SHOPPE BLACK

Ben’s Chili Bowl Inspires D.C.’s Black Business Owners to Invest in Themselves

9 mins read

Virginia Ali, cofounder and owner of Ben’s Chili Bowl, says the iconic 60-year-old business would have folded a long time ago if she and her late husband, Ben Ali, didn’t have the foresight to buy the building on U Street NW.

Today in Washington, Ben’s stands out as a shining example of a black-owned business that’s stood the test of time. Last month, a group of entrepreneurs organized DMV Black Restaurant Week to bring together young restaurant and bar owners looking to follow the Alis’ example. DMV Black Restaurant Week guided attendees to more than 30 participating black-owned restaurants, including Ben’s Chili Bowl, Ben’s Next Door, and Ben’s Upstairs.

Virginia Ali says that the original Ben’s, the landmark home of D.C.’s signature chili-slathered half-smoke sausages, only survived because the she and her husband had invested in themselves instead of renting from someone else. At workshops and events throughout DMV Black Restaurant Week, her message resounded among a new generation of young business owners.

“I’m absolutely, positively sure it made the difference as to whether we could stay or not stay,” says Ali, who turns 85 next week.

In the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, the crack cocaine epidemic had decimated Washington, and Ali said business was practically nonexistent. According to an article in the Washingtonian this year, things had gotten so bad around Ben’s that the matriarch invited police to raid her shop when drug dealers were making sales from inside the restaurant’s booths.

Owning the building outright meant that even though generating revenue was a struggle, the Alis didn’t have to worry about paying a mortgage. Once the Metro station was built nearby, higher rents pushed out many longtime residents and businesses, but Ben’s was able to increase its value. Now the building is a major asset that’s been passed down within the family. Ben’s Chili Bowl opened in 1958 in a building bought for around $65,000. According to D.C. public records, it’s worth more than $2 million today.

In that way, the Alis have established intergenerational wealth. Teaching others to do the same was one of the major topics of discussion during DMV Black Restaurant Week.

Andra “A.J.” Johnson, a property investor and restaurant consultant who helped organize DMVBRW, says acquiring intergenerational wealth is particularly tough in the black community. According to a 2016 study by the Urban Institute, white households in D.C. had an average net worth 81 times greater than black households, and black-owned properties were valued significantly lower than white-owned ones.

DMV Black Restaurant Week founders, from left, Furard Tate, Andra “AJ” Johnson, and Erinn Tucker.

“How many people of color can walk up to their family and say, ‘This is what I need?” Johnson said. “It’s a problem. But it shouldn’t affect how much our growth is.”

For Johnson, building intergenerational wealth in the restaurant industry starts with a change in mindset — instead of grinding to make someone else’s dreams come true, members of the black community should save and invest in themselves early like the Alis did. “We need to get off somebody else’s race,” Johnson says. “We need to be on our own racetrack.”

Johnson brought up hosting a panel on the topic of intergenerational wealth with fellow DMVBRW founders Furard Tate and Erinn Tucker while they planned the weeklong celebration. A conference featuring that panel was a resource for people who want to someday own restaurants. The founders of DMV Black Restaurant Week consider it to be a success. They’re now working on planning quarterly events, including panels and an awards ceremony honoring black hospitality leaders.

“This is a continuing conversation,” Tate said.

Attendees in November learned it’s not enough to solely focus on getting capital to start a business. It’s also critical to secure proper permits and licenses, create a business plan and structure, decide who will inherit the business, and find available city resources and loans.

“If you don’t know about it … you don’t have the opportunity compared to other places that have it,” Tucker said.

Tate, a chef and entrepreneur, knows firsthand that property ownership is crucial to achieving intergenerational wealth. In 2014, he was forced to close his 18-year-old restaurant, Inspire BBQ, after his landlord sold the property on H Street NE to a developer. Tate wishes he’d followed the Alis’ example.

“They were their own landlord, so when times got hard, they were able to weather the storm,” Tate said.

D.C. Institution Ben’s Chili Bowl Holds 60th Anniversary Party
Virginia Ali, center, is escorted by activist Jesse Jackson at the 60th birthday party for Ben’s Chili Bowl in August 2018.
Half-smokes on the flat top at Ben’s Chili Bowl.

The Alis opened Ben’s Chili Bowl when D.C. was still segregated. They envisioned it as a business to not only serve the community on U Street, then known as Black Broadway, but as an asset for their unborn children. Ben Ali gave their three sons Ben as a middle name in case they went into the family business.

The couple’s sons, Nizam, Kamal, and Haidar, also known as Sage, now run Ben’s Chili Bowl. They’ve opened more locations at Nationals Park, FedEx Field, Reagan National Airport, and on H Street NE. They also opened full-service restaurants, Ben’s Next Door and Ben’s Upstairs, that serve avocado toast, steak frites, and crab cakes.

Tony Simpson, who appeared on the DMV Black Restaurant Week panel on intergenerational wealth, has found success running two businesses in predominantly black Prince George’s County. He and his wife, Josette, own SoBe Restaurant & Lounge, a Lanham, Maryland, restaurant slinging American fusion cuisine with a swanky South Beach vibe.

Before opening SoBe, Simpson didn’t know much about restaurants. But he knew plenty about scrimping and saving. He recalls eating tuna fish sandwiches and driving a beat-up car before he got his IT Services company, CHRONOS Systems, off the ground in Suitland, Maryland.

With money from that venture, Simpson financed SoBe himself. Not everyone has that luxury, but with planning and sacrifice, Simpson set the course for the next generation — his 30-year-old son Brandon now manages SoBe and owns a clothing company.

“If you plan to have that for your family going forward, you must start planning for those grandkids and those people that you want to pass it onto in the beginning of your career,” Tony Simpson says.

Virginia Ali hopes her three grandchildren eventually take over the growing Ben’s franchise, already inviting them in to get a taste of the business at the U Street landmark that advertises Chili Smokes and Chili Burgers on its facade.

“It’s a great way to meet people and to learn how to deal with folks from all walks of life and all cultures,” she said. “I find it fun, and I think they do too.” 

SiriusXM Host Joe Madison Honors The Life And Legacy Of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., With A Live Broadcast From Ben’s Chili Bowl In Washington, DC

Source: Eater Washington D.C.

