Publix and the Wings of Time

A couple of years back we featured a series on the history of Publix, the Florida-based supermarket chain. As mentioned throughout those posts, Publix is a company that has inspired a highly unusual degree of loyalty among its customers, a fact that’s no surprise to most folks who live in their market areas. They have a “mystique”, if you will, acquired over the years - something most retailers would kill for. A key ingredient in forming the Publix mystique in the decades following World War II was their unique store architecture – bold, forward looking, well-executed designs that stood out in a sea of strip mall similarity. The “winged” Publix stores in particular stand today (virtually, that is, as I believe all of the originals are gone) as enduring icons of the “Florida Boom” years.

Recently, I was delighted to receive an email from Florida native Tim Fillmon offering to share some photos he took between the late 1970’s and early 90’s of various classic Publix stores. At the time, Tim worked for the State of Florida in historic preservation, and on his travels he documented the changing sights along the way – “from signs and shopping centers to courthouses and motels”, as he puts it. In this day and age that type of activity is (thankfully) becoming increasingly common, but before the advent of digital media, when film was expensive and there were no easy means to share one’s work, it was all too rare. I want to express my thanks to Tim for sharing these with us and hope that you will do the same in the comments section.

Tim has strong family connections to Publix. His sister worked there from 1966 until her untimely passing in 2009, and his father headed up the construction of many Publix stores, including “Central Plaza in St. Petersburg, Britton Plaza and Northgate in Tampa and many others in Orlando, Hollywood, Lehigh Acres, and other places around the state.”

The fun thing for me is how the photos depict these Publix stores as I would have known them had I grown up in Florida. For other tail-end baby boomers or Gen-Xers who did grow up there or who vacationed there regularly, they should bring back some good memories. In any event it’s clear that, 20 or even 30 years after opening, these stores had charm to spare.

In the spirit of recreating the random nature of a typical “early 1980’s drive around town”, I’ve deliberately avoided putting these in any sort of chronological order. I’ve added a few notes for each photo.

“Always start with the night shot” is my philosophy, and shown above is a great one of the Publix at Gainesville Mall, a store that opened in 1967. Does your local supermarket have animated neon? I didn’t think so!

The neon is glowing here, and it’s not even dark out! This was the Southgate Shopping Center location in New Port Richey, Florida, not to be confused with the other Southgate (of Johnny Depp/Edward Scissorhands fame) in Lakeland. Look at the gold “winged” parcel pick-up sign in front, typical of the attention to detail on these stores. Isn’t this nice?

Many of the shopping center-based Publixes pictured here have since been replaced with much larger stores, usually sporting the Spanish-styled architecture that’s de rigueur in the Florida retail world of today. Here’s one instance, however, where the replacement Publix is as fun and quirky as the original, if not more so – from the College Park neighborhood of Orlando. Check out this video of the “Retro-Publix” that occupies this site now. The “rotating wings” sign is reportedly original. Wow!

A wonderful little jewel box of a store, located at 1720 16th Street North in St. Petersburg. Save for the 60’s/70’s cars and the S&H sign (which replaced an earlier neon version), this one looks virtually as it did in 1950, the year of its opening. It featured design elements that Publix would employ through the early and mid-50’s (up until the advent of their famous “winged” designs) on ever larger stores, including Art Deco styling with glass blocks, Vitrolite-faced awnings and two-toned cutout letters. This tiny Publix finally closed in 1982, and the building now houses America’s finest-looking Family Dollar store.

A unique facade was employed at the First Federal Shopping Center Publix in St. Petersburg. The transitional period between the Art Deco and “Winged” eras is clearly in evidence. (“Transitional period.” You’d think I was talking about Picasso here.)

Here’s an example of the larger deco-style Publix stores, a unit that was located at 3615 Gandy Boulevard in Tampa. The framed “arches” jutting out from the sides of the store were common features of their early 50’s stores and appear to have been more important as a decorative element than as a gateway to storeside parking. The word “PUBLIX” once appeared across the top portion of the arches on either side of the store, but by the time this photo was taken it had been removed. A modern Publix now sits on this site.

