Still in the Dogtown neighborhood. The owner of this building does not believe in subtlety. Visitors, welcome or not, will have no trouble finding it. I notice that it is a two family. Seems a bit small for that. The sign on the utility pole says no zoo parking. The zoo is kinda sorta in the area but way farther than I'd want to walk.
And happy birthday to Mrs. C.
There are times when I just need some pictures and I'll go out cruising in neighborhoods I don't generally visit. That happened recently when I was driving around the picturesquely named Dogtown (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogtown,_St._Louis). Never heard of this thoroughfare before. It would be generous to call it an alley, just enough for my car to fit through. Now, where is Three-Quarters Lane?
The St. Louis motorcycle police lead every parade around this town. It must be a fun break from their usual work. Always on black Harley Davidsons with black helmets, black leather jackets and perfectly polished black boots.
One of my very few photographic claims to fame is that I was once asked to use a photo of a line of SLPD motorcycle cops for the catalog of a show at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC. The show was about the art of modern fashion and they wanted to use my picture in a section about motorcycle jackets. https://tinyurl.com/2p8b6pf7 Of course, they said they couldn't pay anything but offered me a couple of tickets and a copy of the catalog if I happened to show up during the run. I did. The contact person who said she would be there wasn't. I had to show the email exchange to a manager to get my meager compensation, but I got my five minutes of fame.
A float in the St. Patrick's Day parade. We visited Northern Ireland once, flying into Dublin and driving north to Belfast. Although peace had long been restored by that time, I will never forget the violent Unionist graffiti on walls near our hotel. It was deeply unsettling. After driving around the North some more, the only way we could tell that we had returned to the Republic was that the speed limit signs changed from miles to kilometers per hour.
Some of the crowd along Friday's St. Patrick's Day parade route. The colors are somewhat similar but do they realize they are waving an Italian, not an Irish flag?
I mentioned that the neighborhood where yesterday's St. Pat's parade was held is called Dogtown. It is a traditionally Irish area. According to Wikipedia, Dogtown got its name as a small mining community in the mid-1800s. There was a concentration of small clay and coal mines in the area during that time, and the term "Dogtown" was widely used in the 1800s by miners to describe a group of small shelters around mines.
So I was standing along the route when this huge pick up truck rolled by. The sign on the door caught my attention. Don't know Keith and the position, of course, is honorary but maybe our tribe is coming up in the world.
By the way, even by American standards, this is one of the biggest pick ups you will ever see. You can just notice the manufacturer's sticker in the back window. The list price is seventy - eight - thousand - dollars and it gets 15 miles per gallon. That's 6.4 kilometers per liter. The good that money could have done...
I know the Vikings raided much of the east coast of Britain but I didn't know they made it around the corner to Ireland. (The English took care of that themselves.) And on such a gorgeous day, the Irish aren't generally so dour. Maybe this chap needed someone to get him a beer.
An instance of the old meme about the luck of the Irish, I suppose. Ireland has had stretches of time when it had extraordinarily bad luck (potato famine, anyone? brutal English colonialism? The Troubles?) but that can be said of many peoples. It's doing quite well these days, though. I've had my share of good luck even though my Irish green and gold is alloyed with Polish red and white.
St. Louis has two St. Patrick's Day parades. We've seen some images from what you might say is the official one downtown, always on the Saturday before the event. The other is on the day itself in the narrow streets of an old Irish neighborhood with the picturesque name of Dogtown (which is not derogatory - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogtown%2C_St._Louis). It's much more let the waist band out and be as goofy as you please. More to come.
I should have mentioned yesterday that March 17 has special significance in our home. Mrs. C and I met in a bar on St. Patrick's Day 49 years ago. The place was so crowded we were almost pressed into one another by the pinball machine I awkwardly asked her if she would like to play. Now here we are, happily growing old together.
