Broadway & Olive Circa 1982

Here’s another shot of the shop formerly known as Smiles. I have posted about this shop before, but this is a different view. This is the corner of Broadway and Olive Street circa 1982.

The thing that truly dates this photo is not one, but two phone booths in the parking lot behind the store! Wow! That’s back when you could make a phone call with some modicum of privacy and shelter from the elements. They may have even had a phone directory hanging from a chain within!

As I remember, these booths were being phased out at the time in favor of the sad little boxes set atop poles. There was a terrific visual joke regarding that change in the first Christopher Reeve Superman movie. The replacement for the old glass boxes were probably a lot easier to maintain but are nowhere near as nice and completely bereft of privacy.

Of course, I may be completely naive thinking that people want to have a discreet telephone conversation. Being that everybody and his dog have cell phones, I’ve been the sad witness to too many private conversations where people talk about the most intimate details of their lives usually accompanied by language that would make the demon in The Exorcist blush and all too often in confined public places such as subway cars, railways or buses. Discretion is dead or people think that it’s the big city and nobody knows them anyway. All I can say is thank God for iPods and Heavy Metal.

The Photo Elective

Back in the 1980s, I went to art school, and I along with all of the other illustration majors were required to take a minor course in photography. We had to shoot the photos as well as process the negatives and make prints. I don’t recall what the particulars of the class assignments were although I can tell from looking at the negatives which were the assignments and which ones were shot just to finish off a roll. The shots to finish a roll are a lot more interesting. While my fellow students mostly resided and shot their photographs in the vibrant metropolis of Philadelphia, I lived and did most of my shooting in and around the staid and solid small town of Westville, New Jersey.