Frank Bowers

I picked up a couple of interesting consignments yesterday. A client of mine found these two Frank Bowers murals at a garage sale in Long Beach years ago, unfortunately leaving one canvas behind. Painted in 1951, they purportedly once hung in a long deceased Long Beach bar called the Ark. Now they are almost ready to move on. Need a cleaning.

The top mural portrays a bunch of randy libertines hooking up for a journey on the ark, the one below might be the Dionysian revelry to be found in the paradise on board. Each one is about 4 x 5'.

Who was Frank Bowers? A very good question. Here is his listing in Eden Hughes book of California artists:

Frank Howard Bowers - Born in California on Nov. 20, 1905. By the 1930s Bowers had settled in Los Angeles. During the Depression he painted murals for the Federal Art Project in the Fruit Growers Exchange (Orange Harvest) and the Ruth Home School in El Monte. He died in Long Beach, CA on Dec. 11, 1964.
Source:
Edan Hughes, "Artists in California, 1786-1940"
Painting & Sculpture in Los Angeles, 1900-45; Death record.

I started hunting around and soon found a treasure trove on Bowers, at an online paean to polynesian pop called Tiki Room. At the Tiki Room website, Bowers is evidently something of a demigod. It turns out that somewhere along the way he developed a taste for the grog and became something of a specialist at painting murals in dive bars to pay off his bar tab. His paintings are the canvas equivalent of tattoo flash art, quite stylized in a manly sort of way. And who in the hell doesn't love devil girls?

Now I used to be a sign painter and unfortunately often got severe headaches from the chemicals and solvents. The only thing that could chelate the old painter's blood  from the preferred Ronin Ronan and One Shot brand lead paint happened to be alcohol. That is why so many old painters were rummies, at least why I think it is so, anyway.

Here is a Bowers watercolor I found for sale today on ebay.

There are a plethora of bar murals that Bowers, often assisted by fourth wife Vicki, painted at the Tiki Room site, really worth scrolling through their many pages. In fact it is a really cool website.

Bowers evidently painted saloons from Vegas to Ensenada and all points in between, many showing tropical temptresses showing off their wares to hulking alpha sailors and buccaneers.

Somebody had to specialize in painting bar walls and Frank did it with both gusto and skillful craft.

Bowers portrait - ebay

Here is a link to the Hard Hat Lounge in Las Vegas, proud owners of a Bowers mural.

Bowers illustrated matchbooks and menus, "how to" books and ceramics. Here are a bunch of cool photos that I purloined from the tiki room site and elsewhere, much obliged, pardon the quality of the shots. Not necessarily great art, but that is in the eye of the beholder after all and you can see how these babies would appeal to the besotted.

Foc'sle - Wilmington

Buccaneer Bar - Sierra Madre

Embers, Whittier

Hard Hat Lounge - Las Vegas

Private collection - Indiana

"City Activities" - WPA mural - South Gate City Hall

Sunkist Mural

Restaurant, Virginia

Sierra Madre VFW

Here is a half mural, all that is left from a gambling scene Bowers did for the Sourdough bar in Ketchikan, Alaska. There must be a ton of his work extant, hanging around waiting to be discovered.

Zamboanga

Bohemia Cocktail Lounge

sold - Clark Cierlak auction

Sultana - First Dibs

Melody Colbert's painting

I found the following blurb at answerbag, written by a daughter, maybe explaining some of Frank's problems.

Vicky Bowers was the fourth wife of Frank Howard Bowers, a California local artist of the 30;s, 40's and 50's, with his last works being completed in 1964 in Serra Madre, California. Frank had three children, Jackson Bowers who drummed with Gene Krupa and disappeared somewhere in Florida around 1947 or 1948. His second child was Tommy Bowers a well known builder in the Belmont Shores area of So.Calif. His third wife was my mother Kathryn King Bowers, a writer and executive secretary to Henry Blanke at Warner Bros. Studios in 1944. Frank was a [story board man] on several motion pictures during the 40's . Of that marriage one child was born, Sydney Louise Bowers, [Female]. Frank went on to marry Vicky with whom he completed several large murals all over Calif as well as Mexico. Frank had a terrible accident in Mexico while painting a bull fight, the stands came down on him and he was never quite the same, but still painted just as well, but could not climb scaffolding so very few murals were done after that time. Frank Bowers died in 1964 in Los Angeles, Ca. , he had a short bout of Cancer that was to give him four short months, and was buried in Serra Madre, Ca. I still have a few pieces of his work, look at it every day. S.M.

