Picture break!
Looking back, looking out.
Happy 2024, and welcome to Januhairy, a word I just learned — thank you, James Landau of the American Dialect Society listserv — but which, CNN tells us, has been around for six years. (It’s “an initiative challenging women to put down their razors for the month.”)
I’m working on some more characteristically on-brand posts, but today I’m switching things up with a serving from my December camera roll.1 It will probably come as no surprise to those of you who know me, or who have just been following along here, that even when I take photos I’m interested mostly in words. My most-used hashtag on Instagram — where most of these pictures originally appeared — is #signlanguage.
December 2: I saw three back-to-back films — with live musical accompaniment — at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival’s annual “Day of Silents” at the glorious Castro Theatre. Before each screening there was an informative slide show; this slide, depicting Sheik brand condoms, preceded The Eagle (1925), starring Rudolph “The Sheik” Valentino.
December 6: Several times a week I take the transbay bus into San Francisco and walk up to the Fisherman’s Wharf area, where I swim in the bay. I spotted this flyer for “Shuffle Dating” on one of those walks. “Modern, fun, and actually works” strikes me as a little pathetic, and speed dating, no matter how you rebrand it, seems like something to be avoided.
December 10: Walking along Bay Street near Franklin in San Francisco I saw this professional-looking paint job announcing the Iranian women’s liberation slogan in two languages against the colors of the Iranian flag.
December 12: Back In Oakland, I saw this curbside sandwich board and admired the graphics while puzzling over the text. Was someone stealing curbs? Was theft happening at the curb? Was “curb” a verb? (Probably the last.) For more context, see my post on “bipping.”
December 20: I love me a fun product name, especially when it’s slightly naughty. (I do, after all, contribute to a blog called Strong Language — check out our year-end Tucker Awards for Excellence in Swearing!) And how good is the expression on the sheep’s face? Spotted at Grocery Outlet, aka the Gross-Out, one of my favorite destinations for odd and occasionally useful products. (The cheese is good!)
December 25: On a Christmas Day walk around my Oakland neighborhood I saw this flyer for a live punk cabaret show. I was struck by the typography, which seemed to defy the punk aesthetic in the best possible way.
December 26: People are constantly dumping stuff on the sidewalk in my neighborhood. (Are they encouraging curb theft?) This “Connie Francis Sings Jewish Favorites” album, however, looked to have been intentionally placed against the gray, gnarled bark of a street tree. I didn’t take the album, but I did do some research: Connie Francis is still alive (she recently turned 86), and although her family was Italian American she was (maybe still is) fluent in Yiddish. The album was released in 1960.
December 28: One last trip to the Berkeley Bowl Marketplace for the year. The store is owned by a Japanese American family and always goes all out for New Year’s, which is a very big deal in Japan and among the Japanese diaspora. These cookies came in such beautiful packages. What’s the story behind the Berkeley Bowl name, you ask? The store’s original location replaced a bowling alley called the Berkeley Bowl. (See the rest of my BBM New Year’s photos on Instagram.)
December 31: Ringing out the year with a dose of reality. Lynn & Lu’s Escapade Cafe is a beloved Oakland breakfast-and-lunch place, founded in 1969, that suffered along with a lot of other local businesses this year. On the day I walked by I was cheered to see a lot of patrons at tables, so here’s hoping the restaurant survives. I wish the same for all of you!
Isn’t it peculiar that we still say “camera roll,” which comes from “roll of film,” which is mostly a non-thing now? Tangentially, I studied photography back in the actual camera-roll era, and learning to develop film in total darkness was one of the three scariest things I’ve ever semi-mastered. The others: driving a manual-transmission Volvo on San Francisco’s hilly terrain, and learning the “wet exit” kayak roll — a different sort of roll from the camera roll, to be sure.
That punk poster is fun, also because of the names on it! (Trixxie Carr! Wowza!)
I've never thought about what an anachronism "camera roll" is in the smartphone era - is there a less pretentious term for that sort of thing than "linguistic skeuomorph" ?
Thanks for sharing the views!