Phallic Friday (LOC)
18 July 2008
Not that long ago, I discovered that the Library of Congress has a Flickr photostream. No shit. The Library of Congress has started posting its vast collection of historic, public domain photos on Flickr, God bless ‘em!
Ted Easterly, Cleveland, Alabama
They haven’t gotten very far, and the subjects are all over the map. But still, it’s already an Americana extravaganza. Suffragettes, Presidential processions, bareknuckle boxers, and all sorts of other sports figures, including the rather, ahem, cocky baseball player above who’s obviously very confident with his big bat.
I’ve also run across other people who have started collecting LOC photos on their own flickr pages, like this guy who has assembled hundreds of bike-related images, such as the ones below. (Bikes are phallic. Right?)
And I couldn’t resist this photo in particular. It’s a boy standing next to his bike and smoking a pipe. I wish I could muster half the dash and effortless savoir faire as that kid. Some people have just got it.
Man, that bike with the giant wheel and the teeny-tiny wheel is crazy! Like, what were they thinking when they designed bikes that way? If you’d never seen a bike before, would it not be obvious that one giant wheel and one teensy wheel is not optimal? How long did it take for someone to figure out that two wheels of roughly the same size work better?