Bobby Edwards (seen here in a self-portrait from 1917) gave his own history of the “Greenwich Village Epic” in that quintessential Village journal, The Quill, in the November 1917 issue:

“Down in dear old Greenwich Village,” or, as the Bard sings, “Way Down South in Greenwich Village,” originated in Polly’s about four years ago. Lucy Huffaker, Jack McGrath and Polly herself concocted a verse to which George Baker improvised music. The ravages of time have nearly destroyed the original version and, as I remember it, it was not a parlor song, though very funny.

About a year later, the troubadour, who was then confining himself to Italian, improvised a few verses at the Dutch Oven to entertain Ernest Holcombe, Harry Kemp, A. Boni and others. Whereupon the Bard, elated at the applause of his distinguished audience, sang the verses day and night to everyone and added more until the rhymes to village were exhausted.

In the meantime low persons made vulgar parodies in imperfect meter. These Bacchic efforts were not incorporated into Mr. Edwards’ repertoire. But a Village publisher at the time scented folklore in the Village, and being so thrilled by his discovery he overlooked the lack of subtlety in these bucolic imitations of the true version and published a leaflet confusing these spurious verses with the innocent compilations of the Bard, to whom credit for the whole mess was generously given. Much opprobrium thereupon descended upon the innocent head of the Bard.

After that the Village Orpheus sang only his own stuff and sternly resented any interpolation or even suggestion.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

“The Greenwich Village Epic,” aka “Way Down South in Greenwich Village,” or “Down in Dear Old Greenwich Village” is often quoted in books on the Village.

It’s usually credited to a famous Village character of the ’20s, Bobby Edwards, “the Troubadour of Greenwich Village.” (I’ve been assembling material on him, by the way; I hope to post it here soon.) In fact, it was a collective creation, a genuine folk song of the neighborhood. As far as I can tell, it was written by George Baker, the manager of the essential hangout Polly’s, and extra verses were added by many others. The first version I’ve found is in The Song Book of Robert Edwards (1917); the second is in Frank Shay’s More Pious Friends and Drunken Companions (1920). Both of these credit Edwards and Baker. Clement Wood included his own verses in two memoirs of the Village, written for Haldeman-Julius’s “Little Blue Book” series: Bohemian Life in N.Y.’s Greenwich Village (#1106, 1926) and Greenwich Village in the Jazz Era (#1336, 1929). Wood, by the way, credits the song to Albert and Charles Boni, Louise (Casey) Murphy, and himself, and grouses that it’s “called a Bobby Edwards song.”

Wood also calls it the “national anthem” of the Village. Typically, it’s satirical; and the satire is directed at the Village itself.

Nobody seems to have collected all of these verses in one place, so here is a first attempt at a complete version of the Epic. There may be other verses out there, but these are the ones I’ve found so far. There’s also a free adaptation by Tuli Kupferberg; you can easily find it on YouTube, so I haven’t transcribed it here.

[Read more →]

Our final fish game is “Go Fish,” published in 1951 by Ed-U-Cards.  The fronts are simple fields of color, the backs show this cheerful specimen.

In later editions, this has been adapted into a flipbook; if you arrange the cards in the proper order, the fish blows bubbles.

As a lagniappe, I’ll add this interesting miniature board game, part of a gameboard published in 1938 by the Transogram Company.  No less than 13 games are crammed onto one remarkable piece of cardboard.  No. 11 is all about fish (click on it to see it in more detail).

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

Come, let us sit upon the fence;
It saves us trouble and expense.

Yes, that’s my turd in the punchbowl; you can keep it, if you like.

You can’t prove that no two snowflakes are alike; but you can make a good case for no one snowflake being alike.

Skinner’s First Law of Economics: Work for people who have more money than you.

Ashes to ashes,
Dust to dust,
Pardon the shovel,
Dig we must.

It’s foolish to debate whether the left or right brain is preferable; it’s like arguing which foot to walk with.

Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what the fuck your country is doing.

Underneath this moon-lit sky,
My wet laundry will not dry.

Ravioli always reminds me of cysts.

Marriage is so gay.

Hey, where’s my

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

Ancient coral or ancient ladies’ swimming cap?

