This week on ‘picture postals’, news-stands of the 1930s and 40s, via the best images to be found at the Library of Congress. Here cropped, contrast-adjusted and reduced to a manageable-but-still-big size from the huge .TIF files.
It’s interesting to see how they were purveyed. Upside down, in one picture.
And quite mixed in another picture from 1939, where Sky Devils can end up right next to Complete Love, and Weird Tales is jammed between Home Friend and Consumers Digest…
Perhaps the war made them more organised, so that they could be more easily given the once-over for seditious material during wartime?
The “being sold upside-down” isn’t strange; the publications are being sold by their titles, and racks like these hang the publications from little spring-clips. So what is visible is the bottom end of each publication, and to make the title visible, you have to put them in the clips upside-down.