I’ve been driving past the Pioneer Broach building on Telegraph Ave. next to Interstate 5 in Los Angeles for eternity. When I was little I knew that it was a head’s up to look for the nearby Samson Tire building and later I just fell in love with the sign which probably hasn’t changed at all since the company was founded in 1939.
I think some of the dead machinery in Pioneer’s backyard dates from 1939 too if the lettering on the “Drivmatic” is any indication. *swoon*.
Cranky, acerbic preacher Dr. Gene Scott died yesterday which gives me a chance to tell my Dr. Gene Scott story.
Many moons ago (well, 1981 to be precise) me and a couple of friends in high school watched Dr. Gene on occasion during the day in between classes. One day I noticed something strange about his phone-in number and then I decided that it was our civic responsibility to inform Dr. Scott that his phone number added up to 666. It really did too, his number was (213) 240-8151 which translates to 6 (2 + 1 + 3), 6 (2 + 4 + 0), 6 (8 + 1 + 5 + 1 = 15 -> 1 + 5 = 6). We called his number every day for a couple of months to warn him of this potential satanic corruption until the number was finally changed.
I still remember the time Scott sat in his chair for hours and just scowled into the camera in between puffs on his stogie without saying a word. And if you haven’t seen Werner Herzog’s God’s Angry Man documentary on Scott yet, make the effort to track it down.
Would you survive a horror movie? Find out @ She’s Crafty
I’ve always been fascinated with GUI screenshots and themes. Maybe I’m hoping to find a better screen layout or something. Anyway, here’s my current desktop.
Like Exclamation Mark, I really like this photo of the Kremlin on Valentine’s Day.
Fred visits the Boulder City Seaplane Fly-In in Boulder City and posts a couple hundred photos from the event. There’s also a “best of” photo album
Continuing the series of “then and now” film locations in San Francisco from Vertigo, here’s Bullitt: then and now.
I’m not quite sure what the point behind del.icio.us is yet, other than a keyword-searchable bookmark/webpage list, but it seems useful and there’s a neat Mac OS X client for it. Anyway, my del.icio.us page (such as it is right now)
Google Maps is the single-most useful new site on the net in a dog’s year. I love how fast it loads, how the map looks, and how it can work as a makeshift Yellow Pages.
What’s left of Pisgah Crater. A gravel company has been steadily picking away at it for years.
I always thought that Pisgah Crater was the site of a hilarious prank that involved a truckload of burning tires and a panicked phone call to Barstow claiming that “the volcano is going to explode!” but apparently it took place at Amboy Crater farther east.
From the newsletter of the California Historic Route 66 Association:
THE AMBOY VOLCANO by Ken Swank
In the 1940s, probably ‘45, ‘46, the kids from the Barstow High School hauled for about a year all kinds of debris out and at different times dumped it down to the bottom of the cinder cone. They had tires, old lumber, old creosoted railroad ties, all kinds of junk. Who started it, nobody knows. On the fateful day, they set it on fire. The cinder cone was then dormant for years. Suddenly it began to get a trickle of smoke. It shut down the Santa Fe railroad, Highway 66, evaculated Barstow - they moved the entire company out - everybody. And that thing burned and it burned and it got more and more and even people could feel rumblings from the ground. They were very excited. The Los Angeles Times hired an airplane, a reporter and a photographer, and they could see what happened and they broke the hoax that had lasted for some 72 hours and had the whole center of the desert tied up.
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