2022 – Got a Match?

 

                         (ignore April 30, 2017 publish date – this was published on November 27, 2022)

 

So there’s this drawer in my kitchen where I can’t keep much – maybe an oven mitt – because it’s filled with my mother’s collection of matchbooks……….hundreds of them.

I may have added to it over the years a bit, but I’m not a global traveler like she and Dad were.

I’ve been putting off posting about this collection for years because of its sheer size, but it’s gotta get done and I have some time to do it, so……………

Where to begin?

Getting them out of that drawer would be a good place to start, so I grabbed whatever handy kitchen containers would hold it all………

 

………..and dumped them on the living room floor:

 

Since they were mostly from hotels and restaurants, I separated out all the hotel ones:

 

Now, I have to tell you that mistakes were made. The plan was to photograph the fronts of multiple hotel matchbooks, immediately flip each matchbook in place and then photograph all the backs, so that each matchbook’s position would stay the same, but I’m finding that one or more had the wrong side facing (and I’m NOT going to go through them all again to recreate each shot just to flip one matchbook. You’ll just have to figure it out, assuming you have that level of interest).

I also found that I never made a restaurants-only pile, but all of those matchbooks are included in the front-and-back pix (I think).

I’m sure I’ll discover other little matchbook flubs, but I’ll be honest about them (and, being honest, it’s a lot easier to do that than to recreate images with a dozen or more matchbooks in them). And since some of them are clearer than others, if there’s something you need to see better, let me know and I’ll get you a better image.

SO – let’s hit the hotels.

The first 15 are matchboxes from all over the world (the one that says “The Grill” doesn’t sound like a hotel, but the side of the box says “Hong Kong Hilton”, so it got included in the Hotel group).

The “Inter-Continental Chicago” matchbox (upper left corner) was my contribution from when Sony Japan flew me to Chicago to shoot Public Enemy for Japanese publications in 1992 (story: https://bobleafe.com/, enter 09-012 in the search box).

Here are the fronts and backs:

 

Since it’s not clear where some of these hotels were located, I put 3 of them (the Regent, Polaris, and the aforementioned “The Grill”) on their sides to reveal that they came from Melbourne (Australia), Nashville and Hong Kong, respectively. Since the Melbourne one was still unreadable, I took a closeup of the side and added it to the bottom of the image (“Melbourne Vic” = Melbourne is the capital of the Australian state of Victoria):

 

Ten more hotels (fronts and backs):

 

Oops!

 

Duplicate hotel matchboxes (looks like I grabbed a few when I was staying at the I-C in Chicago):

 

On to hotel matchBOOKS………….here are 32 front and back:

BTW – very few have any matches missing, so most are unstruck.

 

15 more, front and back:

 

14 more, front and back…….and before you jump on me for having a Lobster Trap Restaurant matchbook in this lot, make sure you check out the back of it where it says “Hotel”:

 

23 more (bored yet?), front and back, including duplicates and triplicates:

The 3 Nikko Hotels matchbooks are mine from when I did the Michael Bolton shoots (mentioned further down) for Sony Japan, who put us all in the upscale hotel in the la-di-da Buckhead section of Atlanta.

 

How about some restaurant matchboxes? Here are 14:

BTW – that unreadable one in the upper left corner says, “Chanticler, Millburn, New Jersey”.

Pickwick’s was about 2 miles from where I live, but I don’t remember it. It was replaced by Feathers (or “Club Feathers”), a gay club. Next to that matchbox is De Shane’s Carriage Club in Teaneck, where I used to bring people when I drove a taxi in the early 70s. My personal contribution to this lot is right next to it – Dish of Salt, where I shot a few after-show parties. A quick look at my site shows some of the people I photographed there: Phil Collins (Genesis party in 1983) and the band Ratt, who had a party there in 1985 where I photographed Paul Stanley, Bruce Kulick and Eric Carr (all from KISS) and Andy Warhol. (Note: I just found the same Dish of Salt matchbox on Etsy for $22.)

 

And 11 more. The first two are mine: Fischer Scientific was from one of the chem labs I worked in and SKYY is my current personal poison. The Meadowlands one may have been contributed by my father, the Stone Harbor (NJ) one was from a place called Henny’s, the J. Rocciola Funeral Home in Hackensack is no more, Volk’s is the Teaneck funeral home that I’m most familiar with (unfortunately) and the unreadable bottom one says, “Oakland State Bank”:

You’ll notice that many of the boxes say “Made in Sweden” on the back.

 

And now for something a little different……….Mom had a small collection of matchbooks from weddings. I don’t know who “Peggy and Dan” are, but they must have really rated with Mom because she grabbed three of theirs (in two different colors) back in 1972. The unreadable one in the top row says, “Marianne and Walter, June 21st 1975”. Neither my sibs nor I have any idea who “Garnet and Charles”, “Carol and John” or any of these people are………..EXCEPT for that last one (“Meg and Ed”), which appears to be our cousin Meg.

Well, that was boring (except – of course – for you, Meg). And only Peggy and Dan had something on the back (two wedding bells………..yawn!), so there was no reason to scan the backs.

 

Back to the restaurant grind (30 matchbook versions, front and back)………..

