Judge, 1917-07-21 · page 5 of 28
Judge — July 21, 1917 — page 5: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This Judge magazine page satirizes "Bohemia"—the artistic, unconventional lifestyle associated with Greenwich Village and similar communities. The top illustration shows a pilot returning home to two women, evoking the popular WWI song "When Johnny Comes Marching Home." The "Bohemia Table d'Hôte" article by F. Gregory Hartwick mocks Bohemian culture through Banks, a character who promises to show the narrator "true Bohemia." The satire targets the affectation of artistic pretense: Banks boasts of taking him to fashionable establishments (Italian restaurants, tea houses, cabarets) that merely *affect* Bohemian authenticity through electric lights, "sawdust on the floor," and girls with bobbed hair singing trendy songs. The joke: what Banks presents as genuine Bohemian experience is actually commercialized, mass-produced leisure—a commodified performance of nonconformity.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
ASKED my friend Banks to take me I downtown and show me Bohemia. Banks is a dark, wicked-looking He has a shock of ungovernable . and his eyes bore into one like diamond-drills. He is an artist by profession, and paints magazine- covers fora liv- ing. At such times as he is not painting pretty girls in impossible ses, he strives toward his Ideal, which has something to do with the coordina- tion of painting and music. He ex- plained it to me once, but I told him it made my head ache. Perhaps this was why, when I asked him to show me Bohemia, he reviled me. “You are a confounded Philistine,” he snorted. ‘You know all about Bohemia already. You know exactly what you wish to see, and what you will see. If the Bohemia I shall show you differs in one jot or tittle from that which you have read of, you will complain that I have not delivered the goods. There- fore, O scion of Philistia, come with me into Bohemia.” (Banks always talks that way when he’s with me.) ‘I shall take man. WHEN JOHNNY COMES Bohemia Table d’Hote By PF. GREGORY HARTWICK you first to an Italian restaurant, where you will eat of bad food and drink a modicum of red-pepper wine. I shall not take you to my particular chop-house, which is truly Bohemian, and where you get really excellent food, because it has electric lights and sawdust on the floor. You would not like it. After dinner I shall take you to the Yellow Wampus tea-house. You will sit in an atmosphere that you would not tolerate in a pool room, and you will see Bohemia swirling about you. A girl with bobbed hair will bring you coffee, and if you are very lucky you will see another girl smoke cigarettes—two, or maybe three. This will delight your little soul. When I have endured the atmosphere of the Yellow Wampus as long as I can, I shall take you to the Purple Cat, where you will see the Bohemians of West End Avenue and parts adjacent. They will be drinking wine, and be just as jolly as anything. And a girl with bobbed hair will stand on a table, maybe, and sing a Bohemian song, which has just come out in the new musical comedy entitled ‘Shoot Me While I’m Happy.’ I shall not take you to the place where FLYING HOME I go to meet my friends, and where there is true Bohemia, because it is the back room of a Sixth Avenue saloon, and has electric lights and sawdust on the floor. You would not like it. I will serve you Bohemia in three courses, table d’héte. Come, O Philistine, and be delighted.” So we went to Bohemia. to pass as my friend prophesied. At the Italian restaurant I noted a And it came Banks had ~~> Axes 2 The selective craft as farmer Corntossel sees it. comicbooks.com