Prada Removes Products with Blackface Imagery Comparisons

3 mins read

Prada is being accused of selling blackface merchandise within their new accessory line called Pradamalia, a “whimsical collection of characters” recently added to their catalog.

prada

However, New York attorney Chinyere Ezie doesn’t think they’re cute at all, in fact, she finds one character, Otto, offensive.

Prada has built a storyline around Pradamalia, the characters are said to be “mutations of the same genetic material. Prada Labs scientists report a strong familial bond between the two.”

Ezie posted on her Facebook page that she came across a Prada storefront promoting the characters, namely Otto, in the window, and she became angry. Also, the timing could not have been worse. 

“Today after returning to NYC after a very emotional visit to the Smithsonian NationalMuseum of African American History and Culture including an exhibit on blackface,” Ezie wrote on her page. “I walked past Prada’s Soho storefront only to be confronted with the very same racist and denigrating #blackface imagery.”

“I entered the store with a coworker, only to be assaulted with more and more bewildering examples of their Sambo like imagery.”

The company seems to be trying to cash in on the recent trend of Kawaii, or creating merchandise to look cute or adorable. The Kawaii culture is very profitable in Japan. A single Pradamalia pendant is going to set you back upwards of $500. 

prada

Otto is described by Prada in part as “inspired by the image of the monkey, one of Prada’s most iconic logos.” 

Wanting answers, Ezie entered the store to inquire further about the questionable miniatures. 

“When I asked a Prada employee whether they knew they had plastered blackface imagery throughout their store,” wrote Ezie, “in a moment of surprising candor I was told that ‘a black employee had previously complained about blackface at Prada, but he didn’t work there anymore.'”

After posting her story, Ezie has already received a lot of support. One saying they have contacted Prada and another listing the corporate phone number.

One addressed Prada directly, “Explain yourself [Prada] better yet we will be calling bright and early and you can explain it over the phone,”

Ezie says history cannot repeat itself, “Black America deserves better. And we demand better.”

She implores people to share her story using the hashtags

 #StopBlackface

#BoycottPrada 

#EndRacismNow

Update: Prada says they are removing the item from their  Pradamalia line. 

Black Boys Don’t Need More Discipline, They Need Mentors

6 mins read

When I first met Chris, he was quiet—I could tell he was trying to figure out who I was, and who I could be in his life. The stories I heard about Chris did not align with the boy in front of me. I was told he was constantly removed from class and referred to the office. In fact, he had 60 such referrals in the first semester of school.

Chris wasn’t receiving the education required for his success, so my job as his mentor was to serve as a liaison and provide behavioral support to intervene. Chris is not an anomaly—in San Francisco, where he lives, the Black student achievement gap is so bad that the local NAACP called it a state of emergency.

When I started working with Chris, it was clear that he verbalized only a fraction of his thoughts. One day, during a break from class, he quietly mentioned that he wouldn’t be at school later in the week because of a funeral—his older brother had been murdered, and Chris was the last person to see him alive.

Chris’ school administrators were completely oblivious to his situation, most likely because he didn’t trust them with the burden he was carrying. At his school, behavioral problems are addressed with office referrals, without the intent to address the heart of the matter. However, I do not place full blame on the faculty—there are 300 kids in need of equal support and the faculty’s limited resources can only provide a fraction of what students need.

MY PURPOSE AS A MENTOR

My purpose as a mentor is to focus not just on academics, but also on emotional support. I have a deep respect for the youth I mentor, and in return, they respect me. For most of the youth I work with, I am the only man they trust to open up to about their emotions, and it makes a difference.

A toxic brand of masculinity that says boys and men are not supposed to exhibit emotion or feel pain has taken hold in our society—it has a debilitating and often violent effect. I have seen firsthand how a healthy masculine figure can counteract that narrative, and if we replicate that model, we might begin to heal people beyond just one neighborhood.

For boys in our program, behavior, attendance and grades all improve with the addition of a mentor who is focused as much on their mental and emotional well-being as on their academics. In the short few months I’ve worked with Chris, his referrals dropped to 17 for the entire spring semester. Another boy in our mentorship program went from 103 referrals in the fall to 11 referrals in the spring.

Part of what makes the relationship with my mentees possible is their first impression of me.

My personal experience as a Black man gives me the tools to see beyond their behavior—it is easier for them to identify with me because they see themselves in me. Although they may have a different set of circumstances, the overall experience for Black boys in public schools is similar across the country, so it’s not just the color of my skin that allows me to relate, it’s also a shared perspective and a mutual respect.

It is important for mentors and others looking to implement solutions for Black students to come from within our own communities. Studies have shown that students do better in class and have less disruptive behavior when educators look like them, and mentorship is no exception.

SELF-CARE HAS TO BE A PRIORITY

In order for adults to be mentors and healers for youth, they must believe in healing and caring for themselves. I can do the work I do because I make self-care a priority. It took me burning out to realize that I had to help myself first in order to help others.

Trauma doesn’t stop manifesting once people hit adulthood. It is crucial for adults to explore their own trauma so that when they interact with students, they can focus on the child’s pain rather than projecting their own. Ideally, teachers and faculty could receive therapeutic support as part of their job.

There are no quick fixes for the Black student achievement gap in San Francisco or elsewhere, but there are interventions that have relatively quick, lasting effects. Investing in mentors who are interested in caring for children as a whole—focusing on their psychological and emotional well-being as well as their academic achievement—is a key that can unlock the door to a brighter future for many of our youth.

Marc Anthony for Education Post

This Entrepreneur Turned a Hobby into a Custom Leather Goods Business

9 mins read

When we first discovered Coppell, Texas based Odin Leather Goods , we were impressed by the aesthetics of their online presence. It came as no surprise that founder, Odin Clack has a background in Digital Marketing.

We spoke with him to find out how he went from making one laptop case in his garage, to producing a branded line of leather products for himself and a growing list of clients in a 1500 sqft workshop space.

Odin Clack

What inspired you to start Odin leather?

In the beginning, I only had two goals: 1) create something I needed (a laptop sleeve); and 2) find a creative outlet. After spending 15 years working in corporate America building a successful career, I found that I always needed a creative outlet. Over the years that need for a creative outlet lead me to do woodworking, web design, and now leather work.

