Query: Why CPG?

Why The Califa Police Gazette you wonder...

I'm so glad you asked!

Well, older hands (much much older--those who have reached their hundred and fiftieth year or so), may recall once seeing upon the newstands a pink papered publication entitled The National Police Gazette.

First published in the 1840s, the NPG was a cross between COPS and The National Enquirer. Under the guise of warning the public of the wickedness of the world, the NPG covered crimes, celebrity gossip, and rough sports, such as boxing and rat-baiting. Supposedly, the NPG was telling you all this for your own good, because only by knowing about badness could you avoid it, but it's hard to believe that the newspaper's public weren't reading it just for the good stuff.

And the good stuff was pretty good: scalpings, lynchings, high-wire electrocutions, white slavery, abandoned women, pugilists, acrobats, women in trousers, runaway horses, runaway brides, bagnios, and all the other news that the New York Times did not deem fit to print.

And to add to the NPG's charm, it was printed on pink paper!

In the 1860s, the NPG got on the illustrated bandwagon, and began accompanying its lurid articles with lurid black and white pen and ink drawings, and that really got its readership going. Photographs were still expensive and required absolute stillness, so drawings were the only way to capture a scene, and capture the scene the NPG's artists did, filling the pages of the newspaper with lightly clad ladies, train wrecks, execution scenes, horse stampedes, dog fights, and men jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge, among other events.

The NPG stayed in circulation well into the 20th century, but the rise of on-the-fly photography, and the development of cheap photo reproduction processes stole most of the paper's graphic thunder. People had other, more realistic outlets, for their baser urges, and they didn't need the NPG anymore. And eventually the paper died a unlamented death, the relic of another naughty age.

When I decided that Califa needed a similar publication, one which would act as shadow to the more respectable Alta Califa, Califa's paper of record, the National Police Gazette proved the perfect model, so I quickly appropriated the name. Alas, that my blog is not usually nearly as exciting or naughty at its namesake, once removed, still, I do strive to entertain, and to inform, and will try to be occasionally lurid, for old time's sake.