There’s a song here somewhere, originally uploaded by wpgbuzz.
Click on the photo above and it will take you to the original Flickr page which includes some great gum history about the invention of gum and gum vending machines by Thomas Adams in New York City (you’ll se his house in an earlier post from today), and also a photograph of what appears on the back side of this advertising card.
adamshouse, originally uploaded by fshk.
In a post last evening, we featured both gum history and a link to a wonderful site that featured the first Wrigley building on Staten Island. As you remember from the gum history included in that post, the building was first used by Thomas Adams, a key inventor of chewing gum in the United States, as the photographer who goes by the name fshk details in her notes on this photograph:
Thomas Adams Jr. House, 8th Ave and Carroll Street. From the Park Slope Walking Tour brochure: “Many critics consider this house the finest example of Romanesque Revival residential architecture in New York City. The inventor of Chiclets chewing gum, and the automatic vending machines that dispensed it, comissioned this double house in 1888 for himself and his son.”
Photo: Nathan Kensinger
Sometimes you have a blog of a blog of a blog, and a rabbit trail that led through yesterday’s Gothamist website led to a truly great site of photography and history from Nathan Kensinger (a documentary filmmaker, photographer, location scout and more who explores “The Industrial Edges of New York City”on his blog), who recently discovered on Rosebank, Staten Island not only the first Wrigley Building, but a treasure trove of gum history in the process.
You’ll want to explore his blog (and not just the Wrigley part) and the wonderful array of photographs of the abandoned building (which may be transformed into a luxury condo) along with the rich chewing gum history contained within those walls, including the story of an 11-time Mexican president, gum inventor Thomas Adams (tires are involved) and Blackjack gum, as this excerpt from his site reveals:
The Wrigley Building is an abandoned 1917 chewing gum factory in Rosebank and part of Staten Island’s historic chewing gum heritage. Modern chewing gum was invented on the island with the help of General Santa Anna, the former eleven-time President of Mexico. In 1869, while living in exile on the island, he sold a ton of Mexican chicle to local inventor Thomas Adams. Adams hoped to make rubber tires from the substance. Instead, he created chewing gum. By 1884, he had introduced the world’s first flavored stick of gum - Black Jack - which opened the door for future chewing gum kings like the Wrigley Brothers.
Many thanks, Nathan, for the privilege of including this significant piece of gum history…and the evocative photographs (which include the one above, which features a view from the inside of the abandoned building) that track the Wrigley building’s glorious and shambling demise.
One of the classic Italian restaurants in Charleston, West Virginia, is Fazio’s, and today’s Charleston Gazette featured an interview with its legendary owner, Joe Fazio (pictured above at a Jaycees fundraiser).
The restaurant grew out of what was once a barber shop operated by his father Dominic, an Italian immigrant. In today’s “innerview” in the Gazette, Joe reminisces about his dad:
“His name was Dominic. He dressed in a black suit with a big hat and horseshoe pin. When he went downtown, he stood out. He would carry four or five packs of chewing gum in his pocket, and when he would go to City National to pay a bill, he would give them a stick of gum. Pop always had a smile for everybody.”
In yesterday’s Daily Aztec, an independent student newspaper at San Diego State University, features editor Faryar Bohani, waxing nostalgic about childhood and the treats it contained, including Whistle Pops and Fruit Stripe gum, as he explains in his column, “Taking yourself back to the candy shop”:
Remember that kid all the girls used to have a crush on and always thought looked like one of the Hanson brothers? It wasn’t because he held a Trapper Keeper from the computer lab to the music room; it was much more than that.
It was because he was chewing Fruit Stripe chewing gum. The gum where that athletic zebra adorned the front of the package and every stick was as identical to an ’80s tie-dye shirt as the next stick.
But what really sold it was the tattoo that came with each stick. It was an emblem of pride, an icon of long-lasting flavor and of course, a symbol of instant coolness that even the Zoey 101 generation can appreciate.
