NakedCity Wichita

jake euker: sticky questions

Posted on 05. Mar, 2010 by Seth in culture

words > MICHAEL CARMODY

photos > MARITA MEYER

Jake Euker’s mania for stickers—yes, those adhesive-backed, printed, paper doodads children love to affix to your delicate and expensive objets de l’élegance—came late in life. But like love and measles, that’s precisely when mania hits hardest. Though initially reluctant to publicly acknowledge this facet of his personal life, he was kind enough to answer a few questions.

When did all this sticker business get started?

Before I was 40, I didn’t really even like stickers, [because] if you got a cool one, you felt that you had to save it—or to stick it on something semi-permanent so as not to waste it. Nothing special happened when I turned forty, except that I did happen to have some cool stickers then, and I found that I liked them better because I stuck them on some people who helped me move. All this potential affection I had for stickers was released, because I had figured out that cool stickers are really wonderful things, provided you don’t try to save them.

What are your favorite subgenres of sticker? Puffy? Scratch-n-sniff? Animal-themed?

It depends on what I’m using them for. One thing I like to do is to alter postcards. You can take an innocuous motel postcard from the ‘60s or ‘70s and stick a friendly-looking dog sticker on it, and if the scale is off enough, the now-giant dog will give the whole scene a really sinister timbre. I stayed in a place called the Great Dismal Swamp in North Carolina, and the resulting postcard was awesomely creepy—there was a bride and groom out in the sticks and a barn covered with big, big ants. I just sent my niece a postcard of the world’s largest grain elevator in Hutchinson, and it says “World’s Largest” in bright red cursive across the front, except that I had a white cat sticker that fit very convincingly atop the elevator, so that the cat appeared to be—what, 300 feet long?

How do modern stickers compare with vintage stickers?

Vintage stickers don’t work, that’s how. The sticky comes off, and then they aren’t stickers anymore, are they? I have some cool old stickers, including a show-stopping cartoon rendering of a Czech hotel I stayed at. This was a Cold War-era sticker, and since I was there directly after the fall of the USSR, the owners were dying to get rid of that stuff—so I got a lot of them, too. But this only proves my point about using rather than saving stickers. They don’t last forever.

Is there a specific sticker you covet? What would you consider a Holy Grail among stickers?

I don’t really know about stickers until I see them, and then I usually just buy them rather than wish I had. The coolest sticker I have now is a red star on a dark, circular background that Jeff Eaton made for me. There are several, and they’re both beautiful and nicely made, in a way that I wouldn’t have noticed a few years ago. I have a sheet of Japanese stickers that I love. They’re teeth with little faces on them, mostly happy except for the ones with cavities. Then there are little devils with pitchforks that are actually attacking the cavity teeth, and toothpaste that attacks the devils, and so on. Some of the teeth are in pain—you can tell because they’re grimacing, and these little rays are radiating out from them, that in any language would say “pain, pain, pain…”

Do you ever come across stickers in unexpected places?

Businesses that use them [will] give them to you. Like my LICK HER WHERE SHE LIKES IT stickers from Ken-Mar Liquor. Or nutritional stickers from sandwich places. I have some of those serious-as-hell stickers that car dealers stick to the cars they sell; those don’t want to come off. And I love utility stickers, ones that say PUSH or whatever. And I still have a sheet of stickers that were intended to go on the vinyl release of The Embarrassment’s Death Travels West EP. They don’t stick very well anymore.

What technological advances do you predict for stickers in the future?

Stickers are perfect as they are, no advances needed. Technology can’t improve on some things. Saying it can is like admitting to the need for decaffeinated coffee. It’s bull$h!t.

Tags: culture