man? brought in peri­od sci-fi rev­er­ences; surf teamed up with rock­a­bil­ly, anoth­er genre that “had a short win­dow of pop­u­lar­i­ty and growth and then went under­ground” until the 80s.

But “Wipe Out” acquired a spe­cial sta­tus as a pure spec­i­men of surf. It remains one of the most pop­u­lar instru­men­tal songs of all time. And all because of an inven­tive 15-year-old drum­mer, his high school bud­dies, and their sup­port­ive par­ents. It may not be the most rock ’n’ roll of musi­cal his­to­ries, but it is the most surf rock of sto­ries. A tale of tal­ent, teenage enthu­si­asm, and the guile­less desire to make oth­er kids dance.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Gnarly Surf Rock of Dick Dale (RIP): Watch the Leg­end Play “Misir­lou,” Surfin’ the Wedge,” and “Pipeline” (with Ste­vie Ray Vaugh­an)

Quentin Taran­ti­no Explains The Art of the Music in His Films

A His­to­ry of Rock ‘n’ Roll in 100 Riffs

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Free Courses to Maintain Mental & Physical Health During a Pandemic

in Health, MOOCs, Psychology | August 20th, 2020

As I write this, the smoke from the numer­ous for­est fires across Cal­i­for­nia are mak­ing the air qual­i­ty ter­ri­ble, so we are being told to stay inside. How­ev­er, the heat­wave is mak­ing it insuf­fer­able to *be* inside. And we also have to be wary of COVID-19 and wear a mask. You could say this is a slight­ly stress­ful sit­u­a­tion. And a lot of us are deal­ing with even more than that–job sta­bil­i­ty, rent, and on and on. Just typ­ing this made me anx­ious!

Dur­ing this time we should try not to neglect our men­tal health. For­tu­nate­ly Cours­era offers free online cours­es about Men­tal Health and Well-Being.

The Cours­era video above comes from a Face­book live event that fea­tures Yale University’s Lau­rie San­tos, who teach­es Coursera’s Sci­ence of Well-Being course. This 30 minute Q&A dives right in to our cur­rent sit­u­a­tion, with San­tos out­lin­ing a pro­to­col for men­tal health that should be as much a part of your reg­i­men as wear­ing a mask and wash­ing your hands with soap (while singing Hap­py Birth­day to your­self, don’t for­get.)

Here’s a top ten of Cours­er­a’s most pop­u­lar health & well-being cours­es to check out:

San­tos answers ques­tions from view­ers, cov­er­ing top­ics like avoid­ing ten­sion and argu­ments with our loved ones, stay­ing informed on the world with­out cre­at­ing more anx­i­ety, how can frontline/healthcare work­ers com­bat anx­i­ety, how to keep your­self pos­i­tive when liv­ing alone with­out fam­i­ly or friends, how to keep pro­duc­tive and healthy at work with the threat of lay­offs, how to look for a new job after being laid off because of COVID, how to help your child who is miss­ing their school friends, how do we cre­ate good expe­ri­ences to cre­ate good mem­o­ries, what we can do about sleep prob­lems, how to care for fam­i­ly mem­bers with COVID while also work­ing a job, and how to show ran­dom acts of kind­ness dur­ing this time (which is what San­tos cov­ers often in her Hap­pi­ness Lab pod­cast).

Over­all, focus on self-com­pas­sion, San­tos says, which has to be the start­ing point for all of this. When you enroll in these cours­es, Cours­era gives you two options. You can enroll as a paid stu­dent and get a cer­tifi­cate at the end. Or choose to “audit” the course (as shown here) and the course is free. Just like in col­lege! All the learn­ing, none of the blue book essays!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Psy­chol­o­gy & Neu­ro­science Cours­es

Cours­era Makes Cours­es & Cer­tifi­cates Free Dur­ing Coro­n­avirus Quar­an­tine: Take Cours­es in Psy­chol­o­gy, Music, Well­ness, Pro­fes­sion­al Devel­op­ment & More Online

1,500 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

Free Cours­es on the Coro­n­avirus: What You Need to Know About the Emerg­ing Pan­dem­ic

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

Essential Reads on Feminism: The New York Public Library Creates a Reading List to Honor the 100th Anniversary of the 19th Amendment

in Books, Gender | August 19th, 2020

We may all have the best of inten­tions when we col­lect and share read­ing lists. We buy the books, stack them neat­ly by the chair or bed, then some­thing hap­pens. Like… lit­er­al­ly, every day, some­thing hap­pens…. Let’s cut our­selves some slack. We’ll get to those books, or give them away to peo­ple who will read them, which is also a good thing to do.

But even if we can’t keep up, read­ing lists are still essen­tial edu­ca­tion­al tools, espe­cial­ly for kids, young adults, and their par­ents and teach­ers. As we cel­e­brate the cen­te­nary of the 19th Amend­ment (which fell on August 18th) and talk about its many short­com­ings, it may be more impor­tant than ever to under­stand the U.S. his­to­ry that brought us to the cur­rent moment.

This is a his­to­ry in which—whether rights were guar­an­teed by the con­sti­tu­tion or not—peo­ple his­tor­i­cal­ly denied suf­frage have always had to strug­gle. Each gen­er­a­tion of women, but most espe­cial­ly Black, Lat­inx, Indige­nous, and LGBTQ women, must claim or reclaim basic rights, lib­er­ties, and pro­tec­tions. More than ever, fem­i­nist read­ing lists reflect the vast dif­fer­ences in col­lec­tive and per­son­al expe­ri­ence that fall under the label “Fem­i­nist.”

