Sketch

Sketch (pronounced skech)

(1) A simply or hastily executed drawing or painting, especially a preliminary one, giving the essential features without the details, later to be elaborated.

(2) A rough design, plan, or draft, as of a book.

(3) A brief or hasty outline of facts, occurrences etc.

(4) As thumbnail sketch, a piece of text which summaries someone or something.

(5) A short, usually descriptive, essay, history, or story.

(6) A short play or slight dramatic performance, as one forming part of a variety or vaudeville program; a short comedy routine (a skit).

(7) To make a sketch.

(8) To summarize, to set forth in a brief or general account.

(9) In metallurgy, to mark a piece of metal for cutting.

(10) In music, a short evocative instrumental piece, used especially with compositions for the piano.

(11) In the slang of the Irish criminal class, as “to keep (a) sketch), to maintain a lookout; to be vigilant; watch for something.

(12) In journalism, as parliamentary sketch, a newspaper article summarizing political events which attempts to make serious points in a lest than obviously serious manner (mostly UK).

(13) In category theory, a formal specification of a mathematical structure or a data type described in terms of a graph and diagrams (and cones (and cocones)) on it. It can be implemented by means of “models” (functors) which are graph homomorphisms from the formal specification to categories such that the diagrams become commutative, the cones become limiting (ie products) and the cocones become colimiting (ie sums).

1660–1670: From the Dutch schets (noun), from the Italian schizzo, from the Latin schedium (extemporaneous poem), noun use of neuter of schedius (extempore; hastily made), from the Ancient Greek σχέδιος (skhédios) (made suddenly, off-hand, unprepared), from σχεδόν (skhedón) (near, nearby), from ἔχω (ékhō) (I hold).  The German Skizze, the French esquisse & the Spanish esquicio are also from the Italian schizzo.  Sketch,  sketcher, sketchist & sketchiness are nouns, verb & adjective, sketching is a noun & verb, sketched is a verb, sketchlike, sketchy, sketchier, sketchiest & sketchable are adjectives, and sketchily & sketchingly are adverbs; the noun plural is sketches.  When a sketcher (or sketchist) sketches their sketches, they appear often in a sketchbook.

Six photographs of Lindsay Lohan, rendered in software as pencil sketches.

Sketch became a verb in the 1660s in the sense of “present the essential facts of" and was derived from the earlier noun. This idea of a sketch as a “brief account” by 1789 had enlarged to a "short play or performance, usually comic", still maintaining the connection from art as something less than full-scale, the reference to comedy suggesting something slight rather than a serious work.  The sketch-book was first recorded in 1820.  That sense extended beyond text to art and design from 1725 when it came also to mean "draw, portray in outline and partial shading", firstly to describe simple drawings, referring later to preparatory work for more elaborate creations.  The adjective sketchy is noted from 1805, describing art “having the form or character of a sketch".  The colloquial sense of "unsubstantial, imperfect, flimsy" is from 1878, possibly to convey the sense of something "unfinished".  Adumbrate (faint sketch, imperfect representation), actually pre-dates sketch, noted first in the 1550s.  It was from the Latin adumbrationem (nominative adumbratio) (a sketch in shadow, sketch, outline).  The meaning "to overshadow" is from the 1660s at which time emerged the derived forms adumbrated and adumbrating and related forms are adumbration (noun), adumbrative (adjective) and adumbratively (adverb).

Sketches by “Boz,” Illustrative of Every-day Life and Every-day People by Charles Dickens (1812-1870), illustrated by George Cruikshank (1792–1878).

Charles Dickens' first book, Sketches by “Boz” was a collection of 56 short pieces, originally published in various newspapers and other periodicals between 1833-1836. They were re-issued in a two-volume set in 1836 with a single edition appearing in 1839.  Very different from the work with which Dickens most is associated, the theme of 56 sketches was the people and scenes of London (the built environment best understood also as a “character” in the narratives.  Divided into four sections (Our Parish, Scenes, Characters & Tales), the first three contained non-narrative pen-portraits while the final wholly was fictional.  In Sketches by “Boz”, there are passages which constitute classic “thumbnail sketches” (in literature, concise, vivid descriptions (classically in a single paragraph of no more than a few sentences) that captures the fundamental essence, appearance, or personality of a character, setting or scene).  The term was a borrowing from the visual arts, where a thumbnail sketch was a quickly composed, rough drawing to map out an idea, the notion being it looked “sketchy enough to have been drawn by the artist's thumb”.  In both graphics and text, the shared definition was an entire concept rendered by the depiction of its most recognizable and striking elements with no extraneous detail.