On the first day of spring, which in New York City was particularly welcome and unseasonably warm, I took a long walk on the sands of Dead Horse Bay, a quiet inlet tucked away not far from Floyd Bennett Field (the City’s very first airport), now abandoned to wildlife, model airplane enthusiasts, nature trails, and a massive recreational complex. My excursion wasn’t solo – the trip was organized by Underwater New York, one of hundreds of events organized worldwide under the auspices of Atlas Obscura, to inaugurate the first international Obscura Day.

New York is so all-encompassing that, even while it broadens my mental horizons, it tends to insulate my geographical imagination. Like the Saul Steinberg cartoon The world as seen from New York’s 9th Avenue: there’s New York City, and then the rest of the continent sort of drops off across the Hudson, condensed into a single, nearly blank parcel of land. With the decline of the shipping industry and scaled-back working harbors it’s easy to forget that New York is a city of rivers: every borough is surrounded by water on at least three sides, and two of those are islands (in more ways than one).

So being out on the edge where the city meets the sea, the bay, or the river refreshes the cliché that the enormity of the ocean dwarfs all else. It changes my experience of time and space, if only briefly, before I have to wince again as teenage gymnasts somersault down the aisle of a cramped subway car or flip each other against the ceiling, threatening passengers with the proximity of flying limbs in the hopes of earning more ‘donations.’

Dead Horse Bay is a little different though. It is not a timeless abyss. It’s a stretch of dirty sand strewn with garbage, thousands of bottles, bones, and sea grass – the remains of a 1926 landfill that burst in the 1950s.

[Read more →]

Our fourth fish game, “Go Fish,” was published in 2001 by Cardinal Industries.  Ten varieties of fish are depicted; but, like the example above, are unidentified.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

When an irresistible force meets an immovable object, let someone else deal with it.

Well, of course it burst: it was a bubble.

Guy Debord noted that Surrealist techniques had been co-opted by the advertising business: automatic writing became unedited “brainstorming.”  Similarly, early experiments in computer-generated poetry led to the composition of spam.

Hey, look everybody!  I’m invisible!

Two plus two doesn’t equal four, you asshole!  One plus three equals four!

If you read a newspaper, you have to buy it; but if you buy a newspaper, you don’t have to read it.

I’m still bitter: I’m no quitter.

To be respected as an artist, you must make money.  The best way to make money is to sell entertainment for teenagers.  Therefore, you will enjoy a better reputation if you don’t make work for adults.

Where have all our struggles gotten us?
And what’s more, they’ve been monotonous.

Yes, my dog bites, but only other people.

Plump the pillow,
Fluff the blanket.
My head’s dizzy:
Time to bank it.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

The art of book illustration seems to have evaporated up into the ullage.  It lives on, of course, in the lively fields of children’s books and graphic novels.  But few novelists nowadays turn over a few pages to an artist to draw pictures of their stories.

Which provides an excuse to post here one of the wonderful creations of Frank C. Papé.  Little is known about him: you too can type his name into the Google box and trawl through the meager findings.  He illustrated many of the books of Anatole France and James Branch Cabell, whose bawdy, irreverent satires were well served by his penchant for opulent, cartoony grotesques.

I’ve selected one of his lithos for France’s At the Sign of the Reine Pédauque.  It depicts the notion that Adam and Eve sinned in copulating with one another, rather than with the Sylphs, Salamanders, and other “Genii of the air.”  It was published by Dodd, Mead, and Co. in 1923.

(Posted by Doug Skinner) 

Our third fish game is also simply called “Fish Card Game,” and comes to us shrouded in mystery, with no indication of date or publisher.  The other fish depicted are: Seahorse, Flying Fish, Surgeon Fish, Manta Ray, Tiger Shark, Ocean Sunfish, Porcupine Puffer, and Deepsea Angler.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)   

Greater longevity has multiplied our problems; fortunately, scientists are working to make life shorter.

Do these pints make me look fat?

The Mona Lisa isn’t smiling; she’s smirking.

A woman once accused me of limiting my audience by making obscure references: I had mentioned Nostradamus.

maggot nuggets

Of course there’s a hole in the ground; where else would it be?

We have, at great trouble and expense, developed an enormously complicated society in which almost everyone is miserable.  It sounds impossible; but, by jingo, we did it!

Why read fiction?  Non-fiction usually contains enough misinformation to slake your thirst for lies.

Filter your philtres.

Here you see a pretty flower, named for Mamie Eisenhower.

Peanut butter always reminds me of earwax.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)