Robert Pence

Charm and elegance! Beautiful photos.

This shindig was at the Hyatt. A rather ordinary breakfast off the menu was $14. Maybe it was expensive because of the fancy fold on the napkins, or the pat of butter shaped like a butterfly. I could get a breakfast special (bacon, eggs, toast, maybe even some hash browns or home fries, with plenty of strong coffee) at a local grill for around $3 - $4, and it was tasty because it had the obligatory generous portion of grease that goes with southern cooking. I think Lee Circle was once the focal point of downtown; the streetcar lines converged/radiated out from there, with a branch to Union Station. The wide, landscaped medians in many of the major streets are where the streetcars once ran. The only survivor of those is the St. Charles line. The waterfront line is a newer creation built to serve the tourist trade. I'm not knocking it, though; they did a nice job with it, and aside from the color, the streetcars on it are pretty close approximations of the original Perley Thomas cars that still run on St. Charles.

Back when I was still gainfully employed, I attended a week-long software-engineering symposium in New Orleans. Even though I was on an expense account, I found the hotel breakfasts outrageously expensive. On one of my early-morning walks I found a corner grill on Canal Street where local workers ate, and had my breakfasts there. Likewise for the evening social events sponsored by the software company, with business-casual dress code; after the classes were over, I'd put on some old jeans, a sweatshirt, and beat-up sneakers, pick up a newspaper, and claim a spot in a booth at the Clover Grill, facing the door. I'd order a coke and fries and a burger and browse the paper while watching the locals come and go. Interesting place. On the hotel's map of the city's attractions, the Clover Grill was in an "unsafe" area. That's often where you find the good stuff and escape the pretentiousness.

You mean Uncle Rando will be gay in 20 years? :wink:

Mmmm! Graham Crackers & frosting! It's a good thing I just finished a big bowl of Quaker Oats with cinnamon, butter, and honey, or I'd be headed for the supermarket pronto! Waitaminnit! I already have a tin full of chocolate-chip cookies and all the stuff I need to make up a batch of homemade butter-cream frosting. See y'alls later! :-D

Beautiful photos! You captured the color, history, and urban density perfectly. I think a lot of tourists only see Bourbon Street and their hotel, and never notice the city's impressive commercial district. A ride on the St. Charles streetcar out to the end of the line is a time trip. Once you get beyond Canal Street and the hotels, it's a workaday line that people use to get to and from work and school. During peak periods the service is very frequent, and from all appearances and sounds the cars are just as they were when built in 1923. They have varnished wood-slat seats and bare-bulb interior lighting, and they amble along at about 10mph down a grassy center median past some of the city's finest mansions. Air conditioning? That's what windows are for.

After being stripped of its fixtures and seats and standing unused for several years, the Lafayette Theater was being restored as a versatile entertainment venue with tables for patrons when I took this photo on a gloomy, dreary October day in 2005 with the marquee lit. It was still mostly a bare shell with work under way and the dusty alkali smell of new concrete everywhere.

It was a fabulous witch hunt led by McCarthy's close associate, a closeted young lawyer named Roy Cohn, who sought self-vindication via the ruining of other people's lives and careers. After his death from complications of AIDS in 1986, the country came to know of his exclusive parties attended by beautiful boys. The 1954 Army-McCarthy hearings made gays out to be one of the greatest threats to America because, it presumed, social stigma and our great fear of being exposed made us vulnerable to blackmail by Communist agents. Cohn focused on outing suspected homosexuals with access to national-security critical information especially related to military strategy and technology. I think that much of the current paranoia about gays in the military can be traced back to that era; there are many stories from pre-McCarthy years (WWII and Korea) that make it clear that homosexual orientation and homophobia were not widespread morale-busters in the armed forces. I know! I know! Sorry!

There are no homosexuals in Lafayette; they all moved to Indianapolis or Chicago. Anyway, Purdue is an engineering school. The nerds haven't figured out yet that they're queer.... :wink: Git the gun! I was in a Communications 101 class when I was "there" as a freshman. My earnest teacher was trying to challenge the class to expand their view of the world and began a discussion on homosexuality. Just as quickly, some blonde-haired male "student" interjects with that comment. Sorry that I keep bringing up this nasty sht about Purdue. Looking back, I realize that there were actually a lot of nice people from there. Lafayette definitely has a redneck element, but I think it's less influential than it once was. You don't have that level of preservation activity in a community without gay people's investment and policy input, and I think that the people who run the businesses and influence public policy are mostly open and accepting. When I was a student there (50 years ago), we weren't that far out of the McCarthy/Roy Cohn fag hunts, and the whole national climate was more repressive than now. If you had broken down all the closet doors (including mine :roll: ) and piled them up and set fire to them, the glow in the sky would have been visible for at least a hundred miles. :-D

There are no homosexuals in Lafayette; they all moved to Indianapolis or Chicago. Anyway, Purdue is an engineering school. The nerds haven't figured out yet that they're queer. You want homosexuals, go to Bloomington; Indiana University is the liberal arts school. Those kids have known since they were 12. :wink:

There was a movement toward grade-separating railroads around that time, too. Growth in traffic on major railroads and in automobile traffic on city streats and increasing urban population were bringing conflict and carnage. In midwestern cities, the 1913 floods probably provided the final push to get it done. Dayton's elevation was completed in 1931, according to some sources. Dayton's Union Station was demolished in 1989. I think the platforms and canopies still were in place for a few years after that; I kind of remember seeing them in 1991, although I'm not sure of that. Here's a link to Miami Valley Railfans. http://www.trainweb.org/mvr/index.html Scroll down past all the introductory stuff on the home page, and there are several photos of passenger trains at the platforms at Dayton Union Station, although unfortunately none of the station itself. Some include good Dayton skyline views.

