This struggle is best illustrated by the unlikely figure who created the side’s only ‘big chance’ of the game.
Goalkeeper Altay Bayindir was the only player to create such a chance, through his repeated use of long balls into the opponents’ half.
That chance came when a long ball from the Turk fell at Matheus Cunha’s feet, but Bernd Leno pulled off a smart save to tip the ball around the post with the Brazilian through on goal.
Fans of the club and neutrals alike were quick to comment on the bizarre statistic.
One X user derided the club, commenting: “When your GK is the playmaker, just know it’s peak banter era.”
Another user piled into the fray on social media, saying: “After spending over 200m on attackers they still need a goalie to create a chance.”
For most people, memories of childhood coughs and colds are synonymous with a menthol-smelling ointment in a dark blue jar with a turquoise cap.
For more than a century, Vicks VapoRub has been a household name across continents. How it became one has roots in the Spanish flu pandemic in the early 20th century.
The story begins with an act of fatherly love.
In 1894 in the state of North Carolina in the eastern United States, the nine-year-old son of a pharmacist named Lunsford Richardson was sick with croup, a respiratory infection that causes a bark-like cough.
Desperate to find a treatment, Richardson began testing out mixtures of aromatic oils and chemicals at his pharmacy and produced an ointment that helped his son.
But this was not Vicks VapoRub – at least not yet.
Seeing that his ointment had worked for his son, Richardson started to sell it for 25 cents a jar. The strong-smelling product consisted of menthol, camphor, eucalyptus and several other oils blended together in a petroleum jelly base. The ointment helped open blocked noses, and when rubbed on the chest, the vapour soothed a cough.
Richardson initially named his concoction Vick’s Croup & Pneumonia Salve. An enthusiastic gardener, he thought of the name after seeing an advertisement for seeds of the Vicks plant, whose leaves smell like menthol when crushed. He also borrowed the name from his brother-in-law, Dr Joshua Vick, a trusted doctor in their town of Greensboro. He felt “Vick” was “short, easy to remember and looked good on a label”.
An old glass bottle of Vicks VapoRub [Courtesy of Ella Moran]
‘Magic’ salve to VapoRub
In 1911, 17 years after the salve was created, Richardson’s son Henry Smith, the one who once suffered from croup, was steering the family business. He renamed the product Vick’s Vaporub Salve from Vick’s Magic Croup Salve, the name under which it had been sold since 1905. That year, the packaging was also changed from transparent glass to the distinctive cobalt blue.
By then, Richardson had also created 21 remedies for various ailments, including Vick’s Little Liver Pills for “constipation and torpid liver”; Turtle Oil Liniment for “sprains, sores and rheumatism”; Tar Heel Sarsaparilla to purify “bad blood”; and Grippe Knockers for the flu. They were sold under the Vick’s Family Remedies company, which he set up in 1905. But none sold as well as the original salve.
So in 1911, Henry discontinued all the other products, renamed the business Vick Chemical Company and began focusing solely on marketing and distributing their signature product. The company began distributing large quantities of free samples while salesmen posted advertisements on streetcars and visited pharmacists, urging them to try the product.
Influenza patients in the Oakland Municipal Auditorium, which was used as a temporary hospital in 1918 [Edward A “Doc” Rogers/Library of Congress via AP]
Marketing during the Spanish flu
Seven years later in 1918, the deadliest pandemic in modern history tore across the world. The Spanish flu claimed the lives of 50 million people – more than eight times the number of COVID-19 deaths.
This was when Vick’s VapoRub sales began to soar.
“Its closest rival was Ely’s Creme Balm … something of a copycat product but doesn’t seem to have had the same cachet,” explained Catharine Arnold, author of the book Pandemic 1918.
She added that there were other remedies for respiratory ailments, including coughs, colds and the flu, such as Hale’s Honey of Horehound and Tar. Some products did not stand the test of time, such as “vaporisers”, similar to modern nebulisers, and throat lozenges such as Formamint. It contained the chemical formaldehyde, which is toxic in large amounts.
However, a marketing campaign led by Smith took the Vicks brand onto the global stage.
