Robert Pence

Cherry Creek looks nicer and better thought out than most temples to ruinous consumerism. :| Excellent photo tour. :-)

Dang whippersnappers need to be taught some respect! :x :wink:

The old lady may have lived in her house for fifty or sixty years, and a long-term neighbor might have died, letting the next-door house fall into the hands of an indiscriminate slumlord. I don't see that the old lady should be in a retirement community if she's able to live on her own and wants to do so. Maybe it's the people next door who should be in a rent-subsidized complex or a trailer park with their own kind. If she was able to steal a football, she's probably not frail and living in a recliner in front of the TV.

Awesome! Thanks for allowing me to experience, if only vicariously, livin' well in Manhattan!

Love those! Even on a dreary NY winter day, the ubiquitous yellow taxis ad splashes of color, like in the Madison Avenue shot.

The family next door may be pure uncivilized white trash who don't comprehend the notion of property lines and whose kids may be nasty foul-mouthed monsters who run roughshod over everything they can get to. Some 89-year-olds are still physically able and maintain nice backyard gardens. If she's among those and her efforts keep getting trashed by hillbilly scum, she's justified in trying to put the neighbors on notice that if they done rein in their devil-spawn brats, it will cost them big-time. :whip:

The people shots on your site are better than I've seen in some publications. Great stuff of people having a great time!

I 'bout peed myself when I saw those, especially some of the older ones! I recall that interior architectural pieces from of the John Hay mansion were incorporated into the Case Western Reserve Museum. I believe there's a garden with a fountain and reflecting pool, too. There are trim and ornamental pieces from some of the other Euclid Avenue mansions, too, but I can't remember which ones. "Kinky Cuyahoga!" *giggle* Someone should open a fetish bar in the flats and use that name! Or charter a themed cruise on the Good Time III. :evil: Sorry. I'll stop now. :oops:

Depends on how many years you're talking about. Remember, it's Ohio and Ohio is Midwestern. The glaciers receded millennia ago, but change still happens at a glacial pace in the Midwest. I first saw Ohio City in 1978. Admittedly, some things are just as they were then, but the changes have been significant. Only a handful of brave urban pioneers had undertaken residential restorations, and they were at constant peril of break-ins and vandalism. Admittedly my bf at the time, a Cleveland-area native, was a big sissy, but he was very wary of going into that area after dark. There are still sketchy areas and problems, but believe me, the overall activity level and appearance of the area are vastly better than they were thirty years ago.

If by fun you mean hellish, then yes. :) I had that experience once when visiting a friend in Manhattan. We killed time until things settled down a little, finally caught a train that wasn't jam-packed, and ended up on a car being terrorized by three drunk thugs. Fortunately my invisibility cloak worked perfectly that night.

The camera isn't the most important element in photography. You have a good eye, and you know what you're trying to accomplish. For web posting or small prints, what you have is plenty adequate. If you were to decide to make big prints for exhibition purposes, you might meet some limitations, but for now you're fine. A monopod is a single pole with extension capabilities like those of a tripod. It's much lighter, of course, and quicker and easier to deploy. It gives added stability to a camera in low-light situations. You'd probably want a tilt head for it to give more flexibility in camera positioning, too. To look at one of the many available, click here. In my price range Bogen/Manfrotto is first-rate, but if you shop around, you may find something else you like better. B&H Photo is one of my favorite on-line stores because of their big inventory, fair-but-realistic prices, and quick turnaround, and their user reviews are usually pretty accurate. There are others, too. Amazon.com has good deals on some things. I love visiting big cities and immersing myself in their energy, but for everyday living I'd like a place with significant but not overpowering mass and density to its urban core, a variety of cultural amenities, good transit, opportunities to escape into nature, and residential enclaves where I can get to know the grocer, pharmacist, and hardware store owner on a first-name basis. I've only seen Denver from the train and the station, most of those times in the dead of winter with near-zero temperatures, so I don't have a feel for the street-level experience. Whether I could afford Denver is a different question. My retirement savings have taken some hits on paper during the current turmoil, but so far, no major components have gone belly-up. Still, I've read about the high cost of the front-range communities, and I would expect they would have an inflationary effect on Denver proper. Time to stop babbling in ProkNo5's beautiful thread.

