what about the plastic animals?

The View From Weeping Rock

Just checking in while I'm doing laundry.

Go away spammers

What's the deal with the comment spam whenever I leave the site alone for a few days?

Confined Space

Time for a trip to confined and unconfined spaces.  Be back in a couple of weeks.

More from the William Ann

The comments from Marie and Dane about the beds in the William Ann reminded me of the story I meant to tell yesterday.

Many years ago I was taking a trip from Saginaw to Albuquerque.  Kansas City seemed like a good place to stop as I could eat at Arthur Bryant's BBQ and take in a Royals game.  I got lucky in that there was a Drury Inn right across the interstate from the Kauffman Stadium.

I walked into the office and the woman behind the desk is staring out into space and there is drool running from her lip to the desktop.  When she finally noticed me she was mortified.  I'm told there is only one non-smoking room left.  I take the room because the place is so convenient to the stadium.  The woman hands me the key and says the bed is on the right when I enter the room.

The bed is on the right?  That's a little strange.  How hard can it be to find a bed in a motel room? 

I go to the room, open the door, and step inside.  There's a wall to the right but no bed.  To my left is an unstocked bar.  Down the hallway, in the room, there are two bathrooms.  There's a full kitchen, a conference table that seats twelve and a smaller table.  No bed that I could see.

At this point I'm totally confused.  Why was I given the conference room?  Where was the bed?  I went back to the office to inquire about the location of the bed.  Seeing the confused look on my face the formerly drooling woman comes down to the room to find the bed.  In my initial visit, overwhelmed by the bar, kitchen and conference table, I had not noticed that the wall to the right was only half a wall.  Hidden away behind the half-wall was the bed.

That was by far the largest motel room I've ever stayed in.  Arthur Bryant's was delicious and filling.  See their short movie, Don't Forget My Fries for a glimpse of the awesomeness.  The baseball game was awful.  The Twins beat the Royals 11-1.  Johnny Damon played for the Royals but all I remember from the game was the Royals starting pitcher getting shelled and the guy sitting in front of me going on and on about how much he liked "that 'Butterfly Kisses' song".

Be Like Barbara

Did Barbara Kruger work on the window advertisement for Ariel West, or did someone really want to Design Like Barbara?

At the William Ann

This was most of my room at the William Ann Motel in Gallipolis.  Three double beds and acres of wood.

Blue Hills

Out of ideas tonight, so I beseech you to enjoy this Arthur Dove-esque close-up of a mural in Prospect Heights.

Obama in Harlem

Here's a couple of new Barack Obama sightings in Harlem.  The mural is toward the northern end of Frederick Douglass Blvd.  I first saw it on Flickr a few weeks ago and had to get a picture for myself.  I forget what the fried chicken place on St. Nicholas just south of 116th St. used to be called, but I noticed yesterday that it has been renamed Obama Fried Chicken, joining the other presidential fried chicken emporia.

The Dave Clark 5 in Harlem

The renovations to the building where the tire shop used to be at 117th and Frederick Douglass Blvd. have uncovered fragments of three old posters.  The yellow poster on the left is for a supreme court judge election in Manhattan and the Bronx.  There's not enough remaining of the blue poster to tell what it is about.

The Paramount Theatre, in the truly fabulous Art Deco Paramount Building, closed on August 4th, 1964.  Murray the K was on WINS-AM (now the all-news 1010 WINS), from 1958 until December 1964.  I couldn't find concert dates for the Dave Clark 5.  However, I found that they played the Ed Sullivan show three times in 1964 before the Paramount closed:  March 8th, March 15th and May 31st.  That would make these posters almost exactly 45 years old.  Check 'em out before they disappear for good.

Update:  A commenter on the Gothamist posting knew that the blue poster was a Johnson, Humphrey, Kennedy (Robert), campaign poster like this button.

Gallipolis Gets the Shaft

One of the odder memorials I've ever seen was on the town green in Gallipolis.  High on top of the marble monument is the broken rocker shaft for the John Porter, a steamer that brought barges, and a yellow fever epidemic, up from New Orleans.  Here's an article about the John Porter from the September 12, 1878 edition of the New York Times:

The way the monument is designed, with the shaft getting prominence of place, it looks a celebration of the John Porter rather than a memorial to the tugboat's victims.  There's a bronze plaque listing some of the victims attached to the river side of the monument, but it almost seems like it was bolted on at a later date.