In some respects I'd say Lafayette is Indiana's best small-to-midsize city, the one all the others should be trying to emulate. It has a dense, urban downtown with intact blocks of restored, occupied, functioning 19th-century buildings, areas of restored/preserved historic housing, a developed riverscape, and a good transit system with active digital reader boards at major stops, giving the destination and eta of the next arriving bus. The courthouse is among the most extravagant of Indiana's many fabulous ones, and was recently extensively restored. Some bigger cities like Fort Wayne and South Bend can't hold a candle to Lafayette for all-around urban quality. The only other Indiana city smaller than Indianapolis that even comes close to Lafayette is the other big college town, Bloomington, and I don't think it has the historic intergrity the Lafayette does.

And when you mess with the wrong person, even worse things can happen. Maybe not right away, but in due time ... Sometimes karma can use a little help. :angel:

Very beautiful! I think that's not terribly far from Cass as the crow flies. As West Virginia roads run, it's about twice that far. Is that a little lower in elevation than Cass? The vegetation looks like the kinds that grow in more temperate zones.

Some treasures here and there, but far more travesties. My first thought when I saw the court house was, "That sure resembles the one in Wooster." Then I saw the caryatids flanking the entrance, and realized it is the one in Wooster. Then I read the caption above it.

Very beautiful! The snowman ballons in the Carnaby Street photos remind me of sculptures by Tom Otterness.

I think the Indiana Transportation Museum at Noblesville still owns one of the former 20th Century observation cars. The last time I saw it, it was pretty shabby on the inside but mechanically sound enough for short-line excursions. One of Mom's friends, a nurse in New York City whom Mom met when doing public-health nursing there in the mid-1930s, used to come to Indiana for her vacations during and after WWII, up through the early sixties. She'd rotate visits with our family and two others to spend the hottest few weeks of summer away from her apartment in Brooklyn. She was always welcomed by Mom, especially after we moved to the farm; she made her own bed, did her own laundry, grocery shopped and fixed two of the three daily meals (5 a.m. breakfast was a bit early for her), introducing us to big-city cuisine, especially Italian, and giving Mom a much-needed break. Only once did she come into Fort Wayne on the Pennsylvania Railroad, because of difficulty booking space on New York Central. On other visits, she traveled on the Pacemaker to Waterloo, about 30 miles away, where one of her host families picked her up. She had a strong preference; she said the New York Central's trains were cleaner, the ride was more comfortable, and the employees were more courteous and friendly. It would be interesting to compare the last photo with a contemporary one from the same vantage point.

Very nicely done! It looks realistically like the way a person's eye would perceive it. I haven't yet played with Photomatix, but I probably should. A couple of friends who are very good photographers like it.

Beautiful! On my one Christmastime visit to San Francisco, by the second day my body had reacted violently to the damp chill. My lungs sounded as if I were in the final stages of pneumonia. I was sleeping on a foam mattress on the living room floor in a friend's house, and in the morning when I'd put away my "bed", the floor under it was wet with sweat that had passed clear through the mattress. On the trip home, when the train reached Truckee late at night, with the outside temp slightly above 0 F and the air clear and dry and lots of fresh snow, I stepped off the train for a few minutes while passengers detrained and boarded. By the time I returned to my sleeper, my lungs felt clean and I was no longer wheezing. Cured by mountain air! I think it would be difficult for me to adjust to Bay Area midwinter climate.

I don't agree with that as a general statement. Sometimes trees are visual clutter that obstruct and disrupt the streetscape. In that setting, I think they'd be so puny in comparison to the wall of built environment that they'd look like litter at the curb, and spoil the clean linearity of that view. The lampposts cut into it just enough for variety. Trees would be too much. Now, if they'd modify that street to two traffic lanes, they could separate off two generous curb lanes for parking and/or non-motorized transport by using medians with plantings and trees. I think that would work better than putting trees at the edge of the existing sidewalks.

I think all the stations on the New York Central System, at least in cities of any size, were classy in style. The last one built was Central Union Terminal in Toledo (1950), and it's restored and gorgeous. The fifties produced some unattractive stuff, but the station in Toledo pulls together all the best elements of the era. "Soda - Lunch - Cigars - News" Some things awaken memories that have been in hibernation. I remember that almost all public places of "importance" always smelled of cigar smoke. On election day just about everything shut down, including city schools, and most school buildings served as polling places. The day after the election when we returned to school, the building always smelled of the poll workers' cigar smoke.

Beautiful scenery, and your photos are crisp and sharp and very nicely composed. What lens are you using?

Mmmmm! Gorgeous photos, beautiful places!

Excellent. I didn't know Denver had areas like that; some of those gave me a strong Chicago parks-and-boulevards vibe, particularly Washington Park at the west end of the Midway Plaisance (59th Street) in Hyde Park.

Wow! Stunning neighborhood! Looks like mostly 1890s - 1920s, nice and solid and ranging from upper middle class to quite affluent. I'll bet it's gorgeous in the warm seasons.