The one difference is that once I started doing leather work, it really stuck! I found myself really digging in on this craft and skill set. I wanted to understand the material and the process of constructing items that I saw other producing. What’s the gap between the types of goods a hobbyist/amateur can make in their home workshop, and those that are being made by the Hermes’ and Louis Vuitton’s of the world? Is it just experience and skill? Is it equipment?

I wanted to understand that and see if I could narrow that gap significantly. It turns out that with a bit of planning and care, you can actually build a sizable business at the same time you’re searching for the answer to these questions.

How did you raise your initial startup capital?

My business has been completely bootstrapped. I’m fortunate to have had a successful career in the digital marketing space. The income from my day job allowed me to invest in the leather craft hobby for the first year or two. Once I recognized the business potential of my hobby, I quickly began to reorganize things to ensure the business would become self-sustaining.

odin leather goods

Once I made that mental shift, from hobby to business, I began to pick projects more carefully and reinvest income back in the business to acquire additional tools, equipment, and most importantly leather. Often times I’d take on bigger and more ambitious projects, not for the profit, but to raise capital to buy a large piece of equipment. I was never about what I could afford. It’s more about ‘what do I have to do, to be able to afford’ something.

Getting started in this business involves a lot of trial and error – that gets expensive quickly. There’s no turnkey ‘start your own leather brand’ toolkit you can buy or purchase. Most leather businesses were started years ago by families who produced shoes or saddles. They’ve already been through that learning curve, trail, and error and have acquired all the equipment and tools needed. I was starting from scratch. Without having a successful day job/career, I’m not sure I could have found the funds needed to start this business.

How has your background as a Digital Marketing executive helped you as a business owner?

My background in Digital Marketing has provided me the capital needed to get through the initial learning curve of starting this craft and business. It has allowed me to leapfrog ahead of some other small brands by leveraging Instagram.

It also allowed me to create an excellent website for my business. So many other makers really struggle in this area. Social media and web design is so foreign and scary to them, despite it being one of the most important sales channels for them to build these days.

There are literally so many great small mom-and-pop brands and products out there that are dying and disappearing each year, just because they haven’t been able to figure out their social media and web strategies. That’s unfortunate, but it has also provided me with an advantage.

What is the most fulfilling thing about owning your business? What is the most challenging?

The most fulfilling thing about owning my own business is knowing that I’m creating something of value. It will be apart of my legacy. Not to say that my kids are going to run the business one day – thats actually not important to me. The legacy I want to leave my kids is a paradigm that they too can build something of value on their own.

I think the default answer so many other entrepreneurs give is “I want to work for myself so that I can be the boss and doing everything my way.” Well… I think that this is actually the most challenging part. When you run your own business, you are wholly responsible for EVERYTHING that happens. There’s no way to defer to someone else or pass the buck. You bear the full burden or all decisions made.

If your goal isn’t bigger than, “I want to be my own boss,” you could easily cave under the pressure. You have to have a bigger goal in mind. Working for someone else is absolutely easier. You know exactly when you’ll get you next paycheck and how much it will be. No one is looking at you each week and depending on you to write a check for them to pay their bills and take care of their families. And let’s not even talk about the number of hours you’re going to work each week.

If you could wake up tomorrow as the master of a particular business skill, what would it be?

Wow. That’s an interesting question. The answer to this question could change daily. This year, I think I’d love to have more experience and insight on managing finances – when to spend money, scheduling expenditures and of course raising capital. Much of our future development will be closely tied to how to manage this. A close second would be related to scaling production.

Where do you see the company in 5 years?

We’re going to make some significant change in our production process in 2019. We’ve got to figure out how to make bags and totes faster. This will lead us to our next big goal of opening a full retail store early next fall. This new retail concept will help to build even more brand equity in our region and really blowout our online business. Online is still our core business, and a retail store to ground us will help us greatly – it’s amazing how that works.

What advice do you gave for aspiring entrepreneurs?

My advice to aspiring entrepreneurs is this:

– Make sure you’re starting your business for the right reason. If it includes not wanting to work for someone else or being able to control your own schedule, I think you should revaluate things.

– Don’t’ chase your competitors! Instead, find your own unique message and brand and stick to it. That’s where you’re going to add value to the marketplace and pick up loyal customers.

Check out their website for more info.

 

 

-Tony Oluwatoyin Lawson (IG@thebusyafrican)

Black Owned Greeting Card Companies You Should Know

1 min read

Embrace the spirit of the holidays by supporting Black-owned greeting card companies. These businesses offer a diverse range of unique and creative designs, showcasing the vibrancy, humor, and resilience of Black culture.

Spread holiday cheer with a difference and empower Black artists and entrepreneurs.

If you know of any other businesses that we should consider, let us know!

Black Owned Greeting Card Companies

Culture Greetings 

Graphic Anthology

By Ms James

Neighborly

African American Expressions

Honest AF Cards

Carla Sue Greeting Cards

Nicole Marie Paperie

black owned greeting card

Paisley Paper Co.

Kitsch Noir

 

➡️ Advertise your Business

Don’t miss any articles! Subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on Facebook, Instagram & LinkedIn

Two sisters opened a Bed & Breakfast in Detroit

6 mins read

Working with a family member even on small projects can be challenging. But imagine trying to renovate a house, decorate it and open it as a bed and breakfast. That kind of a partnership can’t work if you have sibling rivalry.

Detroit Siblings

Sisters Roderica and Francina James are an example of how two siblings can work together, start their own business and support one another throughout the process. They are the owners of the Cochrane House Luxury Inn in Detroit, a new bed-and-breakfast hotel that opened in May.

Roderica James

These born-and-raised Detroiters aren’t hospitality experts. They don’t have a design background. In fact, they’ve never taken on a project this big before. But their mutual respect, admiration for each other’s strengths and balance of each other’s weaknesses made The Cochrane a possibility and, after six months of guests, a true success.

Francina James

The bed and breakfast has three guest rooms, a homemade cooked breakfast delivered to the room, hand poured house made soap, and specialized Cochrane House candles.

The Cochrane House also has customized packages for private parties and events.The Bed & Breakfast is walking distance from all three major sport arenas and theater district in Detroit.