When the pandemic hit, the company produced a series of six ads. Rather than solely promote Vick’s VapoRub, the series focused on raising awareness about the Spanish flu and included information about symptoms, treatment and tips to avoid getting sick. It urged people not to panic and conveyed that the brand cared about people’s wellbeing at a bleak time. The flu was just another variation of an influenza that strikes every century and is caused by germs that attack the nose, throat and bronchial tubes, the ads said. Vick’s VapoRub would “throw off the grippe germs” and make it easier to breathe, they said.
Years later, the accuracy of this content came under criticism. Still, “at the time, this advertisement must have seemed reassuring, telling readers it was just the same old flu, only, of course, it wasn’t,” Arnold said.
“Spanish flu was an atypical autoimmune virus which attacked the youngest and fittest and caused unusual reactions, such as violent haemorrhaging and the notorious heliotrope cyanosis when people’s skin turned blue.”
However, the advice in the advertisements to rest and stay in bed was “sensible”, she added, because the virus was spread through human contact.
In November 1918, a nurse takes the pulse of a patient in the influenza ward of the Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, DC, during the pandemic [Harris & Ewing/Library of Congress via AP]
Becoming a household name
Sales skyrocketed, and in October 1918 – seven months after the outbreak of the pandemic – Vick Chemical Company informed pharmacists that huge demand had wiped out its excess stocks. Supplies expected to last four months had run out in three weeks.
Newspaper notices published at that time showed the company had received orders for 1.75 million VapoRub jars in a single week, and the daily turnover of the business was about $186,492. The jars came in three sizes costing 30 cents, 60 cents and $1.20.
“Big shipments are en route to jobbers [wholesalers] by freight and express. Until these arrive, there may be a temporary shortage. All deals postponed. Buy in small lots only,” one notice read.
The company informed the public that it was working day and night to catch up with demand. The orders received were twice the company’s daily output, and by November 1918, the firm said its factory was running 23.5 hours daily to produce 1.08 million jars weekly.
The product gained worldwide popularity during the pandemic, and according to company data, VapoRub sales grew from $900,000 to $2.9m from 1918 to 1919.
Afterwards, Vick Chemical Company continued to market its product in novel ways. It sent millions of free samples to mailboxes and in 1924 published a 15-page advertisement in the form of a children’s book called The Story of Blix and Blee. The story, written in rhyming verses, was about two elves named Blix and Blee who lived in an empty Vicks VapoRub jar beneath an old jujube tree. One night, they rushed to the rescue of a sick child, little Dickie. The elves convinced the child, who was refusing to take the medicine given by his mother, to use Vicks VapoRub to soothe his cough so he could sleep.
More than 130 years later, Vicks VapoRub is sold in about 70 countries on five continents with more than 3.78 million litres (more than 1 million gallons) of it produced annually. From 2011 to 2016 alone, there were more than a billion units sold worldwide, according to its owner Procter and Gamble.
For Arnold, Vicks VapoRub is part of an American childhood.
“Generations of us grew up with that familiar waxy menthol compound, robes and pyjamas redolent of Vicks during flu season,” she said. “That familiar blue and green label is as much of an American cultural icon as Coca-Cola or Campbell’s soup.”
This article is part of Ordinary Items, Extraordinary Stories, a series about the surprising stories behind well-known items.
Adam Aleksic has somehow managed to make linguistics cool. His rapid-fire videos have attracted an audience of millions across the social media universe.
An exclusive look at what we’re reading, book club events and our latest author interviews.
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A Harvard graduate with a linguistics degree, he has now published a book called “Algospeak: How Social Media Is Transforming the Future of Language,” which explores in depth some of his more fanciful and fascinating theories. We chatted with Aleksic about edutainment, brainrot and President Trump as influencer in chief.
(Please note: The Times may earn a commission through links to Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores.)
✍️ Author Chat
Author Adam Aleksic
(Adam Aleksic)
Did you get into linguistics because you wanted to explore online language?
I don’t think you can actually hope to fully be caught up with online language itself, as it’s mutating by the minute. The book is more of a road map of the general patterns we’re seeing. I personally got interested in etymology in ninth grade. I didn’t know I would be going into internet linguistics.
How do algorithms shape and change language on the web?