The sketch (a short, often topical comedic performance) quickly became a staple of television variety shows and such productions have (thankfully) declined in number, the format is still used.  In literary theory, there are two basic categories of sketch: (1) a short prose piece (perhaps between one to two thousand words) which tends to be of the descriptive kind once most associated with newspapers and magazines (and still often appearing in the latter).  In newspapers, one notable survivor is the “parliamentary sketch” in which some (often anecdotal) “color” is added to political reporting.  A feature of British political journalism since the 1700s when the reporting of the antics of politicians was more restricted (to avoid the truth being told about the lies they told, that strategy seen still in the laws of defamation in some jurisdictions), many of the early parliamentary sketches used pseudonyms for those described and the art of a fine sketch writer was providing just enough for the well-informed reader to “read between the lines”.  In literary use, because of the nature of the form, stylistically some sketches could overlap with the short story and there's is little point attempting to be prescriptive about where one ends and the other begins; the classic example of a sketch was Charles Dickens's Sketches by "Boz", a series of sketches of life and manners.  (2) A brief dramatic piece of the kind one might find in a revue or as a curtain raiser or as part of some other kind of theatrical entertainment, exemplars being Harold Pinter's (1930-2008) Request Stop, Last to Go & Special Offer, performed in the revue Pieces of Eight, which opened at the Apollo Theatre, London, in September 1959.  For better or worse, ambitious monologists including Ruth Draper (1884-1956) and Joyce Grenville (1910-1979) extended the concept of the sketch into a particular dramatic form described as "a kind of monodrama".  Nor were sketches dependent on oral delivery, the solo mime artist Marcel Marceau (1923-2007) sometimes referring to his performances as un sketch dramatique (a dramatic sketch).

Sketches of Spain

Although not yet regarded as the landmark in jazz it would come to be in the decades which followed its release in 1959, even in 1960 Miles Davis’s (1926-1991) Kind of Blue had already created among some aficionados an expectation; realising it was something special, this was what they hoped would be the definitive Davis style and they were anxious for more.  The next release however, wasn’t indicative of what was to come, Workin' with the Miles Davis Quintet (1960 Cat# Prestige P-7166) was the third of four albums assembled from sessions recorded long before the Kind of Blue sessions and released to fulfil contractual obligations to the independent label Prestige.  Although some purists were pleased, after Kind of Blue, the music seemed old-fashioned.

Miles Davis, Kind of Blue, (1959, Columbia, Cat# CS 8163).

Davis had enjoyed considerable success in the 1950s but, needing the distribution and promotional network of a major label to reach a wider audience, he’d signed with Colombia (CBS internationally).  The early Colombia releases had been well received but it was the sixth, Kind of Blue, which made him a star beyond the world of jazz, the album selling in volumes unprecedented in the genre; to date, over four million copies are said to have been shipped.  Davis had been innovative before, his performance at the 1954 Newport Jazz Festival defining what had come to be called “hard bop” (a flavor of jazz influenced by other forms, especially rhythm and blues) but the appeal extended little beyond already established audiences.  What made Kind of Blue so significant was that Davis effectively invented modal jazz which shifted the technique from one where the players worked within a set chord progression to soloists creating melodies using modes which could be deployed alone or in multiples.  Musicians explain the significance of this as a movement to the horizontal (the scale) rather than the traditional vertical (the chord).  In the somewhat insular world of jazz, that would anyway have been interesting but the sound captivated those beyond and was a landmark in what would come to be known as musical fusion, the cross-fertilisation of sound and technique.  Among composers, fusion was nothing new but Kind of Blue realised its implications in a tight, seductive package.

Miles Davis, Sketches of Spain, (1959, Columbia, Cat# CS 8271).

Sketches of Spain too was a fusion but it was different to what had come before and was no attempt to be "Kind of Blue II".  For one thing, the sound was big, recorded in the famously cavernous converted church in Manhattan which for decades was Colombia’s recording studio.  Lined with old timber and with a ceiling which stretched 100 feet (30 m) high, technicians called it the “temple of sound” because of the extraordinary acoustic properties.  The ensemble too was big, a necessity because this time the fusion was with the orchestral, the long opening track an arrangement by Davis and Gil Evans (1912-1988) of the adagio movement of Joaquín Rodrigo’s (1901-1999) guitar concerto, Concierto de Aranjuez  (1939).  Such was the extent of the fusion there were traditionalists who doubted Sketches of Spain could still be called jazz; they saluted the virtuosity but seemed to miss the sometimes arcane complexities in construction inaccessible except to the knowing few.

Miles Davis, Bitches Brew (1970, CBS, Cat# S 66236).

The wider world however was entranced and technical progress needs also to be noted.  Colombia had recorded Davis before in the then still novel stereo but even fans acknowledged the mono pressings remained superior and it wasn’t until 1960, after extensive testing and the refinement of equipment that the technique had been perfected.  Sketches of Spain was lush or austere as the moment demanded, listeners new to stereo especially enchanted at being able to hear the sounds hanging in a three-dimensional space, each instrument a distinct object in time and place.  Nobody asked for mono after that.  Influential as it was, to Davis, Sketches of Spain was just another phase.  Ten years later, noting the increasingly sparse audiences in jazz clubs and aware a new generation had different sensibilities, Davis would fuse with other, more recent traditions and Bitches Brew would cast his shadow over a new decade.  A footnote to the change of direction Bitches Brew flagged came with the release of material from Davis's performance at the Isle of Wight Festival (1970) which included, inter alia, a 17 minute passage substantially from the album.  Noting the discursiveness, producers from Columbia contacted Davis and asked him what the piece should be titled.  "Call it anything" he told them, repeating the answer he'd given to the musicians at the Festival who had asked him what he was about to play.  Liking that, Colombia's literalists included the track Call it Anything when the album The First Great Rock Festivals of the Seventies (1971) was released.   

