FoundClothing

The Overalls Movement of 1920

Whet Moser of the Chicago Reader just sent along this link to some info about overalls clubs, which protested high clothing prices. We might be seeing such groups again soon. Thanks, W!

Found Gloves

04/26/08, about 4:30 p.m.
St. Stephen's Church, Cambria City, Johnstown, PA

These were laid out like so in the back of the church. So, what was I doing at a Johnstown church? Well, my friend Dave Schalliol and I made good on a plan hatched several months ago and traveled to J-town to photograph the interiors and exteriors of five Catholic Churches -- St. Rochus, Immaculate Conception, St. Columba, St. Stephen's and St. Casimir and Emerich -- and West End Catholic School, all potentially up for closure by the Johnstown-Altoona diocese sometime soon. The closure of these churches would be a great tragedy -- it would be like removing the city's vertebrae.

Cambria City is where many East European immigrants, including my family members, settled. They lived there and worked in nearby mines and steel mills, founded the churches, worshiped there.

Rosemary Pawlowski of the Bottleworks Ethnic Arts Center made our trip possible, by contacting the priests and school officials beforehand and helping us with a variety of things. Rosemary is a very sharp dresser! And super-nice. I wish I had gotten to talk to her more, but when she was available on Thursday I was practically comatose from having slept zero hours during the car trip.

D and I got to talk to some of the priests and parishioners. Nice folks. We also traveled around Johnstown and nearby Windber a bunch, stopping to photograph abandoned mines and factories, dilapidated houses, weird stuff we passed by, and interesting characters.

We met a man who was selling bunches of stuffed animals and Taco Bell dogs, a man who was really worn down and out in Kernville. We wanted to take his picture, but with his scraggly beard and crazy eyes he didn't seem like the modeling type.

We went to a bar called the Eureka 42 Club and saw some really tough looking ladies who had 80s metal hair.

We learned that "Section Eight" is a term that white people use when they want to make derogatory comments about black people.

We saw an army helicopter at Roxbury Park, where a high school baseball game was going on. When the helicopter flew over the game, it was surreal.

We stayed in my childhood home, which smelled like grandmas. My grandmother lived there for a few years, so that explains the smell.

We ate lots of cheeseless pizza and tofu at the Chinese buffet.

I went to mass five times. Some services were very traditional (St. Casimir) while others involved sing-a-longs and a more progressive, not-so-ritualistic feel. (St. Rochus).

We had lunch at a restaurant called Our Sons with the priest from St. Rochus. He was super-cool.

We did a bunch of other things. My computer broke. My camera developed a spot on it -- hopefully the $60 clean job at Calumet Photo today has fixed that. We stopped in Pittsburgh for an upcoming trashion article on my Website here. We went to Columbus and had more pizza. It was a wild time.

She's a Model and She's Lookin Good ... and Blurry

 

Thursday night on the Gold Coast for Bohdan, Matt and me. We first went to the i4 Design party (see below), then got lost, then went to the Bebe Grand Opening on Oak. I have never purchased any Bebe products, because they cost too much, but have found and salvaged some Bebe items from people's trash.

This is one of the models who had to stand on a platform in a really tacky shorts ensemble and look like a mannequin. We saw a variety of tacky shorts ensembles during the night -- and shorts with high heels, a combination that should be called the "tryin' too hard."

Overall, the Bebe party was really unfun, and if it hadn't been for B&M I would have left after about 30 seconds. The importance of having friends to join you at such events can not be understated.

Meanwhile, Matthew gave me a useful new term: nerd jock, which describes geeky guys (and, much less commonly, girls) who can't deal with other people being more competent or knowledgeable about something than they are, so they get all passive-aggressive and freak out. (I used to use a similar term: PAN, or "passive-aggressive nerd". As in, "Jimmy preaches all the time about gender equality, yet he seems to interrupt women constantly -- and when I point this out to him, he gets all offended. What a PAN!")