You can’t avoid talking about algorithms if you’re talking about modern language change. I’m looking at my own videos thinking, “Wow, I can’t say this specific word because of the algorithm. I have to say it another way.”
I use the example of the word “unalive” as a replacement for “kill.” That developed in English-language mental health spaces to circumvent platform community guidelines that were enforced by an algorithm used by Chinese government, which was then retooled for TikTok. Suddenly, “unalive” was all over the internet. Algorithms are creating new words.
In the book, you talk about context collapse, the notion that effective videos are designed to appear as if they are addressed directly to the user, even though they are, in fact, bringing in disparate users to a single focal point.
When you’re looking at a video on your For You page, you really think it’s for you. But it never is.
As a creator, I never think about individual people. I think about what’s going to go viral, but also, what do I want to make? I make the video first for myself, then I make it for the algorithm. Never do I consider the actual people that end up seeing the video.
Your phone is an extension of yourself. You perceive a message coming from your algorithmic version of yourself. The algorithm doesn’t actually align who my intended audience might be with who the actual audience is. It just sends my video to whatever makes the most money.
What about brainrot — the notion that the internet is damaging young people’s ability to think and reason. Does this apply to online language?
I think there’s no such thing as “brainrot” with words. They’ve done neurological studies. No word is worse for your brain than other words. Now, the other stuff, culturally, is another conversation. It probably is bad that these platforms are monopolizing our attention to sell us things. So I can say, linguistically, we’re fine.
Do you think the internet makes us smarter?
It’s an interesting question. What is “smarter”? I know that’s a hard thing to define. I think like with any tool, it can be true. Every tool has good and bad, right?
You talk about rage-baiting and hyperbole, or hype, as a tool to gain virality online. Our president is quite proficient at this tactic.
I think Trump’s language uniquely lends itself to virality. He has these phrasal templates, like “Make X Y Again,” or “This has been the greatest X in the history of Y.” People use his sentence structures as these skeletons, which they can remix. He coined “sad” as an interjection, which I regularly see my friends using. I don’t know how much of it is intentional. Maybe he just stumbled into it. But the fact of the matter is, I think we have Trump in office because he is uniquely suited to the internet.
📰 The Week(s) in Books
Anna Wintour, longtime Vogue editor and chair of the Met Gala, recently announced that she would be stepping back from some of her duties at the iconic Condé Nast magazine.
Hamilton Cain calls “The Aviator and the Showman,” Laurie Gwen Shapiro’s joint biography of Amelia Earhart and her husband, “a vibrant account of the courtship and union of the famous pilot and her publisher husband whose intrusive management of his wife’s career may have cost her life.”
According to Ilana Massad, Kashana Cauley’s novel “The Payback,” a satire about student loans, of all things, is a “terrifically fun book that made me laugh out loud at least once every chapter.”
Valorie Castellanos Clark thinks fan fiction writer turned novelist Brigette Knightley’s debut novel “The Irresistible Urge to Fall for Your Enemy” is “proof positive that writing fan fiction is an excellent training ground for building a novel.”
📖 Bookstore Faves
Hennessy + Ingalls bookstore serves those with a taste for the visual.
(Hennessy + Ingalls)
Today we are chatting with Carlos Chavez, a bookseller at Hennessey + Ingalls, a sprawling space in downtown L.A. that specializes in books about art, architecture, graphic design and all things visual.
What’s selling right now?
Because we are a speciality bookstore, sales are really across the board. Everyday it can be something different. Someone came in yesterday and bought a bunch of books featuring art from the painter and sculptor Claes Odenberg, for example. We also sell a lot of books on industrial design, and fashion designers have been buying books about shoes. The other day a prop designer came in and purchased books with red covers. It’s a mixed bag.
Art books can be very expensive. Why do you think there is still a market for them, despite the plenitude of images online?
There are still plenty of book lovers who want to hold a book, and they want to see it before they buy it. For many of our customers, books are a great source of artistic inspiration of the kind you just can’t find online. This is the kind of store where customers are free to linger for hours if they want to.
There has been a lot of social unrest downtown this year. How is the store coping?
Business has been up and down. Some days are better than others. I think people were scared to come out, but yesterday was a good day, for example.
Weathered and bumpy, the wall hidden among the surplus clothing stores of the Fashion District was hardly the perfect canvas.