Hillsborough Boulevard in Tampa, with a parking lot full of “downsized” American cars. I remember my deep disappointment with the looks of the first downsized full-size cars introduced by GM in the fall of 1976 (I wasn’t a driver yet –just in eighth grade!), thinking how ugly and “chopped off” they seemed. The following year, they downsized the mid-size cars, which looked even worse. It seemed to take eons for the “Big Three” American car companies to get their styling mojo back, by which time their overseas-based competition (for whom smaller cars were always the rule, of course) had racked up huge market share gains. Interesting times, those were.

Here’s the Publix store at the Hollieanna Shopping Center in Winter Park, Florida, just north of Orlando. To the right is trusty sidekick Eckerd Drugs, Publix’s pharmacy tenant of choice for many years starting in 1959. Prior to that, most Publix-owned shopping centers featured Rexall drugstores, owned by franchisee Walt Touchton. When Touchton sold off his stores to Rexall mega-operator Liggett, Publix was disaffected by the ownership change and offered Jack Eckerd the proverbial “opportunity of a lifetime” to locate his drugstores in Publix-owned shopping centers. Within ten years Eckerd became one of the largest drug chains in the country, and in his autobiography Eckerd was quick to credit the Publix deal as the catalyst of that success.

The Hollieanna store once again, wings clipped and remodeling underway. Those letters have baked in the Florida sun for a long time. I'm digging the two-toned Monte in the foreground!

On an earlier post there’s a 1960’s-era postcard showing the Punta Gorda Mall Publix (again, the place was much more “shopping center” than “mall”) as it appeared in its early years. This photo shows the store after its 1970’s remodeling, a makeover that many Publix stores received. Not nearly as dramatic as the “winged” look, but very attractive nonetheless.

By the early 1970’s, the company’s new and remodeled stores featured only the word “Publix”, along with the famous “Where Shopping is a Pleasure” slogan. Interestingly, they made a slight attempt at modernization of this store (at Cleveland Plaza in Clearwater) by removing the “Market” signage and replacing it with three sets of mini-wings. Kind of gives the usually humble Publix a bit of swagger, don’t you think? Instead of “Publix Market”, you get “Publix, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh!” Strictly my interpretation, of course.

A wide view of the Midway Shopping Center in Largo, Florida, showing part of a Publix store (once again minus the “Market” and plus the “swagger”) among some hard-to-identify fellow tenants. One that’s not hard to identify is Cloth World, the “Wonder World of Fabric”, a chain that was bought out by Jo-Ann Fabrics in 1994.

Another deco classic, located at 6001 N. Nebraska Avenue in Tampa, once again virtually unchanged in appearance since its opening, which took place in February 1954. Again, the modern-day S&H signs are about the only new thing. Publix was The Sperry and Hutchinson Company’s largest and most loyal customer, a relationship that lasted some 35 years. In 1987, when the company began a two-year phaseout of S&H Green Stamps (more than a decade after most chains threw in the towel on stamps), it was a crushing blow from which S&H never really recovered.

One of the hallmarks of the early Publix-developed shopping centers was their way-cool neon signage, and the memorable “arrow” design of the early 60’s, shown here at the Venice Shopping Center (today the place would have to be called “The Merchants of Venice” or something equally imposing) was one of their favorites. These signs were built for Publix by Lane Neon Company of Lakeland. According to an article in Signs of the Times magazine, the yellow arrow measured “28 feet vertically from tip to tip”. All of these signs originally had a marquee board where the “Southeast Bank” sign is located on this one. I’m aware of the following locations, in addition to Venice, that featured this type of sign: Melbourne, Douglas, Indian Rocks, Southgate (New Port Richey) and Punta Gorda. The last two can be seen on this previous post.

The Searstown Shopping Center (later renamed Town Center) in Lakeland, Florida featured a Publix store with the “letterbox” variant sign. Martin Scorsese would not be pleased.

Another fine example of the classic mid-60’s winged Publix at the Tri-City Plaza in Largo, Florida, which opened in April 1966 with a ribbon cutting by “Donna Dehart, Miss Largo, Dorothy (Kitty) Carr, Miss Clearwater and Dorothy Argo, Miss St. Petersburg” according to a St. Petersburg Times article from the morning of the big day. Again, a modern, much larger, Spanish-style Publix has long since taken the place of this store.

