PETTICOAT LANE RAG (BOWMAN, 1915)

Описание: Happy Easter to those who celebrate! 🐣🐇 When I was young, this time of year was preceded by a trip with my mom and sister to the shopping mall in search of complimenting pastel colored outfits. This time spent in the mall seemed to last ages – I was young and restless…

These days, I often spend my work lunch break at a nearby mall; it’s one of the few shaded respites from the San Fernando Valley’s oppressive heat. While walking, I reflect upon how much the world has changed in the last two decades or so. The Glendale Galleria is far from a “dead mall”, but the mall seems a far less vital place than it was in the late 1990s to early 2000s.

If one was doing such shopping in early 20th Century Kansas City, it’s likely one would have made a trip to 11th Street and Main, which was then known as “Petticoat Lane.” Euday Bowman, who immortalized nearby “12th Street” in the ubiquitous rag, also wrote an “11th Street Rag” and a piece called “Petticoat Lane.” Most of the discerning ragtime pianists I know who venture an opinion consider “Petticoat Lane” Bowman’s finest and most musically interesting creation. It is practically void of the “12th Street Rag” patterns that pervade much of Bowman’s writing, and the melody of the A-theme seems to obliquely reference Mendelssohn’s “Spring Song.”

Like many retail spaces and “third places”, “Petticoat Lane” in Kansas City is a hollowed-out shell of its former self. Looking on Google maps, it appears that there is still a Slabotsky’s Menswear in the district, but the most of the old buildings have been given a rather brutalist facelift and filled with corporate chains and fast casual restaurants. Time marches onward…

In case you, like me, are not particularly well-versed in the nuances of women’s fashion, a petticoat is not actually a coat but a sort of underwear, not unlike a lining worn under a skirt. Throughout history and fashion, the petticoat has alternated between a hidden layer or a decorative element contrasting with the outer clothing. During the ragtime era, suffragettes and other progressive minded women may have chosen to eschew the petticoat in favor of bloomers – a practical choice, but one that attracted great controversy at the time. I wonder what they would have thought of the Glendale Galleria.