“We want people to come in and relax, play music, a board game or have a glass or wine. Our whole goal is for our guests to be in an atmosphere where their mind, body, and soul is relaxed.

We want our guests to have the best experience possible. When you walk into the doors you can feel the family atmosphere.” says Founder and Owner of The Cochrane House Roderica James.

Life experience
These sisters have a wide range of experience and skills that they bring to The Cochrane House. Co-Owner Francina James is a graduate of Martin Luther King Jr., senior high school. She graduated from the University of Michigan and has held various position in the educational field. She is also a graduate from Thomas M. Cooley Law School and is currently a licensed attorney.

Roderica started a nail business in high school and continued throughout college. James graduated from Eastern Michigan University and began working in education. She worked at Pepper Elementary School in Oak Park, where she started as a teacher and later on became the Student Intervention Specialist.

At 23, she began working with her mother at EduTech Tutoring Company. Noted as one of the largest tutoring companies in Detroit, she served as executive director. James then expanded the business to Atlanta, Georgia and Jackson, Mississippi where she became Southern Regional Director.

“My sister and I are 13 months apart. We went to the same elementary, middle and high schools. She went to Michigan while I went to Eastern. So we’ve been close our entire lives,” Roderica said. “Of course, we have our disagreements. But because we know each other so well, we know how to listen to each other’s ideas.”

Francina agrees. “Roderica is the whimsical one, the one with the best ideas and entrepreneurial spirit. I’d say I’m the realistic one, the logical one. Whenever she has an idea, I give her suggestions on how to bring it down to Earth a bit so we can get it done.”

A dream fulfilled
Roderica started renovations on The Cochrane House in 2013. The home was erected in 1870 for Dr. John Terry, a Detroit eye doctor who decided to build his home in the Brush Park neighborhood. He lived in this mansion only for one year, before Lyman Cochrane purchased it. In 1871, Lyman Cochrane not only occupied this beautiful home, but also was elected to represent Detroit in the Michigan State Senate.

He served for two years and was later appointed Judge of the Superior Court of Detroit in 1873. He served in that position until February of 1879, the time of his death. He took pride in scholarship and was presumed to have one of the most extensive and valuable private libraries in the city of Detroit.

With family support, persistence and patience, Roderica’s dream has come true. Just on the heels of turning 40, James is proud to have a business in the city where she grew up.

“I feel blessed and honored. My position gives other women an opportunity to see someone at my age dedicated to something for so long finally come to fruition. It’s not easy, but my journey shows other young people, if you stay dedicated and focused, you are able to do it,” says Roderica.

Source: CORP

Photographer Bruce Talamon captured Black joy in the glory years of Soul and Funk.

17 mins read

Earth, Wind & Fire founder Maurice White had one name in mind for his memoir photos: Bruce Talamon. The photographer, who has nearly 40 years experience shooting feature film stills, began his career documenting R&B, soul and funk music’s golden age in the 1970s.

bruce talamon
Bruce Talamon

In 1979 and 1980, Talamon traveled with Earth, Wind & Fire, capturing shows, rehearsals and moments in between as the band toured Europe, Japan, South America and Egypt. That’s where Talamon took White’s favorite shot, a black and white photo of the musician walking toward the pyramids of Giza.

Photos by Bruce W. Talamon.

Herb Powell, who was helping to write the memoir, looked through Talamon’s pictures of the famed funk band and asked the question: “What else you got?”

A light bulb went off. Talamon began to reflect on his collection of images — of Teddy Pendergrass, Stevie Wonder, Diana Ross and many, many more — from the era. It was this eureka moment that led Talamon and his agent to pitch art-book publishers in New York. But they all passed.

Eventually, Talamon took matters into his own hands, writing a provocative letter to publisher Benedikt Taschen in 2015.

Photo books have documented jazz, rock ’n’ roll, the Rolling Stones. But there’s never been a photo book on R&B, soul and funk music, Talamon said. “As far as I’m concerned, that’s criminal. That speaks to being marginalized as the music was back then.”

Talamon usually was the only black photographer on the West Coast consistently photographing R&B, soul and funk musicians, he said.

“Generally, white photographers showed up at the white acts — Paul McCartney, Led Zeppelin, the Stones,” he said. “They might do the Jackson 5 and Diana Ross and Marvin Gaye and Smokey [Robinson], but they weren’t going to do Thelma Houston. They weren’t going to do Ashford & Simpson because there was no market for it.”

Diana Ross performing in Los Angeles in 1976. The Supremes would have 12 number-one singles and become the most celebrated vocal groups of all time followed by a wildly successful solo career for Ross. Credit: Bruce Talamon

To Talamon’s surprise, a representative from Taschen wrote back within a day, and weeks later an editor was in his living room poring over more than 5,000 early-career photos.

“Here I was revisiting this stuff some 40 years later, and it jumped out at me — the Parliament-Funkadelic group shot, the stuff with Bill Whitten,” Talamon said, referring to the designer of stage costumes for the Commodores, the Jacksons and others. “One of the things I said to my editor: I definitely did not want this book to be just some black guys screaming into a microphone. I had no interest in that, because this is about so much more.”

Motown company basketball game: Katherine, Janet, Michael and Randy Jackson with Billy Bray, Los Angeles 1974. – Photos by Bruce W. Talamon.

Bruce Talamon

Teddy Pendergrass, 1977. Photos by Bruce W. Talamon.

Marvin Gaye and his brother Frankie eat Thanksgiving Photos by Bruce W. Talamon.

“Bruce W. Talamon. Soul. R&B. Funk. Photographs 1972-1982,” released this fall, features nearly 300 images chronicling the performers and the fans from the era. Talamon’s book highlights not only the icons — including Franklin, Wonder, Summer and the Jackson 5 — but also showcases influential acts that didn’t find the same mainstream success, such as the Stylistics or the Dramatics. Also documented are cultural touchstones such as Don Cornelius’ music and dance TV program “Soul Train.”

A 1978 shot catches Marvin Gaye and his brother eating Thanksgiving leftovers at their mother’s home on South Gramercy Place in L.A. Patti Labelle props up her heels after a long day of interviews and radio-station visits in 1977. Quincy Jonesis at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco working on music arrangements with his then-wife, Peggy Lipton.