Here is a comment a girl named Melody wrote on the website that fills in a few more dots on the artist:

Hi I was researching Frank Bowers and came across this discussion. I grew up under a Frank Bowers painting signed by Frank and dated '61 - it was hung over our mantle in Sierra Madre, where Frank and Vicki lived in the early sixties. My father was a carpenter, and the story is that Frank gave him the painting as payment for work my dad did for him. Vicki and Frank lived (and painted) in a store-front in downtown Sierra Madre. I recall mom talking about the fact that both Vicki and Frank had a fondness for the drink, and lived pretty poorly -- no stove or refrigerator, just a toilet and sink! I inherited the painting from my mother and it includes many of the Chinese figures shown in similar paintings here, although the female figure is fully clothed (no doubt because he knew our family consisted of five children). How can I post a picture of the painting here? I don't see any "attachment" button. I am also writing because I spent a lot of time at the VFW post (Veterans of Foreign Wars) bar in Sierra Madre (I was a kid, so they served me Shirley Temples). It was called "The Vets" by locals. I recall there were murals by Frank both upstairs in the bar, and downstairs in the meeting hall (where I had my wedding reception 25 years ago!) Then, the post sold the building, so I have no idea where the murals went (they may have been painted on the walls,perhaps still standing?) I moved away years ago, and most of dad's contemporaries have died, so I have no idea how to track this down.-Melody 
p.s. My dad BUILT the bar at the Buccaneer when he helped in its remodel many years ago.

You want to call it kitsch, pulp or pop, feel free. One man's kitsch is another man's chicken dinner. I'll take lowbrow over some slick New York hipster artist of the month any day. I think that this stuff is cool and it is a shame that Bowers never made more of a mark on the jetstream for his iconoclastic, testosterone driven style.

I dig painters like this. Come check the paintings out before they get cleaned. If you have any information on the artist to share, please do! I want to thank the Tiki Room for the wonderful job they have done researching and celebrating these wonderful artists.

First postscript: Got on ancestry.com - Frank married Vicki Vergez in 1950 in Orange. He was born in Alameda. There is an early 1935 photo of him sculpting but it is deemed private.  I will continue to hunt...

Bang the war drum slowly

It's an ugly mess out there. Liberal casper milktoasts are busy getting their war on. Normal gop hawks are sudden isolationists. I'm really not in the mood for writing about this stuff but want to make a few points.

This is not about Syria, it is about Iran. It does not surprise me that their mortal sunni enemies the Saudis are pushing us so hard to strike. We are carrying their water and I assume assuring our oil tap. The whole Syria problem has to be also seen in the wider cultural subtext of the gigantic religious battle war between sunni and shia. Global domestic disputes are the worst type of conflicts to get embroiled in. A tragic family matter, with no conceivable end game in sight. Exactly the worst type of conflict to meddle in.

Confronted with pictures of Syrian rebels executing their enemies and evidence of their harassing christian and other Syrian minorities yesterday, Secretary of Defense John Kerry made one of the lamest statements in memory in seeking to allay fears that our Syrian rebel allies are radical jihadists.

“I just don’t agree that a majority are al Qaeda and the bad guys. That’s not true. There are about 70,000 to 100,000 oppositionists … Maybe 15 percent to 25 percent might be in one group or another who are what we would deem to be bad guys." “There is a real moderate opposition that exists. 

So by my primitive math, that means there are only somewhere between 10,500 and 25,000 bad guys.

Why does that not reassure me? We have seen in Afghanistan and Iraq what havoc such a trifling percentage of terrorists can do to the stability of a nation. Sunni extremists have already launched missile sorties on Israel from southern Lebanon.

Bill called last night. He mentioned that sarin gas is horrible, granted, but how much worse is it on a human scale than all of the Syrian women and children killed by more conventional means in the last two years?

This is the clumsiest foreign policy demonstration in memory. Ground troops in Syria would be the biggest blunder. We need to learn from our history. The United States launches such an attack on a country, it owns the country, and all of its problems, sometimes for decades. The Syrians need to sort their own problems out. We risk a much wider regional conflict that involves lebanon, Iran, Israel, Russia and lets not forget the nukes in Pakistan that may or may not be secured. Obama pandered to Congress that this effort was a way to help Israel, a joke that he reaches for that considering his previous distaste for the country, a country that his new envoy Samantha Power once called for invading.

Hard to find good guys in this movie. True, innocent people are dying. Yet, the people in the region will never find stasis if we insist on tipping the scales.

Avinu Malkeinu

Shana Tova

To all those tribal types and their significant others, happy 5774. What a long strange trip it's been.

