Back to Flea Market Eye Candy and Breaking Down the New Yorker

Super Sized Part 2 of 2

Jun 03, 2025

Next week, in coordination with Writer’s Digest magazine and the Annual Humor Conference, I will be reviewing submitted humor work and giving advice, personally. If this interests you, check out the details at the end. I will share some stuff in the next edition of The Bob for paid subscribers.

Some more photos from the latest adventures in flea marketing.

BRIMFIELD, MA.—I was very tempted to purchase this James Bond starter kit ($99), if it weren’t for the fact I stopped getting any calls years ago.

You never know what you will find. The absurd song, “You Know My Name,” may be my favorite Beatles song. And “Let It Be,” perhaps my least favorite. “You Know My Name” was written and performed exclusively by John and George.

This arrangement of goods begs the question, “What is my next project?”

LENOX, MA.—On our way home, we went through Lenox, Massachusetts and stopped by The Bookstore to say hello to my old friend Matt Tannenbaum. I was flattered to see my illustration of his bookshop on display.

Well, we went to Stormville Flea Market and brought literally hundreds of odds and ends to sell. We’re not sure how much flea marketing as a side gig will be in the cards for the future. It was fun until we started getting wet. We started getting rained on as soon as we pulled up in the truck.

STORMVILLE, N.Y.—Dramatic storm clouds. You would have thought we would have seen it coming when we passed the sign, “Welcome to Stormville.”

In many ways working at the flea market is a lot like cartooning. There are a lot of characters. There is certainly a luck element involved regarding what people will buy and a lot of work done on spec. There are all these seasoned veterans you meet, nice but hardened, who will tell you, it’s no longer as good as the ol’ days or that it’s a young man’s (or woman’s) game, because of all the heavy lifting and jokes going over my head now.

If you look carefully, you can spot a stranger inside the truck, a dealer who insisted on not waiting and checking out we had before we unpacked anything and he brought along his assistant, a dog. It’s called chutzpah.

What IS great about cartooning, and writing, is there is little overhead. And you can do it anywhere (why we live in one of the most expensive cities in the world to do something which can execute anywhere is beyond me and one of my dumbest business moves…but I guess we both love New York City too much).

But flea marketing at the level that makes a living, requires going to the big events that require some traveling, renting a truck as well as a space at the venue, and then driving to the next place. We passed on renting a large tent and instead bought lots of plastic tarps to cover the tables full of goods overnight from dew and as security. We already had a dozen folding tables. So, while we brought in more money than I could usually make cartooning in a weekend, you can see there are aforementioned expenses as well; not to mention the tolls, gas, the fee for the space, over-priced apple cider donuts and food, and buying other people’s junk.

One find at the Stormville flea market was a classic issue of The New Yorker, from the year I was born. I have since dissected it. The issue bears no resemblance to today’s New Yorker. It clocks in at 238 pages (this week’s new issue was 70). It’s priced at one quarter (The new issue is $9.99).

The cover is by Arthur Getz. It is both calming and unsettling. Beautiful and melancholy. It’s a very limited palette—I could never show that much restraint.

Getz did 213 New Yorker covers through his career, the most by anyone and they captured New York’s moods. This cover was the first to appear days after the assassination of President Kennedy. We do share a few coincidences. Exactly fifty years apart from each other, we both went to Pratt Institute on a full scholarship and then taught at the School of Visual Arts. Arthur Getz continued painting until he was 83.

Once you soak in the magnificent cover, the magazine immediately transports you to Gershwin’s New York City. You are hit with ad after ad of Madison Avenue ad men’s pitches that strive for a life of luxury; Jaguar, Bergdorf Goodman, Christian Dior, Saks Fifth Avenue.

Try parking this thing in my neighborhood.

I won’t make a snarky remark about the ad except to say it could be a caption contest for some who read this.

One of the highlights of my cartoon career was getting the chance to lunch with my favorite cartoonist, Robert Weber. Supposedly, his charcoal drawings were unimaginably done from top left corner down, to avoid smudging. Although he wore a mask when adding fixative to his final drawings, it was believed that the contents of spray contributed to his decline.

Robert Weber’s cartoon, amazingly, doesn’t appear until page 54, starting a brief flurry of greatness. There are no credits up front for the cartoons, but they are by those who need no introduction. The first cartoons are by Robert Weber, Charles Addams, Peter Arno, Saul Steinberg, and B. Kliban, each cartoon a Master Class in the craft. Some of the cartoons take up full pages, given the respect they are due. Some are embarrassingly tone deaf and would be out-of-step today. And then it ends. Only one cartoon appears in the last 200 pages.

Here are a couple of New Yorker cartoon icons, Charles Addams, and Saul Steinberg:

I have a handful of his cartoon books and have seen loads of Charles Addams cartoons but this is a new one on me.

Redefining what a cartoon can be, by the genius, Saul Steinberg. Most know him for his iconic *New Yorker* cover of looking down 5th Avenue to the rest of the world.

Saturday, June 14th, I will be giving a program on the Writer’s Digest Humor Writing Virtual Conference. This is open to the public and there is a modest fee of $130 for four one-hour sessions. To sign up, go HERE.

Here is the class description of my one-hour session done over Zoom along with my “press” bio who those who are not familiar with me;

How To Make Your Writing Funnier: Advice I’ve Learned from the Funniest People in the World

I’ve been lucky enough to know and work with some of the funniest people in the world. In this hour, I am looking forward to sharing what’ve learned from them. The class will discuss a techniques and ideas to help your work be the funniest it can be.

Bob Eckstein is a New York Times best-selling author, award-winning illustrator, whose work has appeared in MAD, McSweeney’s, National Lampoon, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Playboy, Reader’s Digest, SPY, and publications worldwide. His work has been exhibited in the Cartoon Art Museum of San Francisco, Smithsonian Institute, The Cartoon Museum of London, Sordoni Art Gallery at Wilkes University. Eckstein has spoken in over a 200 TV and radio shows and at The Mount, Mark Twain Museum, Milford Readers & Writers Festival, Stroud Mansion, NYPL, Miami Book Fair, MOCCA Arts Festival, NCS, Norman Rockwell Museum, Millbrook Literary Festival, The Norman Rockwell Museum, and The Grolier Club. He is Contributing Editor at Writer’s Digest, was the editor of the series The Ultimate Cartoon Book by the World’s Greatest Cartoonists, and taught writing and cartooning at New York University, Pratt Institute, School of Visual Arts, and many other learning institutions.