In 1990, George H.W. Bush was drawing a line in the sand, Twin Peaks was preparing to jump the shark in its second season, and culture was still very much locked in the Eighties. I had landed in London for my second year of law school, where me and me mates had managed to rent the top two floors of a Clapham row house belonging to an elderly Irish couple who always made it available to Notre Dame students abroad. One look at the price of burritos in the Taco Bell on Piccadilly and I knew I needed to watch my pounds sterling, at least enough to keep my local willingly pouring pints of Guinness for me between classes.
Of course, this frugality didn't last long, and soon enough I was spending as frivolously as ever. A poster of a Harley Girl was probably one of the first luxuries I treated myself to. I found her at the Camden Lock flea market one sunday, so I must've still been trying to pinch my pence a bit. Nevermind who Shy Luchmand is; apparently he's some photographer, somewhere south of Man Ray, and West of Nagel. I liked her because, like the Eighties, she radiated style, rebellion, and edge. Flannel and combat boots was still a good couple of years away. Leather, chrome, and shades, and studiously tousled locks of blonde were still not ironic.
When I left London, I left her on my wall in Clapham along with an empty bottle of Beaujolais covered with a year's accumulation of candle wax. If I could find an actual poster sized image of her, instead of this blown up thumbnail, I'd pay the equivalent worth today of what I paid then, on the cobblestones of Camden.
If this is your image, you must be Shy Luchmand. Please let me continue to use it. However, if you disapprove, feel free to let me know and I will take it down.
