Freeport: it’s Pretzel City! All 26K residents are famous for making and consuming pretzels.

No; it’s just a nod to its German history, I gather. Let’s see how German - or twisty - it is.

Ah, small-town America. Could be 1955! Except for the 70s touches and the curb cuts.

Like so many of these Google Street View pictures, it has a certain "Omega Man" quality to it. Where is everyone?

A delightful building, complete with a third-floor apartment for the German equivalent of the Little People. But . . .

 

. . . that hard octopus tentacle is a bit unnerving. Or it’s a light mast infested by barnacles.

 

That’s unchanged from its teens / 20s incarnation, right down to the stones.

 

The mast has a plaque? It’s historic?

“He did five windows in one day, ran out of paint, said he’d be back the next morning. That was 22 years ago.”

 

You wonder if everyone who sits on the bench doesn’t dematerialize into vapor that's sucked up by the pipes, or something.

 

What the hell did they do to that building? Did they paint it white to make the disparate parts mesh? If so, it works.

Full-on Buckaroo Revival, complete with a 70s fave: angled wood.

 

It would be nice if someone would sandblast the bricks.

 

Geologists, by reading the sedimentary layers, can determine the age of a formation.

 

It collides with this structure, another beneficiary of 1950s storefront renovation:

 

There’s a ghost.

 

Hmm. Shelkin? Sheklin Opiates?

I’ve looked through old papers from the 30s, 40s, 50s - can’t find an ad. No idea.

So “Your First Choice in Freeport” probably wasn’t the slogan:

 

Finally: The State, looking like a robot baring its teeth.

That’s just the start. Next week: everything that changes any impression you got today.

 

That'll do, I hope. Motels await - see you tomorrow.