THE CHEAP DETECTIVE

Ben Katchor's works include Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer: The Beauty Supply District, and Cheap Novelties: the Pleasures of Urban Decay with Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer. Katchor really captures that era of the 70s when the Flatiron District, and points south, really was something of a novelties district, with cavernous stores filled with shelf after shelf of gimmicks and gimcracks. Supermarkets of strangeness. There was the Gordon Novelty Shop on Broadway and 22nd.

And there was B. Shackman & Co., on the corner of Fifth Ave. and 16th Street. Their metal nameplate is still on that corner, offering "favors" and "novelties." There were wind-up toys and old-time dolls that were its stock in trade, as well as a fantastic assortment of dollhouse furniture, just the thing to brighten up that ant farm or amateur "Amazing Colossal Man" film.

I passed it every day, finally succumbed, and entered. I was surprised that nothing really fired my imagination, until I saw these:

Unlicensed merch at its finest! I was happy to get them...cheap.
A "magic book" is just a sun picture, and these are their protective covers.
You expose the sun picture to direct sunlight, and an image appears.
I haven't tried it, because they couldn't possibly be as good as these!