The Arch On Friday

I haven't had a lot of Arch pictures lately. The winter has been miserable and a photographer is pretty exposed around its base. Plus, there's the problem that I keep whining about of finding something new .

Well, it's finally getting warmer. My new office is a block from the foot of Eads Bridge so I decided to go for a walk to it at lunch time. There was the Arch, framed by some bare gum trees. I liked how this turned out so here it is, even though it is the wrong day of the week. 

The bottom picture was taken from the bridge looking back at my office building. It's the rectilinear one under the US Bank sign. My window looks straight at the bridge and river.

            

A Bit Forlorn

It's hard to say why the organizers of our Mardi Gras events keep up the Tuesday night parade. I'm pretty sure it's run by a for-profit business (the website is mardigrasinc.com) so there has to be a commercial reason. There's nobody out on the street downtown on a winter week night. The attendance was so small that the occasion had a certain pathos.

On the other hand, Washington Avenue has gotten so many bars, restaurants and entertainment venues in the last 10 or 20 years that it has created a destination.  A lot of young people are attracted to it but in the warm months the spillover into the street can get, um, let's say, intimidating. That's city life.                             

The Little Parade

The people who organize the local Mardi Gras stuff have to do something on the main night. There is a tepid parade on Washington Avenue, apparently for the benefit of the many bars and restaurants up and down the street. It lasted 15 minutes, tops. You can see the size of the crowd. Still, somebody was out there trying.                       

Boys, Too

We had some women at the Mardi Gras parade yesterday. Some young men today. Granted, I go out looking for the strangest, most arresting things to shoot, but most of these guys look like they live on the margins. Well, not the last group. Probably just college boys out for some fun. Black and white seemed appropriate to their jagged, hard edge.

Sorry I'm getting few comments written. Long days at work (a whine often heard here) and there is a lot of extra stuff to do at home during Mrs. C's convalescence. She's getting stronger day by day, though.                                                                           

And by the way, since it is that Tuesday: 

          

Girls Just Wanna Have Fun

That's what Cindi Lauper would have us believe. I accept it. The taste and judgment of these ladies might be questioned but then that's what Mardi Gras is all about.

By the way, that's a tee shirt in the second picture. She told me she had to go all the way to New Orleans to buy it.                                   

STL Mardi Gras Parade / City Daily Photo Theme Day

It's that time again when the only constraint on St. Louisans' behavior is the temperature. New Orleans blows us away, of course, but we probably have the next biggest Mardi Gras celebration in the US. The parade proceeds from the baseball stadium south to the Soulard neighborhood. Let it all hang out.

My computer tells me that I snapped the shutter 1,117 times in four hours. Half were cut in the first pass. There are some gems among the remainder. Days worth of material, and it works pretty well for the CDP "people in the street" theme day. Click here for pedestrians from around the world.                          

The World's Fair Pavillion

This post could also be titled "Filler." I got nothing new. Too much work and extra things to do around the house that Mrs. C normally covers. Her recovery from her knee replacement is coming along well but it's still a slow, difficult process. 

So anyway, these are two panos of one of the two buildings left in Forest Park from the 1904 World's Fair, the other being the Art Museum. Hard to tell here since the pano technique and wide angle lens create distortion on the sides, but this is at the top of a rather grand hill. There are a lot of wedding receptions here. When I was in college, the Grateful Dead showed up on Sunday afternoons and played here for free a few times after regular theater shows. Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear . . . 

Today is one of the year's main photo ops in The Lou, the big Mardi Gras parade. Pix of crazy people on the march starting tomorrow.