“Something for everybody” or “back-and-forth through time” would be a good way to describe the scene in this photo of the Pine Hills Shopping Center (Orlando area, west of town), where at least three distinct architectural styles are represented in the space of about 150 feet. To the left of the Publix, on an unidentified store, we see a nice 50’s zig-zag awning. To the right, on the Firestone dealership, a set of 60’s Roman scalloped arches. What better way to tie them together than with some good old 70’s diagonal stained wood? Now let’s top it off with some turrets, the new look of the 80’s, to bring things up to date!

Saving the best for last, we present the pièce de résistance…a prime example of my new lifelong favorite style of architecture, which I refer to as “Jet-Age Antebellum.” Not much information to go on about this one, although Tim thinks it could possibly be a South Florida location, and may have originally been intended as a “Food World”, Publix’s short-lived discount food banner. If anyone can fill us in on this store, I’d be forever indebted. And if by some chance, hope against hope, it still exists as a Publix and looks like this, please send me a copy of the local “Homes For Sale” magazine, ‘cause I’m moving there!

Thanks to Edric Floyd for identifying the location of this Publix store, at 100 West El Camino Real in Boca Raton, Florida. The building still exists as a Fresh Market, and while some changes have been made to it, some of the store's distinctive features (not the wings, of course) can still be seen. Since it's no longer a Publix, guess I won't be a Florida resident anytime soon!

A Truly Scintillating Publix

"1. The neon pylon and background wipe on and silhouette the letters."

"2. When the wipe on is complete, the letters scintillate."

"3. Then the neon wipes off, leaving only the scintillating letters.
Scintillating letters go out and the cycle repeats."

Yup, born too late.

This is the Publix Super Market at Britton Plaza, 3838 Dale Mabry Road in Tampa, Florida, as depicted in a 1959 ad for Time-O-Matic, Inc., the manufacturer of the control system that enabled this little bit of neon magic.

Thanks to Debra Jane for the tip on the existence of this ad.

Publix Earns Its Wings

In the world of mid and late 20th century retail architecture, there are a number of store exterior designs that are indelibly, inextricably linked with one company. Where supermarkets are concerned, it’s a fairly small number. Two of those that immediately come to my mind are the Marina style stores (glass-front, arched roof design) of Safeway and the Centennial stores (Early American/Colonial design) of A&P. Those two companies certainly weren’t the only ones to use these designs – Philadelphia-based Penn Fruit was a pioneer of what would later be called the “Marina” style (named after Safeway’s 1959 flagship store in San Francisco’s Marina district), and many supermarket firms, including Grand Union, Acme, Albertsons and Food Fair to name just a few, opened stores that featured the Marina look. And I’ve seen a couple of very nice early 60’s examples of Colonial-style architecture on a Stop & Shop unit (Coventry, Rhode Island) and even on a Piggly Wiggly store operated by Shop Rite of Texas (who built some of the nicest looking Piggly Wigglys ever, in my opinion). Despite this, the association of those two styles with those particular companies (Marina = Safeway) and (Colonial = A&P) still hold the strongest.

Another one I would add to this list is Publix, with their magnificent winged-facade stores that first began to appear in 1956. Perfectly capturing the optimism and good-natured flamboyance of the times, these stores caused a stir when first opened, and the design was such a hit that Publix would stick with it for nearly 15 years.

A commenter on a recent post noted that “it’s easy to see how the ‘winged’ Publix stores evolved” from the previous art deco designs the company used, and I would have to agree. If you look at the series of black and white photos at the end of that post, a natural progression can be seen, with nearly every store showing slight differences from the previous one. One design element in particular, the large “PUBLIX MARKET” lettering, was used on several pre-“winged-era” stores, and in a few cases was even retrofitted to older stores, replacing their more subdued original signage. In one sense, the move away from the art deco look was necessary as more and more of the new Publix stores were in-line with shopping centers instead of free-standing. The distinctive art deco curved corners could no longer be used, rendering the style much less effective in a shopping center setting, something that can be seen in the later photos on that same post.

