Going against the tide of Flickr curmedgeons, here’s some Flickr video from the QC archives:
Alkali flies on the ground at Mono Lake. They don’t bite at all, but it’s unnerving walking around them and seeing them flee and reorient as you walk around.
Some Mono Lake shoreline to go along with the flies.
A flyby of the last remaining Northrop Flying Wing prototype.
A couple of worthy stories over on Airminded. The first comes from a DOE atomic bomb test in 1957 to see what would happen if a Navy airship was used to deliver a nuclear depth charge.
In short, the bomb wins:
The second story concerns the latter days of Hammer Films in the early 1970s and an unmade film with the working title Zeppelin vs Pterodactyls.
The story was along the lines of THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT, with a German Zeppelin being blown off-course during a bombing raid on London and winding up at a “lost continent”-type place.
The Land That Time Forgot is still essential viewing here whenever I run across it, but Zeppelin vs. Pterodactyls would have obsoleted it instantly. Hammer only got as far as commissioning up a poster to attract investors, but holy cow what a poster!
Microgramma font is instant Stendhal syndrome for me.
I was at LAX for the visit of the Concorde in October 1974, so I’m obliged to go see the Airbus A380 during it’s visit to LAX this week. Larger photo on the Flickr page.
The only thing missing from the surveillance video of the SUV driver crashing through an Augusta mall is the Blues Brothers soundtrack. Bonus points to the deputy sheriff who barely keeps from laughing during his interview.
The state of air travel…
Passing through the Zurich (ZRH) airport is like being in a photo shoot for Nokia advertisements. Neutral blue-grey color scheme with a touch of red from the Swiss souvenir shops, well-dressed travelers quietly having a coffee before boarding and in true Enoian spirit there is background music but from a completely indiscernible source. Arriving back at the squalid LAX Bradley terminal after such a great experience is the real culture clash of traveling: missing ceiling panels, dirty carpeting, ambient garbage, and long lines.
Security control at LAX encapsulates everything that is wrong with the State Of Things. TSA isn’t secure at all, but a grown-up version of junior high school hall monitors with guns and just enough humiliation to avoid class-action lawsuits. Several hundred people are lined up to pass through the two passport checkpoints that are open. One guy efficiently does his job, the second takes five times as long and several more watch the proceedings. No one suggests opening up another checkpoint to process more people. At the baggage claim, a TSA guy has his dog sniff at four suitcases only before taking off - ignoring everything else on the carousel. During a delay in processing baggage, a TSA staffer announces to the 40-odd people left waiting that “all baggage has been off-loaded and to see your airline’s lost luggage counter if you don’t have your bag.” It was just a delay and the remaining baggage did show up but her announcement (whether it was a deliberate lie or callous incompetence) upset a few people.
Not surprisingly, international airlines are taking their business elsewhere and in true SoCal-strength NIMBYism, the locals could care less if the $4 billion of international visitor dollars disappears.
Symbolic perhaps that a chunk of the Theme Building collapsed. At least it’s being repaired.
Jose Jimenez scanned the rows of CDs, whose covers mainly pictured men dressed in cowboy hats and Western-style shirts open at the collar.
Jimenez, who is from Mexico, was in a Latin record shop in the New York City borough of Queens. He was searching for the latest from a Mexican band whose forte is accordion- and polka-based music that relates sometimes-true stories about drug trafficking and its social ills. He had recently seen the band play on a Spanish-language television show.
“You listen to the music and start to believe you’re back in your country,” the 36-year-old said, adding that the lyrics speak about what is going on in Mexico these days.
For many Latin Americans like Jimenez, the source for their music - a cultural bridge between their lives in the U.S. and their homelands - is the neighborhood Latin record shop. These stores have proliferated in New York’s immigrant neighborhoods in recent years and have survived even as the retail music industry that caters to English speakers faces grim prospects.
[via Everyday Literacies]
I’m a bit fed up with criticism of the Hualapa’s effort to save their lives. Most condemnation reeks of Anglo racism at worst and misplaced white paternalism at best. One comment on Kurt’s piece really got me going.
“The architects of the El Tovar and the other buildings at the South Rim kept the buildings aesthetically in line with the canyon.”