To illus­trate the con­tin­ued crit­i­cal impor­tance of fem­i­nist his­to­ry, the­o­ry, and lit­er­a­ture, the New York Pub­lic Library pub­lished read­ing lists for adults, kids, and teens on the 19th Amendment’s 100th anniver­sary. These books can help cre­ate com­mu­ni­ty and sol­i­dar­i­ty and inspire deep reflec­tion as kids are pushed back into schools and par­ents and teach­ers try to help them cope.

The adult list con­tains 126 books and includes links to the library cat­a­log or e‑Book edi­tions. “The titles bridge the past and present of fem­i­nist move­ments, from Simone de Beauvoir’s The Inde­pen­dent Woman (1949) to Rox­ane Gay’s Bad Fem­i­nist: Essays (2014), and from the ear­li­est man­i­festos for equal­i­ty to con­tem­po­rary writ­ings on inter­sec­tion­al­i­ty,” Valenti­na Di Lis­cia writes at Hyper­al­ler­gic.

The lists for kids and teens are of a more man­age­able length, and “if you’re look­ing to stock the book­shelves before his­to­ry class starts this fall,” you can hard­ly do bet­ter than to start with these titles (or just book­mark the lists for now), as Danielle Valente—who help­ful­ly tran­scribes both lists, below—notes at Time Out New York.

NYPL’s Essen­tial Reads on Fem­i­nism: For Kids 

• Black Girl Mag­ic by Mahogany L. Browne
• Black Women Who Dared by Nao­mi M. Moy­er
• Bold & Brave: Ten Heroes Who Won Women the Right to Vote by Sen­a­tor Kirsten Gilli­brand,
• Brave. Black. First. 50+ African Amer­i­can Women Who Changed the World by Cheryl Willis Hud­son
• Delores Huer­ta: A Hero to Migrant Work­ers by Sarah War­ren
• Eliz­a­beth Start­ed All the Trou­ble by Doreen Rap­pa­port
• Equal­i­ty’s Call: The Sto­ry of Vot­ing Rights in Amer­i­ca by Deb­o­rah Diesen
• Good Night Sto­ries for Rebel Girls: 100 Tales of Extra­or­di­nary Women by Ele­na Fav­il­li and Francesca Cav­al­lo
• The Gut­sy Girl: Escapades for Your Life of Epic Adven­ture by Car­o­line Paul
• Heart on Fire: Susan B. Antho­ny Votes for Pres­i­dent by Ann Malaspina
• Her­sto­ry: 50 Women and Girls Who Shook Up the World by Kather­ine Hal­li­gan
• I Am Enough by Grace Byers
• I am Jazz by Jes­si­ca Herthel and Jazz Jen­nings
• Ida B. Wells: Let the Truth Be Told by Wal­ter Dean Myers
• It Feels Good to Be Your­self: A Book About Gen­der Iden­ti­ty by There­sa Thorn
• Julián Is a Mer­maid by Jes­si­ca Love
• Lead­ing the Way: Women in Pow­er by Janet How­ell and There­sa How­ell
• Lil­lian’s Right to Vote: A Cel­e­bra­tion of the Vot­ing Rights Act of 1965 by Jon­ah Win­ter
• Lim­it­less: 24 Remark­able Amer­i­can Women of Vision, Grit, and Guts by Leah Tinari
• Lit­tle Lead­ers: Bold Women in Black His­to­ry by Vashti Har­ri­son
• Lucía the Luchado­ra by Cyn­thia Leonor Garza
• Malala’s Mag­ic Pen­cil by Malala Yousafzai
• Miss Paul and the Pres­i­dent: The Cre­ative Cam­paign for Wom­en’s Right to Vote by Dean Rob­bins
• The Moon With­in by Aida Salazar
• My Name Is Truth: The Life of Sojourn­er Truth by Ann Turn­er
• Noto­ri­ous RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bad­er Gins­burg by Irin Car­mon and Shana Knizh­nik
• Rad Amer­i­can Women A–Z: Rebels, Trail­blaz­ers, and Vision­ar­ies Who Shaped Our His­to­ry… and Our Future! by Kate Schatz
• Ros­es and Rad­i­cals: The Epic Sto­ry of How Amer­i­can Women Won the Right to Vote by Susan Zimet
• Shak­ing Things Up: 14 Young Women Who Changed the World by Susan Hood
• She Per­sist­ed: 13 Amer­i­can Women Who Changed the World by Chelsea Clin­ton
• They, She, He, Me: Free to Be! by Maya Gon­za­lez and Matthew SG
• Women Win the Vote!: 19 for the 19th Amend­ment by Nan­cy B. Kennedy

