It was supposed to snow three to five inches yesterday, and everyone was resigned to it.
But then it just . . . didn’t. There wasn’t any sign that it could. The hand was stayed. The sun came out and much of what covered the world over the weekend skulked into the ground, bled into the gutters. The forecasts say sixties next week. It’s over.
Etiam ac porta est, id finibus nibh. Donec laoreet ante ut pharetra hendrerit. Praesent nec purus sem. Vivamus tincidunt orci vestibulum, pellentesque arcu ac, ultrices nisi. Donec iaculis volutpat nisl ut mollis. Duis maximus turpis nec posuere dignissim. In euismod et massa eget malesuada.
We’re like the Munchkins coming out of our little huts after the witch is dead, without the Lollypop Guild - which, by the way, had a union connotation that sailed right over our heads when we were kids. Or perhaps a reference to a mutual-assistance society, with its female auxiliary in the form of the Lullabye League. All I know is that those Lollypop guys were some tough little SOBs. Had to crack a few heads if anyone wanted to sell Lollypops without the Guild’s approval.
Last weekend I went to the semi-annual Postcard Show. It was sad. There were few vendors and fewer customers, thanks to the blizzard. Managed to spend the usual allotment, though, so relax: it looks like I have enough postcards for 2019. It’s a silly thing to care about, but I do. This site’s postcard section isn’t the only one on the internet, but it might be the best. That’s something.
Many curious finds I had to buy. In a box of unloved portfolios - those linen-paper accordion-fold tourist souvenirs people sent to friends, or bought for themselves and never looked at again, keeping them the same way people keep a magnet they bought at an airport - there was a 1911 brochure of New York views. It had a magnificent panorama of the skyline.
You want a bigger version? Of course you do. Brace yourself. Click. Then click again, if you get a magnifying glass icon.
Now, for some1911-NYC-related fun: this video was sent by a few people who know what's up my alley, and in my wheelhouse, although there are no wheelhouses in alleys.
It's the added ambient sound that makes it. The corrected speed makes you realize how many people grew up thinking the past was ridiculously fast and herky-jerky. And the quality! It's astonishing.
Someone tweeted a suspicion that I was already taking screen snaps and finding locations.
Why, yes, I was. They're pretty easy.
It's the angled street that gives it away, and the building in the far left distance. Also helps if you've seen this in its less-impressive modern incarnation.
No one ruins New York like New Yorkers.
Another:
Again, not hard, if you figure the previous shot was taken from the same location. He just pointed the camera south.
Ah, but where is the photographer standing? Let's take another look:
Pre-Jazz-era skyscrapers are a mixed bag aesthetically, but always astonishing when you consider how big they could build back then. The buildong on the right is Napoleon LeBrun's Met Life tower. 1909.
Now:
It's amazing what you can get out of Google Earth. Anyway, the shooter's in the Flatiron.
Back to the postcard show: I couldn’t resist a picture of Marshall Field’s main floor a hundred years ago.
But here’s the real mystery. Someone came up and said if anyone in the room could identify this, I could. Hah! Nice. But no.
It’s a strange classical structure in the middle of nowhere. With a stage and seats. Like a war memorial with permanent seating for shows. But where?
Anyone know what this was?
As long as we're on the architecture matter, I posted a picture last week - I think - of a new "iconic" skyscraper going up on the Nicollet Hotel block. "Iconic" was the city's request, and what they got was boring. The design has since been changed.
Better. But almost anything would be.
Dope Fiends used to dress much better. Lance, in the second panel, looks like he's coming out of a three-day bender.
You're off the beam, Lawson! I have the feeling that all of these crooks were guys from around the Star-Tribune office.
This feature began with an account of the music cues for The Couple Next Door. Why not revisit the subject?
These were the most popularly used cues for the show's conclusions, and listening to them now reminds me of the days when I first discovered the show listened to it daily.
Three moods. You hope your meetings with people go like the first one; you fear the second is your theme song; you realize that the third is probably how life views you, with amused affection.
Instead of the swank old sounds of Goodwill albums, this year we're going to share bad 1960s pop music. The second- and third-tier tunes.
The opening music for every cheap youth-market 1967 movie.
PSA: here are mod trumpets to tell you to be a hip older sister
Well, well - another Friday. This one's going to be substandard, because I have to get up early on Saturday for the last of the orientation events for Daughter Removal Project. We'll probably find out where in Brazil she's going, and when. Middle of the summer, probably. It would be quite something if she left on her birthday. Two snips of the cord.
