Put Some Pep in Your Step!

From Dave Brigham:

I made this photo in North Adams, Mass., along Eagle Street, the one time I visited the Berkshire County city. I had plans to explore more of this old mill town before going to a concert at MassMOCA, the amazing visual- and performing-arts space created out of the former Arnold Print Works and Sprague Electric Co. factory, but my plan was foiled. I was meeting a friend and his son in the late afternoon, and hoped to walk around and make photos before they arrived. But they showed up earlier than I'd expected, so we just did a quick walk before dinner and the concert.

That trip was in November 2017. Every once in a while I would search through my Dropbox looking for photos from that day, convinced I'd taken several. The only one I've stumbled across is this ghost sign, but until recently, I had forgotten about it. So that's why I'm writing this post all these years later.

"Enna Jettick," which is a brilliant name, was a line of women's shoes manufactured by Dunn & McCarthy, Inc., in Auburn, New York, beginning in the late 1920s or early 1930s. The shoes were designed to be comfortable and stylish, and seemed to have been marketed toward active women. Writing at her blog, The Vintage Traveler, Lizzie Bramlett indicates that on her vintage pair of Enna Jetticks, "The uppers are two colors of perforated leather, and the sole is an interesting rubber-like substance. They are quite snappy!"

That blog post also features photos and information about the Aerocars that Dunn & McCarthy used as traveling showrooms for the Enna Jettick line of shoes.

Dunn & McCarthy "filed for bankruptcy in 1989, closed in 1990, and the factory burned down in a spectacular fire in 1993," according to this post at the Vintage Fashion Guild web site.

As for the concert, it was a mind-blowing show by Godspeed You! Black Emperor, the Canadian instrumental post-rock band that has issued numerous albums in an on-and-off career that launched in the late 1990s. The band got its name from a 1976 Japanese documentary film about the local motorcycle culture.

Below is a live clip of my favorite song of theirs, "Blaise Bailey Finnegan III." I learned while writing this that Blaze Bayley is the name of the dude who sang for Iron Maiden from 1994-1999 when original vocalist Bruce Dickinson left to pursue a solo career.

The poem that is read as part of this song is evidently nearly identical to the lyrics of Iron Maiden's "Virus."