New York Pub­lic Library’s Essen­tial Reads on Fem­i­nism: For Teens 

• Alice Paul and the Fight for Wom­en’s Rights by Deb­o­rah Kops
• Ask a Queer Chick: A Guide to Sex, Love, and Life for Girls Who Dig Girls by Lind­say King-Miller
• Because I Was a Girl: True Sto­ries for Girls of All Ages by Melis­sa de la Cruz
• Beyond Magen­ta: Trans­gen­der Teens Speak Out by Susan Kuk­lin
• Beyond the Gen­der Bina­ry by Alok Vaid-Menon
• Brazen: Rebel Ladies Who Rocked the World by Péné­lope Bagieu
• The Bride Was a Boy by Chii
• Col­o­nize This!: Young Women of Col­or on Today’s Fem­i­nism by Daisy Hernán­dez and Bushra Rehman (eds.)
• Dear Ijeawele, or a Fem­i­nist Man­i­festo In Fif­teen Sug­ges­tions by Chi­ma­man­da Ngozi Adichie
• Fem­i­nism Is… by Alexan­dra Black, Lau­ra Buller, Emi­ly Hoyle and Dr. Megan Todd
• Fem­i­nism: Rein­vent­ing the F‑Word by Nadia Abushanab Hig­gins
• Fierce Femmes and Noto­ri­ous Liars: A Dan­ger­ous Trans Girl’s Con­fab­u­lous Mem­oir by Kai Cheng Thom
• Fight Like a Girl: 50 Fem­i­nists Who Changed the World by Lau­ra Bar­cel­la
• Full Frontal Fem­i­nism: A Young Wom­an’s Guide to Why Fem­i­nism Mat­ters by Jes­si­ca Valen­ti
• Girl Ris­ing: Chang­ing the World One Girl at a Time by Tanya Lee Stone
• Girls Resist!: A Guide to Activism, Lead­er­ship, and Start­ing a Rev­o­lu­tion by Kae­Lyn Rich
• Girls Write Now: Two Decades of True Sto­ries from Young Female Voic­es
• Here We Are: Fem­i­nism for the Real World by Kel­ly Jensen (ed.)
• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
• I, Rigob­er­ta Menchú: An Indi­an Woman In Guatemala by Rigob­er­ta Menchú
• Light­ing the Fires of Free­dom: African Amer­i­can Women in the Civ­il Rights Move­ment by Janet Dewart Bell
• Mod­ern Her­sto­ry: Sto­ries of Women and Non­bi­na­ry Peo­ple Rewrit­ing His­to­ry by Blair Imani
• Mus­lim Girl: A Com­ing of Age by Amani Al-Khataht­beh
• Not for Our­selves Alone: The Sto­ry of Eliz­a­beth Cady Stan­ton and Susan B. Antho­ny by Geof­frey C. Ward and Ken Burns
• #NotY­our­Princess: Voic­es of Native Amer­i­can Women by Lisa Charley­boy and Mary Beth Leatherdale (eds.)
• Rethink­ing Nor­mal: A Mem­oir in Tran­si­tion by Katie Rain Hill
• She Came to Slay: The Life and Times of Har­ri­et Tub­man by Eri­ca Arm­strong Dun­bar
• Sis­sy: A Com­ing-of-Gen­der Sto­ry by Jacob Tobia
• Tomboy: A Graph­ic Mem­oir by Liz Prince
• Trans Teen Sur­vival Guide by Owl and Fox Fish­er
• Trans+: Love, Sex, Romance, and Being You by Kathryn Gon­za­les and Karen Rayne
• Votes for Women!: Amer­i­can Suf­frag­ists and the Bat­tle for the Bal­lot by Winifred Con­kling
• With Courage and Cloth: Win­ning the Fight for a Wom­an’s Right to Vote by Ann Bausum
• You Don’t Have to Like Me: Essays on Grow­ing Up, Speak­ing Out, and Find­ing Fem­i­nism by Ali­da Nugent
• Ama­zons, Abo­li­tion­ists, and Activists: A Graph­ic His­to­ry of Wom­en’s Fight for Their Rights by Mik­ki Kendall

This is, indeed, an excel­lent place to start. Giv­en younger gen­er­a­tions’ lev­els of engage­ment with cur­rent events, it’s like­ly your kids or stu­dents are already famil­iar with many of the new­er books on the lists.

And if you, your­self, need some less daunt­ing bib­li­ogra­phies to get you start­ed, you might also check out Emi­ly Temple’s “40 New Fem­i­nist Clas­sics” list on LitHub or her (short­er and less diverse) “10 Essen­tial Fem­i­nist Books” at The Atlantic, or fem­i­nist writer Mona Eltahawy’s list of Black fem­i­nist books on Twit­ter, or for­mer NFL play­er Wade Davis and Cor­nell Eng­lish pro­fes­sor Muko­ma Wa Ngugi’s lists for “men who care about fem­i­nism.”

If there’s any over­ar­ch­ing theme to be found among such a vast and ever-expand­ing canon of fem­i­nist lit­er­a­ture, it might be summed up best in the title of a recent Angela Davis book on fem­i­nist move­ments around the world: “Free­dom is a con­stant strug­gle.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

11 Essen­tial Fem­i­nist Books: A New Read­ing List by The New York Pub­lic Library

Down­load All 239 Issues of Land­mark UK Fem­i­nist Mag­a­zine Spare Rib Free Online

103 Essen­tial Films By Female Film­mak­ers: Clue­less, Lost In Trans­la­tion, Ishtar and More

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Graphic Novels Tell the Story of David Bowie, Billie Holiday, John Coltrane, Jean-Michel Basquiat & Other Artists and Thinkers

in Art, Books, Comics/Cartoons | August 19th, 2020

If you’re fas­ci­nat­ed by cer­tain artists and thinkers, you can learn about them from books. Any­one who has a sig­nif­i­cant cul­tur­al or intel­lec­tu­al influ­ence on human­i­ty soon­er or lat­er gets a biog­ra­phy writ­ten about them, and usu­al­ly more than one. But how many get their own graph­ic nov­els? The ver­sa­til­i­ty of the “com­ic book,” long unsus­pect­ed by many West­ern read­ers, has been more and more wide­ly dis­cussed in recent decades. Some of those read­ers, how­ev­er, won’t believe what can be done with the form until they see what can be done with it. So why not show them the graph­ic nov­el on the life of David Bowie pub­lished not long ago — and if they remain uncon­vinced, why not show them the oth­er one?

