Wanted: Clint Eastwood on Black Velvet

I’ve had Clint Eastwood on the brain recently.

Not the new, really old, Oscar-winning, Hollywood-Teddy-bear Clint Eastwood, but the bad-ass, cigarillo-smoking, gun-toting, Orangutan-loving, two-kinds-of-people-in-this-world, make-my-day Clint Eastwood.

The reason is because I keep seeing him around, first on an awesome The Good, The Bad and The Ugly lightswitch plate at Angelos Pizza (620 East Sixth Avenue), and then on an even more awesome black velvet picture at Cap City Tavern (1247 Bannock Street), possibly from A Fistful of Dollars.

But my efforts to find similar artwork for my own home have proven unsuccessful. A lady at Angelo’s told me she found the switch plate at a booth during the People’s Fair a couple years ago. I made it, briefly, to the People’s Fair this year, but didn’t find the item. Nor can I find it anywhere online.

As for the black velvet painting, co-workers suggested the Mile High Flea Market on 88th Avenue. So on Sunday, I went there for the first time and walked up and down the infinite rows in the hot sun, looking at infinite quantities of junk. But sadly, there were no black velvet Clint Eastwoods, or any other black velvet paintings for that matter. Sure, I could buy one online (like the pictured version), but that just doesn't seem right.

So like Lone Watie told Clint’s character in the The Outlaw Josey Wales, I will “endeavor to persevere.” – Jonathan Shikes