But artist Sloe Motions’ vision for the memorial mural in honor of Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gianna following their deaths in 2020 brought the stretch of Main and 14th streets to life with vibrant hues of purple and gold.
One of the most well-known Kobe murals across Southern California, the art piece — outside Jimmy Jam T-Shirts — was the backdrop for a commercial for Super Bowl LVI featuring Vanessa Bryant and has drawn fans from near and far.
For years, the mural remained untouched — an unspoken mark of respect for the artist and the subject but one that abruptly ended this year.
In late March, someone tagged the artwork with large bubble letters outlined in black and filled in with white — a similar style to other street tagging visible across the city.
Sloe Motions went back to work, painstakingly restoring the mural. There was much fanfare in downtown when the new mural made its debut in late May. But within a few days, it was again defaced. The artist is disappointed but vows to restore it once again — this time in a new location.
“This one has a lot of meaning to it, so it hurts me that people would do something like this where they’re disrespecting the Bryant family. It just exposes these people’s demons,” Sloe Motions said.
Graffiti has long been an element of Los Angeles life, and residents of downtown are used to tags as part of the landscape. This is, after all, the place where taggers coated the unfinished Oceanwide Plaza high-rise complex with graffiti, generating international attention and debate about the line between art and vandalism.
But the treatment of the Kobe tribute surprised Sloe Motions.
“This isn’t just another Kobe mural. It’s a memorial,” he said.
Street art has long been a part of the culture of Los Angeles, where murals — sanctioned and unsanctioned — and graffiti harmoniously share canvas space. Some abide by the unwritten code that you don’t cover someone else’s art. Others take a more autonomous approach, creating what they want where they want.
“Great cities have great public art,” said Wyland, a Laguna Beach-based artist who has painted murals across the world. “This Kobe mural, it’s become part of the fabric of Los Angeles. And for someone to come in and destroy it like that doesn’t make any sense.”
Los Angeles is known as a city of murals — some of which remain respectfully untouched for years, while others like the Kobe memorial are a seemingly irresistible target for taggers. There was a time when some property owners believed hiring the right muralist to grace your walls — or including a portrait of the Virgen de Guadalupe — could keep taggers away. But not anymore.
In many ways downtown Los Angeles is the perfect gallery for viewing street art, turning nondescript buildings into colorful canvases that tell the story of the region.
Ife Ewing, co-owner of Jimmy Jam T-Shirts, says street art has changed in the 13 years her business has been housed on Main Street.
James Ewing, co-owner of Jimmy Jam T-Shirts, looks at a mural Wednesday of Kobe and Gianna Bryant that has been vandalized again on the side of the business at 14th and Main streets.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
“Before, it was isolated to designated areas,” she said. “It’s a different breed of artists now. They have no respect for business owners, property owners. It’s disrespectful. You have to call it what it is, it’s just disrespect.”
Sloe Motions is far from the only muralist to feel burned.
Judy Baca’s famed mural of a female Olympic runner is beloved, even though it has been hit by taggers in the past. Then in 2019, the mural — part of the 1984 Olympics art movement — was mysterious whitewashed, sparking outrage. Metro eventually admitted one of its graffiti abatement contractors had covered the mural and vowed to restore it.
“They would rather paint on the mural than see even a mark of graffiti on the mural,” Baca said at the time.
The latest vandalism to Bryant’s mural felt like another blow to the area.
A post on June 3 from the DTLA Insider Instagram account summed up the situation simply: “We really can’t have nice things.”
The mural image is a spin on a photograph capturing a sweet moment during the 2008 NBA Finals when the Lakers legend — a proud “girl dad” — leans down and kisses the side of his smiling toddler’s head as he cradles her in his arm during a news conference.
Sloe Motions was drawn to the emotion in the photograph — the purity of a father’s love and a daughter’s admiration for her hero. It was captured years before Gigi started playing basketball, showing off her own version of her dad’s envied fadeaway jumper.
Next to them, the words “Mambas Forever” with an infinity symbol are painted in purple and gold.