Few sub­jects demand a visu­al form as much as Bowie, because of the cen­tral­i­ty of his ever-chang­ing appear­ance to his artis­tic project as well as the need to evoke the effer­ves­cent cul­tur­al peri­ods he lived through and did more than his part to define.

Hence the impor­tance of Michael Allred’s BOWIE: Star­dust, Ray­guns, & Moon­age Day­dreams and Nejib’s Had­don Hall as graph­ic-nov­el con­tri­bu­tions to the grow­ing field of Bowieol­o­gy. Com­ic artists and writ­ers have also done well by oth­er fig­ures with places in music his­to­ry: John Coltrane and Bil­lie Hol­l­i­day, for exam­ple, the sub­jects of Pao­lo Parisi’s Coltrane and Blues for Lady Day: The Sto­ry of Bil­lie Hol­i­day.

We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured both of those books here on Open Cul­ture, as well as Parisi’s Basquiat: A Graph­ic Nov­el. Con­vey­ing the life of a fel­low artist, even one who worked in a dif­fer­ent medi­um, pos­es a unique set of chal­lenges to the graph­ic nov­el­ist. But it’s one thing to depict the work of anoth­er, and some­thing else again to visu­al­ly reimag­ine it, as in BOOM! Stu­dios’ adap­ta­tion of Kurt Von­negut’s Slaugh­ter­house-Five, a nov­el involv­ing not a few bio­graph­i­cal ele­ments in the first place. Oth­er respect­ed works of lit­er­a­ture late­ly to under­go graph­ic nov­el­iza­tion include James Joyce’s Ulysses in Rob Berry’s Ulysses Seen, and the “weird fic­tion” of H.P. Love­craft in the equal­ly weird Love­craft Anthol­o­gy.

You can also read a graph­ic-nov­el adap­ta­tion of a source work nev­er com­plet­ed in the first place — but nev­er com­plet­ed, one must note, by Sal­vador Dalí and the Marx Broth­ers. A col­lab­o­ra­tion between pop-cul­ture schol­ar Josh Frank, artist Manuela Perte­ga, and come­di­an Tim Hei­deck­er, Giraffes on Horse­back Sal­ad real­izes on the page a film that not only was nev­er, but quite pos­si­bly could nev­er have been made. For read­ers clos­er to world­ly real­i­ty, there’s Jim Otta­viani and Leland Myrick­’s Feyn­man: A Biog­ra­phy, which tells and shows the life of world-famous the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist, teacher, and bon vivant Richard Feyn­man. Nev­er before, sure­ly, has a com­ic book had to leg­i­bly and con­vinc­ing­ly depict quan­tum elec­tro­dy­nam­ics, safe-crack­ing, and bon­go-pay­ing — to name just three of Feyn­man’s pur­suits.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load Theft! A His­to­ry of Music, a New Free Graph­ic Nov­el Explor­ing 2,000 Years of Musi­cal Bor­row­ing

Bound by Law?: Free Com­ic Book Explains How Copy­right Com­pli­cates Art

iTunes Terms & Con­di­tions Adapt­ed into a Graph­ic Nov­el: Read It Free Online

Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graph­ic Nov­el Adap­ta­tion

Read the Entire Com­ic Book Adap­ta­tion of T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

A Com­ic Book Adap­ta­tion of Edgar Allan Poe’s Poignant Poem, “Annabel Lee”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

A New Interactive Map Shows All Four Million Buildings That Existed in New York City from 1939 to 1941

in Architecture, History, Maps, Photography, Travel | August 19th, 2020

New York­ers have borne wit­ness to a notice­able uptick in the num­ber of shiny, new build­ings going up in the city over the last few years, crowd­ing the water­front, ris­ing from the ash­es of com­mu­ni­ty gar­dens and old­er, infi­nite­ly more mod­est struc­tures.

Their devel­op­ers have tak­en care to top load them with luxu­ry ameni­ties—rooftop cabanas, 24-hour fit­ness clubs, mar­ble coun­ter­tops, screen­ing rooms.

But one thing they can’t pro­vide is the sense of lived his­to­ry that imbues every old build­ing with a true sense of char­ac­ter, mys­tique, and oft-grub­by charm.

I fear that the occu­pants of these new­er build­ings won’t have near­ly as much fun as the rest of us search­ing for our cur­rent address­es on the NYC Munic­i­pal Archives’ inter­ac­tive map, above.

Every dot rep­re­sents a Works Progress Admin­is­tra­tion pho­to­graph of a New York City build­ing, snapped between 1939 and 1941 as a means of stan­dard­iz­ing the way in which prop­er­ty val­ues were assessed and record­ed.

There are 4,282,000 dots, spread out between five bor­oughs.

Does that sound dense­ly packed?

You should see it today… there’s been a lot of ver­ti­cal build.

This unas­sum­ing fuel oil plant near Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal has giv­en way to a 430-unit build­ing boast­ing a yoga room, spin stu­dios, and valet ser­vices for those in need of dry-clean­ing, laun­dry, apart­ment clean­ing, or dog walking…though sad­ly, no on-premis­es motor oil. We find that omis­sion some­what sur­pris­ing for such a full-ser­vice res­i­den­tial devel­op­ment on the banks of a Super­fund site, whose clean up is esti­mat­ed to tip the scales at $500 mil­lion.