On top of that, styles were changing. To me, there’s a parallel between the look of American automobiles of the late 40’s and early 50’s and the Art Deco Publix stores, which both sported curvy lines and high profiles. A similar parallel can be drawn between the late 50’s winged Publix stores and the long, low, sleek car designs of that period, razor-sharp tailfins replacing the curved lines of the preceding years. So it must have been like grocery shopping in a ’59 Cadillac, or a “wide-track” Pontiac! (Ok, I guess some analogies can be carried too far…)

Publix’s tagline, “Where Shopping is a Pleasure”, was boldly emblazoned on the new facades. Still in use today, this slogan was the creation of Publix advertising manager Bill Schroter. In the 1940’s and early 50’s, the company had used another slogan - “Florida’s Finest Food Stores”. Schroter discussed his feelings about the original slogan in the book “Fifty Years of Pleasure”- “doggone it, the thing was self-congratulatory, offering no promise…I realized this could be a sacred cow”. “People would say, ‘Publix was such a pleasant place to shop.’ Or ‘The people are so pleasant’. It triggered something, and I just came up with a slogan idea”. Initially apprehensive about approaching Publix founder George Jenkins with it, Schroter pressed forward and presented his case, and one of the retail world’s most enduring slogans saw its first use.

From a corporate standpoint, Publix continued to grow steadily through the late 1950’s, reaching a total of 37 stores by 1958. The following year saw the beginning of an initiative that played a big part in Publix’s explosive growth over the following decades. In 1959, Publix took its first steps outside its Central Florida home base, opening its first store in the Miami area on July 5th of that year. Things took a big step forward there in November, when George Jenkins learned that The Grand Union Company had decided to put six of its Miami area stores up for sale. Despite the hand-wringing of some observers (Miami has always been a notoriously brutal grocery pricing market), Jenkins moved ahead on the deal. Thus was established Publix’s Southeast Coast division. By 1963, the company had built 14 additional stores and opened a distribution center in Miami. Publix also entered another new market in 1959 when it opened a store in Jacksonville. With prohibitive single-store advertising costs and the need to marshal their resources for the competitive battle in Miami, the company soon decided to sell that store to hometown heroes Winn-Dixie. In 1971, Publix would return to Jacksonville, this time for keeps.

Another venture that did much to shape Publix’s destiny was its entry into shopping center development. In fact, the first “modern” shopping center in the state, St. Petersburg’s Central Plaza, had a Publix store as a tenant. Florida’s second shopping center, in Largo, was actually developed by Publix. Over the next 25 years, Publix would develop 70 centers, all featuring major general merchandise and specialty retailers to complement their supermarket units. In the early years, Publix’s shopping centers typically included such variety stores as W.T. Grant and F.W. Woolworth, a drug store (mostly Touchton–Rexall, and later Eckerd), along with all manner of bakeries, toy stores, dry cleaners, shoe stores and clothing stores among others.

One Publix-developed center has even achieved a measure of pop culture status (again, owing to a movie) – 1958’s Southgate Shopping Center in Lakeland, which featured a gigantic arch in the middle of the shopping center that is thankfully still intact. The shopping center was the site of a scene in the 1990 Tim Burton movie “Edward Scissorhands”, starring Johnny Depp, providing what one columnist called “Lakeland’s Hollywood debut”. (Have there been other movies filmed in Lakeland?) Earlier this year, the Publix store, which was remodeled a number of times and most recently featured an early 70’s-ish Publix look, was torn down. Soon a much larger, brand new Publix store will reopen on the same spot. The iconic “Southgate” arch will remain in place, but the new store will be in the modern Publix mold. While I’m sure the new Publix will be beautiful, part of me wishes they’d “winged it”.

All of these photos are from a 1958 Publix promotional booklet. The first photo shows the new winged facade at the North Gate Shopping Center in Winter Haven, Florida, resplendent in palm trees and S&H Green Stamps signs. Second, an impeccably dressed mother and daughter experience some pleasant Publix service. Note the box of Tide, “The Washday Miracle”, in the shopping cart. Consumer products don’t get more photogenic than that. Third is an aerial view of Lakeland’s Southgate Shopping Center. With all of those customers, who needs Hollywood? Below are some black and whites of some the first winged stores, painstakingly captioned below for your surfing pleasure!

Cleveland Plaza, 1209 E. Cleveland, Clearwater

211 Douglas Ave., Bradenton (unusual "concave" variant)

West Gate Shopping Center, 3909 W. Manatee Ave., Bradenton

Britton Plaza, 3838 Dale Mabry Ave., Tampa (Debra Jane sent me a link to an incredible ad that shows the neon lighting pattern for this particular store. It's on her Flickr page at this link. Wowza!)

