Mar 22, 2011 Boozing animals by way of Kubrick
A friend tipped me off to this collection of photos Stanley Kubrick shot for Look magazine in the summer of 1949. The accompanying feature was called “Chicago–city of contrasts” so I guess it’s fitting that my friend was drawn to the the body-building baby and I’m stuck on the Pump Room, a post-prohibition star magnet described a decade later by Life as “where king crab meat is served on flaming swords.”
Well, at least, it once was.
The old Pump Room is dead, and its parts were auctioned off just last month. But such is Life that I could mourn only a second before stumbling onto its Animals Drinking Booze* gallery. Sad thoughts < a squirrel monkey named Sam drinking a beer.
Francis Miller/September 1958
*The entire gallery comprises only 13 photos and is well worth going through if only to set up the contrast and hilarity of the final shot.