We also won­der what the occu­pants of the above build­ings would have made of the glassy 25-sto­ry com­plex that opened on their coor­di­nates ear­li­er this year. Is it just us, or does it seem a bit disin­gen­u­ous of its devel­op­ers to trum­pet that its loca­tion is “the epit­o­me of New York City’s authen­tic­i­ty, with over a cen­tu­ry of rich his­to­ry, where the world’s sar­to­r­i­al and culi­nary trends are born”?

(You can find us a few blocks away mut­ter­ing into our chopped liv­er at Russ and Daugh­ters, a ven­er­a­ble food shop that looks much the same today as it did in 1940, though you’ll have to con­firm with a bit of research on your own if you don’t want to take our word for it, the WPA “dot” reveal­ing lit­tle more than a man with a stick and sev­er­al mov­ing vehi­cles.)

Our final stop is one of many archi­tec­tur­al ghosts to haunt the Hud­son Yards colos­sus, the self-described “epi­cen­ter of Manhattan’s New West Side… a bea­con for cre­ative pro­fes­sion­als, a hub for fash­ion, design, com­mu­ni­ca­tions and art.” In addi­tion to a much reviled $200 mil­lion shawar­ma-shaped “3‑dimensional pub­lic space” and state of the art wine fridges, ameni­ties now include diag­nos­tic and anti­body test­ing “per­formed by top med­ical pro­fes­sion­als.”

It’s telling that in the sum­mer of 2020, prospec­tive ten­ants were offered incen­tives includ­ing two months’ free rent and a $2,000 gift card.

Proof, per­haps, that New York will con­tin­ue as it always has—a city in con­stant flux. The preva­lence of mod­ern high rise build­ings in dystopi­an fic­tion gives us pause.…

Explore the Street View of 1940s New York here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Behold the New York City Street Tree Map: An Inter­ac­tive Map That Cat­a­logues the 700,000 Trees Shad­ing the Streets of New York City

New York Pub­lic Library Puts 20,000 Hi-Res Maps Online & Makes Them Free to Down­load and Use

The New York Pub­lic Library Lets You Down­load 180,000 Images in High Res­o­lu­tion: His­toric Pho­tographs, Maps, Let­ters & More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Back to the Arena: Battling the Hunger Games Prequel with Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast (#57)

in Film, Literature, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | August 19th, 2020

Remem­ber when The Hunger Games was every­where? Its author Suzanne Collins has decid­ed that young peo­ple could ben­e­fit from more explo­ration of Just War The­o­ry through the world of Panem, and so has pub­lished The Bal­lad of Song­birds and Snakes, a pre­quel cov­er­ing the ear­ly years of future pres­i­dent Cori­olanus Snow dur­ing the 10th Hunger Games.

Pret­ty Much Pop hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt give their spoil­er-free reviews of the new book and look back on the orig­i­nal book tril­o­gy and its adap­ta­tion into four films (and do spoil those, in case you want to go watch them). We talk about what makes these nov­els “YA,” the func­tion of adapt­ing them to film, and the lim­its of the fran­chise’s premise and world-build­ing. Does the work cri­tique yet glo­ri­fy vio­lence at the same time? Will the film ver­sion of the new nov­el be our next Phan­tom Men­ace?

Some arti­cles we looked at includ­ed:

• “A ‘Hunger Games’ Pre­quel Focus­es on an Unlike­ly Char­ac­ter” by Sarah Lyall
• “ ‘The Bal­lad Of Song­birds And Snakes’ Is A Lack­lus­ter Pre­quel To ‘The Hunger Games’ ” by Annal­isa Quinn
• “Why the ‘Hunger Games’ Pre­quel Book is So Con­tro­ver­sial” by Lau­ren Sarn­er
• Stephen King’s orig­i­nal 2008 Enter­tain­ment Week­ly review of The Hunger Games
• “Hunger Games: 25 Things Wrong With Kat­niss Every­one Choos­es To Ignore” by Stephanie Marceau
• “How Bad Is Kat­niss’ PTSD in The Hunger Games? We Asked the Experts” by Vasilis Pozios and Praveen Kam­bam
• “How does The Hunger Games Crit­i­cise Amer­i­can Soci­ety?” By Megan Burbage
• “Suzanne Collins Talks About ‘The Hunger Games,’ the Books and the Movies” (Q&A with David Lev­i­tan)
• “Why the Mes­sage of the Hunger Games Films is Dan­ger­ous” by Peter Bloom
• “10 Years Lat­er, is The Hunger Games Still Shock­ing?” by Con­stance Grady et al at Vox
• “Hunger Games Pre­quel Movie The Bal­lad of Song­birds and Snakes Offi­cial­ly Set by Lion­s­gate” by Joseph Bax­ter

Learn more at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

A Record Store Designed for Mice in Sweden, Featuring Albums by Mouse Davis, Destiny’s Cheese, Dolly Parsley & More

in Art | August 18th, 2020

We live in [insert adjec­tive, exple­tive, emo­ji, tweet, Tik Tok video here] times, I don’t have to tell you. We could all do with a lit­tle dis­trac­tion from cur­rent events. I’m talk­ing, obvi­ous­ly, about mice.

Not every­one loves the lit­tle home invaders. Some peo­ple loathe them. But who could fail to be charmed by the cre­ations of the Anony­Mouse col­lec­tive, a group of artists who have recre­at­ed “minia­ture restau­rants, record shops, and apothe­caries squeeze[d] into ground-lev­el win­dows on the street next to their human-sized equiv­a­lents”?

These instal­la­tions have appeared “in cities across Swe­den, France, and the Isle of Man,” writes Grace Ebert at Colos­sal, and they are pro­found­ly adorable. The artists sug­gest “that the mice have a sym­bi­ot­ic rela­tion­ship with the pedes­tri­ans on the street” by repur­pos­ing human items like a cham­pagne top­per or match­box as mouse-sized fur­ni­ture.

