While I’m on the subject of old street signage, there is also an amazing number of old painted advertisements that can be found in American cities. Sometimes and old house will fall to the wrecking ball and on the walls of the neighbors old advertisements suddenly see the light of the day. And then there [...]
Here are some more old signs that I pass almost daily in my neighborhood. Two of the four signs are for existing establishments, while two businesses are sadly no longer with us. The Food Fair Market is undergoing some major refurbishment and may not resurface as the same store and the Chop Suey must have [...]
We just saw Born into Brothels on DVD for the first time and we were both moved by the amazing story of these children and the energy that the photographer, Zana Briski, put into bettering the lives of the young inhabitants of the labyrinthine brothel in Calcutta. One result of Mrs. Briski’s efforts has been [...]
One thing that has always fascinated me about American cities is the abundance of old signage everywere. Wherever one goes, it will not take more than five minutes to find a vintage shop sign that hasn’t changed in fifty years. Here are a couple of recent examples from a walk around the Nob Hill and [...]
The Public Health Service Hospital in the Presidio is one of a very rare kind of buildings in San Francisco – an abandoned one. The city is so densely populated that a large, publicly owned building will find a new use very soon – but not so in this case. The hospital has been closed [...]
I just found a quarter in my wallet that has been coined in my birth year. Sure, I hear you saying, that happens to all of us… But did you notice that over the years everytime you find a coin as old as you, the coins look older and older? This quarter looks horribly scratched [...]
Michael Wolf has an amazing photo project on his site: 100×100 One hundred pictures of small single-room apartments in a Hong Kong public housing project. Each room is about 9 square meters or 100 square feet small and it is quite fascinating to see how different people have created a viable space to live in [...]
When a country loses its ability to take care of its people, when it loses the energy, the will and the means to help the needy and to take care of its infrastructure, then such a country is broken. When it ceases to function as a system of community-sponsored support, then it becomes a burden [...]
Time to warm up the blog again, after a loooong and unproductive break… So how about The Bird People in China? In case you (like me) have never heard of this movie before, do yourself a favor and rent it or buy it right now. This is quite possibly the highest ranked nearly unknown movie [...]
Bush was asked if his administration was planning for the possibility of a nuclear strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. “All options are on the table,” he said. Since the White House seems to have misplaced their only copy of the large-print history of the 20th century for pre-schoolers, here is a quick refresher on what [...]