Scum

Scum (pronounced skuhm)

(1) A film or layer of foul or extraneous matter that forms on the surface of a liquid as a result of natural processes such as the greenish film of algae and similar vegetation on the surface of a stagnant pond.

(2) A layer of impure matter that forms on the surface of a liquid as the result of boiling or fermentation.

(3) As disparaging slang, a person though low, worthless, or evil (often as “scumbag” or “scumbucket”.

(4) Such persons collectively (often as “scum of the earth”).

(5) An alternative name for scoria, the slag or dross that remains after the smelting of metal from an ore.

1200–1250: From the Middle English scume, derived from the Middle Dutch schūme (foam, froth) cognate with German schaum, ultimately of Germanic origin, drawn from the Old High German scūm and Old French escume.  In Old Norse word was skum, thought derived from the primitive root (s)keu (to cover, conceal).  By the early fourteen century, the word scummer (shallow ladle for removing scum) had emerged in Middle Dutch, a borrowing from the Proto-Germanic skuma, the sense deteriorated from "thin layer atop liquid" to "film of dirt," then just "dirt" and from this use is derived the modern skim.  The meaning "lowest class of humanity" is from the 1580s; the familiar phrase “scum of the earth” from 1712.  In modern use, the English is scum, the French écume, the Spanish escuma, the Italian schiuma and the Dutch schuim.  Scum is a noun & verb, scumbag, scumbaggery, scumbagginess & scumbucket are nouns, and scumlike, scummy & scumbaggy are adjectives; the noun plural is scums.

Rendezvous: New Zealand-born cartoonist David Low's (1891-1963) famous take on the 1939 German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact.

The document usually is called the Nazi-Soviet Pact or Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact because it was signed by comrade Vyacheslav Molotov (1890–1986; Soviet foreign minister 1939-1949 & 1953-1956) and Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893–1946; Nazi foreign minister 1938-1945).  To illustrate the pact's cynical nature, Low depicted Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945, left) exchanging artificial pleasantries with comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953, right) both knowing it was only a matter of time before their nations would be at war.  Although Low at the time couldn't have known it, comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) was not unaware of public opinion and when presented with the pact's draft text, decided the rather flowery preamble extoling German-Soviet friendship was just too absurd, telling the visiting delegation that "...after years of pouring buckets of shit over each-other...", it'd be more convincing were the document to be as formal as possible.  Sensational as news of the pact was in 1939, what became more notorious still was the appended "secret protocol" which defined the line of delineation by which Poland would be "carved-up" between Germany and the USSR after the German invasion.  Because of geography and demographic reality, the line on the map was remarkably close to the Curzon Line, first proposed in 1919 by Lord Curzon (1859–1925; Viceroy of India 1899-1905 & UK Foreign Secretary 1919-1924) as the border between Soviet Russia and a reconstituted Poland.

Cautiously, comrade Stalin waited a couple of weeks to ensure the German victory was secure before sending the Red Army over the border, an act the Poles would remember as "a stab in the back".  The defense counsel at the first Nuremberg Trial (1945-1946) obtained a copy of the secret protocol and attempted to have it introduced as evidence but the judges denied the motion, the compromise being it could be referred to but the contents could not be discussed.  The irony of two Soviet judges dealing with the charges of a conspiracy to wage aggressive war (Count 1) and waging aggressive war (Count 2) when knowledge of the secret protocol (a conspiracy to invade Poland) was afoot attracted much comment.  One unmoved by the perception of cynicism was comrade Stalin for whom all politics was realpolitik.  At the Yalta Conference in February 1945, during the difficult negotiations over Polish borders, Molotov habitually would refer to “the Curzon Line” and the UK foreign secretary, Anthony Eden (1897–1977; thrice UK foreign secretary & prime minister 1955-1957), in a not untypically bitchy barb, observed the more common practice was to call it “the Molotov-Ribbentrop line”.  “Call it whatever you like” replied Stalin, “we still think it's fair and just”.  Rarely did comrade Stalin much care to conceal the nature of the regime he crafted in his own image.      

 

The Society for Cutting Up Men: The S.C.U.M. Manifesto

S.C.U.M. Manifesto (post shooting, 1968 paperback Edition).

Although celebrated in popular culture as the summer of love, not everyone shared the hippie vibe in 1967.  The S.C.U.M. Manifesto was a radical feminist position paper by Valerie Solanas (1936-1988), self-published in 1967 with a commercial print-run a year later.  Although lacking robust theoretical underpinnings and criticized widely within the movement, it remains both feminism’s purest and most uncompromising work and an enduring landmark in the history of anarchist publishing.  In the abstract, S.C.U.M. suggested little more than the parlous state of the word being the fault of men, it was the task of women to repair the damage and this could be undertaken only if men were exterminated from planet Earth.  The internal logic was perfect.

As well as the Society for Cutting Up Men, Acronym Finder’s list of the use of SCUM as an acronym includes (1) Subculture Urban Marketing, (2) Santa Clara United Methodist, (3) Sensitive Caring Urban Male (though being one of those wouldn’t save them and they’re as likely (after ordering their Venti Iced Caramel Macchiato with almond milk and an extra shot of espresso) as a (4) Self-Centered Urban Male to get Solanas’ “six-inch blade” between the ribs), (5) Southern California Unified Malacologists (malacology is the study of molluscs), (6) South Coast United Motorcyclist and (7) Socialist Cover-Up Media (how Fox News and those in the MAGA (Make America Great Again) cult think of the “fake news media).

