Is this the Scariest Clown of All Scary Clowns?

At least of all Scary Clowns riding tiny, tiny tricycles.

Just look at this guy!

He's the corpsiest clown ever. Even if you're not scared of clowns, you should be scared of this guy.

Taxidermy from the Four Corners region of Colorado

 This fox was in the window of an antique mall in Pagosa Springs, CO. 

 This bear was in the Lake City, CO Historical Museum, repository of many fine artifacts relating to the Alferd Packer cannibalism case. The bear, which has nothing to do with old Alferd or his dietary idiosyncrasies, stands only about four feet tall. (More on Packer soon!) 

And this baby ostrich stands in what might be described as an antique store or a flea market in Del Norte, CO, operated by a genial old fellow who used to run an ostrich farm. He also once built his own coffin prior to open heart surgery, which he survived. The coffin is standing up in the middle of the store and took him just a few hours to build. If you ever get to Del Norte he's a very good conversationalist and has some odd things for sale. Who doesn't need a stuffed baby ostrich?

Dodgem, Alber's Flour, the Boardwalk and the beach

 This photograph was given to me by the owner of a small antique store in Alamosa, Colorado, when I was buying a couple of books. I asked him how much he wanted for it and he said "Take it." Looks to me like Coney Island, maybe, or Atlantic City, circa 1925. Maybe one of the guys in suits is Nucky Thompson from "Boardwalk Empire."  Click to enlarge and read the ALBER'S FLOUR sign.

Little America, Granger, Wyoming, August 27 1938

Found this lovely thing in Indiana a few weeks ago:

This is the kind of weird old-timey Americana I'm always looking for in old pictures. And only two dollars! As always, click to enlarge, there's plenty of satisfying detail in there....

More French Brothel Stereoscope Images from the 1930s

Oh, boy! This is what you've all been waiting for with baited breath, right?  Here's another outdoorsy one:

And here's a similar pose inside the maison close itself:

This is my favorite of the bunch.  Note the rolled stockings in the second image, as well as the other woman seated on the bed. What is the subject of the photo reaching for under there?

As always, click to enlarge, and view them in stereo if you can!

The Musical Saw

Here's a stereo image I had scanned by a lab because the original image wasn't showing up in my own scans with  the detail I was able to get from a darkroom. I used to see this fellow occasionally around the Centre Pompidou in Paris. One day in the mid-eighties I asked if I could take his picture and he said okay:

It's a nice 3D image, with the saw and the bow making for some nice relief. As I recall, his playing was haunting and lovely, and he was very good-natured about getting his pitcher took.

Spooky Abandoned Farmhouse

Here's a spooky abandoned farmhouse Mrs. Phillips spotted on a two-lane highway outside of Modoc, IL:

I should have waited for Halloween but I haven't posted much of late.

Dire Wolf Barks Hello

A whole bunch of Dire Wolf (Canis dirus) skulls on display at the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles:

My Old Writing Space

In the interests of posting random and uninteresting pieces of my past, here is the door of the tiny squalid fetid cramped dusty room I used to rent on the rue Yves Toudic in the 10th arrondissement in Paris for 500ff per month, about $100 at the time:

My next door neighbors were an elderly woman and her middle-aged daughter, who always smiled sweetly in the stairwell but who shrieked the vilest of obscenities at one another inside their apartment. They ended up in a novel and a short story both, as did the junkie who used to leave his works in the communal toilet down the hall. In the lower right hand corner you can see part of my porno trunk, a "must" for a young lusty bachelor!

Taxidermied Sewer Rats, Twenty-five Years On

 Here's what the Arouze Pest Control company in Paris looks like today.....

 And here it is around 1985. As you can see the muskrats at the bottom of the display have been moved over to the other side, and the hanging sewer rats raised.

And here's a closeup of the right side:

More of Cape Girardeau

 Coca-Cola Ghost Sign!

 Stag Beer Ghost Sign!

 Spooky Abandoned Restaurant! Inside and Out!

 And finally, the Cape Wiggery Shop, sadly defunct but with its sign intact.

Bookseller

I found my old B. Dalton Bookseller nametag in a box of old slides I've been scanning:

This provoked a very vivid B. Dalton dream last night. In the same box, three photo booth pictures from around 1982, smack dab in the middle of the B. Dalton years:

In the top one I'm doing my Stan Laurel face. I also had Stan Laurel hair. I was very, very young. And callow!