Sitting in his South L.A. home, Talamon flipped through the nearly 10-pound tome on his lap and reflected on how those early photos affected his career, which has included work for magazines and for filmmakers like Steven Spielberg.

“So many visual artists don’t get recognized until they’re either dead or in a wheelchair,” he said. “It’s nice to get this recognition.”

Earth, Wind & Fire

Earth, Wind & Fire, 1978 Bruce W. Talamon

“I definitely did not want this book to be just some black guys screaming into a microphone. I had no interest in that, because this is about so much more.”

Bruce Talamon

 

Wattstax, 1972

Isaac Hayes, 1972 Bruce W. Talamon

Born and raised in South L.A, Talamon never planned on becoming a photographer. As a political science major at Whittier College, he aspired to pursue law.

During a semester abroad, Talamon purchased his first camera, a Pentax Spotmatic, for $100 in Berlin. “Then I read the directions and started photographing,” he said. After learning that Miles Davis would be performing at the Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen, Talamon bought cheap seats to see the jazz artist. But he also wanted to take photos.

Camera in hand, Talamon headed toward the front of the stage.

“The usher said, ‘You have to go back to your seat, sir,’ ” Talamon recalled. “And I said … ‘Well, I’m a photojournalist from Jet magazine.’ ” The lie allowed him to snap some of his first music shots.

After graduating college, Talamon moved back to L.A. to pursue photography as a career.

In 1972, Talamon secured a photo pass to Wattstax, a benefit concert at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum held seven years after the Watts Riots. Dubbed “Black Woodstock,” the concert included the Staple Singers, Albert King and the Bar-Kays. Then 23, Talamon captured his first R&B photograph: soul singer-songwriter Isaac Hayes wearing aviators and wrapped in chains that draped from his shoulders to the stage.

The concert is also where Talamon met one of the most influential people in his career, Howard Bingham, Muhammad Ali’s photographer.

Soul newspaper 1972-82

Mel Melcon/ Los Angeles Times

That year Bingham introduced Talamon to Regina Jones, the publisher and co-founder of Soul Newspaper, a publication born out of the Watts Riots and focused on black entertainers. His first cover assignment for Soul was photographing “Me and Mrs. Jones” singer Billy Paul at an obscure nightclub in the Crenshaw district.

“It was packed full of women, from young women in there, old sisters in there, shaking it up to ‘Me and Mrs. Jones,’ ” Talamon recalled. “It was wild up in there. The drinks were flowing.”

After a couple of months freelancing for Soul, Jones sent Talamon on a press junket to Japan and Hong Kong with Motown Records’ premier female singing group, the Supremes.

It was there that he caught the attention of Bob Jones, a prominent black publicist who worked for Motown. Talamon said that for Jones it was important to hire black photographers. And in an era when black music was also a political statement, artists began speaking up too. “They understood the power of their positions,” Talamon said. “Black acts were asking stuff like, ‘Where are the black photographers?’ ”

Motown became his first corporate client and led to more gigs with record companies shooting publicity and editorial photographs.

At Soul, Talamon photographed what he called R&B royalty: Pendergrass, George Clinton and Smokey Robinson. Oftentimes, the newspaper featured artists before they hit the mainstream.

“This woman allowed us to experiment, to have fun,” Talamon said of Jones. “She knew we would come back with something good.”

“He never stopped trying to improve himself,” Jones said. “Bruce was always trying to come up with a better picture, a better lighting, a better staging, better concert shooting. … He was always looking to be better and make the publication better.”

Combing through Talamon’s book was an emotional experience.

“We were all too busy moving so fast with very, very, small staffing to low to no budget,” Jones said. “You’ve got a deadline every two weeks and then on to the next issue. You didn’t get to sit there and look at [the photos].”

And all these years later, she said, the work is proving even more important.

“There’s no other book I’ve ever seen out there … that covers intensely the way he does the black recording artists of the era,” Jones said. “I don’t think there’s anything like it.”

Donna Summer, 1977

Donna Summer photographed for the cover of Soul newspaper by Bruce W. Talamon.

After convincing Jones to invest in strobe lights to improve Soul’s covers, Talamon used the new equipment in sessions with Summer, Bootsy Collins and Chaka Khan and her band Rufus.

He referred to Summer’s shoot as one of the most important in his career.

In 1977, Summer was scheduled for 20 minutes, but when the queen of disco saw the sophistication of the setup by Talamon and his partner Bobby Holland, she stayed for four hours.

Months later, Summer told Ebony magazine that she had worked with Talamon, and the shoot became his first national magazine cover. That year he also shot comedian Richard Pryor for People magazine.

Importance of the Leica

B.B. King, The Roxy, 1978. Shot by Bruce W. Talamon

As a self-taught photographer, Talamon credited those who helped him throughout his career. He learned to light from Holland and Jim Britt, a staff photographer for Motown. He also counts Hollywood portrait photographer Bob Willoughby and rock ’n’roll photographer Jim Marshall among his teachers.

“Bruce put a stop to the going to law school, but Bruce didn’t put a stop to learning,” said Talamon, referring to himself in the third person. “I took the tools that I learned as a political science and sociology major and I applied them to photography.”

One tip he learned from Marshall was to use a Leica in quiet moments. Holding the camera in his hands, Talamon demonstrated the faint click of the shutter.

This was the camera he used to photograph B.B. King waiting backstage at the Roxy in 1978. It was the camera he used in 1984 while covering Jesse Jackson’s historic presidential run for Time magazine. Talamon used the Leica during Jackson’s apology at a New Hampshire synagogue for using a derogatory term to describe Jewish people in an interview.

“I took off all my Nikons, put my black and white in my pocket and walked up to them and said, ‘I need to be there,’ ” Talamon said. “He let me come in.”

Nearly 30 years later, after switching to digital cameras, he brought the Leica to set while working on the 2011 romantic comedy “Larry Crowne” and snapped black and white personal photos for Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts.

Then and now

Bruce Talamon

Mel Melcon/Los Angeles Times

Talamon lamented the tight control that publicists and music labels yield over an artist’s image now. In the 1970s, the photographer was often given unlimited access. “You were creating something, and you were photographing and you were watching,” he said. “You can’t do that in five minutes; you can’t do that in three songs.”