“Twen­ty-five install­ments cur­rent­ly exist across Europe…largely inspired by Astrid Lind­gren’s and Beat­rix Pot­ter’s whim­si­cal tales and movies from Don Bluth and Dis­ney.” Unlike pre­vi­ous, sim­i­lar projects by the artists Bill Scan­ga and, more recent­ly, Fil­ip­po and Mar­i­an­na, the minia­tures do not fea­ture any actu­al rodents, alive or oth­er­wise, oth­er than those who chance to wan­der in off the street. Instead, they adapt human cul­tur­al prod­ucts for an imag­ined par­al­lel mouse world.

AnonyMouse’s lat­est instal­la­tion, Ricot­ta Records in Lund, Swe­den, “fea­tures tiny vinyl,” for exam­ple, “from the likes of Destiny’s Cheese, Bruce Spen­wood, Kesel­la Fitzger­ald, Dol­ly Pars­ley, and Win­nimere Hous­ton,” reports the Vinyl Fac­to­ry. “In addi­tion to its record selec­tion, the shop also has a selec­tion of minia­ture posters and instru­ments.”

See sev­er­al images of the inven­tive inte­ri­or above and below, and more—including band posters for Rats Against the Machine and Mod­est Mouse, the only band whose name remains unchanged—at the Vinyl Fac­to­ry and the Anony­mouse Insta­gram page. Should you be so moved as to par­tic­i­pate in the grow­ing Anony­Mouse fan com­mu­ni­ty, they have start­ed a con­test for the best Ricot­ta Records sug­ges­tions. The win­ner will receive a framed, mouse-sized poster.

You don’t have to love mice to get in on the action. Cur­rent fron­trun­ners, NME notes, include “Amy Winemouse” and “Tai­lor Swiss”….

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Art Gallery for Ger­bils: Two Quar­an­tined Lon­don­ers Cre­ate a Mini Muse­um Com­plete with Ger­bil-Themed Art

Two Cats Keep Try­ing to Get Into a Japan­ese Art Muse­um … and Keep Get­ting Turned Away: Meet the Thwart­ed Felines, Ken-chan and Go-chan

Enter the Cov­er Art Archive: A Mas­sive Col­lec­tion of 800,000 Album Cov­ers from the 1950s through 2018

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Every Possible Kind of Science Fiction Story: An Exhaustive List Created by Pioneering 1920s SciFi Writer Clare Winger Harris (1931)

in Sci Fi | August 18th, 2020

When Jeanette Ng gave her accep­tance speech at the 2019 Joseph W. Camp­bell awards (now called the Astound­ing Award for Best New Writer), she described “Gold­en Age” edi­tor Camp­bell as “a fas­cist” who “set a tone of sci­ence fic­tion that still haunts the genre to this day. Ster­ile. Male. White.” The list of Hugo win­ners this year show how much the sit­u­a­tion is chang­ing. Ng her­self won a Hugo for her Camp­bell speech. (The unpleas­ant per­for­mance of the awards’ online pre­sen­ter sad­ly got more head­lines than the win­ners.)

Yet pop­u­lar canons of sci-fi, even “seem­ing­ly pro­gres­sive books for their time,” Liz Lut­gen­dorff writes, still con­tain a “per­va­sive sex­ism.” Camp­bell was hard­ly the only offend­er, but the charge cer­tain­ly sticks to him. “The first sci­ence fic­tion antholo­gies were pub­lished dur­ing a back­lash against first-wave fem­i­nism,” Wired explains. In response to grow­ing women’s activism, “male edi­tors such as John W. Camp­bell and Groff Con­klin specif­i­cal­ly exclud­ed women from” the pages of Astound­ing Sci­ence Fic­tion’s pop­u­lar anthol­o­gy series and Con­klin’s many best-ofs.

Pri­or to these pow­er­ful edi­tors, “women writ­ers were rel­a­tive­ly com­mon through­out the pulp era, and the pro­por­tion of women read­ers was even high­er.” Lisa Yaszek, Pro­fes­sor of Sci­ence Fic­tion Stud­ies at Geor­gia Tech, found that “at least 15 per­cent of the sci­ence fic­tion com­mu­ni­ty were women—producers—and read­ing polls sug­gest that 40 to 50 per­cent of the read­ers were women.” These fig­ures sur­prised even her. Many of the writ­ers whom Camp­bell exclud­ed were huge­ly pop­u­lar dur­ing 1920s, influ­enc­ing their con­tem­po­raries and inspir­ing read­ers.

One such writer, Clare Winger Har­ris, pub­lished her first short sto­ry “The Run­away World,” in the July 1926 issue of Weird Tales (after writ­ing an ear­li­er his­tor­i­cal nov­el in 1923). That same year, she won third place in a sto­ry con­test run by leg­endary Amaz­ing Sto­ries edi­tor Hugo Gerns­back, from whom the Hugo Awards take their name. She would go on to pub­lish ten more sto­ries in pop­u­lar sci­ence fic­tion pulps, most of them for Gerns­back. Then she dis­ap­peared from writ­ing in 1930, osten­si­bly to raise her three sons.

But she had more to say. In the August 1931 edi­tion of Gernsback’s Won­der Sto­ries, a let­ter from Har­ris appears in which she ral­lies the com­mu­ni­ty to insist that Hol­ly­wood make sci-fi films. “Come on, sci­ence fic­tion fans, let’s go!” she writes, “Our unit­ed efforts might bring this coun­try a few films in 1932 that are not wild west, sex dra­ma or gang­ster stuff. I think we’re all strong for good come­dies, but let’s have of our seri­ous dra­mas a lit­tle less of the emo­tion­al and more of the intel­lec­tu­al.”