Three of these are my handiwork. The Abbey was a nice place in Atlanta that Sony Japan publicists took me and several Japanese magazine writers for dinner in 1991. Sony flew all of us there to cover some Michael Bolton events (concerts, softball game…………see story/pix on my site under “Michael Bolton”).

Right below them are two that Mom grabbed from Villa Amalfi in Cliffside Park, NJ, where my brother Ed’s wedding reception was held in 1986. Right next to those is a black one with nothing on the front and “Delta Point River Restaurant” on the back. It’s located in Vicksburg, Mississippi.

There are 3 in the next-to-last row from “The Sea Shack”. I looked to see what shore town that place was in and was surprised to learn that it was in Hackensack! The name doesn’t ring a bell with me and I can’t find any images of it online. I can find an address, but no pix. I’m told it was torn down and I can find a couple of references to it being elsewhere in Hackensack, but they don’t give a phone number, so I have my doubts that it still exists.

The Playboy one in the top row gives no indication of a location or that a restaurant was part of it.

 

Next up are some odds and ends matchbooks and two matchboxes that I somehow missed before, which is strange because I contributed one of them – NYC’s China Club, where I used to photograph:

 

So we have 5 from a funeral home, 3 each from Norwegian Caribbean Lines and 3 different banks and one from a politician named Woodcock. But I couldn’t figure out what that streaking star one was, just from looking at it. It turned out to be quite clever after I opened it up. Read what it says and look at the matches:

 

The next front-and-back matchbooks pair features (top to bottom): 7 from Playboy, 8 from Tricky Dicky, and 3 political ones:

 

A blowup of the 3 political matchbooks’ information:

 

A mix of 6 from East Lansing, MI, 3 different supermarket chains, and 3 wildlife-related stamps (JFK was known for having had a bit of a wild life):

It’s likely that the top 6 were acquired when Mom and Dad attended my brother Ed’s graduation from MSU. Two thoughts: 1). I’d be surprised if my parents really did go to a ”nite” club in a college town and 2). If they DID go to “Beggar’s Banquet” restaurant (and saloon!), I KNOW they had no idea that that was the name of a Rolling Stones album or that its “Gimme Eat” slogan could be a take on the Stones’ “Gimme Shelter”.

 

Has anyone ever heard of Overwaitea Food Centers in British Columbia? I sure haven’t, but Wikipedia – of course – has:

On March 8, 1915, Robert C. Kidd purchased a store at 746 Columbia Street in New Westminster, British Columbia. He developed several innovative merchandising techniques to attract customers to his store including odd-penny pricing and selling 18 ounces of tea for the price of a pound. The store was soon known as the “over-weight tea” store. When Kidd opened his second store, he decided to call it “Overwaitea”.

As of August 2015, the Overwaitea Food Group owned and operated 145 grocery stores in B.C. and Alberta under six different brand names. OFG later opened four stores in Saskatchewan and three stores in Winnipeg, Manitoba during 2016. Additionally, in 2017 a full-size store was opened in Whitehorse, Yukon.

Just thought you’d like to know that.

Dunno if/why Mom and Dad visited/shopped there.

And if you’re wondering what to get that special little kid you know in British Columbia for Christmas…………..

(or choose from the 20 other Overwaitea items on eBay, including hats, pins, books…………….even a teddy bear!)

 

MORE weirdness: Here are 3 matchbooks with 2 rows of wooden matches with the front row of matches taller than the back row:

There is no writing anywhere, save for tiny lettering at the bottom of the front flap where it usually says “Close before striking” (or words to that effect). Instead, it says, “stang fliken innan ni tander”. Google says it’s Swedish and translates to “close the tab before you teeth” (words to live by):

 

Odds & Ends time again (some are more “odd” than “end” and they’re all pretty self-explanatory) – the first 16:

 

The final 12:

I have a personal connection with two of these. Chubby’s was my local barber shop on Cedar Lane when I was a teen. Show Case in Cresskill (3 towns away from Teaneck) was where I saw Blue Angel in the early 80’s. Their singer was pre-solo-success Cyndi Lauper.

 

I made a local post about 4 Hackensack-related matchbooks: 2-Rudy’s, 1 Primrose House (which you just saw in the final 12) and one Packard’s Print Room:

 

The first Rudy’s shows what looks like a crude, hand-drawn map on the inside (it’s the same on the other one – you’d think they could have spent a little money and included one that’s a lot more readable):

 

 

I’m going to finish up with two items that I thought were just striker-less matchbooks………….until I read the bottom:

 

Here they are, opened up:

Oh, look – they almost………………match!

 

Sorry – I think I’m getting a little burnt out:

 

See ya.

 

 

 

3 Comments

  1. Anne Raso November 27, 2022

    There is no other match blog post that matches this level of detail! I miss Dish Of Salt! That was a fun place with great food (across from Radio City). I can still remember the Ratt party well but do not remember seeing Andy Warhol there!

  2. John G November 27, 2022

    Wow what a collection Bob! I remember those King Edward matches all over my house as a kid. The Sea Shack and Print Room ones are so cool. I also dig the old MAC machine and Foodtown ones. The Playboy ones are so cool too. Your parents definitely did their share of traveling!! Thank you for taking the time to share them with us.

  3. Barry Rubinow November 27, 2022

    Nice pics! I love the details of the graphics.

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