I Scare Myself

This was a performance from 2001, the occasion Dan's 60th birthday. Here he is accompanied by the original Charlatans and Hot Licks as well as Brian Godchaux and David La Flamme.

I hope that Tracy watches this video!

9.4.13

I got the sigma 1.4 teleconverter today that extends my focal reach past 1100mm. Bought it used from B & H. Probably won't use it very often, you have to manual focus and that can be a pain in the ass with the big honker, especially when things are moving.

Kerry asked me if I was using NIK filters to get some of my effects on the bird shots but no, don't own the thing, they are all straight out of the box. Thanks everybody for all the kind words, by the way.

His question propelled me to buy the NIK filter package yesterday. NIK was a San Diego outfit, their stuff was really expensive but now Google has bought them and is selling the product for a song. Viveza lets you set a lot of multiple points for vignetting and other operations and I look forward to utilizing it as well as the other programs in  he group. Sells for $149.00, by the way.

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I drove to the coast to see an orthopedic surgeon today, looks like my shoulder needs some work. Afterwards I stopped by Ron's and we went over to Bulltaco for lunch. It was freaking hot on the deck overlooking the Pacific and we sought comfort under an umbrella. The waves were calm, but the view as always was outstanding.

Ron had wahoo tacos. I opted for elk tostadas and a duck burrito, of which I brought half home for my partner. Really good but the habañero sauce was almost too hot today. What a great place Cardiff's Bulltaco is.

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Have you read about the 37 floor "Walkie Talkie skyscraper in London that is melting nearby cars? I loved the developer's statement yesterday.

"The phenomenon is caused by the current location of the sun in the sky."

Like who put that damn sun there?

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Check out Nadav Kandar's brilliant photograph of Paul Kagame in today's New York Times. And this from my photography blog, Fallbrook Shutters.

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New unbeatable poker machine and neural nets.

Big River Blues

Hot Tuna

Our friends invited us over for some fresh bluefin and yellowfin sushi the other night. The last time we got invited it was truly memorable, stuff is fresh off their friend's boat and my stomach was starting to rumble with the thoughts of the feast.

"Uh, sorry," I heard my wife say. "We can't go. All of the pacific bluefin has been conclusively proven to be radioactive and we can't risk it."

I looked up, disbelieving my ears. Hey, so what if the fish glow a little bit? We are past the age of wanting to replicate and who knows, we eat enough, we might save on night lights?

"Uh dearest, where exactly did you hear about the radioactive fish?" I asked rather gingerly.

"It was on Facebook."

Well, what can you do when faced with such irrefutable evidence. Is Facebook ever wrong?

Our hosts cancelled the dinner. We will see if we ever get another invite. I decided to do a little research.

It appears that a scientist from Stanford named Dan Madigan did a study on fish caught off our coast and that all of them showed some radioactivity. What is also true is that the radiation levels were negligible and the study sample was all of 15 fish.

I found the following quote in an illuminating article from Science Daily: Nicholas Fisher, a Professor at Stonybrook, says not so fast with the radioactive fish stories, the likely doses of radioactivity ingested by humans consuming the contaminated fish, even in large quantities, is comparable to, or less than, the radiological dosages associated with other commonly consumed foods, many medical treatments, air travel and other background sources.

"For American and Japanese seafood consumers, the doses attributable to Fukushima-derived radiation were typically 600 and 40 times lower, respectively, than the dose from polonium," said Professor Fisher. "In estimating human doses of the Fukushima-derived radioactive cesium in Bluefin tuna, we found that heavy seafood consumers -- those who ingest 124 kg/year, or 273 lbs., which is five times the US national average -- even if they ate nothing but the Cs-contaminated bluefin tuna off California, would receive radiation doses approximately equivalent to that from one dental x-ray and about half that received by the average person over the course of a normal day from a variety of natural and human sources. The resulting increased incidence of cancers would be expected to be essentially undetectable."

It turns out that Madigan stressed in his study that the Fukushima radiation found in bluefin tuna is significantly lower than naturally occurring radioactive isotopes normally found in the fish and that the detected cesium levels are only an insignificant 3% higher than normal background levels.

I found a chicken little piece over at liberals unite that is trumpeting the dangers of the higher radiation levels. Some of the comments there are quite interesting as is this article by a pro nuclear industry writer James Conca at Forbes. or try this one at NPR.

I believe that one should ascertain the facts objectively and then decide for yourself. It seems that the radioactive dangers of bluefin have been way overblown and I have missed out on a very good dinner.