The door in the side of the Forest City Trust building used to be an entrance to the station in the subway approach that the streetcars used for the lower deck of the Detroit-Superior (Veterans Memorial) Bridge. In the late seventies, the entrance still had a "Subway" sign above it, and I think the stairs and doorway into the tunnel are still there.

Wow! Exceptional set. The grayscale enhances the grittiness in the first part, and the summer shots are gorgeous.

Looks quite lovely. I think I'll move there. :roll:

Yup! In the sixties I used to visit a friend who had a place off SR 800 just north of the Sistersville Ferry. I had a fast car, a lead foot, and no sense, and could make the drive from Fort Wayne in about six hours. I think at least an hour of that was spent crawling through Columbus on US 40.

Excellent set. I like the combination of architectural styles and periods, and the angles bring out the interesting juxtapositions. The photos make downtown look clean, open, and functional, but not sterile or austere.

Denver looks like the kind of city where I could enjoy living. I enjoyed your photo sets. Ever consider a monopod for night/low-light photos? It's cheaper than a tripod and more convenient to pack around, and in marginal lighting it can help a bunch.

When you compare contemporary car travel with contemporary train travel, consider that if we funded automobile infrastructure on a par with passenger rail infrastructure, those car trips drives wouldn't be at 70-plus mph on four or more lanes of interstate concrete and asphalt. They'd be on two-lane roads full of potholes and congested with trucks, slogging through urban cores with miles of stoplights, block after block.

Well put, noozer. On occasion someone will ask me, "Why should I take the train for two days when I can get there in four hours for less money on an airplane." Somewhat tongue-in-cheek considering the current state of Amtrak on-board service, I tell them, "You can pay the cheaper price and be subjected to indignities before you ever board the airplane, and then get crammed into a tiny seat with no room for your knees and get fed a cold, unappetizing snack if there's any food at all. If you have a window seat, unless you're lucky your vista will be the tops of clouds. "So, for your economy fare you get four hours of abject misery, while you can pay more and enjoy a couple of days of a comfortable seat or even your own private space with a bed to stretch out in. You can get up and walk about to your heart's content, most likely use a restroom without a lengthy wait, go to the lounge and buy a beverage of your choice when you choose to, and sit at a table with a continuously-changing view while eating hot food. You get what you pay for." In the words of the late John Achey, a retired locomotive engineer on the Soo Line whom I met nearly fifty years ago, "Good things ain't cheap, and cheap things ain't good!"

Outstanding photo tour, as usual! I've only seen those three cities from train windows, and even on Amtrak that doesn't allow a lot of time for sightseeing and photo-taking. Looks like I oughta' go back and walk around!

Mmmmm! Cleveland from Edgewater Park at its lovliest time of year! Excellent photo, but it doesn't make me want to be there. :wink:

I grew up on the edge of Erie-Lackawanna territory in Indiana, and often had to wait for their freight trains at rural road crossings. In the sixties, before they went in the dumper, I used to see their trains on the stretch between Decatur and Huntington, Indiana. It was a long, flat straightaway and they ran fast. I could sit at a rural road crossing and watch them barrel past, the cars straight upright and steady as a rock. Unfortunately they were going hungry because of diminishing rail freight traffic, and when they suffered massive storm damage to large parts of their ROW in Pennsylvania, they were unable to recover. With the Conrail merger, most of the old Erie was abandoned.

Very good article. I think it makes clear one of the reasons that the term, "railfan," is a pejorative among rational, informed, committed advocates of a modern, efficient national railroad network. Railfans, aka Foamers, to a great extent are stuck in mental adolescence and would like a renaissance of passenger rail most if it included coal-burning steam locomotives, clerestory-roofed open-window coaches, and Carpenter Gothic depots with wooden water tanks and concrete coal docks. Run service between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh in the style of the Strasburg Railroad, and they'd all flock to southern Pennsylvania. They wouldn't by tickets and ride, though. They'd just spend their days trackside with DSLRs and camcorders and vying with each other with "Can you top this?" stories.

That's completely amazing to me. My only visit to Phoenix was in 1979, and then the buses ran hourly with rather sparse coverage, and the system appeared to be barely hanging on financially. One of the things that caught my attention then was that on the big articulated buses they had air conditioning powered by its own separate 4-cylinder diesel engine to cope with summer heat.

Excellent photos! I recognize most, but not all of those places; I haven't yet been to Pilsen. Some interesting compositions in the set, too.