Har­ris goes on, in response to anoth­er read­er let­ter, to cor­rect the notion that “there are only five or six orig­i­nal plots.” (This num­ber has var­ied over the ages from sev­en to thir­ty-sev­en). “That may be true as regards the tech­nique of plot devel­op­ment,” writes Har­ris, “but I have made a table of six­teen gen­er­al clas­si­fi­ca­tions into which it seems to me all sci­ence fic­tion sto­ries writ­ten to date can be placed.” See it above.

Sci-fi author Doris V. Suther­land points to the redun­dan­cies and dat­ed quaint­ness of much of the list. Giant insects have fall­en out of fash­ion. “A num­ber of the cat­e­gories speak of the tech­no­log­i­cal lev­el of the day. The inclu­sion of ‘ray and vibra­tion stores’ harks back to an era when the unseen effects of var­i­ous elec­tro-mag­net­ic waves had only recent­ly been grasped by researchers.” More­over, the atom­ic age was yet to dawn. After it, “the idea of a man-made apoc­a­lypse would become rather more top­i­cal.”

The sta­tus of Harris’s let­ter as a “time cap­sule” that sum­ma­rizes the “dom­i­nant themes in SF” at the time doc­u­ments her keen appre­ci­a­tion for, as well as inno­va­tion on, those themes. She was val­ued for this tal­ent by many in the field, Gerns­back includ­ed. Upon learn­ing she had won third prize in the 1926 Amaz­ing Sto­ries con­test, he “gave praise,” Brad Ric­ca writes at LitHub, “couched in the cul­tur­al moment”—as well as indica­tive of his own bias­es.

That the third prize win­ner should prove to be a woman was one of the sur­pris­es of the con­test, for, as a rule, women do not make good sci­en­tifi­ca­tion writ­ers, because their edu­ca­tion and gen­er­al ten­den­cies on sci­en­tif­ic mat­ters are usu­al­ly lim­it­ed. But the excep­tion, as usu­al, proves the rule, the excep­tion in this case being extra­or­di­nar­i­ly impres­sive.

These insult­ing beliefs did not pre­vent Gerns­back from con­tin­u­ing to pub­lish Harris’s work, nor any of women whose writ­ing he approved. (He also helped make Camp­bel­l’s career.) Some have found it remark­able that Har­ris pub­lished under her own name rather than a male pseu­do­nym, but Yaszek argues this was fair­ly com­mon at the time. In fact, sev­er­al male authors pub­lished under female pseu­do­nyms. (Gerns­back him­self once adopt­ed the moniker “Grace G. Huck­snob.”)

As women writ­ers were edged out of sci­ence fic­tion dur­ing Campbell’s reign in the 1930’s, Har­ris retreat­ed. Her only pub­lished lit­er­ary pro­duc­tions were the 1931 let­ter and a short sto­ry that again proves her sta­tus as a pio­neer. Her last sto­ry orig­i­nal sto­ry “appeared in 1933 in the fifth and last issue of a sta­pled, mimeo­graphed pam­phlet called Sci­ence Fic­tion that had a print run of maybe—maybe—50 issues,” Ric­ca writes. The sto­ry had been solicit­ed by the tiny mag­a­zine’s edi­tors, Jer­ry Siegel and Joe Shus­ter, major Har­ris fans who would, of course, “go on to cre­ate Super­man, the most rec­og­nized sci­ence fic­tion char­ac­ter on the plan­et.”

Learn more about Harris’s fas­ci­nat­ing life—including her father’s brief stint as a Gerns­back-influ­enced sci-fi nov­el­ist and her sta­tus as an ear­ly Amer­i­can con­vert to Bud­dhism before her death in 1968—at Ricca’s excel­lent LitHub inves­ti­ga­tion. See her full let­ter above.

via @jessesheidlower

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Enter a Huge Archive of Amaz­ing Sto­ries, the World’s First Sci­ence Fic­tion Mag­a­zine, Launched in 1926

Stream 47 Hours of Clas­sic Sci-Fi Nov­els & Sto­ries: Asi­mov, Wells, Orwell, Verne, Love­craft & More

The Ency­clo­pe­dia of Sci­ence Fic­tion: 17,500 Entries on All Things Sci-Fi Are Now Free Online

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

An Introduction to Postmodernist Thinkers & Themes: Watch Primers on Foucault, Nietzsche, Derrida, Deleuze & More

in Philosophy | August 17th, 2020

For decades we’ve been hear­ing about the prob­lem of Post­mod­ernism. I sup­pose I get, in a vague sort of way, what peo­ple mean by this: moral rel­a­tivism, mis­trust of objec­tiv­i­ty and sci­en­tif­ic, reli­gious, and oth­er author­i­ties, “increduli­ty toward meta­nar­ra­tives,” as Jean-Fran­cois Lyotard defined the term in The Post­mod­ern Con­di­tion in 1979.

Don’t we find much of this rad­i­cal skep­ti­cism in the work of David Hume? The Cyn­ics? Or Niet­zsche (a Post­mod­ern ances­tor, but also claimed by Prag­ma­tist and Exis­ten­tial­ist thinkers)? A prob­lem with blan­ket cri­tiques of Post­mod­ernism is that the word has nev­er rep­re­sent­ed a cohe­sive school of thought (nor, for that mat­ter, has Exis­ten­tial­ism).