The use of Scum as an acronym for Society for Cutting Up Men existed in printed form from 1967 (though not in the manifesto’s text) although Solanas later denied the connection, adding that S.C.U.M. never existed as an organization and was just “…a literary device”.  The latter does appear true, S.C.U.M. never having a structure or membership, operating more as Solanas’ catchy marketing label for her views; dubbing it a literary device might seem pretentious but, given her world-view, descending to the mercantile would have felt grubby.  That said, when selling the original manifesto, women were charged US$1, men US$2.  While perhaps not as elegant an opening passage as a Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) might have penned, Solanas’ words were certainly succinct.  "Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and eliminate the male sex.”  Ominously, “If S.C.U.M. ever strikes” she added, “it will be in the dark with a six-inch blade.”  No ambiguity there, men would know what to expect.

On set, 1967, Andy Warhol (1928-1987) & Nico (1938-1988).

Author and work were still little-known outside anarchist circles when, on 3 June 1968, Solanas attempted to murder pop-artist Andy Warhol, firing three shots, one finding the target.  The year 1968 was in the US a time of violence and tumult but amid it all, the celebrity connection and the bizarre circumstances ensured this one crime would attract widespread coverage.  Valerie Solanas with her two guns had entered Mr Warhol’s sixth-floor office at 33 Union Square West convinced he was intent on stealing the manuscript of the play Up Your Ass she’d repeatedly tried to persuade him to produce.  Warhol and his staff had reviewed the work and decided it simply wasn’t very good (Warhol giving the the back-handed compliment of it being "well-typed") but because he’d “misplaced” the manuscript (it was later discovered in a trunk) Solanas concluded that was just a trick and he was going to steal what she thought of as her brilliant play, claiming it as her own.  Although she’d for some time hovered around the fringes of the Warhol “Factory”, she seems not to have had much success as an advocate.  Her S.C.U.M. Manifesto envisioned a world without men which was at the time heady stuff with a certain mid-1960s appeal but Warhol also declined her offer to become a member of the Scum’s “Men’s Auxiliary” (a group for men sufficiently sympathetic to Scum’s aims to begin “working diligently to eliminate themselves.”)  As offers go, it really wasn't compelling.

New York Daily News, 4 June 1968.

Not best pleased by the headline, “Actress Shoots Andy Warhol”, Solanas demanded a retraction claiming that she was "a writer, not an actress."  The paper had based the headline on her appearance in Warhol's films I, a Man (1967) and Bike Boy (1967).  Warhol later admitted he'd cast her in I, a Man (for which she received a US$25 fee) in the hope she'd stop nagging him about the play she'd written.  She never complained about anything else the press wrote about her but apparently the label "actress" was beyond the pale.

Solanas’ state of mind about the fate of her intellectual property can be explained by it being no secret Warhol was inclined to “use” (the words “borrow”, “appropriate” “steal” also often used but “sample” was not yet a thing) and rebrand it all as “his art”.  For weeks leading up to the attempt on his life, repeatedly she’d called his office with first requests and then demands about her manuscript, culminating with threats at which point Warhol stopped taking her calls; the next call she made was in person and she shot him and an art gallery owner with who he was discussing an exhibition (he (as collateral damage) received minor injuries); Warhol was declared dead but paramedics arrived to stabilize him.  Calmly, Solanas left the building and several hours later, approached a policeman in Times Square, handed over her two guns and told him: “He had too much control over my life.”  Unsurprisingly, a judge ordered a psychiatric evaluation and she received a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia but despite this, she was found competent to stand trial and pleaded guilty to “reckless assault with intent to harm”; sentenced to three years incarceration (including time served) in the Matteawan Hospital for the Criminally Insane (1892-1977); she was released late in 1971.  Solanas never renounced the S.C.U.M. manifesto nor lost faith in its capacity to change the world but her her mental health continued to decline and reports indicate she became increasingly paranoid and unstable. She spent her last years in a single-occupancy welfare hotel in San Francisco, where, alone, she died in 1988, the official cause of death listed as "pneumonia".  

  

A (fake) montage of Lindsay Lohan as Andy Warhol (1928–1987) might have rendered.  Ms Lohan was not yet 12 months old when Warhol died (the start of her modeling career still two years off) but had he lived another two decades he'd almost certainly have painted her.

Ms Solanas' infamy lasted beyond fifteen minutes and one unintended consequence of her act was the S.C.U.M. Manifesto finally finding a commercial publisher, thus becoming what is publishing is known as succès de scandale (a work which owes its success or very existence to some notoriety or scandalous element).  In certain feminist and anarchist circles she remains a cult figure although, it takes some intellectual gymnastics to trace a lineal path from her manifesto to the work of even the more radical of the later-wave feminists such as Andrea Dworkin (1946-2005), Susan Brownmiller (b 1935) or Catharine MacKinnon (b 1946).  Solanas to this day still is usually described as a “feminist” or “radical feminist” but, given the implication of the manifesto, it would seem more accurate to label her a misandrist (one who exhibits a hatred of or a prejudice against men), a world view which attracts many because, to be fair, there are any number of reasons to hate men.  Although one suspects among women the "all men are bastards" school of thought is ancient, the noun "misandry" was a late nineteenth century formation, the construct being mis- (in the sense of “hatred”) +‎ -andry (men), by analogy with the more commonly used misogyny (hatred of or a prejudice against women); the inspiration was the Ancient Greek μισανδρία (misandría), the construct being μισέω (miséō) (hate) + ἀνήρ (anḗr) (man).

