:: On Monday, Chief Health Commissioner Rudolph     “Guy” Fenimore sent a press release reminding hungry citizens that the     city’s three-year long ban on open air barbecue restaurants ends this     Saturday. Blowout celebrations are currently planned at Roy’s BBQ, Captain     Jack’s Rib Shack, Shiney’s, the Thai Barbecue House (which will be removing     its temporary tarpaulin after closing time on Friday evening), and South     Street Jimmy’s, among others.

:: Think you know which building has the greatest number of floors on the west side? If you said the First National Bank building, think again! It’s actually the Richards Center at the corner of Willow Avenue and 5th. Despite its stunted appearance the building, a former slaughterhouse, has five sub-basements!

:: According to a 2006 poll, more residents of the city are worried about red ant infestations than possible corruption at City Hall.

:: Charles Medfield has run Medfield’s 24-Hour Cheesery continuously for over 60 years.  It has been closed only once, during the birth of his third child, Marilyn.

:: Animal Planet filmed 3 episodes of the series Animal Cops in the city in the summer of 2006, but the project was canceled and the footage never aired due to the death of an associate producer with the show from an ocelot attack.

:: Singer/Songwriter Andy Partridge of the musical group XTC has specifically requested in his will that he be buried under Wonderland Walk in Mabel Tripp Gardens, but only if his death occurs prior to the year 2020.

:: Hipsters and nerds take note- Local Gotta Dollar? Gotta Deal! stores are flush with original 1980s Transformers Trapper Keeper folders, after a liquidator found thirty cases in a warehouse in northern New Jersey.

:: The city was once home to the largest ball of purple yarn in the western hemisphere. This unusual tourist attraction was housed in the basement of the Zimmer Building, and admission was 12 cents. The ball of yarn was finally disassembled in 1918 to contribute to the war effort. Purple strands can still be seen in military bedding from the time.

:: Local horror show host Count Film-ula declared a five-year “hiatus” from his show on this date in 1997. He currently creates chainsaw sculpture art and declines all interviews.

:: The city’s community garden features grape vines that have been used each year since 1939 to produce three to five bottles of wine that are auctioned off for charity.

:: Theodore Roosevelt’s famous Bull Terrier, Pete, passed away during his visit to the city in 1910. – D. Andrews, K. Church, S. Levinson, J. Morris, R. White

 A new recurring series in which we take a look back at the city’s most familiar advertising icons.

“Aw … PHOOEY!” The Silent Life of Sour Grapes Magee

Long-time residents of the city may recall that the dour-faced figure painted on the side of the Lowell Furniture Warehouse – just east of Southwest South Street, by exit 588 – not only once had a name, he had a voice.

For youngsters and newcomers, however, he’s just a puzzle – with a grimace marring his cowlicked head, arm raised in a dismissive wave – the almost entirely silent mascot whose painted profanity of “Aw Phooey” being the only, utterly ambiguous clue behind his connection to a local furniture magnate.

He is Sour Grapes Magee, and there was a time when he was the talk of the town.

David Floyd Lowell, grand old man of the Lowell Furniture empire, opened his first store on the first floor of a modest three-story brick building in the ritzy 117th Avenue district (converted into a portion of the fourteen-story Golda Meir industrial complex in 1978). Welcoming customers through an impressive set of double doors, Lowell had a beautiful picture window by which to display his collection of moderately-priced contemporary American furnishings and a passion for business, but unfortunately he lacked publicity.

Urged and assisted by his neighbor and good friend, newspaperman Pink Norwood, Lowell himself crafted the figure who would operate as the business’ mascot all the way to Lowell’s death in 1984 – Sour Grapes Magee.

A dour-faced, cow-licked contrarian who resembled the often-criticized idle young middle-class men of the Jazz Age, Magee was immediately pulling long hours as the sole spokesman for Lowell Furniture – in print ads, billboards and radio spots, the reedy, complaining voice of Sour Grapes Magee could be heard or read every hour of the day, by thousands of the city’s then-relatively-few literate citizens.

Unfortunately, the message he delivered confused more than it enticed.

The premise of the ads was fairly straightforward (or so Lowell insisted, up to his death fifty years later); The advertisement would praise Lowell Furniture’s high quality, low prices, excellent location and customer satisfaction. Sour Grapes Magee, however – by dint of his idleness, slow wits or unwarranted pride – would find himself unable to take advantage of Lowell Furniture’s positive features, and would – by way of those eponymous “sour grapes” – put down Lowell Furniture. Often in vehement, illustrative prose.

And therein lay the problem, as potential customers were often confused by the message being delivered. A typical Lowell Furniture print ad might feature a bus full of smiling, happy customers speeding towards Lowell’s, loudly singing the praises of Lowell’s low prices, high quality, and so on. In the corner of the ad, standing beside a broken down car, a frustrated Magee would declare by contrast “Aw, all Lowell Furniture’s gots worms in ‘em!”

