This building is immediately next to the one seen in yesterday’s post. I think it was originally a small firehouse. Someone turned it into a night club. The logos in the lower corners of the center door are for liquor brands, but the last owners went to the trouble of installing a wheelchair ramp. It is empty again. Another handsome building in need of an angel.
A beautiful but derelict building in midtown St. Louis. As with many buildings its age, it has lovely architectural ornaments in danger of ruin. This one, though, is going to make it back. The banner says that redevelopment is sponsored by the Kranzberg Arts Foundation. It is a wonderful organization that has restored a swath of our midtown area for the visual and performing arts, including the St. Louis Fringe Festival, with which I am very involved.
This is the kind of Arch picture I used to post on this blog when I was merely middle aged. After a while, I thought I had exhausted the approach. But time passes, the well starts to run dry, and why not take another run at the idea. The thing is 630 feet / 192 meters of stainless steel in the shape of a perfect catenary arch. It opened to the public in June 1967. I showed up here for college two months later and promptly went for a look.
Pictures from a campaign rally in downtown St. Louis in 2020. He is a decent, honest man, unlike his former opponent, and I am grateful for what he did for our country. Now we will do whatever we can to support Vice President Harris.
A couple of days ago I ran a picture of a carriage similar to this, but forlorn-looking and parked in a run-down industrial area. I remarked that it would never get Cinderella to the ball. This one will. It is parked at the bottom of the steps leading down from the Arch to the promenade along the Mississippi, waiting for business. Or a princess.
All of the elevated trestles seen here are railroad lines, a block or two closer to the Mississippi than the building in yesterday’s post. Some of them will return to ground level, some will rise onto a bridge over the river. The line that comes in from the center of the left edge has emerged from a tunnel under the Arch grounds.
South of the Arch, between the Mississippi and an elevated highway. Derelict commercial buildings that serve little purpose other than to support mobile phone antennas. A plan is being floated to turn this area and adjacent land into a multi-purpose office-commercial-residential district. I wish the developers good luck.
Under a railroad trestle, looking at what we call the Poplar Street Bridge, where Interstates 44, 55 and 70 cross the Mississippi River. Here in the Midwest, major cities are a few hours drive apart.
Hard to believe, but today is Mrs. C’s 80th birthday and she is in fabulous shape. (She is my senior, but not by enough to matter. Doing better than me in some ways.) We have been married 50 years and have had some great adventures together. She is seen here holding Buddhist prayer flags on some godforsaken plateau in Tibet. I’m hoping for many more years with her. She makes my life complete.
One of my favorite pieces of American architecture, the Art Deco crown of the Chrysler Building. It was briefly the world’s tallest building until the Empire State surpassed it. Hard to believe it is 94 years old. The Wikipedia article suggests it isn’t doing so well.
Oh, and in today’s New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/12/realestate/chrysler-building-manhattan.html
Back at The Summit, the all-mirrored observation areas on the 91st to 93rd floors of One Vanderbilt, the newish mega-tall structure that blocks the afternoon light on the western side of Grand Central Station. The 92nd floor is something of a mezzanine, not reaching to the broad southern windows and overlooking the full-size floor below. The eastern and western side of the 92nd have mirrored circular tubes through the floor, with mirrors above, below and beside. As if there wasn’t enough vertigo.
Another from the Butterfly Vivarium at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. The inhabitants can have a sense of drama.
Street photography in Manhattan. Food carts like these are ubiquitous and they have quite a varied menu. There is a trailer hitch on one side to tow them in and out. No nutrition labels.
It seems like a hallucination. Maybe it is. A shipping container had been pulled into Luna Park in Coney Island. The doors were opened and workers threw a mountain of large plush dogs, wrapped in plastic bags, onto the pavement. Ellie calls them stuffies (she has her own mountain of them) and wanted one so badly. Won’t fit in the suitcases, kid.
One of Ellie’s favorite rides at Coney Island, which she went on over and over. This photo can only offer a hint at the high speed loops and curls to come after this spiral ascent. She thought it was great fun, in part because she is 64 years younger than me.
On Tuesday, we took granddaughter Ellie to Coney Island, on the Atlantic shore of Brooklyn. (There is no island in sight.) It is home to a string of amusement areas that have been around since the early 20th Century. I loved our rare family visits when I was a kid. Ellie went on the wildest rides over and over, things that would twist my stomach and spine.
Coney Island is also home to another American institution, Nathan’s hot dogs. On the Fourth of July, our Independence Day, Nathan’s has a hot dog eating contest. How many sausages and buns can you cram down your throat in 10 minutes? It’s on national TV and is a bizarre spectacle. The men’s winner put away 54, which was nowhere near the record. See https://tinyurl.com/587rxebs
One of the spaces at The Summit, I think on the 92nd floor, is full of silver mylar balloons that - quite literally - reflect the mirrored interior surfaces. Blowers around the edges push them up to the cieling. Then they slowly, randomly settle. If I was younger, I’d think it was pretty trippy.
If I can make it there, I'll make it anywhere
It's up to you, New York, New York
I want to wake up in a city that never sleeps
And find I'm A Number One, top of the list
King of the hill, A Number One.
Nice to be back in my home town, particularly with granddaughter Ellie, who is having a blast. She thinks she is almost a subway riding expert because she can stand in a moving car without holding the pole (mostly). Still needs some guidance about where to go. I was riding the subway by myself at 12 or 13. It was normal.