Cause and effect: The (attempted) murder weapon (Beretta M1935 automatic in .32ACP, left) and Warhol's post-operative torso (right).

Warhol required surgery to his spleen, stomach, liver, esophagus and lungs; the damage he suffered to a range of internal organs not uncommon among those shot at close range; the bullet ricocheted off a rib, accounting for the lateral trajectory.  Although the Beretta M1935 automatic (in .32ACP) she used is not regarded as a “big calibre” (the .32 listed by most as a “small bore”), a single shot from one, especially at close-range, can be lethal and an wound from even a smaller load (like the .22 she was also carrying) can be fatal.  In the context of handguns, a “big calibre” load usually is defined as one with a diameter of .40 inches (10mm) or larger and of those there are many including .44, .45 & .50 although “magnum” versions of smaller bore ammunition (.22, .357 etc) can match many larger loads in “stopping power”.  Interviewed later, Warhol reflected: “Before I was shot [June, 1968], I always thought that I was more half-there than all-there - I always suspected that I was watching TV instead of living life. People sometimes say that the way things happen in the movies is unreal, but actually it’s the way things happen to you in life that’s unreal. The movies make emotions look so strong and real, whereas when things really do happen to you, it’s like watching television - you don’t feel anything. Right when I was being shot and ever since, I knew that I was watching television. The channels switch, but it’s all television.”

Gun (1982), synthetic polymer paint and silkscreen ink on canvas by Andy Warhol.

Artistically, the shooting had consequences.  Warhol became more guarded, abandoning projects like filmmaking which required so much contact with people and stopping the production of controversial art which might attract more murderous types and focusing on business, in 1969 founding what in 1969 became Interview magazine.  Although there had in his previous output been evidence of an interest in death and violence, after the shooting, often he would visited the theme of death, painting a series of skulls and one of guns, a weapon with which he now had an intensely personal connection.  He was certainly not unaware what happened that day in June 1968 was a turning point in his life, some twenty years later noting in his diary: “I said that I wasn’t creative since I was shot, because after that I stopped seeing creepy people.”

Customer

Customer (pronounced kuhs-tuhm-ah)

(1) A habitual patron, regular purchaser, returning client; one who has a custom of buying from a particular business (obsolete in its technical sense).

(2) A patron, a client; one who purchases or receives a product or service from a business or merchant, or intends to do so.

(3) In various slang forms (cool customer, tough customer, ugly customer, customer from hell, dream customer etc), a person, especially one engaging in some sort of interaction with others.

(4) Under the Raj, a native official who exacted customs duties (historic use from British colonial India).

Late 1300s: From the Middle English customere & custommere (one who purchases goods or supplies, one who customarily buys from the same tradesman or guild), from custumer (customs official, toll-gatherer), from the Anglo-French custumer, from the Old French coustumier & costumier (from which modern French gained coutumier (customary, custumal)), from the Medieval Latin noun custumarius (a toll-gatherer, tax-collector), a back-formation from the adjective custumarius (pertaining to custom or customs) from custuma (custom, tax).  The literal translation of the Medieval Latin custumarius was “pertaining to a custom or customs”, a contraction of the Latin consuetudinarius, from consuetudo (habit, usage, practice, tradition).  The generalized sens of “a person with whom one has dealings” emerged in the 1540s while that of “a person to deal with” (then as now usually with some defining adjective: “tough customer”, difficult customer” etc) was in use by the 1580s.  Derived terms are common including customer account, customer base, customer care, customer experience, customer-oriented, customer research, customer resistance, customer service, customer success, customer support, direct-to-customer, customer layer, customer-to-customer, ugly customer, tough customer, difficult customer etc.  Customer is a noun; the noun plural is customers.

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) used the word sometimes to mean “prostitute” and in his work was the clear implication that a buyer was as guilty as the seller, the law both unjust and hypocritical, something which in the twentieth century would be rectified in Swedish legislation.

Shakespeare: All's Well That Ends Well (circa 1602), Act 5, scene 3

LAFEW:  This woman’s an easy glove, my lord; she goes off and on at pleasure.

KING: This ring was mine. I gave it his first wife.

DIANA: It might be yours or hers for aught I know.

KING (to attendants) Take her away. I do not like her now.  To prison with her, and away with him. Unless thou tell’st me where thou hadst this ring, Thou diest within this hour.

DIANA: I’ll never tell you.

KING: Take her away.

DIANA: I’ll put in bail, my liege.

KING: I think thee now some common customer.

DIANA (to Bertram): By Jove, if ever I knew man, ’twas you.

