Kaplan’s Deli of Monticello, New York

it closed in 1992.  the sign came down in 2005

PIZZA BOX SPATULA!!!

EAT IT EDISON & TESLA!!!

Clockwork Orange‘s Durango 95

is actually the car of the (1969) future

The M-505 Adams Brothers Probe 16

look ma, no doors!!

#OTD 1969: Blue Peter looked at two cars from opposite ends of the aesthetic spectrum. Which is better, new-vintage or old-futuristic? pic.twitter.com/MTyV3ik6pE

— BBC Archive (@BBCArchive) November 17, 2017

designed by brothers Dennis and Peter Adams

only 3 Probe 16s were ever made!

(and yes, there was a Probe 15)

the Clockwork Probe, known as AB/4, had the license plate JFB 220H (and DAV 485Q in the film)

The Chequered Flag garage sold it to one Robin Gibbons, who was THE kind gentleman that lent the car for a few weeks to Kubrick’s Polaris Pictures company for the Clockwork Orange shoot

below is a photo of his Probe 16 in the parking lot of Gibbons’ place of work, the Ford Motor Company in Ilford, East London

shortly after the filming ended or the films’ release, Gibbons sold the car

not sure if there was an owner in between, but it passed onto to someone by the name of Mr Lyndon-Dyke (or perhaps Lybdon-Dyke), and then eventually made its way to America and was showcased by the Pollock Auto Showcase of Pottstown, Pennsylvania

and in the 1987, ended up back in the UK, in the possession of scientist and motorsportsman Dr. Colin Feyerabend, apparently yellow and in need of a lot of work (not sure how it became yellow or lost its bottom)

which led him to plead the British show Top Gear to help restore it, and they even featured it on the show for a contest segment hosted by James May called ‘Restoration Ripoff‘ that aired in 2004…

sadly the Probe 16 didn’t win the contest, and the one that did led to some sort of hullabaloo

well, what was once silver, then yellow, is now, restored by Club Autosport, like clockwork – ORANGE!

which has now been showcased the world over in all its glory!

and I saw it with mine own eyes at the amazing Stanley Kubrick: The Exhibition held at the Design Museum of London

as for the other two Probe 16s…

the first one ever built – AB/2, license plate MJO 145H – was sold to American songwriter Jimmy Webb (best know for ‘Up Up And Away‘)

(sadly cannot find a picture of Mr Webb with his Probe):

it eventually fell into disrepair, found abandoned in the 1980s at a Los Angeles tow pound by a one David Farmer of Antelope Valley, California, and it looked like this…

the other M-505 Probe 16 – AB/3, license plate PWV 222H

was originally owned by Cream bassist Jack Bruce!

who then gave it as a b-day gift to Mountain drummer, and co-bandmate in West, Bruce & Laing, Corky Laing, seen here in the car

Laing had trouble maintaining this low to the ground car, residing in the overly snowy Montreal, and later cobblestoned, salt watered streets of Nantucket, and so he sold it to a Canadian university mechanical-engineering professor named Clyde Kwok, seen here, in 1979, with his son Hugh, in the car

then, perhaps, it came under the ownership of a one Guylain De France De Tersant of Montreal, who was looking to sell it in 1980

the Jimmy Webb and Jack Bruce Probes eventually came into the possession of Canadian collector Phillip Karam, who restored them both. he sold the Webb Probe, AB/2, to a one Dr. Mark Geach of England in 2016

the Jack Bruce one, AB/3, appeared alongside Malcolm McDowell at the 4th annual Ottawa Comiccon in May of 2015.  Karam got McDowell to lend his autograph under the hood! (even though it wasn’t THE Probe used in filming)

and this Jack Bruce Probe JUST sold for $184,800!!!

REAL horrowshow!!!

The first image scanner developed for use with a computer was a drum scanner. It was built in 1957 at the US National Bureau of Standards by a team led by Russell A. Kirsch. The first image ever scanned on this machine was a 5 cm square photograph of Kirsch’s then-three-month-old son, Walden. The black and white image had a resolution of 176 pixels on a side

thank you Mr Kirsch

heard about the Topps Project 2020?  the gold standard trading card company picked 20 of their own iconic rookie baseball cards, which run the gamut from Jackie Robinson to Mike Trout, and currently have 20 artists you’ve probably never heard of, and neither had we either (my favorites being Ermsy and Efdot) putting their own creative spin on them.  400 cards in total.  insane!

the cards are printed by demand within a 2-day sales window, so the total print runs are what they are.  at first no one really knew about the project, and the print runs were low (some under 2K), making the cards instantly in-demand for those who wanted them and valuable to those who owned them 

then more and more collectors and card flippers (people looking to score a quick profit buying them and then turning right around and re-selling them) jumped in, the print runs ran WAY too high, and the market crashed.  the project is still going, but outside of the early cards, it’s hard to tell what the future value of the cards will be

the boom and bust can all be linked to one card – the 88th in the series – Keith Shore’s take on Ken Griffey Jr’s 1989 rookie card

he took this card…

and turned it into this…

and 99,177 card sales later, the Project would never be the same

but that’s OK.  the Project soldiers on, and while we marvel at the new cards dropping daily, we do so with more artistic appreciation of them, and less on hoping for them to appreciate monetarily

so a lot of us (I’m in it for both the collecting and the $$$) are left with plenty extra cards on hand that are less in value than what we paid Topps for them

Griffey Shores (as they’re known) are basically fancy paperweights and a in-joke wink for all who got swallowed up by the gold rush of these Project 2020 cards

But after seeing what some people were doing on eBay, making their own custom 2020 cards, I decided to join the fray, throw my hat in the ring and turn someone else’s art into my own (and try to at least make my money back OR MORE!)

(and doing it for cards beyond Griffey Shore, as I have several other cool looking ‘paperweights’)

so yes, I’m making art, but using someone else’s to make my own

and now YOU can own it for yourself!

but act fast – there’s only 1 of EACH of what you see below in existence!

bid!

bid!

bid!

bid!

  

bid!

  

bid!

–

go get em kids!

and there’ll be more where these came from, so keep an eye and a thigh out!

#ProjectWithinTheProject