Even though they are just a few steps from Dominick Giambrone’s saloon, the boys at this 1911 makeshift ice rink seem completely insouciant. Stolle’s Hall was close to the rink, where Johnny danced with a woman other than Frankie. Anarchists, mule wranglers, burlap bag menders, pickpockets, “professional rat-catcher”, who lived alone with two weasels; Oscar Berger (champion goose-driver in St. Louis), who drove his birds to Biddle market with a series of eerie whistles and led them through “pitch, sand, and to put an extra solely to their feet”; an elderly gent who stood near Carr stirring grape juice with a broom handle to create “California” wine. This area was called “the plague spot” by a health inspector, but one can sense that the real problem lies in the fact that many of these people were poor and immigrants. This image challenges his descriptions of “urchins”, trash heaps, and consumptives to the media. There is not a single trash heap visible and a few happy boys are skating, their flushed cheeks evident even in black-and-white.
