Monday, November 17, 2003
My Mad Magazine Fix
Twice this weekend I drove back into my old neighborhood. Working on this project has connected me once again to the infrastructure of Uptown. On the corner of Thorndale and Winthrop, directly acorss from George B. Swift elementary school stood a stable of many neighborhoods ... the drugstore. Thorndale drugstore served many purposes in the neighborhood. Besides filling prescriptions and sundries, it served as a haven from the long summer afternoons. Where a quarter would get you an ice cream sandwich or a six once bottle of Seven Up. Where the local street gang would conjugate with their sharp prattle between servings of waxed lips, Boston Baked Bean candy and menthol Kools.
But for me this place was a warp in which I sought solice from an otherwise doldrum existance. This was where I bought Mad Magazine. I was a budding artist by the age of nine and Mad's artists were my heroes. Jack Davis and Sergio Arregarnos opened creative outlets in me that comic books could not. My thirty-five cents went a long way and not a week would pass before I would go back, magically hoping a new Mad would somehow be hot off the presses. The concept of monthly issues escaped me and I was continually dissapointed. Which led me to Cracked magazine as a fix until Bill Gaines got his act together. Then there were all the "rip-off" wannabes such as "Panic" and "Yell" and "CarTOONs", all of which I would buy in order to study illustration with sophmoric humor.
In this spot today stands a Coffee shop. A semi-upscale place with decent espresso. And the building has been greatly changed for where the magazine rack once stood is now the edge of the outside patio at which I would find myself this weekend. Having a Cappacino, listening to the kids run through the Swift playlot, and so I removed a sketchpad from my satchel and I drew.
-kac