Creepy Creepy Old West Waxwork Figures

 These used to be at the always fascinating Pink Elephant Antique Mall in Livingston, IL, where I have picked up many an interesting bit of Americana.
 
I think they came from a wax museum or Old West theme park that went out of business. They weren't in the best of shape by the time I took these pics.

I think this one's supposed to be Jesse or Frank James. His shirt needs washing, in either case.

 Those gloves are empty! Plus the left arm seems to have become disconnected from the shoulder, adding to the walking-dead vibe.

Buffalo Bill and Annie Oakley are somewhat better preserved, at least from a few feet away.

Uh-oh--that buckskin's looking a little frayed. Let's get a better look at Miss Jane-- 

 Good lord! She has the eyebrows of a Yeti! Let's look a bit closer at Bill:

GAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaahhhhHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!! Back away, hellspawn!

 That's better. A little better. Still he looks like a cadaver painted up by a frontier undertaker after a week in the hot sun.

 And this feller was the only one not for sale (see sign.) He's the only one not made of wax, and he has his own wheelchair!

 I suspect this is why he wasn't for sale: Look at his mouth. Peer inside. Yes, that's right--he talks!
I took these pictures a few years ago, and the other figures are gone--probably sold--

--but the Old Timer is still there at the Pink Elephant, greeting customers as they come in through the door. Pay him a visit if you're traveling I-55 through Illinois.

The Cabinet of Dr. Sweeney, plus Bonus Ghost Sign

 A couple of years ago my filmmaker friend Mark W. Stone took me on a tour of the neighborhood where Dr. Francis Sweeney, almost certainly Cleveland's infamous Torso Killer, had his practice.

 Which building it was is impossible to say at this point, but these were the buildings that held those sorts of offices at that time.

 This one still houses some medical offices.

 On the right, a library converted into a chapel.....

 And here, windows both broken and boarded up.

And finally, a really nice Ghost Sign, in multiple languages (Czech?) advertising Mail Pouch tobacco.

More Nudes in Nature: Arundel Holmes Nicholls

 Here are the last two of the Nicholls 8x10s from the estate sale the other week:

 

Thislady seems to come from an earlier era than the one below, whose bob places her squarely in the Jazz Age as opposed to the Edwardian.

She looks rather pixieish as well....

Ghost Signs, Beverage-Related

 The first two were taken in Nice, France in 1987. I don't know if they really qualify as Ghost Signs since they're painted on glass, but the loveliness of their deterioration is similar. As always, click to enlarge!

And this one is from Brussels in 1982--too modern to be a proper Ghost Sign, perhaps (the number at the bottom reads 1/23/68, which could be a date, though in Europe it's usually Day/Month/Year.) 

Major Astro, circa 1970

In Wichita we had several memorable kiddie show hosts (Cap'n Bill, played by Bill MacLain, Freddie Fudd, supposedly Elmer's cousin, played by Henry Harvey) but none loomed as large in our little cartoon-addled minds as Channel Three's Major Astro, played by Tom Leahy, who also served as The Host on KARD's late-night horror movie show "Nightmare" (the prime inspiration for Joel Sanderson's brilliant "Basement Sublet of Horror").

 The show began in the days of the Mercury program, but as you can see by the Moonbase set above, it was still running well into the Apollo years.

 Here the Major waves, looking like he's giving his signature sign-off line, "Happy orbits, boys and girls!" I met Tom once when my friend Jeff Killian interviewed him in his home, and I was running one of two video cameras. In the interview, Tom was very, very funny, (he referred to the character as "The Maj") and afterwards he invited us to have a drink with him. Jeff and the other cameraman demurred, as it was before noon, but I wasn't by God going to pass up the chance to have a snort with Major Astro. He gave me a glass of white wine and said "I believe I'll have something stronger myself." Then he poured himself a good-sized tumbler of scotch.

The viewing screen behind him to his left is where the cartoons would first appear before going full-screen.  I believe Jeff gave me these pictures in the late eighties to print; I just found them in a box of old slides. Most likely they came from The Maj himself. Tom died a year or two ago, mourned by thousands of Wichita's former kiddie-show viewers. Rest in Peace, Maj!