Colonial Plaza, 2418 E. Colonial Drive, Orlando

North Gate Shopping Center, 8815 N. Florida Ave., Tampa

Madeira Shopping Center, 662 East Welch Causeway, Madeira Beach

North Gate Shopping Center, 1395 N.6th Street, Winter Haven

Southgate Shopping Center, 2515 S. Florida Ave, Lakeland
South Gate Plaza, Sarasota (slogan on the awning)

Southside Shopping Center, 6th St. and 45th Ave. S., St. Petersburg (still under construction)

Publix - The Art Deco Super Markets

Nearly four years after the opening of the Winter Haven, Florida Publix market, “the most beautiful and most modern grocery establishment in Florida, and one of the finest in the United States”, it remained the company’s only store. Successful though it was, the economics of operating a single store were daunting, due to the inability to buy in volume and the very high cost of advertising per sales dollar, among other factors. Publix founder and president George Jenkins was acutely aware of the need to expand in order for his company to thrive. Jenkins stated goal at the time was “to build a chain of fifty stores like the (Winter Haven unit), no more”. In 1944, the situation began to look up, and the following year can be considered the true beginning of Publix as a “chain”. Unable to secure adequate building materials to expand during World War II, the company was finally able to scrounge up the necessary resources near the war’s end to buy a second store in neighboring Lake Wales.

The real catalyst for the company’s expansion, however, would come in the form of an acquisition. In 1945, J.A. Powell of nearby Lakeland, Florida, put his firm, Lakeland Grocery Company, up for sale. Powell’s company operated 19 little supermarkets under the banner of All American Stores. To put it mildly, the stores were humble in appearance - having “all the architectural charm of a shoe box”, as Jenkins later put it, but would provide the desperately needed volume. Included in the deal would be All American’s home office building and warehouse, the latter being particularly attractive to Jenkins, who understood the role of a distribution infrastructure as essential to a chain operation. Of critical importance was the fact that Powell was willing to provide financing on the sale price of $175,000 (for the entire company!), payable at twenty grand per year.

Beyond a cadre of loyal customers and a motley crew of stores, the All American buyout yielded a priceless asset to the fledgling Publix organization – a reservoir of management talent. The team of people that Publix gained from All American would lead the company for the next four decades, working alongside the dynamic Jenkins to take Publix from obscurity to being one of America’s most admired companies. This group included Joe Blanton, who worked his way up from meat cutter to vice president of real estate, ultimately becoming Publix president and “right-hand man” to George Jenkins. Blanton, a gentle giant who stood well over 6 feet tall and weighed over 300 pounds at his peak, became a highly respected figure in the supermarket industry and in Publix circles was revered nearly as much as the founder himself. Upon Blanton’s untimely death in 1984, he was succeeded as president by Mark Hollis, who began as a bagboy in 1946 in one of the former All American stores and whose father, William, would become a longtime Publix vice president.

Since it would be several years before Publix could afford or even obtain materials to replace the All American store buildings, great pains were taken to clean up, repaint and reequip the existing stores. Within the first couple of years, each of the stores would be renamed as Publix units.

And construction wasn’t the only aspect of Publix’s business affected by shortages. During World War II and for several years afterward, popular food items remained in high demand and short supply. Pat Watters’ book “Fifty Years of Pleasure”, released in 1980, describes the problems Publix (and many other grocers across the country) faced in keeping the stores stocked in those days. With packaged foods, for example, Publix was frequently forced to accept shipments that contained as much 50 percent of slow-moving off-brands in order to receive an allotment of what they did want (and could sell), such as Campbell’s soups or Libby’s canned vegetables. The shortage of meat was especially challenging, and the Watters book cites some unconventional meats that were stocked as a temporary solution – “sheep, rabbits, turtles, anything to put in a showcase”. (I can envision a big “Tastes like Chicken!” sign above the display.) These shortages and the resulting empty shelf space led to the introduction of another line of products – health and beauty aids. It goes without saying now that these lines (now typically called “HBC” for health, beauty and cosmetics) are indispensable to a supermarket’s bottom line, but prior to the late forties they were pretty much the sole province of drugstores. When Publix began to stock small amounts of these items – soap, shaving cream, cold cream, etc., they flew off of the shelves. Initially the manufacturers, including Colgate-Palmolive and others, resisted selling their products through grocery stores. When the sales numbers began to roll in, however, they were soon “breaking down our doors”, as Publix official Bob Schroter described it to Watters.