In Sweden, the law was amended in a way of which Shakespeare might have approved, Chapter 6, Section 11 of the Swedish Penal Code making it an offence to pay for sex, the act of “purchasing sexual services” criminalized, the aim being to reduce the demand for prostitution.  The law provides for fines or a maximum term of imprisonment for one year, depending on the circumstances of the case.  So selling sexual services is not unlawful in Sweden but being a customer is, an inversion of the model for centuries applied in the West.  Individuals who engage in prostitution are not criminalized under Swedish law, which is intended to protect sex workers from legal penalties while targeting the customers, now defined as those who “exploit them”.  The Swedish model aims to reduce prostitution by focusing on the demand side and providing support for those who wish to exit prostitution and as a statement of public policy, the law reform reflected the government’s view prostitution was a form of gender inequality and exploitation.  The effectiveness of the measure has over the years been debated and the customer-focused model of enforcement has not widely been emulated.

The customer is always right

Reliable return customer: Lindsay Lohan in the Chanel Shop, New York City, May 2013.

The much quoted phrase (which in some areas of commerce is treated as a proverb): “the customer is always right” has its origins in retail commerce and is used to encapsulate the value: “service staff should give high priority to customer satisfaction”.  It is of course not always literally true, the point being that even when patently wrong about something, it is the customer who is paying for stuff so they should always be treated as if they are right.  Money being the planet’s true lingua franca, variations exist in many languages, the best known of which is the French le client n'a jamais tort (the customer is never wrong), the slogan of Swiss hotelier César Ritz (1850-1918) whose name lived on in the Hôtel Ritz in Paris, the Ritz and Carlton Hotels in London and the Ritz-Carlton properties dotted around the world.  While not always helpful for staff on the shop floor, it’s an indispensible tool for those basing product manufacturing or distribution decisions on aggregate demand.  To these counters of beans, what is means is that if there is great demand for red widgets and very little for yellow widgets, the solution probably is not to commission an advertising campaign for yellow widgets but to increase production of the red, while reducing or even ceasing runs of the yellow.  The customer is “right” in what they want, not in the sense of “right & wrong” but in the sense of their demand being the way to work out what is the “right” thing to produce because it will sell.

Available at Gullwing Motor Cars: Your choice at US$129,500 apiece.

The notion of “the customer is always right” manifests in the market for pre-modern Ferraris (a pre-1974 introduction the accepted cut-off).  While there nothing unusual about differential demand in just about any market sector, dramatically is it illustrated among pre-modern Ferraris with some models commanding prices in multiples of others which may be rarer, faster, better credentialed or have a notionally more inviting specification.  That can happen when two different models are of much the same age and in similar condition but a recent listing by New York-based Gullwing Motor Cars juxtaposed two listings which left no doubt where demand exists.  The two were both from 1972: a 365 GTC/4 and a Dino 246 GT.

Some reconditioning required: 1972 Ferrari 356 GTC/4

The 365 GTC/4 was produced for two years between 1971-1972 during which 505 were built.  Although now regarded as a classic of the era, the 365 GTC/4 lives still in the shadow of the illustrious 365 GTB/4 with which, mechanically, it shares much.  The GTB/4 picked up the nickname “Daytona”, an opportunistic association given 1-2-3 finish in the 1967 24 Hours of Daytona involved three entirely different models while the GTC/4 enjoyed only the less complementary recognition of being labeled by some il gobbone (the hunchback) or quello alla banana (the banana one).  It was an unfair slight and under the anyway elegant skin, the GTB/4 & GTC/4 shared much, the engine of the latter differing mainly in lacking the dry-sump lubrication, the use of six twin-choke side-draft Weber carburetors rather than the downdrafts, this permitting a lower hood (bonnet) line and a conventionally mounted gearbox rather than the the Daytona's rear transaxle.  Revisions to the cylinder heads allowed the V12 to be tuned to deliver torque across a broad rev-range rather than the focus on top-end power which was one of the things which made the Daytona so intoxicating.

Criticizing the GTC/4 because it doesn’t quite have the visceral appeal of the GTB/4 seems rather like casually dismissing the model who managed only to be runner-up to Miss Universe.  The two cars anyway, despite sharing a platform, were intended for different purposes, the GTB/4 an outright high performance road car which could, with relatively few modifications, be competitive in racing whereas the GTC/4 was a grand tourer, even offering occasional rear seating for two (short) people.  One footnote in the history of the marque is the GTC/4 was the last Ferrari offered with the lovely Borrani triple-laced wire wheels; some GTB/4s had them fitted by the factory and a few more were added by dealers but the factory advised that with increasing weight, tyres with much superior grip and higher speeds, they were no longer strong enough in extreme conditions and the cast aluminum units should be used if the car was to be run in environments without speed restrictions such as race tracks or certain de-restricted public roads (then seen mostly in the FRG (Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Federal Republic of Germany; the old West Germany) 1949-1990), Montana & Nevada in the US and Australia's Northern Territory & outback New South Wales (NSW)).  The still stunning GTB/4 was the evolutionary apex of its species; it can't be improved upon but the GTC/4 is no ugly sister and when contemplating quello alla banana, one might reflect on the sexiness of the fruit.

