The Naked City | Jul 23 2021 |
You can pull a man from water but you can't make him breathe.
And in contrast to Yôko Azusa, who's very adept in water, here you see a photo of someone who didn't fare well in that medium. This shot shows cops fishing drowning victim John Ray Thompson from MacArthur Park Lake in Los Angeles today in 1951. This is another curious and macabre discovery from the digital archives of the Los Angeles Examiner. Such imagery fascinates us because this type of news content, now unseen in the U.S., was prevalent in Central America when we lived there. We assume it still is. It was known as nota roja, basically “red reports,” essentially, if it bleeds it leads. The Thompson photo shows no blood, but the principle is the same. We have no idea how he drowned. Whether by accident, suicide, or murder, that information doesn't appear anywhere online that we looked, and might not have been printed back in ’51 either. Examiner photographers shot rolls of film every week, and editors picked the best photos for the paper. There's no guarantee an item on Thompson's death ever ran. But however he drowned, it was a bad ending.
Vintage Pulp | Nov 5 2015 |
Fast lane to the promised land.
We've done a bit of France and Germany this week, so we thought we'd keep Pulp Intl. international by heading over to Holland. Above you see eight pulp style covers from Rotterdam publisher De Vrije Pers for various works of erotica, including Marquis de Sade's Wilde Nachten, aka, The 120 Days of Sodom. These were part of De Vrije Pers's Sexpress collection, and indeed the rear covers inform readers Een nieuw serie ware sex verhalen sprankelen van realisme—a new series of true sex stories sparkle with realism. Which is good, because who doesn't love a little sparkle? We also love the covers. You may remember we shared one a while ago and promised to revisit the collection. So this is us doing that. Middle and late 1960s on these.