Bryant, 41, and 13-year-old Gigi, along with seven others — John Altobelli, 56; Keri Altobelli, 46; Alyssa Altobelli, 13; Christina Mauser, 38, Sarah Chester, 45; Payton Chester, 13; and pilot Ara Zobayan, 50 — died Jan. 26, 2020, when the helicopter Zobayan was flying crashed in the hills of Calabasas.
After the initial vandalism in late March, Sloe Motions had sought donations to help cover the cost of restoring the mural in the current location, hoping to preserve the spot for the Bryant family.
“There’s just a lot of meaning at that wall,” he said.
Lakers star Luka Doncic’s foundation quickly jumped into action, donating $5,000, the full amount needed, to a fundraiser to help restore the art piece.
In late May, Sloe Motions posted on Instagram that the mural was finally finished. He’d added a few additional touches, painting the No. 8 on Gigi’s jersey, an homage to the number that Kobe wore for the first 10 seasons of his career.
A week later, the new details were still visible but under the scrawl of white paint.
On June 4, television news cameras were positioned near the mural, and passersby stopped to assess the damage. A jumble of bright white paint cut across the image, and heavy white dots covered Kobe’s and Gigi’s eyes.
“This time, they really went heavy,” Sergio Bautista, 35, said as he stood in front of the mural. “It’s sad to see.”
Sky Hendrix, who was in the area filming a music video with a friend, expressed his disbelief.
“That’s disrespecting the dead,” Hendrix said as he took in the scene. “Who would do that? He’s the GOAT and she’s just a little girl.”
Despite the vandalism, Sloe Motions showed no real sign of anger as he talked about the future of the art piece somewhere else where more people could view and appreciate it. He said he sent “prayers” to the people who vandalized his work.
“Nothing’s forever, and that’s the beauty of this stuff,” Sloe Motions said. “Some stuff could last a minute, some stuff could last a day, some stuff could last years.”
Times photographer Genaro Molina contributed to this report.
No, it wasn’t the sound of distorted guitars, punk rockers puking or Nazis getting punched in the face. Though there was plenty of all of that.
It was the buzz surrounding FLAG, the most talked about band at the annual bowling tournament and music festival, now in its 25th year.
FLAG is the hardcore supergroup composed of four former members of Black Flag — Keith Morris, Chuck Dukowski, Dez Cadena, and Bill Stevenson — and Stephen Egerton, Stevenson’s longtime bandmate in the Descendents.
It had been six years since the last FLAG gig, which was also at Punk Rock Bowling. But this was more than a reunion show. It felt like history in the making.
It started Saturday with a panel discussion led by Fat Mike of NOFX at the Punk Rock Museum. Surrounded by photos of their younger selves taken by the late Naomi Petersen, all five members answered questions from Fat Mike, who introduced FLAG as “the best version of Black Flag I’ve ever seen.”
Fat Mike asked each participant to name their favorite album or song, which became something of a referendum on the band’s volatility on and off the stage, with musicians cycling in and out of the band. For instance, Henry Rollins, the band’s best-known vocalist, was Black Flag’s fourth singer.
“When people say, ‘Oh, Henry is my favorite. Ron [Reyes] was my favorite,’” Cadena said, “usually, that’s the first gig that they saw.”
“Why is it a contest?” Morris asked. “Each one of us contributed in the way we contributed. We each had our own personality.”
Keith Morris and Stephen Egerton of FLAG speaking about the band at the Punk Rock Museum.
(Rob Coons)
That those personalities frequently clashed with the band’s enigmatic guitarist and songwriter Greg Ginn is the story of Black Flag. Extreme music attracts extreme people. What’s unusual about these clashes is that they continued long after Ginn pulled the plug on his own band in 1986.
For instance, in June 2003, Rollins and Morris played Black Flag songs together — just not at the same time, Morris clarified during the panel — to raise money and awareness for the West Memphis 3.
It’s probably not a coincidence that later that summer, Ginn put together a Black Flag reunion of sorts at the Hollywood Palladium. The problem?
It featured musicians who’d never been in the band and they played along to prerecorded bass tracks. The shambolic set wasn’t well-received. These shows were also a benefit — for cats — launching a veritable cottage industry of CAT FLAG T-shirts.