Gullwing’s offering was described as “a highly original unrestored example in Marrone Colorado (Metallic Brown) with a tan leather interior, factory air conditioning, and power windows; showing 48K miles (77K kilometres) on the odometer.  It has been sitting off the road for several years and is not currently running.”  It was certainly highly original and seemed complete but properly should be regarded as a “project” because of the uncertainty about the extent (and thus the cost) of the recommissioning.  At an asking price of US$129,500, it would represent good value only if it was mechanically sound and no unpleasant surprises were found under the body’s shapely curves although, given the market for 365 GTC/4s in good condition, it was a project best taken on by a specialist.

Some assembly required: 1972 Dino 246 GT by Ferrari

The days are gone when the Dino 246 was dismissed as “more of a Fiat than a Ferrari” and even if the factory never put their badge on the things (although plenty subsequently have added one), they are now an accepted part of the range.  The 246 replaced the visually almost similar but slightly smaller and even more jewel-like Dino 206, 152 of which (with an all-aluminium 2.0 litre (122 cubic inch) V6 rather than the V12s which had for some years been de rigueur in Ferrari’s road cars) were built between 1967-1969, all with berlinetta (coupé) bodywork.  Mass-produced by comparison, there were 3569 Dino 246s produced between 1969-1974, split between 2,295 246 GTs (coupés) & 1,274 246 GTSs (spyders (targa)).  Fitted with an iron-block 2.4 litre (147 cubic inch) V6, the Dinos were designed deliberately to be cheaper to produce and thus enjoy a wider market appeal, the target those who bought the more expensive Porsche 911s, a car the Dino (mostly) out-performed.  In recent decades, the Dino 246 has been a stellar performer in the collector market, selling typically for three times the price of something like a 365 GTC/4; people drawn to the seductive lines rather than the significantly better fuel consumption.

Most coveted of the 246s are those described with the rhyming colloquialism “chairs and flares” (C&F to the Ferrari cognoscenti), a reference to a pair of (separately available) options available on later production Dino 246s.  The options were (1) seats with inserts (sometimes in a contrasting color) in the style used on the Daytona & (2) wider Campagnolo Elektron wheels (which the factory only ever referred to by size) which necessitated flared wheel-arches.  At a combined US$795.00 (in 1974), the C&F combination has proved a good investment, now adding significantly to the price of the anyway highly collectable Dino.  Although it's hard to estimate the added value because so many other factors influence calculation, all else being equal, the premium is usually between US$100-200,000 but these things are always relative; in 1974 the C&F option added 5.2% to a Dino GTS's list price and was just under a third the cost of a new small car such as the Chevrolet Vega.  It was a C&F Dino 246 GTS which in 1978 was found buried in a Los Angeles where it had sat for some four years after being secreted away in what turned out to be an unplanned twist to a piece of insurance fraud.  In remarkably good condition (something attributed to its incarceration being during one of California’s many long droughts), it was fully restored.

Not in such good condition is the post-incineration Dino 246 GT (not a C&F) being offered by Gullwing Motor Cars, the asking price the same US$129,500 as the 365 GTC/4.  Also built in 1972, Gullwing helpfully describe this as “a project”, probably one of history’s less necessary announcements.  The company couldn’t resist running the title “Too Hot to Handle” and described the remains as “…an original car that has been completely burnt.  Originally born in Marrone Colorado with beige leather.  It comes with its clear matching title and this car clearly needs complete restoration, but the good news is that it's certainly the cheapest one you will ever find.  The Dino market is hot and shows no signs of cooling. An exciting opportunity to own an iconic 246GT Dino. This deal is on fire!”  It’s still (technically) metal and boasts the prized “matching numbers” (ie the body, engine & gearbox are all stamped with the serial numbers which match the factory records) so there’s that but whether, even at the stratospheric prices Dinos often achieve, the economics of a restoration (that may be the wrong word) can be rationalized would need to be calculated by experts.  As with the 365 GTC/4, Gullwing may be amenable to offers but rather that the customer always being right, this one needs "the right customer".

Aggregate demand: The highly regarded auction site Bring-a-Trailer (BAT, their origin being a clearing house for “projects” although most were less challenging than Gullwing’s Dino) publishes auction results (including “reserve not met” no-sales) and the outcomes demonstrate how much the market lusts for Dinos.  BAT also has a lively comments section for each auction and more than once a thread had evolved to discuss the seeming incongruity of the prices achieved by Dinos compared with the rarer Berlinetta Boxer (365 GT4 BB, BB 512 & BB 512i) (1973-1984) which was when new much more expensive, faster and, of course, a genuine twelve cylinder Ferrari.  In such markets however, objective breakdowns of specifications and specific performance are not what decide outcomes: The customer is always right.

Digging up: The famous "buried" 1974 Dino 246 GTS, being extracted, Los Angeles, 1978 (left) and the body tag of a (never buried) 1974 Dino 246 GTS.  While it's true the factory never put a "Ferrari badge" on the Dino 206 & 246 (nor did one appear on the early Dino 308s) the Ferrari name does appear on the tags and some parts.  Gullwing's Dino would be a more challenging "project" and even with today's inflated values, the financial viability of a restoration might be dubious. 

