KC MO

 

Family road trip today, heading for Missouri’s other major city. Mrs. C has family there and there are plenty of things for our favorite kid to do. Friday, it's about another three hours northwest to the part of rural Kansas where my wife grew up. Her family has a biannual get together of these descendants of the German emigre diaspora. Just bragging, but last time this Irishman won the German language quiz.

Since we recently took Ellie to New York, we are hoping for a teaching opportunity about the very different backgrounds of her grandparents and the varieties of the American experience.             

SHIPWRECK

A strange sculpture in a lonely spot near the Mississippi. It looks like the skeleton of of a wrecked boat, partly stuck in the earth. I did not see a plaque of sign describing it. The shape is unusual. Except for small personal craft, river boats tend to be rectangular and flat bottomed. Maybe it is a post-apocalyptic gesture.

This post is up late because of a new, annoying problem with Photoshop. I edit pictures as PSDs and then save as a JPG. All of a sudden, save as jpeg is not an option. I can’t find any online help and ended up using a third party website to make the conversion. Anyone know what’s going on?                     

MADELEINE MONDAY

 

Girls just want to have fun. Ellie at one of the local branches of Urban Air, a kids’ play zone that starts with a trampoline park and goes on to lots of other adventures. Ellie loves the zip line and the bumper cars, seen here. She is having her birthday party there in a few weeks.                

VANISHING POINT

A railroad line emerging from downtown, heading for the Mississippi River. If you wait long enough, you could see the Amtrak train going to Chicago.                

SUSPENDED REHAB

 

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.                  

DEVELOPMENT COMING SOON

 

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.                     

THURSDAY ARCH SERIES

 

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.         

SEVEN THOUSAND VOLTS

Truck tractors in a freight yard near the river. The yellow vehicles are what caught my eye. Only when editing the photo did I notice the small yellow sign on the right. It’s hard to read at this resolution, but it says “WARNING Electric Fence, 7,000 V.” So what if an elderly wandering photographer tripped on a rock and fell into it? Or just a bird? I wondered if it was like a sign that says “Warning Vicious Dog” just for show.

A WORKING RIVER

My last office before I retired looked directly over the Mississippi River. When I was tired of pushing paper or clicking screens, I would watch the long barge flotillas drifting up and down. Navigation looked terribly difficult, with powerful push boats at the rear. Think of it as a very big car with rear wheel drive, but also the steering wheels in the back. What we see here is a riverboat and barge facility just south of the Arch.                

THANK YOU, JOE

 

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.           

THIS IS THE ONE CINDERELLA NEEDS

 

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.             

DOPE CITY

Full disclosure: I’m an old fogey. I don’t pretend to understand all the language of the young. Nevertheless, my understanding is that “dope” is a positive term these days. Thus, Dope City, referring to our town, may be a compliment. Yet the figure between the dollar and cent signs looks like a medication capsule. The red tagging characters under the top of the Arch spell STL (not that outsiders would know), and the red numerals to the right, 314, are the main local telephone code.           

CINDERELLA LEFT

Lots of cities have horse-drawn carriage rides for tourists. I’ve seen them in New York’s Central Park for as long as I can remember. We have them in downtown STL, although the scenery is perhaps not as opulent. I haven’t seen it before, but this empty, horse carriage is parked beneath the railroad lines south of the Arch. I wonder if Cinderella made it to the ball - and whether we have one.                 

THURSDAY ARCH SERIES

Haven’t run this feature in a long time, but it’s hard to find something new to see in a 190 meter steel wicket after 30 years of photographing it. The huge billboard tower stands beside the major highway bridge over the Mississippi. Looks like ad biz isn’t so good.                

THE RAILS

 

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.                     

RUINS

 

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.               

DESTINATIONS EAST

 

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.               

HIGH VOLTAGE

Time to bring the images back home, changing from the energy of New York to high voltage lines crossing the Mississippi. There is an album of NYC pix, with more still to be added, at  https://tinyurl.com/4w5ymb85  .                 

A SPECIAL DAY

 

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.            

STL DPB IN NEW YORK - CHRYSLER BUILDING

 

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           

STL DPB IN NEW YORK - INFINITE REGRESSION

 

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.                       

STL DPB IN NEW YORK - ANOTHER PRETTY BUG

 

Another from the Butterfly Vivarium at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. The inhabitants can have a sense of drama.                   

STL DPB IN NEW YORK - REPOSE

I loved going to the American Museum of Natural History when I was a kid. There are lots of new things since my last visit decades ago. One is an indoor butterfly room they call the Vivarium. It’s hard to get one of them to stand still and pose but this worked. We think the circle is its rolled up proboscis.                

STL DPB IN NEW YORK - STREET FOOD

 

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.               

STL DPB IN NEW YORK - MADELEINE MONDAY

 

 She does. 42nd Street and Second Avenue. 

STL DPB IN NEW YORK - YOUR MOMENT OF ZEN

 

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.             

STL DPB IN NEW YORK - SCREAMIN’ EAGLE

 

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.               

STL DPB IN NEW YORK - NATHAN'S

 

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             

STL DPB IN NEW YORK - I’M FOREVER BLOWING BUBBLES

 

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.             

STL DPB IN NEW YORK - IF I CAN MAKE IT THERE...

 

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.                

STL DPB IN NEW YORK - KID HEAVEN

Elie had quite the day.  It started at the observation floors ot The Summit, one of New York’s mega-tall buildings, towering over Grand Central Terminal, more about which soon. Next stop was the Museum of Ice Cream in Soho, which she thought was as close to paradise as she was going to get. It’s all the sugar you can consume, and she made a mighty effort. This is one of the final rooms, sort of a ball pit but made up as candy sprinkles. She said she had a dream of doing something like this.             

CITY DAILY PHOTO JULY THEME - FLEA MARKETS

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/                 

STL DPB IN NEW YORK - MADELEINE MONDAY

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.