Keith Morris, from left, Stephen Egerton, Bill Stevenson, Fat Mike, Dez Cadena and Chuck Dukowski gather to discuss FLAG’s reunion at the Punk Rock Museum over Memorial Day weekend prior to their set at the Punk Rock Bowling festival.
(Rob Coons)
In December 2011, Morris, Dukowski, Stevenson and Egerton played together for the first time at the Goldenvoice 30th anniversary show at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, where they were introduced as “Black Flag.”
The old friends had such a blast playing together, they decided to keep it going. Cadena was added to the mix and they played Black Flag songs under the banner of FLAG. The coming-out party for this lineup was an incendiary set at the Moose Lodge in Redondo Beach in April 2012.
Again, it’s probably not a coincidence that Ginn subsequently “reunited” Black Flag and initiated all kinds of legal activity against his former bandmates. At the heart of the issue was who could use the names FLAG and Black Flag. At the end of the day, the courts ruled that FLAG could continue.
Mike Magrann, vocalist and guitarist for L.A. punk band Channel 3, saw both bands play that year.
“It was puzzling,” Magrann said of Black Flag’s set, “because they weren’t honoring their legacy. When FLAG played, they played those songs the way they sounded back then. It brought back that feeling of being a kid on the side of the pit. The real threat of violence is right there. It was unbelievable!”
That ineffable feeling of danger is what drew so many people to FLAG’s Memorial Day performance. Fans came from all over the world just to see the show. Joey Cape of Lagwagon wrapped up a solo tour in Japan and flew directly to Punk Rock Bowling.
Like Cape and Magrann, some of the most hardcore fans were musicians who’d been inspired by Black Flag when they were young. David O. Jones of Carnage Asada drove in from L.A. with Martin Wong, who organized Save Music in Chinatown, and Martin’s daughter, Eloise Wong of the Linda Lindas. They returned to L.A. immediately after the show because Eloise, who is a junior in high school, had a physics test the following morning.
FLAG made it worth the trip. The band ripped through 22 songs, starting with “Revenge” and mixing crowd favorites like “My War” with deep cuts such as “Clocked-In.” Morris held the microphone with both hands like he was blowing on a bugle and urging the crowd to charge.
It was easily the rowdiest pit of the festival, and it swelled to nearly the length of the stage with a steady stream of crowd surfers being passed over the barricade: old men, young women and even small children. During songs like “Gimme Gimme Gimme,” “Wasted” and “Nervous Breakdown,” the roar from the crowd was almost as loud as the band.
There wasn’t any banter from the usually loquacious Morris. Toward the end of the show, he simply said, “Thank you for your participation,” and launched into the next song.
FLAG performs at the 25th Annual Punk Rock Bowling and Music Festival in Las Vegas on May 26, 2025.
(Courtney Ware)
After the obligatory performance of “Louie Louie” at the end of the set, the players took their instruments off the stage and were gone. Fans young and old looked at each other in disbelief, their lives changed, their DNA forever altered by punk rock.
FLAG had done it again. They played the songs the way they were meant to be played. They honored their legacy.
It will be a tough act for Black Flag to follow. In recent years, Black Flag has been much more active. Inevitably, that means more changes to the lineup. Earlier in May, Ginn announced Black Flag will be touring Europe this summer with three new members: all of them young musicians, including a young woman named Max Zanelly as the new vocalist.
Once again, the internet flooded with Black Flag memes keying on the considerable age gap between Ginn, who is 70, and his new bandmates who look many decades, if not generations, younger. Wong, who knows something about the power of young musicians to change the world, is hopeful.
“Everyone wins when there’s more good music in the world,” Wong said. “In a perfect world, the new Black Flag lineup will get Ginn stoked on music and push him forward. But if that doesn’t happen, we get FLAG, the best Black Flag lineup that never happened.”
While Black Flag prepares for its new chapter, is this the end of the road for FLAG?
“I don’t know,” Stevenson said after the panel at the Punk Rock Museum. “We always have fun when we get together. You can tell we love each other. I’m sure we’ll do more. At some point, one of us will be too old to do it, but so far that’s not the case.”
Jim Ruland is the author of the L.A. Times bestselling book “Corporate Rock Sucks: The Rise & Fall of SST Records” and a weekly Substack about books, music, and books about music called Message from the Underworld.
