Here we have a poster that charged $12.50 to watch two members of the Chicago Seven fight each other. Jerry Rubin, billed as "now a Yuppie," and Abbie Hoffman, "still a Yippie," came back to the city that once put them on trial. The Learning Annex hosted the prize fight.
Rubin appears as a hard-edged photograph in a polka dot tie. Hoffman faces him nose to nose as a scribbled ink caricature in a red sweater. Hang it and the two noses sit an inch apart at eye level, close enough to start something. The schedule printed up top holds the real joke. Before the debate, Rubin taught a workshop on promotion and entrepreneurship. Hoffman taught one on how to organize for fun, profit or anarchy. The anarchist's class had the word profit in the title.
Event posters like this lived on lampposts and bulletin boards for about a week. Most went in the trash with the snow. This one is a nice survivor, I can’t find another one.
Th 1980s debate poster came out of ephemra collector’s estate in Chicago. Hoffman and Rubin took the Yippie vs. Yuppie debate on the road in 1984 and held their last one in Vancouver in 1986. The poster gives Thursday, February 21st with no year. That date landed on a Thursday in 1985, so I place it circa 1985 on the calendar and the tour dates.
The poster is printed in black and red on smooth poster stock and appears to be offset lithography. The illustrator signed lower right, but the frame lip hides everything past what appears to be an E. I have not identified the artist. According to Hoffman biographer Jonah Raskin, Abbie quietly invested some of his speaking fees on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. The frame carries the label of Artists' Frame Service on North Clybourn Avenue, a Chicago shop Jay Goltz founded in 1978.
The 1980s political poster measures about 24” tall by 16” wide. There is surface scuffing and fine abrasion across the pale field between the headlines and the faces, which appears to be on the paper beneath the glazing. The plastic glazing has light scratches. The cardboard backing has a horizontal crease and old tape along the bottom edge. Minor rubs to the black metal frame. Please see all pics as they are part of the description.
I ship FedEx to street addresses in the continental USA only (no PO Boxes). Free shipping on the framed Chicago Seven family feud.
Both men are gone now. Nobody ever counted the vote, and the argument still hangs here unresolved.