“No publicist is going to use this,” he said, referring to the book’s cover, a blurred shot of Stevie Wonder performing at Inglewood’s Forum in 1980. “This was me having some fun after I’d gotten the shot.”

But all these years later, Talamon also noted the connections between performers of the past and newcomers today. “One of the things I wanted to show was how much these musicians have to give,” Talamon said. “Now that is something that is consistent with today.”

“That’s why I have that picture of Al Green collapsed at the door of his dressing room. … He left it all out on the stage. And that’s what they would do, the Isley Brothers, B.B. King, James Brown — when they said they were the hardest working men in show business, that’s the truth.”

Source: Makea Easter for The LA Times

Meet the Black Architect who designed Duke University 37 years before he could have attended it

10 mins read

In 1902, when Julian F. Abele graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in architecture, he was the school’s first-ever black graduate. The debonair Philadelphia-born architect went on to design hundreds of elegant public institutions, Gilded Age mansions, and huge swathes of a prestigious then-whites-only university’s campus.

Yet the fact that an African-American architect worked on so many significant Beaux Arts-inspired buildings along the East Coast was virtually unknown until a political protest at Duke, the very university whose gracious campus he largely designed, was held in 1986.

Abele’s contributions were not exactly hidden—during that era it was not customary to sign one’s own designs— but neither were they publicized. When he died in 1950, after more than four decades as the chief designer at the prolific Philadelphia-based firm of Horace Trumbauer, very few people outside of local architectural circles were familiar with his name or his work.

In 1942, when the long-practicing architect finally gained entry to the American Institute of Architects, the director of Philadelphia’s Museum of Art, a building which Abele helped conceive in a classical Greek style, called him “one of the most sensitive designers anywhere in America.”

black architect
Julian F. Abele.  Courtesy Duke University Archives

The protests at Duke that ended up reviving his reputation had nothing to do with Abele’s undeserved obscurity; they were protests against the racist regime in apartheid South Africa. Duke students were infuriated by the school’s investments in the country, and built shanties in front of the university’s winsome stone chapel, which was modeled after England’s Canterbury Cathedral. One student (perhaps majoring in missing the point) wrote an editorial for the college paper complaining about the shacks, which she said violated “our rights as students to a beautiful campus.”

Unbeknownst to even the university’s administrators, Julian F. Abele’s great-grandniece was a sophomore at the college in Durham, North Carolina. Knowing full well that her relative had designed the institution’s neo-Gothic west campus and unified its Georgian east campus, Susan Cook wrote into the student newspaper contending that Abele would have supported the divestment rally in front of his beautiful chapel.

Her great grand-uncle, who in addition to the chapel designed Duke’s library, football stadium, gym, medical school, religion school, hospital, and faculty houses, “was a victim of apartheid in this country” yet the university itself was an example “of what a black man can create given the opportunity,” she wrote. Cook asserted that Abele had created their splendid campus, but had never set foot on it due to the Jim Crow laws of the segregated South.

The indoor stadium at Duke University.  Courtesy of UPenn


This was the first time that Abele’s role in designing Duke, a whites-only university until 1961, had been acknowledged so publicly. Many school administrators were hearing about him for the very first time. Cook’s claim that Abele had never even seen his masterwork up close was devastating. (Accounts differ, however. In 1989, Abele’s closest friend from UPenn, the Hungarian Jewish architect Louis Magaziner, recalled being told by Abele that a Durham hotel had refused him a room when he was visiting the university. A prominent local businessman also remembered Abele coming to town).

Either way, the fact that by the 1980s most people had never even heard of the history-making architect, who designed an estimated 250 buildings while working at the well-known Trumbauer firm, including Harvard University’s Widener Memorial library and Philadelphia’s Free Library, was even more shocking. Cook’s letter led to something of a reckoning. Today, there’s a portrait of Abele hanging up at Duke, and the university is currently celebrating the 75th anniversary of the basketball arena he designed, the Cameron Indoor Stadium, which opened this week in 1940.

Raised in Philadelphia as the youngest of eight children of an accomplished family, Abele had excelled in school since early childhood, once winning $15 for his mathematical prowess. But Abele’s years at UPenn—first as an undergraduate and then as the school’s first black architecture student—took place in a climate that, while not as restrictive as the Jim Crow South, was still very racist. In addition to segregated seating in theaters and on transport, most campus gathering spots and sports teams were closed to African-Americans, and the dining hall and nearby restaurants refused to serve them.

Photo of UPenn’s Architectural Society (with Abele, center) courtesy of UPenn

 

It was an isolating atmosphere, and friendships could be hard to come by. “You spoke perfect English but no one spoke to you,” wrote a woman of color who graduated from UPenn nearly two decades after Abele did. Yet, during his senior year at the university, Abele was elected president of the school’s Architectural Society, and he also won student awards for his designs for a post office and a botany museum. His professors evidently thought highly of him: five years after Abele graduated, the head of the school’s architecture program tried to lure him away from his firm for a job in California.

Abele’s employer at that time, Horace Trumbauer, refused to let him go. He had become invaluable. Trumbauer had hired Abele in 1906 to be the assistant to the Philadelphia firm’s chief designer, Frank Seeburger. When Seeburger departed in 1909, Abele ascended to his position. The young architect worked well with Trumbauer, who was self-conscious about his own lack of formal education—he learned the craft of architecture through apprenticeships and avid reading—and who built his firm by hiring very competent underlings.

Abele, a serious man who dressed in impeccable suits, spoke French fluently, and reveled in classical music, was exactly the technically gifted architect, proficient in Beaux Arts building styles, that Trumbauer needed for his team. “I, of course, would not want to lose Mr. Abele,” Trumbauer brusquely replied when he was asked, in 1907, to release Abele from his contract. Many accounts describe the firm’s artistic vision as Abele’s, although dealing with clients and bringing in commissions fell to Trumbauer.

Photo of Duke University’s hospital courtesy of UPenn

 

One such client was James Buchanan Duke, the tobacco millionaire who commissioned the Trumbauer firm to design vast residences in New York City and in Somerville, New Jersey for his family (and their 14 servants). The white-marble mansion in Manhattan was modeled on a 17th-century French château, and when it was completed in 1912, the New York Times declared it the “costliest home” on Fifth Avenue. By 1924, the Trumbauer firm was hired to transform and expand an existing college in Durham, North Carolina into a well-endowed university named after its patron.

