A plaque remaining from the Big Apple Night Club at West 135th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem.

Above, a 1934 plaque from the Big Apple Night Club at West 135th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem. Discarded as trash in 2006. Now a Popeyes fast food restaurant on Google Maps.

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“Instead of ‘British Summer Time’ and ‘Greenwich Mean Time’ we should just call them ‘Oven Clock Correct Time’...” (3/28)
“Has anyone here ever drank a pint of tequila? I know it’s a long shot” (3/28)
“A pint of tequila? That’s a long shot” (3/28)
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Entry from December 22, 2010
“We’d all like to vote for the best man, but he’s never a candidate”

Kin Hubbard (1868-1930) drew the popular “Abe Martin Says” one-panel newspaper comic. Many sayings became widely quoted.
 
“We’d all like t’ vote fer th’ best man, but he’s never mixed up in politics” was first printed on December 6, 1913. In the compilation book Abe Martin’s Primer: The collected writings of Abe Martin and his Brown County, Indiana, neighbors (1914), this was changed slightly to become the saying: “We’d all like t’ vote fer th’ best man, but he’s never a candidate.”
 
   
Wikipedia: Kin Hubbard
Frank McKinney Hubbard (born 1 September 1868 in Bellefontaine, Ohio - died: 26 December 1930 in Indianapolis, Indiana) was an American cartoonist, humorist, and journalist better known by his pen name “Kin” Hubbard.
 
He was creator of the cartoon “Abe Martin of Brown County” which ran in U.S. newspapers from 1904 until his death in 1930, and was the originator of many political quips that remain in use. North American humorist Will Rogers reportedly declared Kin to be “America’s greatest humorist.”
 
Wikiquote: Kin Hubbard
Frank McKinney Hubbard (1 September 1868 - 26 December 1930) was an American cartoonist, humorist, and journalist.
 
Sourced
We’d all like t’vote fer th’ best man, but he’s never a candidate.
. The Best of Kin Hubbard (1984) Variant: We’d all like to vote for the best man but he’s never a candidate.
     
Google News Archive
6 December 1913, Spartanburg (SC) Herald, pg. 8, col. 3:
ABE MARTIN SAYS
It seems like th’ greater a feller is th’ worse his clothes fit. We’d all like t’ vote fer th’ best man, but he’s never mixed up in politics.
   
Google Books
Abe Martin’s Primer:
The collected writings of Abe Martin and his Brown County, Indiana, neighbors

By Kin Hubbard
La Vergne, TN: Lightning Source Inc.
1914      
Pg. ?:
We’d all like t’ vote fer th’ best man, but he’s never a candidate.
 
Google Books
The Best of Kin Hubbard:
Abe Martin’s sayings and wisecracks, Abe’s neighbors, his almanack, comic drawings

Edited by David S. Hawes
Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press
1995, ©1984
Pg. 14:
Politics and politicians frequently take their lumps in Abe’s sayings:
(...)
We’d all like t’ vote fer th’ best man, but he’s never a candidate.

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