This is the view to the south from the 91st floor observation area at The Summit, the newish super-tall building over Grand Central Station.
There used to be a wonderful big annual flea market in St. Louis to benefit the symphony called the Gypsy Caravan. I would go shoot every years. Sadly, they had trouble keeping an appropriate venue, it moved to the outer suburbs and gradually withered. You could find all sorts of interesting stuff but I wouldn’t try to restore this violin.
See bric-a-brack found by City Daily Photo members around the world at https://citydailyphoto.org/category/theme-days/
Mandatory kid stop in NYC, F. A. O. Schwarz toy store, perhaps the most famous in the world. The doorpeople are made up like toy soldiers. Everybody who works there is VERY kid-friendly and engaging, which no doubt helps sales. Good thing for them, since the rent in Rockefeller Center is pretty high. Ellie made off with some cute souvenirs that only moderately dinged my credit card.
Returning once again to my home town, this time with Mrs. C and granddaughter Ellie. This is one of the many entrances to the Times Square subway station. Ellie liked the subway but not being out on these streets. She said it felt crowded, loud, confusing and a little scary. Welcome to New York, kid.
The family arrives in New York this afternoon and Ellie is pumped. This is a picture I took two years ago at the observation floor of The Summit, one of the city’s newer mega-tall towers, this one next to Grand Central Station. The special thing is that the walls, floors and ceilings are all mirrored. You have to wear special booties over your shoes so you don’t scratch the floor. We are booked for a visit on Monday.
We’ll be a little low on material until we get to New York on Saturday but this will do for now.
Sunday evening's patio party included entertainment from three members of the music ensemble Moon Valley, https://moonvalleymusic.net/ . Founder and native Scotsman Gavin Duffy plays guitar, mandolin and sings the many songs he has written. Two other members of the group joined him, whom we will soon see. I'll run with this for a bit. Back in New York Saturday with our granddaughter, so more Big Apple images but from a kid's eye view.
We might set a record high temperature for the date today. What else is new.
Sunday evening get-together, pot luck dinner and chance to meet interesting people at the home of our friends, Lohr and Carrie, the moving force behind our Artica festival, https://articastl.com/ . I do some images for them. https://tinyurl.com/yc7fn7aj . The musicians, part of a group called Moon Valley, were wonderful. More about them to come.
The event also celebrated the opening of Lohr and Carrie’s co-working, event and community venue, 3rd Space, https://3rdspace.llc. Likely I’ll be photographing goings-on there.
The same fake ruins and fountain in Tower Grove Park, seen from across the pond. One of the things I like about this place is the feeling of calm and quiet, unless a festival is being held there. Much in contrast to its bigger and better-known competitor, Forest Park, which can be just packed.
An odd feature in Tower Grove Park: there is an area of fake ruins beside a pond, sort of a Romantic fantasy dropped down in the Midwest. It’s not like the park is set on a foggy moor. This was built in the 19th Century and seems pretty strange today. Still, people like it. You often see wedding parties being photographed here.
It’s not like anyone here needs a news bulletin that summer has arrived. No need to rehash the common complaints about the heat. I’ll just say that I didn’t spend a lot of time out of my car when I visited Tower Grove Park. I gave this picture a bit of an old color postcard look, thinking about what used to be normal.
The equestrians are back. Run the horse around the ring, stretch a rope across a radius and, well, let it fly. This is hard for me to understand. How do you train for it? How do you accommodate mistakes?
I really need to get back out on the street and find some new material. However, as you may have heard, the northeastern quarter of the U.S. is in the oven this week. Maybe there is something interesting indoors.
There is another circus organization in St. Louis. Circus Harmony has trained children and teens to perform gymnastics and circus acts, with performances around the world. One of the things they learn is reliance on their teammates. This may be what they call a leap of faith.
I’m at least mildly afraid of horses. After all, they are a lot bigger than I am and, if things went the wrong, way they could do you some real harm. The only horses around when I was young were under New York policemen. I certainly don’t know how to ride them. So I have great admiration for artists like Caleb Carinci-Asch and Leah Innocenti, who do things that could do them some real harm, and carry it off with aplomb.
Peru native Carlos Morales began performing circuses at age 12. After mastering more and more complex feats, he began touring with the so-called Wheel of Death. These two photos can only hint at its complexity and daring. Walking in or outside the bigger wheel causes the whole thing to rotate. We are staggered to think the source of the idea, its design, testing, maintenance and transportation.
I don’t have a lot going for me in the eye-hand coordination department. Can’t juggle two objects, let alone three or more. We usually think of these artists throwing things in the air. However, Tersit Asefa Dersu, a native of Ethiopia, turns it upside down. She calls herself a bounce juggler. When you throw a ball in the air, you have some leeway to work the parabola on the way down. When you bounce one off a hard surface, geometry is unforgiving. I got this image at a high shutter speed but it can’t give the feeling of the frantic, precise pace at which she was working.
For our international friends. OSHA is the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the agency responsible for worker safety standards.
A staple of Circus Flora is the performance by the renowned acrobatic family, the Flying Wallendas, three generations of high wire artists. Tino is the patriarch, possibly as old as me. Son Alex, in this shot, has grandson Matteo strapped tightly to his shoulders. But they are probably 10 meters off the ground with no net. The family does this day after day, but should the authorities be concerned?
