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Dateline: 1961. Kennedy
is president, the U.S. breaks diplomatic ties with Cuba and the Berlin Wall
is being erected...the "Cold War" has begun. The Yankees win the
World Series, Patsy Cline releases "Crazy" and Ty Cobb and Chico
Marx are laid to rest. The Federal debt is 292.6 billion dollars, a first
class postage stamp costs four cents, and I'm born seven years after my
older brother Terry, and almost two years to the day before my younger brother
Glenn.
My dad owns a gas station and my mother works
on the switchboard at Genesee Hospital.
Born and raised in Rochester New York's busy 19th
ward, I spent my "formative" years hanging around with my friends
Kevin, Pete and the Picccolo brothers in what was a typical 1960's - early
1970's inner-city neighborhood. We were pretty normal. Beginning in kindergarten,
we walked 10 blocks to John Walton Spencer Public School #16. We played
Battleship, Rock'em Sock'em Robots and street hockey. We payed $1.25 to
see Japanese monster movies at the Coronet Theater on Saturdays, and snuck
in our own ten cent cans of Blue Boy pop. We watched the Flintstones, Mr.
Ed, American Bandstand and F Troop . We built model cars at Kevin's kitchen
table. We filled those model cars with GulfLight, set them on fire and sent
them down the slide at the playground.
Alright...so were weren't completely normal,
but we survived it all.
My family moved to the nearly suburb of Irondequoit
the year I started Junior High...
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Even in 1962 I had pudgy hands and
my hair did whatever it wanted to...
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| The Briskie Boys Circa 1967 |
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| "A real full-blooded erupted in the early 1960s
with school busing and the unethical real-estate practice of block busting,
Race riots in the inner city in 1964 further diminished its reputation as
a safe place to raise. White flight began as thousands of families found
suburban living more appealing. Residents of the 19th Ward, formerly accustomed
to leaving doors unlocked and keys in cars, were now plagued with robberies.
Businesses that had served the neighborhood for generations closed or relocated
because of shopping and vandalism. Predatory gangs roamed Thurston Road
and Genesee Street. Drugs, violence and property neglect brought home values
down. Sadly, many citizens felt they could no longer walk the once peaceful
streets without feeling threatened." |
from Images of America: Rochester's
19th Ward by Michael and Glenn Leavy |
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| '74...dig the studded
collar! |
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"In the Day we Sweat it Out
on the Streets of a Runaway American Dream, at Night we Ride Through Mansions
of Glory in Suicide Machines." -Born To Run
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Irondeqouit was only a half hour North of Rochester,
so I spent many weekends staying in the city with my old friends, or likewise
having them come out to the 'burbs to stay with me.
Those relationships will never die. The guys from
the neighborhood I grew up in, Kevin (Doughboy), Pete, Keith...I still hang
out with today.
But I made some great friends in Irondeqouit as
well. Dave Schaertel, Rusty Braund, another Keith (Armitage), Eric Rothfuss,
Mark Gregory, Goona Montanus, Ramone Vorndran, Mike Boehm, John Driscoll,
The Kucharski Brothers, Paul Salamone...we all hung out in pretty much the
same way that I had in my old neighborhood. What did change however, was
street hockey had surrendered to hot rods and keg parties. Hanging out on
the Post Ave Church fire escape evolved into all-night bonfires on Lake
Ontario's Durand Beach. We virtually lived on Lakeshore Blvd....a mile-long,
four lane strip that ran parallel to and overlooked the beach; and was a
mecca for fast cars, dusk-til-dawn parties, girls and great music. Lakeshore
Boulevard was the place to see people, and the place to be seen. More than
250 cars , cruising a circuit that stretched from Charlotte Beach to Seabreeze
Amusement Park, with every radio tuned to WSAY until it signed off at midnight.
After that, it was a free-for-all of Blue Oyster Cult, Yardbirds, Rush and
Rolling Stones 8-track tapes.
In hindsight...it was a charmed life. Most importantly,
I met my future wife at Irondequoit High School.
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Fast-forward through four years of absolute fun,
albeit a bit blurry, at Irondequoit High School; and 1979 finds me graduating
and getting ready for what would be a brief, seven month long college career.
In late 1980, I jumped at the chance to work in a retail advertising office;
hired originally to paste up ads and provide illustrations, as a way to
help build my fledgling new graphic design business, Cocoanut Jam Studios.
I ran away from home at age 21.
By 1984, I've worked my way up, but eventually
out of the advertising department, and am struggling to make a living doing
design work, lettering race cars and doing airbrush and pinstriping work.
I work as a service writer and parts person at a local Western Auto service
center four nights a week to make ends meet, and by 1986, I'm engaged to
Paulette Palumbo. We assume a mortgage on a house down by the beach in '86
and get married in 1988.
Hit that fast-forward button again, and get past
the years of eating macaroni and cheese, and standing my ground on pricing
and standards in both our sign shop and our custom paint business, AutoGraph
Customs. For a few years in the early 90's, I partner up with four friends,
form the Motorsports Exhibition Group, Inc, and start producing what were
unquestionably the best custom car shows in Western New York. The novelty
of losing money on such a grand scale wears off after a few years, and MEG
disbands. All the while, Paulette and I are running our sign and graphics
business, the paint shop, and are still able to sneak in at least one, 4-day
weekend of fishing up in the 1,000 Islands region of New York each month
from May to November.
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By the late '90s, Paulette and I have outgrown
our home. Not just in size, as the businesses grew and took more space;
but in our mindset. The novelty of being down by the water, and five minutes
from the beach was outweighed by the nuisance of the never-ending parade
of hot rods and motorcycles that were beach bound from 7 pm on...and coming
back past our place at 2 am when the bars closed. It was time to move.
Uprooting our personal lives, not to mention
two businesses, required a lot of planning and patience. We looked at well
over 200 houses, mostly in outlying areas, for over a year; before finding
the right place. The right place came in the form of a 3,800 square foot
raised ranch with a walk-out basement, attached 2.5 car garage on about
an acre of property in Adams Basin, New York. It was only 20 miles West
of Rochester, so we could maintain most of our clientel base; and had more
than enough space in the lower level of the house for the businesses. Adams
Basin is a quiet, historic, post card-like hamlet on the Erie Canal, and
our property backed up to Salmon Creek. It was perfect.
1998 was a tumultuous year. We took a month
off from work, and in 30 days we spent $30,000 turning the lower level of
our home into our dream shop in Adams Basin. '98 also found me securing
my first paying gig endorsing a product, SignGold; and started working at
sign and graphics trade shows on their behalf. The chaos hasn't stopped
since. Now, I travel eight to ten weeks out of the year. Paulette and I
still run the sign and custom paint shops, we launched an online clip art
company (www.CustomClipArt.net) in 2004, and founded a marketing and promotions
firm, Sign Classroom, directed at the sign trades, in 2006.
Together, Paulette and I have created quite
the little empire. All four businesses under one roof - and all under the
collective name Brian The Brush World Headquarters. I'm presently enjoying
being a frequent contributor to a leading publication, Sign Business,
and am proud to be a board member of the American Sign Museum in Cincinnati,
Ohio. I recently stopped providing any services to SignGold, due to ethical
differences; however we've added companies as prominent and prestigious
as 1 Shot Paints to our marketing portfolio and continue to try and release
a new clip art collection every 60 days or so.
Now we have to start working on getting back
up to the Islands for some fishing. |
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