99% Invisible - 129- Thomassons

Episode Date: August 26, 2014

Cities, like living things, evolve slowly over time. Buildings and structures get added and renovated and removed, and in this process, bits and pieces that get left behind. Vestiges. Just as humans have tailbones and whales have pelvic bones, cities … Continue reading →

This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars. Cities like living things evolve slowly over time. Buildings and structures get added and renovated and removed. And in this process, there are bits and pieces that get left behind. Little bestages. Humans have tailbones, but no tails. Whales have pelvic bones, but no legs. Whales have pelvic bones but no legs. And cities have stairs that lead to nowhere.

Telephone poles without wiring. And pipes that carry nothing at all. That's producer Avery Trufflement. Most of the time, these architectural leftovers rust or crumble are get taken down. But other times, these vestiges are not removed and they remain in the urban organism. And sometimes, even though they no longer serve any discernible purpose whatsoever, they are actually maintained. They get cleaned and polished and repaired and repainted just because they're there. These architectural leftovers first caught the attention of an artist in Japan named

Akasa Gawa Ganpei. This was in 1972. One day he was on his lunch break with some friends. And as they were walking to lunch, they came across this staircase that went up and then back down. But there was no door at the top. He basically just walked up and then walked back down. And there was a piece of the railing that had been recently fixed.

Something clicked with him when he saw that. That is Mat Fargo. He's translated to Casagawa's work into English. A Casagawa himself doesn't speak English. And he's up there in the years and he's not currently doing any interviews. But his passion for these city vestiges spread to Mat Fargo. It's very rare for one. There's not a lot of facets of our life these days that are allowed to be completely purposeless.

Acosta Gowas saw these urban leftovers as artistic byproducts of the city. He photographed all the things he could find that were both vestigial and maintained. He began publishing his findings in a magazine column, accompanied by musings about each object. So, for example, this is what Akasagawa wrote about those stairs to nowhere. Everything in our capitalist society has to have a purpose. So where does that leave this particular staircase? Could you even call it a staircase when all it did was let you peep into a window?

Of course you can't. You can only call it a staircase when all it did was let you peep into a window? Of course you can't. You can only call it art. A work of art shaped like a staircase. People began to send a Kasegawa pictures of similar architectural leftovers that they found. And in his column, a Kasegawa would evaluate their submissions on two criteria. One, were they truly, completely useless, and two, had they been recently maintained.

In 1985, Acosta Gawa published a book of these collected photographs and writings, which Matt Fargo translated into English for the first time in 2009. And of course, now Matt finds these things everywhere, and they've changed the way he sees his surroundings. Architecture is constantly changing and being amended. So it is fun to think about, how do we end up where we are right now, and the warp and wof of how it formed over years. It's not a static, immutable thing. The changing nature of the city was especially clear to Akasagawa as a Japanese artist.

Japan's rapid reorganization after World War II created a lot of these city vestiges. A gossagawa coined a term for these kinds of urban leftovers, those that are, again, both totally purposeless and regularly maintained. He called them Thomason's. It comes from Gary Thomason, who was a baseball player, an American baseball player, and a really good one. Gary Thomason played for the LA Dodgers, the New York Yankees, and the San Francisco Giants.

And then he was snatched up by another team, also called the Giants. The Yomiyori Giants, which is like the Yankees of Japan, they have all the money and they win a lot of titles. And also, incidentally, Akasegao's favorite baseball team, located in Tokyo. They hired him to come over and they paid him an exorbitant amount of money. But in this new country, on this new team, the great slugger Gary Thomason lost his stride. He got there and could not hit a Japanese pitcher for the life of him. He actually set the all-time strikeout record in Japan in 1981, and he remained in this

rut until his contract ran out the following year. So he basically ended up just sitting on the bench and collecting a lot of money. Miss after Miss Gary Thomas and gained the nickname, the human fan, you know, for swinging the bat around and only moving the air. And so this kind of useless player that was being physically maintained was a Kasega was foiled for these objects he was finding. After Matt translated a Kasega was original book, which by the way is entitled Hyper Art Thomason.

The American publishers wanted to get a conversation going state side. They collaborated with a team of artists and photographers to find Thomason's all around San Francisco, which is where the publisher was based at the time. It was partly its own project and it was partly to promote the book and the idea. Claire Light spearheaded this project and she and collaborator Alan Manolo took us on their own Thomas and Tour. You find them all of a city, I'm not showing to you, yeah, we'll go down four.

Of all the Thomasans that Claire and Alan found in San Francisco, their favorite ones, sit poetically on a drawbridge right in front of AT&T Park. Home of the world champion San Francisco Giants. Alan's a big Giants fan. And outside the stadium on a drawbridge named after a former giant left-yodoole beyond a plaza named after former giant Louis Mays, he found some objects unovisually named after former giant Gary Thomas. There's two on one on each side. They look like little kind of robot century guards. So picture this. There's a drawbridge and on either side are these lifting arm gates.