Although it's in recent years the prices paid for the things sharply have spiked, the lure of the Dino is not a recent thing.  In 1978, a 1974 246 GTS was discovered buried in a Los Angeles yard and it transpired it was on the LAPD’s (Los Angeles Police Department) long list of stolen vehicles.  The department’s investigators concluded the burial had been a “rush job” because while it had been covered with carpets and some plastic sheeting in an inexpert attempt to preserve it from the sub-terrain, one window had been left slightly open.  Predictably, the back-story was assumed to be an “insurance scam”, the owner allegedly hiring two “contractors” to “make it disappear” in a manner consistent with car theft, hardly an unusual phenomenon in Los Angeles.  The plan was claimed to be for the Dino to be broken up with all non-traceable (ie not with serial numbers able to be linked to a specific vehicle) parts on-sold with whatever remained to be dumped “somewhere off the coast”.  In theory, the scamming owner would bank his check (cheque) from Farmers Insurance while the “contractors” would keep their “fee for service” plus whatever profits they realized from their “parting-out” which, even at the discount which applies to “fenced” stolen goods, would have been in the thousands; a win-win situation, except for the insurance company and, ultimately, everyone who pays premiums.

Dug Up: The 'buried" Dino after restoration.  Two of the Campagnolo wheels are said to be original and the 14 x 7½ wheels & fender flares combo was at the time a US$680.00 (about a third the cost of a new, small car); their presence can now add US$100,000 to a 246's value so they proved a reasonable investment.

However, it’s said that when driving the Dino, the hired pair found it so seductive they decided to keep it, needing only somewhere to conceal it until they could concoct another plan.  Thus the hasty burial but for whatever reason (the tales differ), they never returned to reclaim the loot and four years later the shallow automotive grave was uncovered after a “tip-off” from a “snitch” (tales of children finding it while “playing in the dirt” an urban myth).  The matter of insurance fraud was of course pursued but no charges were laid because police could not discover who had done the burial and rather than being scraped and “parted-out” (this time lawfully) as might have been expected, the Dino was sold and restored.  That was possible because it was in surprisingly good condition after its four years in a pit, something accounted for by (1) the low moisture content of the soil, (2) the degree of protection afforded by the covers placed at the time of burial and (3) its time underground coinciding with one of the prolonged droughts which afflict the area.  So, although Dino values were not then what they became, purchased at an attractive price (a reputed US$9000), it was in good enough shape for a restoration to be judged financially viable and it was “matching numbers” (#0786208454-#355468) although that had yet become a fetish.  The car remains active to this day, still with the Californian licence plate “DUG UP”.

Sandra West with her 1964 Ferrari 330 America.

Cars (for fraudulent purposes being buried or otherwise secreted away is a not uncommon practice (some have even contained a dead body or two) but there’s at least one documented case of an individual being, in accordance with a clause in their will, buried in their Ferrari.  Sandra West (née Hara, 1939-1977) became a Beverly Hills socialite after marrying Texas oil millionaire and securities trader Ike West (1934-1968) and as well as jewels and fur coats (then socially acceptable evening wear), she developed a fondness for Ferraris.  Her husband died “in murky circumstances” in a room of the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas and while the details of his demise at a youthful 33 seem never to have been published, he had a history of drug use and “health issues” related to his frequent and rapid fluctuations in weight.  His widow inherited some US$5 million (then a considerable fortune) so the LA gossip columnists adjusted their entries from “Mrs West” to “Sandra West, Beverly Hills Socialite and Heiress”.  Her widowed life seems not to have been untroubled and her death in 1977 was certainly drug-related although sources differ about whether it was an overdose of some sort or related to the injuries she’d suffered in an earlier car accident.

Sandra West's burial.  The legal proceedings related to the contested "burial clause" had been well publicized and the ceremony attracted a large crowd.

She left more than one will but a judge ultimately found one to be valid and it included a clause stating she must be buried “…in my lace nightgown … and in my Ferrari with the seat slanted comfortably.”  Accordingly, after a two month delay caused by her brother contesting the “burial clause”, Mrs West’s appropriately attired body was prepared while the Ferrari was sent (under armed guard) by train to Texas where the two were united for their final journey.  Car and owner were then encased in a sturdy timber box measuring 3 metres (10 feet) x 2.7 m (9 feet) x 5.8 m (19 feet) which was transported by truck to San Antonio for the ceremony, conducted on 4 May 1977 in the Alamo Masonic Cemetery (chartered in 1848, the Ancient Free and Accepted Masons in 1854 purchased this property because of the need for a burial ground for Freemasons).  It was an unusual ceremony in that a crane was used carefully to lower the crate into an obviously large grave while to deter “body snatchers” (who would be interested in exhuming car rather than corpse), a Redi-mix truck was on-hand to entomb the box in a thick layer of concrete.  In a nice touch, her grave lies alongside that of her husband and has been on the itinerary of more than one tourist operator running sightseeing tours.  Mrs West owned three Ferraris and it’s not clear in which her body was laid; while most reports claim it was her blue, 1964 330 America (s/n 5055), some mention it as a 250 GTE but 330 America #5055 has not since re-appeared (pre-modern Ferraris carefully are tracked) so that is plausible and reputedly it was “her favourite”.  Inevitably (perhaps sniffing the whiff of a Masonic plot), conspiracy theorists have long pointed out the only documentary evidence is of “a large crate” being lowered into the grave with no proof of what was at the time within.  However, given burial clause was ordered enforceable by a court, it should be assumed that under the remarkably plain gravestone which gives no indication of the unusual event, rests a Ferrari of some tipo.