Today's palette comes from a The House Beautiful magazine cover by Maurice Day published in 1919.
I don't think this is my best work in this travel poster series. I severely overestimated my patience to draw windows onto the buildings, and underestimated how unfinished the whole piece would look without them. Maybe someday I'll go back and add the windows in.
But regardless, this is what's done now!
When I was trying to decide what to do with the last palette, I realized that there was one more home state that I hadn't done: New York. Both sides of my family are from Brooklyn, I was originally born in Brooklyn, and New York City played a huge role in my upbringing in general. I don't know that there are any actual cryptids unique to NYC, but there was one particular urban legend that went around a lot while I was growing up: Alligators in the sewers.
See, roundabouts the '80s, baby alligators were really popular pets. They were unique, about the size of an iguana, and at least seemingly pretty low-maintenance. If you ever watched Clarissa Explains It All back in the day on Nickelodeon, you probably remember her having a pet baby alligator she named Elvis and that she kept in a wading pool full of sand in her bedroom. The problem is that alligators don't stay the size of an iguana and they are predators that can be extremely dangerous.
So once the alligator got too big, the vast majority of owners got rid of them. Some of them were given to animal rescues or rehab organizations; some of them were given to reptile breeders; and some of them were gotten rid of in less savory ways.
When you hear about alligators being captured in rivers and lakes where they're not native? Those are typically alligators that used to be pets and were just released into the wild when they got too big and/or dangerous. In NYC, that very real story was turned into a bit of an absurd urban legend. The legend goes that NYC alligator pet owners, when their alligators got too big, they decided to just flush them down the toilet like a dead fish, and all of the alligators that survived the flushing ended up in the sewers under the city where they thrive on a diet of rats and the occasional unfortunate sanitation worker.
Obviously this isn't true. As many experts have pointed out over the years, even if people did try to flush an alligator down the toilet, pre-2000's plumbing wouldn't have been able to handle even a baby alligator, nevermind one that grew big enough to make their owner decide to get rid of it. There also simply haven't been any verified reports which, considering how many sanitation workers have been down in the sewers over the years, there would have to be at least one.
But it is a silly little story from back when NYC was allowed to be weird, and I think I heard at some point that it was part of the inspiration for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Though maybe that's an urban legend too.
Today's palette comes from a The House Beautiful magazine cover by Maurice Day published in 1919.
I don't think this is my best work in this travel poster series. I severely overestimated my patience to draw windows onto the buildings, and underestimated how unfinished the whole piece would look without them. Maybe someday I'll go back and add the windows in.
But regardless, this is what's done now!
When I was trying to decide what to do with the last palette, I realized that there was one more home state that I hadn't done: New York. Both sides of my family are from Brooklyn, I was originally born in Brooklyn, and New York City played a huge role in my upbringing in general. I don't know that there are any actual cryptids unique to NYC, but there was one particular urban legend that went around a lot while I was growing up: Alligators in the sewers.
See, roundabouts the '80s, baby alligators were really popular pets. They were unique, about the size of an iguana, and at least seemingly pretty low-maintenance. If you ever watched Clarissa Explains It All back in the day on Nickelodeon, you probably remember her having a pet baby alligator she named Elvis and that she kept in a wading pool full of sand in her bedroom. The problem is that alligators don't stay the size of an iguana and they are predators that can be extremely dangerous.
So once the alligator got too big, the vast majority of owners got rid of them. Some of them were given to animal rescues or rehab organizations; some of them were given to reptile breeders; and some of them were gotten rid of in less savory ways.
When you hear about alligators being captured in rivers and lakes where they're not native? Those are typically alligators that used to be pets and were just released into the wild when they got too big and/or dangerous. In NYC, that very real story was turned into a bit of an absurd urban legend. The legend goes that NYC alligator pet owners, when their alligators got too big, they decided to just flush them down the toilet like a dead fish, and all of the alligators that survived the flushing ended up in the sewers under the city where they thrive on a diet of rats and the occasional unfortunate sanitation worker.
Obviously this isn't true. As many experts have pointed out over the years, even if people did try to flush an alligator down the toilet, pre-2000's plumbing wouldn't have been able to handle even a baby alligator, nevermind one that grew big enough to make their owner decide to get rid of it. There also simply haven't been any verified reports which, considering how many sanitation workers have been down in the sewers over the years, there would have to be at least one.
But it is a silly little story from back when NYC was allowed to be weird, and I think I heard at some point that it was part of the inspiration for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Though maybe that's an urban legend too.
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