Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: Today’s photo is part of a run of early photos I have purchased either on Instagram or in an online version of the Brimfield sale. (I have only been to Brimfield a few times and it is one of my life’s ambitions to go again. As a car-less non-driver there is no good path from Manhattan. Fellow junk collectors who would like to make the trip in future less disease inhibited times, please do advise. Happy to fund gas.)

This photo postcard came out of the Instagram haul. Purchasing on Instagram is like being in a real time auction although there is no raising of a bid – just who gets to claim it. Some are fast paced and other items just sit and get marked down. It is interesting to me to see what @MissMolly thinks I would like from what I have already purchased and when she DM’s me about one. She’s low on cat photos though and I have yet to manage to purchase one from her.

The Brimfield sale (those to follow in future weeks) moved at a somewhat slower pace, which works better for me. I do like to have at least a bit of time to ponder and consider. The Instagram sales are definitely you snooze you lose – the Brimfield one largely allowed for some consideration and even negotiation before things started to get snatched up.

This photo postcard is entirely unmarked and was never sent. I suspect that it was the composition that caught my eye. The photographer caught a good moment with the legs of these gentlemen, their shoulders and that flag creating a triangle in the middle – a sort of perfect composition – with those table legs adding to it. All the gents sport ties so they were dressed for the occasion, the one even completes the ensemble with a vest and watch chain. I would hazard a guess that it wasn’t a day that started out with drinking and smoking, but was ending with it.

Each fellow has a liberal shot of what appears to be hard liquor, with a bottle of beer chaser as well. (Or so it appears to me.) The two younger men may be brothers, a thought that only occurs to me when I start looking hard at it. Cigarettes spring from the mouths of the two guys. I think it is fair to say this is serious business, they do not appear jolly. Their attire marks this photo as very early. The room is pretty nondescript although there is an oddly incongruent and cheerful boarder of flowers on the wall near the floor and what I thought was a series of either small holes or something along the middle of the wall, but turns out to be something on the negative or in the printing. It’s hard to see, but there’s a happy flowered carpet on the floor too.

I spent a little time considering the flag at the back and its position. Taking out the possibility that somehow the photo negative and printing process somehow flipped which could be possible, I wondered what the statement might be. As many readers probably know, an upside down flag is a signal of duress. I had not encountered backward.

Our friends over at Google informed me that the military positions the flag this way (blue section, stars up highest) on uniforms, vehicles and whatnot, making the flag look as if it is waving as the person or the vehicle moves forward. I don’t know that I agree that they achieve this effect, but I guess it isn’t for me to weigh in on. Meanwhile, I admit that somehow I have never noticed this. So much for my general powers of observation. I cannot find any other reference to this positioning of the flag. (Someone with better eyes might be able to date this within a range by counting the stars on that faded flag.)

Meanwhile, I believe there is a general sense that our prolonged quarantine has increased people’s drinking (um, why wouldn’t it?) and probably not always in a good way. Zoom cocktails (starting earlier and earlier in the day it seems) being the social version of this – although here in New York you can sit outside with someone and drink if you are comfortable doing it in what turns out to be a not-quite socially distanced way. (I have yet to do it but I did have an in-person work breakfast outside on the corner of York and 86 the other day. It was very hygienic and just fine.)

When it comes to work if someone invites you to Zoom cocktails it to be a way of saying it isn’t really a work meeting, and maybe you will talk a little work, but you’ll also chat about other things. (Strangely though, like the meetings we have all tuned into, they tend to last exactly an hour.) Whether you have a jam jar of white wine in one hand, cold hibiscus tea (my favorite summer drink which makes me look like I am guzzling red wine), or something harder, it’s up to you and anything pretty much goes – after all, you’ll on someone’s laptop or iPad screen. I personally seem to be consuming the large quantity of my calories through baked goods rather than alcohol, but to each their own.

However, the other evening we (meaning we at Jazz at Lincoln Center) hosted a Dizzy’s Club online event and sent out the offer for cocktail and mocktail fixings for the guests. Although I purchased the requisite box (which came with salted peanuts in a nod to Dizzy himself) featuring Negroni fixings, instead I made a vodka tonic the way I like, with a ridiculous amount of fresh lime. (I had spent the day packing the apartment for the installation of bookshelves and needed the pick me up – more on this in a future post.) In this way, I found myself on Zoom with 60 or so jazz lovers. The evening kicked off talking to the great Catherine Russell followed by a clip of her at Dizzy’s. (I don’t have that clip but instead offer another which at the time of writing can be found here.)

Our apartment packed up for the bookcase installation.

However briefly it did seem we were transported to a summer’s evening, wiled away at Dizzy’s, sweating drinks in hand – a serving of spicy mac ‘n cheese within reach and maybe some fried pickles, enjoying some companionable time, listening to the music and watching the view of the sun setting over Central Park. I must say, those were the best Zoom cocktails so far.

View of Dizzy’s, Central Park and the East side out the windows.