Hayward

We should have a "What are you listening to RIGHT NOW" thread. Unless that already exists somewhere. Lupe Fiasco's Food and Liquor. The last song "Outro" is perfect when cruising up Lake Shore Drive in Chicago at night. Will last you the whole way.

Nice! Those night shots are great.

Nice photos!

Excellent pictures. Heh, you try running into the wall at 9-3/4? Just look at the life in those stations. Its a shame that the majority of Americans miss this experience. The ability to socialize or be around different people. I think deep down, almost all Americans would like to see mass transit that they can have easy access to. The thing is, we have very high expectations... that it be affordable, effiicient, clean, and fast. If an American city has trains, they are usually lacking in some ways in those categories, and thus don't have high ridership. Yet in Europe, Americans embrace mass transit because it excels in those catgories.

It's probably that David. I was at the bar the other day in my hometown, and they had this great sound system out on the patio and played "Buy u a drank" and "I'm a flirt." I normally don't like those songs, but the sound system and the alcohol made them sound great. Otherwise, coming out of my cars crappy speakers on the way to work drives me crazy. The worse was that song with Gwen Stefani and Akon. I got that song from my friend way back in October before it was even officially released. We played it at our parties a few times and no one knew what the hell that song was. By December we were sick of it. By February it was on the damn radio playing every hour. And it's still playing!!! Make that song go away!!

Well congrats Cleveland. You guys definitely had the talent and determination to pull off winning this series. Just please destroy San Antonio in the finals. If there is one team I can't stand, it's the Spurs. BTW, I was just looking at tickets prices. $500 for 1 freakin seat! Three years ago the season the Pistons won the championship, I went to two games for just $25 each. Talk about ticket inflation or somethin.?

Mine is the album cover for the Tipping Point by the Roots. They've had another album since, but resized down to 100 x 100, the other album covers wouldn't look like much. Original File:

I really need a dose of fresh music at this point. There past few months for me I've been running through old playlists. Looks like I'm going to have fire up Pandora.com and rip the music onto my computer at work again. So yeah, no favorites, though I do HATE that song by Huey. "Buy u a drank" is terriblbe too. And yes I love hip hop as well.

I'll have tickets assuming I buy another season for 2008! Another state rival? nahhh I assume you'll be making the short trip up to Annarbour for that game C-dawg?

\- sigh -

Here's a few photos of the building I took if anyone is interested. The pano was taken on my second visit. These photos are from 2 and half years ago, that means the building is in even worse condition. Someone also stole the entire copper roof. We could see the theft in progress, but it's Detroit where apparently people can get away with stealing a couple tons of copper. However, the Lions heads that were stolen from this building were removed from a new condo project in Chicago and brought back to Detroit. I have mixed opinions on this. They were better off in Chicago. In Detroit they would have been vandalized, or if saved, thrown in storage forever only to be forgotten about. Or in the worse case, they would have been lost if this building is demoed. At least they had a place for a century to follow. Side: Front: Sub-basement corridor (entry used to be through a ground hatch down the street, which is now sealed) Lobby Grand Living Room: Corridor with intact ceiling Destroyed Apartment Gap where masonry spandrels were stolen Damaged walls where plumbing was stolen More Damage: Hood Without Flash With Flash It's important to note that when this photo was taken in 2005, the building had only closed 10 years earlier! Technically, most buildings wouldn't see a significant amount of damage due to neglect unless all the windows were removed like this one. The stairwells lack railings because they were burned by the homeless Rooftop penthouse where the floor is covered in aspergillus mold. Something you might not want to breath in. Fortunately there is no asbestos in this building ColDayMan! :-D The roof that was stolen Rooftop New Center Downtown:

That's odd that a new HVAC system would be the difficult to outfit in this building. I've been working on renovations to old schools for the past couple of years at the architecture firm I work for. What we typically end up doing is dropping the hall ceilings for ductwork and other conduit and replace them with a drop ceiling (which sucks, but it's a good trade off). This allows the classrooms to maintain their ceiling height. In some instances we bring small exposed ductwork into the classrooms. Usually classrooms near the center of the building, or near the ends are sized down to allow space for chases to pass through. Usually we just make the classrooms offices if they end up being too small. You can never have enough offices in a school. I'm having a tough time buying the whole tear down and rebuild is cheaper from the school officials. We've outfitted some of the most impossible schools with new communications equipment HVAC and new wiring that didn't require a massive overhaul on several buildings. At the same time, we ripped out drop ceilings in classrooms and installed full height windows that were energy efficient and matched the identical architecture of the building during it's completion. I think this is more about a school with a bad layout, high maintenance costs, and aging appearance. The ideas of what should be saved and what should not vary city to city, school board to school board. For example, my hometown of Saginaw is slowly replacing all the older schools which are quite beautiful. There are the same excuses, although these aging structures sit in the middle of blight and abandonment. Sometimes I think they want to erase the idea of the building being a ghetto intercity school, and rebuild a bright new shiny structure on the site that casts an aura of improvement over the neighborhood. On the other hand, nearby Bay City is preserving all of its older buildings, even if the expenses are high. They value the history and beauty behind them. Therefore, they are restoring the exterior, upgrading HVAC systems, and improving classrooms, and additions all match the original architecture... not some crappy tacked on POS that so many firms today still do. I'd be interested to see what Ironton puts up. It can't be any different from the 3 story faux historical building that replaced my old classical elementary school this year.

Ugh.... those two buildings in the warehouse district. Really, I love them. But I had to deal with the site behind them for my fall semester architecture project. After awhile you get sick of dealing with the same site. I had a lasercut model of those two buildings. There comes a time in every architecture student's life where you have throw some stuff out. So smashed the above two buildings. Take that!

:x

Here's a crazy photoshopped image of me

:x

I checked out the Getty Villa last year. Your photos really captured the beauty. I'm still kicking myself for not allowing more space on my flash card for this place.

It is always painfull when a small town loses one of their more historical and notable buildings downtown. I remember what a loss it was to lose the central block of Hamilton Square in Saginaw to a fire. A really ornate 10 story hotel caught fire and it became so structurally damaged, that it collapsed sideways onto the surrounding buildings, which then all caught fire as well. The entire block contained a lot of history, and all was lost except for 3 story structure. Since then, they've rebuilt half of it with a faux historical look. It just isn't the same though.

Okay I was thinking about going, but gas prices ruined it all, and the drive for me is 4 hours or something from where I live.

I'll throw my broken ipod in there in exchange for one that works.

That's too bad. Hopefully they can gut and rebuild the building.

Oh, I'm definitely not an industry expert on this. Malleable, in its final days only made transmission gears. It did manufacture parts for engines though in the past, and many components have gone aluminum due to improved alloys. I don't believe there is an entire industry-wide switch to aluminum though.

General Motor's Malleable Iron Foundry is a 350,000 square foot plant located in Saginaw, Michigan. The plant opened in 1917 and has been in continuous operation since. However as GM moves into producing vehicles with higher fuel efficiency, it no longer made sense to produce components out of heavy iron when they could be made with aluminum. This May was the last month the plant would be in production. It has been known for quite some time that this plant would close. Meanwhile, down the street is a much larger plant that is making components out of aluminum. General Motors announced it will invest hundreds of millions of dollars into the expansion and upgrades of that plant. So there will very little impact on Saginaw's economy due to Malleable's closure. Malleable Iron has supported thousands of families for almost a century including mine I've been inside more times than I can remember throughout my life. When I heard it was closing its doors this week, I knew I had to get some pictures. Saturday (May 19th), I grabbed my camera and headed on over to the plant to shoot some interior photos. It was a completely different place without people. The dark areas you will see in these photos were typically lit brilliant orange by the molten iron. What was still there was the smell of heated iron (which smells just like greasy hamburgers). I always loved that smell, glad I got one last whiff of it before the gates are locked. Enjoy!

Excellent! It's nice to see a different perspective when you are shooting them from the top of the bus.

I just dug up this panoramic I had long forgotten about. This taken from Lee Plaza, the only building left standing where you can get a clear and complete view of the entire Detroit skyline. I'd like to go back up and retake this (image is over 2 years old), unfortunately people keep getting shot or stabbed in the building. -- --------------------------> -------------------> ------------->