When the ads moved to radio, confusion grew ever more intense. “Awww, Lowell Furniture supports the Kaiser,” declared one infamous ad. “My ma bought a love seat from Lowell’s,” he explains in another, “And now the whole town thinks she’s loose!”

Well-meaning newspapers, and radio and television stations made it a point to forward letters of complaint and confusion to David Lowell, encouraging him to re-engineer the mascot, fearing they’d lose a consistent advertising dollar if Lowell’s clearly misguided strategy were allowed to continue. But David Lowell stuck to his guns.

The issue at hand, unbeknown to advertisers and customers alike, was that Lowell had a very personal motive in the fabrication of Sour Grapes Magee. According to a biography of David Lowell, written by his daughter Alice in 1990, he fostered a burning hatred for his younger cousin Sylvester Lowell, an unaccomplished author and general layabout, of whom Lowell would often paint vivid, hateful pictures at family events.

While the source of the rivalry between the two cousins yet remains a mystery, it was clearly heated enough that the caricature of Sour Grapes Magee – whose likeness bears an undeniable similarity to Sylvester Lowell’s – persisted as Lowell Furniture’s prominent spokesman right up to Sylvester’s death in 1972.

Citing a clear absence of business growth clearly attributable to Sour Grapes Magee’s confusing public message, Alice Lowell – upon inheriting the business at her father’s retirement – similarly retired Sour Grapes Magee in favor of a more straightforward advertising. The heiress’ strategy has clearly borne fruit, inasmuch as Lowell’s Furniture has not only risen to dominance in the regional furniture wholesaling market, but has opened new warehouse complexes in three surrounding counties.

Nonetheless, both as a tribute to her father’s perseverance and by way of a condition of his will, Sour Grapes Magee holds a place of permanent “honor”  on the side of the primary Lowell Furniture Warehouse to this day, raising his hand in silent protest and continuing to baffle an otherwise well-meaning public with his seemingly contrary message.

 It started as a fraternity stunt, but running enthusiasts the world over now look forward to it almost as much as the Boston and New York Marathons. It’s the Mile-High Marathon, a uniquely urban race, and it happens right here in our very own city.

The goal of the marathon (although, at seven total miles of running distance, it remains far from an actual marathon) is to run every continuous inch of it along the city’s landscaping and architecture – as long as you run above street-level!

The race begins – as it has ever since Tau Theta Mu pledges first made the run in 1978 – on the Calvin Siegel Walkway running adjacent to the elevated train at the Pepper Avenue and 77^th Street station. The brick walkway runs three-quarters of a mile along a beautifully landscaped flower garden, and luckily leads directly to the Industry Island Ferry.

Runners jog up the gangplank, up the stairs, and take a mandatory fifty laps of the upper decks before disembarking on the island (although officials frown on runners taking to using the low wall surrounding the island, they tacitly allow foot traffic as long as a strict one-at-a-time and “no rough-housing” rule is obeyed). From the walls, runners hop to the stairs leading up to the Wheat Bay Aquarium, running across the plexiglass “Bridge Across the Sea” (one at a time, monitored by off-duty police officers), and then taking speed-walking laps inside the elevated cable car as it takes them back to the mainland (deliberate rocking of the car earns instant disqualification from the race).

From there, it’s across the marble walkway at the Center Alley Public Library, across the backs of the Seven Virtues statues, up the stairwell at Business Plaza Tower to the 22^nd floor, where runners are allowed ten at a time across the enclosed corporate walkway leading to the Darcy Ford-Davis Building.

Runners then take to the second and third stories of Cashville Mall, eventually boarding the British-style double-decker tour busses which are specifically rented for the event. Traffic regulations limit the athletic activity in which one can engage on the exposed top tier of a two-story bus, so runners content themselves with stomping their feet while sitting comfortably, until they reach the Wonderland Walk at Mabel Tripp Gardens.

Running the Wonderland Walk boardwalk leads participants to an awkward scramble up and down the curves of the Gardens’ famous wooden roller-coaster, The ‘Splitter, after which elated and exhausted runners can finally reach the home-stretch- The Mile High Marathon elevated bridge, built specifically for the event in 2003, funded by private contributions.

Participants past, present and future are currently petitioning the city to add a 1300-foot extension to the Mile-High Marathon Bridge, linking it to modern artist Christo’s 1992 installation “Stilt City,” adding another valuable 500 yards to the Marathon and bringing it within spitting distance of Chauncey Butler Arena, the year-round home to the Chauncey Butler Circus and its tantalizing assortment of highwires and trapezes.

Folks often wonder whatever became of Wet-Foot Field, the stamping ground of the city’s first Ethnic-League baseball team, the Blue Stockings. Well, appropriately enough, it was excavated, lined with concrete and turned into the world-famous Swimporium public indoor swimming pools at Mabel Tripp Gardens in 1902.

