It’s the time of the year when I give my art supplies a thorough reorganization. It takes more than putting the brushed and paints in order. There are boxes of maps, shelves of old atlases and a few boxes of random scraps of paper. The boxes contain old photos and ephemera. It’s all filed under “collage fodder” in my world. No time for that task today, but I decided to just reach up into a box on a high shelf and blindly use the first piece of paper I pulled out.
It was a renewal card for Life Magazine. I can’t say how old it was, but the card referred to a “postal zone number” instead of a zip code. Zip codes came into use in 1963. The preprinted address on the card read, “San Francisco 2 Cal.” The person lived in the 200 block of Page Street. That’s 94102 nowadays, of course. I immediately can remember where and when I found this. I can’t say the exact date, but it was around 1996. I was walking to work downtown and happened on a box of old greeting cards, postcards, photos and things like this. It was abandoned at the corner of Oak and Octavia under a freeway. The Central Freeway is now only a memory for those of us who have lived in San Francisco for a while. I’ve incorporated many of things I found that morning into collages over the years.
It was a renewal card for Life Magazine. I can’t say how old it was, but the card referred to a “postal zone number” instead of a zip code. Zip codes came into use in 1963. The preprinted address on the card read, “San Francisco 2 Cal.” The person lived in the 200 block of Page Street. That’s 94102 nowadays, of course. I immediately can remember where and when I found this. I can’t say the exact date, but it was around 1996. I was walking to work downtown and happened on a box of old greeting cards, postcards, photos and things like this. It was abandoned at the corner of Oak and Octavia under a freeway. The Central Freeway is now only a memory for those of us who have lived in San Francisco for a while. I’ve incorporated many of things I found that morning into collages over the years.
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