In 1948, Publix was finally in a position to begin replacing the stores, opening new units in the image of the Winter Haven store as designed by architect J.A. Tilden, with its distinctive art deco/streamline moderne lines, glass block tower and marble-and-glass storefront. The first replacement unit opened that year in Bartow, Florida. There was one notable exception to this plan. Soon after the replacement program was underway, Jenkins and Blanton began to question whether the level of luxury they were building into the stores was cost justifiable. It was decided that the next replacement store, in Clermont, Florida (Home of the Citrus Tower – Best. Tourist Attraction. Ever.) would have the streamlined appearance, but no glass block tower, no electric eye doors and no marble. The Watters book described the construction of the Clermont store as a fairly miserable episode, and whether or not the company considered it a “jinx” or there was some other reason, all subsequent stores would receive the full-blown luxury treatment. By 1951, twenty-five new and replacement stores had been opened. Jenkins was halfway to his goal.

The early fifties saw the introduction of another Publix signature – what would be a long-standing relationship with S&H Green Stamps. Publix initially agreed to give them out on a trial basis, with a benchmark of a 14 percent increase in sales as a requirement for keeping them. To their delight (both that of Publix and especially of Sperry & Hutchinson, no doubt) the increase was nearly double that. For decades following, Publix would be a most enthusiastic advocate of Green Stamps, prominently featuring S&H signs on their store facades and in newspaper ads. Years later, when competitors such as Winn-Dixie would drop stamps as part of a switch to a “low-price model”, Publix cheerfully doubled the amount of stamps they handed out.

In 1954, news of the Publix phenomenon reached a national audience for the first time. A 1954 issue of The Saturday Evening Post magazine featured a story entitled “The Grocer the Girls All Love”, a laudatory piece on George Jenkins and his company. As a number of you surely remember, weekly pictorial magazines, including Life, Look and the Saturday Evening Post were staples of American living rooms during that era. Eventually they succumbed when their advertisers shifted to television, but in 1954 they still wielded considerable power and influence. The article described how Jenkins built his empire “by bowing to the whim of the housewife”, describing the sumptuous décor of the stores and extolling the company’s treatment of its employees. The article was illustrated with photos of Publix’s gorgeous new Lakeland store, including a photo of the very dapper Mr. Jenkins carrying groceries while escorting a beaming young mother and her three kids to their car. The article was no doubt instrumental in the rise of a new form of American anxiety - supermarket envy. As if Khrushchev wasn’t trouble enough.

The first photo, from a 1956 brochure called "Progress of Publix", depicts a color view of the “glass block tower” from a typical Publix store in the 1946-56 era. The second and third photos are from the Post magazine article referenced above, showing the brand-new Lakeland store at 916 N. Massachusetts Ave. The photos below show a sampling of different Art Deco-styled Publix stores, shown in approximate chronological order of opening. These photos are from a 1958 Publix brochure called "Personality of Publix" but shows stores of many vintages. Top to bottom, they are (1) Bartow, (2) the barebones Clermont store, (3) 225 N. Ft. Harrison Street, Clearwater, (4) 229 N. Orange Blossom Trail, Orlando, (5) 1065 S. Florida Ave., Lakeland, (6) 1118 S. Kuhl Ave., Orlando, (7) 801 S. Collins, Plant City, (8) 211 Edgewater Drive, Orlando, (9) 1720 16th St. North, St. Petersburg, with a very cool S&H sign, (10) 6001 Nebraska Ave., Tampa, a store that was completely rebuilt in 1995 and on which they retained the classic style , as seen in a new pic from Debra Jane Seltzer's incredible Roadside site - if only more companies would do that!, (11) Pinellas Shopping Center, Largo, (12) a wider view of the Massachusetts Ave. Lakeland store, nicknamed “The Masterpiece market of the 1950’s”, (13) Gandy Blvd., Tampa, (14) Central Plaza Shopping Center, 3340 Central Ave., St. Petersburg, (15) Ringling Shopping Center, Sarasota, (16) First Federal Shopping Center, 890 49th St. North, St. Petersburg, and (17) 5420 W. 9th St, St. Petersburg, now a Walgreens (and a t-shirt, thanks to Jack for the tip!)