The term derives from an archi­tec­tur­al move­ment of the 1960s that is, itself, impos­si­ble to clear­ly define since it inten­tion­al­ly grafts togeth­er approach­es and tra­di­tions in exper­i­ments that cel­e­brate kitschy excess­es of style and that defy nar­ra­tive coher­ence. Post­mod­ern archi­tec­ture gave us mod­ern malls and mul­ti­plex­es, aid­ing and abet­ting late cap­i­tal­ist sprawl. (But this is anoth­er sto­ry….)

Lyotard cer­tain­ly fit the stereo­type of the Post­mod­ernist philoso­pher, with his life­time of social­ist activism and the­o­ret­i­cal hybrids of Marx and Freud. He gets lit­tle cred­it, though he put the term in cir­cu­la­tion in phi­los­o­phy. Instead, Michel Fou­cault is often cit­ed as a sig­nif­i­cant influ­ence, though he reject­ed the cat­e­go­riza­tion and thought of him­self as a mod­ernist.

Many a sur­vey of Post­mod­ern thought, such as this YouTube video series by Then & Now, begins with Fou­cault. The series cov­ers oth­er thinkers we don’t always see put in this box, like soci­ol­o­gist Pierre Bour­dieu and 19th cen­tu­ry Russ­ian nov­el­ist Fyo­dor Dos­to­evsky. Niet­zsche appears, of course, in two parts, as well as Eve Sedg­wick, Jacques Der­ri­da and Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guat­tari.

But in many ways, Fou­cault may be the best place to begin. As pro­fes­sor of phi­los­o­phy Scott Moore writes:

If post­mod­ernism is under­stood as a rejec­tion of… an Enlight­en­ment point of view… one that is char­ac­ter­ized by a detached, autonomous, objec­tive ratio­nal­i­ty… then Fou­cault is sure­ly a post­mod­ernist. Turn­ing Bacon on his head, Fou­cault affirmed that it is not the case that knowl­edge is pow­er, but pow­er is knowl­edge. Mean­ing, those peo­ple who have pow­er (social, polit­i­cal, etc.) always decide what will or will not be count­ed as “knowl­edge.”

Unlike, how­ev­er, many lat­er cul­tur­al the­o­rists who inher­it­ed the cum­ber­some label, Fou­cault looked not to the present or the future in his work, but to the past, re-inter­pret­ing pri­ma­ry sources from ancient Rome to the post-WWI glob­al eco­nom­ic order, through sev­er­al dif­fer­ent dis­ci­pli­nary lens­es.

Then & Now cre­ator Lewis Waller takes a post­mod­ern approach to this series him­self. In the video “Detach­ment, Objec­tiv­i­ty, Imag­i­na­tion: A Cri­tique,” he makes a case that Roman­tic his­to­ri­ans like Michelet, Thier­ry, and Car­lyle had a “bet­ter under­stand­ing of the real­i­ty of the historian’s craft than the sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly mind­ed did.” It’s a con­trar­i­an argu­ment that begins with Sir Wal­ter Scott and that may unset­tle your pre­con­cep­tions of what the catch-all term Post­mod­ernism might include.

See more videos from the series above and watch all of them on YouTube. You may or may not feel like you have a bet­ter sense of what Post­mod­ernism means in gen­er­al. If we take it as short­hand for the loss of unchal­lenged het­eropa­tri­ar­chal pow­er, then it is, I sup­pose, a prob­lem for many peo­ple. If we take it to mean a mode of thought that “prob­lema­tizes” seem­ing­ly sim­ple con­cepts we mis­take for the very struc­ture of real­i­ty, then it “is also an atti­tude,” writes Moore, “and it has been most art­ful­ly prac­ticed by Socrates, St. Augus­tine, Kierkegaard, Wittgen­stein, and a host of oth­ers.”

Maybe Post­mod­ernism has appeared in every peri­od of philo­soph­i­cal and lit­er­ary his­to­ry. Only it hasn’t always been so… well… so over­whelm­ing­ly French, which could have had more than a lit­tle to do with its neg­a­tive rep­u­ta­tion in Anglo­phone coun­tries. Put your meta­nar­ra­tives aside and learn more here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What the The­o­ry?: Watch Short Intro­duc­tions to Post­mod­ernism, Semi­otics, Phe­nom­e­nol­o­gy, Marx­ist Lit­er­ary Crit­i­cism and More

David Fos­ter Wal­lace on What’s Wrong with Post­mod­ernism: A Video Essay

Hear Hours of Lec­tures by Michel Fou­cault: Record­ed in Eng­lish & French Between 1961 and 1983

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

2020: An Isolation Odyssey–A Short Film Reenacts the Finale of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, with a COVID-19 Twist

in Current Affairs, Film | August 17th, 2020

From New York City design­er Lydia Cam­bron comes 2020: An Iso­la­tion Odyssey, a short film that reen­acts the finale of Stan­ley Kubrick­’s icon­ic film, 2001: A Space Odyssey. But with a COVID-19 twist. “Restaged in the con­text of home quar­an­tine,” Cam­bron writes, “the jour­ney through time adapts to the mun­dane dra­mas of self-isolation–poking fun at the navel-gaz­ing saga of life alone and indoors.” If you’ve been a good cit­i­zen since March, you will sure­ly get the joke.

via Colos­sal/Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Open­ing of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey with the Orig­i­nal, Unused Score

James Cameron Revis­its the Mak­ing of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey

Rare 1960s Audio: Stan­ley Kubrick’s Big Inter­view with The New York­er