The Browns

Santee Lakes

65mm 1/640th f10 iso 500

Ken and I were planning on shooting at the heron rookery in Oceanside sunday morning but we had a last minute change of plans. We decided to drive down to Santee Lakes instead, a series of seven lakes teeming with waterfowl. Tom Shearer joined us on our early morning run.

210mm 1/8000th f9 iso 1000

We paid our five bucks and entered the beautiful preserve.

There were countless egrets and ducks ever-present but the scene was dominated by a large osprey in a tree, the stately sea eagle the apparent king of the entire domain.

500mm 1/400th f10, iso 800

I took a lot of shots and put the Sigma 50-500mm through all of its paces.

Here I show a bit of old school grain - 95mm, 1/2000 f10 iso 800

I had heard that you need to shoot five hundred or so shots before you figure out this lens. I think that is about right, although I far exceeded that. Starting to get the hang of it.

Because the Bigma is a full frame lens on the APS sensor on my Nikon d-7000dx rig, all millimeter focal ranges actually increase by fifty percent so 500mm is in reality 750mm.

500mm 1/400th f8 iso 800

The lens likes light, lots of it. I pushed the iso and the shutter speed. I usually shoot aperture priority but found that shutter priority was better for this lens, anything as slow as 1/250th had problems.

High speed means noise but there are ways of dealing with noise. This lens is a F4.5, the last version was 4.0, but I have to assume that there was a good reason for the switch.

Watched Casey here catch and release a nice five lb. plus bass.

I have always enjoyed long legged birds and I took a lot of shots that I am very pleased with. The reflections were wonderful!

380mm, 1/400th f8, iso 800

270mm 1/2000 f8 iso - 1000

The lens was sharper than I expected once I dialed it in. I think that it is going to be a valuable tool as I learn to use it. I have a lot of good material to process already. I hope that you enjoy the shots.

280mm, 1/1250th f8 - iso 640 

380mm 1/4000th F7.1 iso 1000

240mm 1/4000th f7.1 iso 1000

I shot handheld all day, The lens is heavy as hell. But the optical stablilization doesn't work optimally on a monopod or tripod so I kept it in hand.  Thanks Wild Bill for loaning me the sling!

Blue Railroad Train

Spicy City

I usually don't pay that much attention to food reviews, preferring to keep my own counsel and trust my own stomach. I can do fine french and I can do dives with equal gusto. Long as it's good. I tend to find a place and stick with it for better or worse and sometimes lose out on what else is happening around town. There are a ton of hip, new restaurants in San Diego that I have never even had a sniff at.

I was down in Kearny Mesa the other day on business. That usually means a quick stop at Jasmine for dim sum or Jasmine Express for honey glazed pork and barbecued duck take out. People pan the joint but it has always been good for me and I have eaten dim sum all over the continent. Sometimes I will stop for Pho or Korean but I am really very comfortable at Jasmine.

The U-T published a best of San Diego Chinese food discussion by their favored cognoscenti the other day and a few places were consistently mentioned; ChinaMax, Dumpling Inn and Spicy City. I have eaten at ChinaMax and was less then impressed, prefer the immediacy of carts to eating off a menu and the food wasn't that memorable. I have tried to get into the Dumpling Inn but there is always a huge line there and I just can't ever find a table. Sounds wonderful, though.

I decided to try Spicy City. Spicy City is located on the west side of Convoy, behind China Max. Spicy City is a Sichuan province style restaurant, which means that the food is very piquant. I remember when the Hunan and Sichuan craze first hit New York in the early seventies and all our palates officially caught on fire.

I was one of the few occidental faces in the crowded restaurant. I looked at my fellow diners and many of them were eating from large hot steaming bowls of soup. I opened the menu and there was a story of a famous region of China that was known for their broken noodle soup. The menu has a lot of pictures, very helpful when ordering dishes. What the hell, when in Rome, I ordered a bowl with pork.

There is a good reason they call it Spicy City. I can still feel the singe on my upper palette. I watched as the Chinese couple next to me casually ate the extremely hot peppers with their chop sticks. I was starting to sweat. Great place but definitely hard core. I decided to order a second dish to sample and then bring home, fried pork cutlets brined in salt and garlic. Excellent and a very large portion to boot.

I forgot how good sichuan can be. I look forward to coming back to this place and sampling its offerings many times in the future. If you like a little heat, I highly recommend the place.

Spicy City

4690 Convoy St Ste 107, San Diego , CA 92111   (858) 278-1818 Chinese restaurant specializing in Sichuan and Yunnan cuisine