Sunday, December 8, 2013

Photo Files: "it sure ain't fresh in my mind"

Lunchtime Atop a Skyscraper 1932


Yesterday at noon I snapped a photo of the above poster at Bubba's Diner in London. Yesterday afternoon I began to isolate small groups of workers who seemed to be taking amongst themselves, and I put my own words into their mouths, revealed in two previous posts. [ Post 1, Post 2 ] And yesterday evening, while channel surfing, I happened to find an Irish documentary on TVO that focussed on the contribution of Irish steel workers to New York's building boom in the 1930s, and revealed more about the iconic photo we see before us. 

Don Kelly, a friend who accompanied me to Bubba's for lunch, emailed last evening:

     Just by coincidence there was a document-
     ary about that very picture of the men on the
     beam on TVO this evening. It was called
     Men at Lunch ... synchronicity.
 
Synchronicity, coincidence, good timing? All of the above, I say.

Later, online, I found the following blurb about the film:

     Few images are more iconic to New York than
     Lunch Atop A Skyscraper, the September 1932
     photograph of eleven iron workers eating lunch
     on a steel beam suspended above Rockefeller
     Center. And in the new documentary Men at Lunch,
     director Sean O. Cualain digs into the history behind
     the Depression-era photograph, attempting to
     investigate the identities of the anonymous iron-
     workers and explain why the image has lingered
     so long in our city's historical canon.
     [Link to above review]

Through careful searching some identities were discovered. But what the men were talking about together remains a mystery. 

Still, I have a few ideas:


   Man, left: Listen, I tell ya, somethin' doesn't smell right.
   
   Man, centre: I hear ya. I've had fresh and this here ain't
                     near fresh.

   Man, right: Considerin' that salami only came up 54 stories,
                   it sure ain't fresh in my mind.   

More spicy details to follow.

Photos by GH

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Please click here to view you gonna finish that?

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