Abele would spend the next two decades creating a magisterial campus for a university that he was not even allowed to attend. All his creations were done under the name of the firm. “The lines are all Mr. Trumbauer’s,” Abele once said. “But the shadows are all mine.” But after his boss died of cirrhosis in 1938, the talented architect signed his name to one of his own designs for the very first time. It was for Duke’s chapel, the same structure that played a part in reviving his reputation 48 years later.

 

Source: Curbed

Nashville’s Slim & Husky’s Pizza is Opening Two Atlanta Locations

4 mins read

North Nashville’s hip-hop-inspired Slim & Husky’s Pizza Beeria is opening two Atlanta locations in 2019. In addition to 581 Metropolitan Parkway in Adair Park — announced in January — owners Clinton Gray, Derrick Moore, and Emanuel Reed will also open a Slim & Husky’s in the former One Rooster space (née Real Chow Baby) at the corner of Howell Mill Road and 11th Street in Westside. That location should open in late February or early March.

The partners had hoped to open on Metropolitan Parkway this year. The plan was to build several commercial units there, in addition to Slim & Husky’s. However, those plans have been restructured to only include the restaurant. Metropolitan Parkway should open next summer.

“We wanted to open something in Atlanta in early 2019 so, when the Howell Mill space became available in our search, we liked it,” Gray tells Eater Atlanta. “It’s a turnkey project and gives us the opportunity to be in a busy area like Howell Mll, as well as in a more underserved community, like Metropolitan Parkway and Adair Park.”

Demolition has already begun on the Howell Mill outpost. Gray is actively looking for Atlanta artists to produce pieces for the restaurant. The partners see the potential foot traffic from residents of the future mixed-use apartment complexes under construction between 14th and Marietta Streets and from visitors to existing area attractions, like Westside Provisions District and the Northside Tavern, as a big plus.

Pizza

The menu for both Atlanta locations will be the same as their three restaurants in Nashville. Most pizzas are named for songs by various hip-hop and R&B artists — the Rony, Roni, Rone!, for instance, is named for the group Tony! Toni! Toné! and includes three types of pepperoni.

Slim & Husky’s just introduced a new meat lovers pizza to the menu, the Cee No Green. Gray and his partners fed Atlanta’s Goodie Mob and the pizza’s eponym, CeeLo Green — the crooner from the group — before they performed in Nashville last month. Apparently, the members of Goodie Mob and CeeLo loved the pizza.

Gray says Slim & Husky’s ATL vibe will be felt most in the artwork throughout the restaurants and the beers offered from local Atlanta and Georgia breweries. Dine-in and take-out are planned for both locations. A take-out window is being installed at the Metropolitan restaurant, which is staying open later in the evening to better serve students attending Morehouse, Clark-Atlanta University, and Spelman.

And, this won’t be the last Atlanta locations. There are plans to expand Slim & Husky’s to other areas around the city.

“We really feel like Atlanta will be a great city for Slim & Husky’s. Opening here is big for us. I know our friends from Hattie B’s are finding success in Atlanta,” says Gray. “We hope to be the next Nashville restaurant to find success in Atlanta. We’re excited to be in the ATL.”

1016 Howell Mill Road, Atlanta; 581 Metropolitan Parkway SW, Atlanta. slimandhuskys.com

 

Source: Atlanta EATER

From Beyoncé to Sorry to Bother You: the new age of Afro-surrealism

15 mins read

There he was, dangling into the void. Sinking, arms outstretched, helplessly clawing at the air. Jordan Peele’s satirical horror Get Out introduced us to the “sunken place”, a purgatory where Daniel Kaluuya’s character is trapped by body-snatching white liberals. As otherworldly as the Salvador Dalí-designed dream sequence in Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound, it was the scene that planted Afro-surrealism firmly in the mainstream.

It also symbolised the revival of a genre in which strangeness and blacknessnot only co-exist but are impossible to separate. In recent years we’ve had Atlanta, a show its creator Donald Glover proudly called a “black Twin Peaks”, and a host of film-makers including Kahlil Joseph, Arthur Jafa and Jenn Nkiru, who have given a hallucinatory edge to the music of Kendrick Lamar, Flying Lotus, Kamasi Washington and Beyoncé. Joseph’s video to Flying Lotus’s Until the Quiet Comes reimagines Watts in Los Angeles as a phantasmagoric playground where a murdered black man’s body dances, bullet-ridden and bloodied, through the projects. Jafa’s video installation Love Is the Message, the Message Is Death is a collage of images; athletes and artists from LeBron James to Drake are interspersed with footage of police beating black people and civil-rights unrest, while a huge psychedelic sun burns in the background – coming in and out of the mix like a harbinger of impeding doom.

Earlier this year in the United States, writer and director Terence Nance’s sketch show Random Acts of Flyness sent up police violence, white saviour syndrome and everyday racism in a style described by the New York Times as “kaleidoscopic, nearly unclassifiable”. And this week sees the UK release of Boots Riley’s satire Sorry to Bother You, which uses surrealism to comment on race, sexuality and capitalism.

So why is the Afro-surrealist revival happening now? And is escaping into the strange and fantastical simply a natural response to living in a world bound by structural racism?

According to Terri Francis, director of the Black Film Center/Archive at the University of Indiana, it’s no wonder our pop cultural landscape is turning Afro-surreal at a time when society is wrestling with racial violencebias and inequality. “I think their work is very realistic in representing the absurdity of black life,” says Francis. “[In America] the ideals are there and you’re aware of what should be going on … but that’s not the reality.”

This is far from the first time black artists have turned to the weird and dreamlike to explain and examine their circumstances. “We’ve forgotten the history of surrealism,” says Francis. “Initially, it included African and African-Caribbean artists; André Breton was very close to Aimé Césaire. Their sense of surrealism was not segregated. A lot of that work that we celebrate as being surrealist is drawing its inspiration from African art and African American music.”