But wait, you might ask, whatever became of the world-famous Swimporium? After a 1907 bacterial infection caused an epidemic of Queensland Fever among summertime patrons of the swimming pools, almost four thousand tons of bleached sand were used to fill the pool and bury the surrounding dressing tents – just in time to simulate snowy hills for the Mabel Tripp Gardens Christmas Gala the following year, in 1908.

A sand flea infestation required the removal of all forty tons of sand, and ended in the death of three immigrant workers. In 1910, the area was reopened briefly as an open-air, fenceless petting zoo, built along the theories of ardent conservationist Pastor Martin David Dodger, who believed that open spaces quelled animal aggression. The high cost associated with retrieving runaway animals and subsequent lawsuits saw the zoo closed in the first few weeks of Spring, 1911.

Over the next ninety-five years, the space has housed such disparate facilities as the city’s only all-wooden roller coaster, an asylum for children believed to be falsifying deafness, no less than three department stores and four minimalls over the course of as many decades, an aquarium composed entirely of plaster fish contained in blue-tinted blocks of Lucite, a recording facility operated by former Police-frontman Sting, several community theater groups and a pair of Shakespearean troupes, five competing Renaissance festivals, the Lowland Games, a miniature model of the city of Pompeii with working volcano (firing soap-flake ashes every three hours of the day, beginning at six in the morning and ending at nine at night), and the site of the first three and last two reunions of ground-breaking local improv comedy troupe Fork, Knife and Spoon (for the last of which a custom bandshell was built in 2003).

Most recently, the land has been converted into a multi-story, 4,000-car capacity parking facility. Whether this latest incarnation will stand the test of time is yet to be seen, but one thing is for sure – drivers in the downtown shopping district are doing more than taking advantage of convenient and inexpensive parking when they make the short walk to any of the facility’s eight elevators or three stairwells – they’re taking part in history.

Fun Facts: :: The Blue Stockings were largely Armenian, with three Greeks and one shortstop from Argentina. :: The Swimporium broke all world records for deepest indoor swimming pool. Singapore has held that title since 1971. :: Queensland Fever is typically only communicable through intimate contact with similarly infected farm animals. :: The lease for the parking garage currently occupying the land runs until 2035. :: Fork, Knife and Spoon co-founder Jones Murphy perished from Queensland Fever in 1981.

:: Number of years between the founding of the city and its incorporation- 19

:: This Sunday marks thirty years since the closing of the Hearth’s Delight Confectionaries factory, here in the heart of the city. Here are some of the fondly-remembered candies and sweets manufactured by this hometown Willy Wonka: Caramel Flats, Chocolate Hailstones, Dices, Ring-O-Ding-A’s, Strippies, Freaking Flip-Outs, Comfort Bar, Silver Nuggets, Sticks N’ Stones, Peach Boys, Rev-Em-Ups, Red Snappers, Mouth Umbrellas, Sasquatch Bar and Coconut Sasquatch Bar.

:: Square miles annexed to the city since 1970 (2005)- 9.1

:: Only resident of the city to be featured on a foreign nation’s postage- local poet Jakob Kaczala on Poland’s .25 zloty (about 33 cents) stamp

:: Current Value (in dollars) of a mint-condition copy of the stamp- 25 cents

:: The top sandwich at the As You Like It Deli (the one on Casper Street)- The Krazy Kat— sauerkraut, chopped liver, and peanut butter on one slice of rye and one pancake.

:: Today marks the eighty-seventh birthday of locally-born food scientist Professor Alfred Cash Delaney, inventor of the mini-marshmallow. Professor Delaney has described his time spent developing his compact culinary creation as “very difficult.”

“People tell me ‘It’s just a small marshmallow,’ what’s the big deal?’” said the Professor during a 1976 interview, “I say to them, ‘Why don’t you try to make a very tiny television set, see how far you get!’”

:: Cause of yesterday’s traffic snarl on the Westbridge Bridge: A parakeet named Cassius playfully escaped from his cage in owner Laura Prescott’s 1984 Nissan Sentra and playfully pecked at Prescott’s neck while she drove, sending her into the guardrail. Cassius was uninjured. Ms. Prescott’s condition was not known as of press time.

:: The No-Smoking ordinance passed in 1999 prohibits smokers from lighting up inside restaurants, bars, theaters, common areas in multi-family residences and within fifty feet of school properties, but oddly enough allows smoking in churches, libraries and gymnasiums.

:: Number of major-party vice-presidential candidates born here (1804 – 2004)- 3

::In six of the eight school districts within the city, the following elective sports are acceptable alternatives to regular Phys.Ed classes- Bowling, Beginner SCUBA, Intermediate SCUBA, Crossbow Hunting and RC Demolition Derby

:: Until 1992, an ordinance banned the use of two-letter state codes on outgoing official city correspondence. The ordinance was lifted in 1997, briefly reinstated in 1998, and then lifted again.

:: Number of statues in the city dedicated to Santa’s reindeer- Eight