You know, like the barriers that lower at railroad crossings to keep the cars from moving forward. you know, like the barriers that lower at railroad crossings to keep the cars from moving forward. But next to these modern lifting arm gates are the old models, or what's left of them. Their arms were chopped off, but the base is still there. And this old useless base is still maintained. They actually took the trouble to move the damn thing, but they didn't remove it. And they had it painted before, so we could not figure out why it's still here. And it's painted like the same colors, the bridge black,

this kind of industrial black. And these Thomassons were some of the only indisputable examples that Claire and Alan found. There are plenty of things around the city that are just derelict. It's the maintenance that makes it a true Thomasson. Claire and Alan drove us to a loading dock by the San Francisco Marina and pointed out a staircase that led to nowhere. A classic Thomason.

Or so it seemed. Upon closer look, we weren't so certain. I think that one is more of the Thomason. I don't think it has been repainted because if you look at the bottom, the pink fades into the rust. But if you look at the other railings over there, they're all roasted. So that's where they're going. Let's take a closer look. The four of us huddled around this railing and tried to figure out if the rust was painted

over, which would mean that it was a Thomason, or the paint was rusted over, which would make it not a Thomason. It looks like it was freshly painted, but then we're figuring it wasn't and that it just hasn't been used and so that's why it doesn't look like it doesn't have nicks or cuts on it. This discourse is part of the fun of Thomasons. Anyone can just look at broken-down city parts,

but it takes active examination and attention to assess if this object is truly useless and has been cared for. This detailed look and debate is what at Casagawa was encouraging in his writings and publications. And so we thought we would imitate that with our website. Claire teamed up with Matt Fargo, the translator, to create a blog where people could offer up their own

potential Thomassons for analysis and debate. And so people were actually using it and sending in their Thomassons from all over. Like in Acasagawa's original magazine column, there are submissions. And there's commentary as to whether or not they met the definition of a Thomason. And we got a lot of really beautiful pictures. That's Translitter Matfargo again. And then one day they got a submission that was definitely not a Thomason. Or maybe it was the truest Thomason of them all. One day we got one that was just a big picture of a middle finger and it said thank you for making my family forever famous or something like that and it was

from Gary Thomason's daughter. That middle finger was a pretty clear sign. The Thomason family is not pleased, if indeed that is actually Gary Thomason's daughter who submitted it. But either way the family declined to comment for this story. Which brings us to another debate beyond whether or not something is of Thomason. Is it fair to call these things Thomason's at all? Gary Thomason was a remarkable baseball player for a long time, and just being a professional baseball player in and of itself is amazing. Hitting a baseball and going 90 miles per hour is about the hardest thing to do in professional

sports. If you are fantastic at it, you'll fail 70% of the time. Combine that with Thomason getting on in years, the stress of living abroad, and any number of other things that could have been going on in his life at the time. It's totally understandable that he wasn't the slugger that he was for the San Francisco Giants. And a cassega when you're that, he followed baseball. He was a fan of the Yomu Yuri Giants.

He was a fan of Gary Thomson. It was, a cassega was big fear when we told him we wanted to publish the book. He's like, I don't know about publishing it in English because it might be really embarrassing for the Thomason family and don't want to hurt any feelings. He's a sweet man. Matt himself was pretty nervous about the Thomason family's reaction. I can't imagine what he would say or, yeah just hope he knows that uh nothing but love for him and that that Acosta Ga was really really nervous about that. But not so nervous that Acosta Ga Ga would not publish the book. And unfortunately the name Thomasin works well. It fits. It's catchy. And

maybe it's kind of mean. In fact when I first heard about Thomas' sense I thought it was really mean. But then I tried to remember all the baseball players I could from the 1970s and I came up with something like four names. And now because of a Kasegawa, Gary Thomas' has transcended even Pete Rose and Reggie Jackson and joined the immortal ranks of the eponym, Cartigan, Liatar, Guillotine, Sandwich, Silhouette, and Plymsol. However, hurtful, the useless title might be, the legacy of a Casa Gawa's Thomason, one could argue, is ultimately a positive one. Thomasons are delightful to find.

They have inspired artists, translators, performers, and urban explorers around the world. Thomasons are treasures, waiting to be discovered and analyzed. [♪ Music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in Plus, if you need to get a gift for the Urban Design enthusiast who has everything, I'm thinking a Gary Thomas and baseball card would be perfect. 99% Invisible was produced this week by Avery Truffle Men With Sam Green's Fan Katie Mingle And Me Roman Mars We are a project of 91.7 Local Public Radio KALW in San Francisco and produced are the offices of Arksign, the Reggie Jackson of Architecture firms in beautiful downtown Oakland,

California. You can keep up with all the goings on at 99pi on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, and Spotify if you say hi, we usually say hi back. And if you ever need a place to crash, you can always hang out at our place at 99pi.org. Radio TIPI from PRX.