Afro-surrealism
Culture for Senegal … Léopold Sédar Senghor. Photograph: Peter Johns for the Guardian

Césaire, a poet from Martinique, was part of the Négritude movement in 1930s France, a collective of African artists from former French colonies who created a new vision of modern Africa from French culture, pan-African thinking and surrealism. Emerging a decade after the Harlem Renaissance, Négritude produced perhaps the most remarkable early Afro-surrealist: Léopold Sédar Senghor, a Senegalese poet and socialist who would become the country’s first president in 1960. He believed art could power his country’s economy in a postcolonial world; at one point his government was pumping 25% of the state’s budget into its ministry of culture.

At the same time, American writer Henry Dumas was producing work that would see him dubbed an “Afro-surreal expressionist” by the US intellectual Amiri Baraka, who first coined the term. Dumas was born in Arkansas in 1934. After a stint in the US air force, he began a writing career that would marry the bizarre with ideas of black identity and power. In short stories, poetry and more experimental projects (Dumas created accompaniments to the work of the Afro-futurist figurehead and jazz musician Sun Ra), Dumas used surrealism to question the social strife of African Americans and the negligent attitude of the white ruling class. “When a Negro boy is shot and killed by policemen who do not check the situation before pulling their guns, the people get angry. It is a simple law of nature,” he wrote in his short story Riot or Revolt. In a tragic, ironic twist, Dumas was shot and killed by a transit cop in a New York City subway station in 1968.

Baraka wrote that Dumas’s work was made up of magical “morality tales” that were “constructed in weirdness”. Some of his work, such as the story of a group of right-on white jazz fans who demand entry to a black jazz club but die because their bodies can’t physically handle the potency of the music, could easily have come from the mind of Riley or Nance today. So is that same frustration with everyday racism the reason a new generation of black film-makers and artists reaching for the surreal again? For Francis, the only way to explain the reality of life for black people in America is through the extraordinary.

Extra real … Tessa Thompson and Lakeith Stanfield in Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You Photograph: Annapurna Pictures

“I’ve always thought about Afro-surrealism as something that is not wild and crazy,” she says. “It’s like Random Acts of Flyness or Sorry To Bother You, they’re extra real. They are about moments and what is going on in the now, and it’s that revelation about a once hidden or lesser known reality that makes the work have that impact.”

In Random Acts of Flyness, Nance creates vignettes that examine the absurdity of race relations in America. In one sketch, he hires a white friend who appears to vouch for him whenever he’s stopped by a police officer. Another, White Angel, focuses on a narcissistic director who uses a friend’s adopted Malawian child as a muse for a grotesque white saviour film, playing with ideas of Hollywood’s self-satisfaction, exploitation of black suffering and virtue signalling.

In Atlanta’s second season, the episode Woods sees the rapper Paper Boi flee into a forest after being mugged. There, time and reality shifts as he’s chased by a mystical junkie who taunts him for not making more of his life. Just as David Lynch’s warped vision of smalltown America revealed the darkness that lingered underneath, the Afro-surreal cohort are expressing the sheer bizarreness of having to cope with a racist society.

Ralph Ellison, whose novel Invisible Man – along with Toni Morrison’s Beloved – is arguably the most famous Afro-surrealist work of literature, dug the fantastical foundations for Man Booker prize winner Paul Beatty’s The Sellout and Colston Whitehead’s Pulitzer triumph The Underground Railroad. Ellison told an interviewer he “was just being true to reality”. Today’s artists are sometimes loth to embrace the surrealist tag fully as well. “We certainly don’t approach episodes and say, ‘Hey guys, let’s make sure this script is surreal!’” explains Stefani Robinson, one of the lead writers on Atlanta. “We’re a very specific group of individuals who are probably more drawn to the unusual, the strange, and the otherworldly. It’s just personal taste, not a verbalised mandate.”

Drawn to the unusual … Donald Glover in Atlanta. Photograph: 2018 FX Productions

Similarly, Kevin Jerome Everson – the experimental artist whose films about working-class black life point at what Francis calls “the blues at the core of Afro-surrealism” – is conscious of his work being completely misread by the art world’s predominantly white gatekeepers. He was weary of certain institutions that wanted to screen his film Tonsler Park, which captures life inside a voting station in Charlottesville, Virginia during the 2016 US election. “They wanted to show it during the election and they said it was anti-Trump,” he explains. “It didn’t have anything to do with that.

The white ruling class thinks because there are black people in it, they can only see us as a political entity. You are still in the service society, so you’re still serving them. I’m not down with that.”

Francis believes one of the core tenets of Afro-surrealism is its introspective nature, where metaphors like the sunken place are used to explore painful truths. “The journey of Afro-surrealism is inward,” says Francis. “It’s about imagining how your interior world works and staying in that place to reckon with your everyday.” In that sense you can include the work of Michaela Coel’s Chewing Gum and Issa Rae’s Insecure, which both delve into the rarely explored (in mainstream culture, anyway) interior world of black women.

Everson believes younger artists see the liberating potential of the genre. “I think everyone was used to seeing things as ‘real’ in African American culture,” he says. “Once people looked back at Funkadelic they realised, ‘Oh wow, people used their imagination.’” George Clinton’s group would descend on stage from the P-Funk Mothership, a 1,200-pound aluminum stage prop that fit in with the group’s intergalactic self-mythologising, developed after Clinton and bass player Bootsy Collins claimed to have encountered a UFO. “Black people have always used their imagination,” adds Everson. “And I think the young people freaked out because in popular culture there seemed to be no avenue to use their imagination.”

The Parliament-Funkadelic mothership lands in Los Angeles, 1977. Photograph: Michael Ochs Archives

Now, surrealism is spreading. The New Negress Film Society is a collective of film-makers, including Ja’Tovia Gary, who use dreamlike elements, and which supports black female directors and artists. Young directors from the African diaspora including Adoma Owusu, Cecile Emeke, Chinonye Chukwu and Frances Bodomo (who directed four episodes of Random Acts of Flyness) have all experimented with the surreal in their films. In June, Jenn Nkiru worked on the Afro-surreal video for Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s Apeshit, which cut between images of staid old masters in the Louvre and black America’s biggest power couple. As an art form, Afro-surrealism has taken root.

“Just about any black person is an Afro-surrealist because you have to be able to imagine something more than what is right in front of you,” explains Francis. “You need to have that sixth sense to be able to understand white people and where you’re safe. You also have to imagine another world beyond this one, where you are just a normal person living your life.”

 

Source: Lanre Bakare for The Guardian

1 84 85 86 87 88 126