What a load of crap. The Market Plaza at the South Rim is the size of a K-Mart. Why do we need such a big store in a National Park?
“The facilities the National Park Service built at the Grand Canyon are, for the most part, necessary in order for people to visit the canyon.”
Again I need my hip waders. John Wesley Powell and early travelers didn’t need a city on the South Rim to sustain them. Nor did Clarence Dutton or John Muir or Teddy Roosevelt, who expressed his wish that it remain pristine for future generations.
Today, the Canyon is anything but pristine with houses and pay phones at Phantom Ranch, a water pipeline across the canyon, a bank, an ATM, 11 restaurants, an auto mechanic shop, Internet access, a kennel, a medical clinic, a post office, gas stations, gift shops, six lodges with almost 1000 rooms. There are 228 miles of roads and 1143 buildings. This isn’t “necessary”. It’s excessive and it’s impossible to find solitude on the South Rim.
So back off the Hualapai! I’m fed up with this racist double standard. After everything the US government has done to native peoples, how dare you smugly anticipate the financial failure of their tribe!
My prediction: the skywalk will be out of business within three years. The controversy then will be people screaming at the government on how to best dismantle it, but not before the CLUI installs a guerilla photo exhibit.
The Ford Cortina from Life On Mars is being auctioned off for charity and if I lived in the UK I would totally bid on it. Meanwhile, I patiently await the next episode.
And finally, two lesser-known conflicts going on in the world…
1. Armani attacks Savile Row, dismissing the traditional home of menswear as “a bad English comedy.”
2. Rock & Roll versus “Shadowy Russian Business Interests” in a war to control the factory that supplies two-thirds of the world’s vacuum tubes for amplifiers.
A chance to see a 60 year old UFO fly doesn’t come by that often, so the big event this weekend was a drive out to the Palm Springs Air Museum to see the original N9M flying wing prototype fly.
The old Northrop flying wings are one of the few planes I still obsess over. I still vividly remember the flying wing scene from the 1953 War Of The Worlds (and the audience in the Orange Theater cheering when L.A. City Hall gets blown up) and getting worked up over something that looked like it stepped off of the front cover of a vintage SF pulp magazine. Cue a lifetime of general obsession over retrofuture technology that was just too ahead of its time to be of any practicality. Somewhere I still have a beat-up poster of the B-49 that lasted through three years of high school dorm living.
Anyway, one of the few remaining flying wing third-scale prototypes was restored a few years back and makes the occasional flight demo here and there. Even after all the pictures, films, etc. I’ve seen of it, I couldn’t help but sputter out an “illbegoddamned” when it took off.
Here’s the requisite Flickr set from the day and some some short movies I took (pass 3, pass 4, pass 5)
Of course any trip to Palm Springs requires two additional things… Modernism and the Sonny Bono statue.
The tour of airport cafes continues…
The relatively new terminal at El Monte Airport (EMT) doesn’t have the old charm of Fullerton or Long Beach, but the outstanding breakfast at Annia’s Kitchen inside is the current champion. The best deal is the “Airport Special Breakfast” which loads you up with at least two of everything for $4.99
I’ve blogged about the Long Beach Airport (LGB) before - vintage terminal, free wireless, and happy times on JetBlue. I’ve never been to the cafe before though, so it was time for another round of coffee, pancakes, and bacon.
The food was your basic above-average diner quality and the wait staff kept the coffee flowing. The real winner though is the view out of the window where you’ve got a panoramic view of almost all airport operations. I could easily sit here, drink coffee, and stare out the window all day. Did I mention the free Wi-Fi?
Just down the street from the LGB terminal is the old McDonnell-Douglas aircraft plant. Boeing took it over when they they bought out McDonnell-Douglas and renamed the MD-80 descendants the Boeing 717. Boeing shortly phased out the 717 soon enough anyway. Still, the real tragedy is that the giant “Fly DC Jets” neon sign on the roof is no longer lit.
This week’s visit was to the Fullerton Airport (FUL) cafe a.k.a. Tartuffles. I’ve been there dozens of times before so it wasn’t any big surprise - yummy food, direct view of the tarmac, and pretty reasonable prices (the whole breakfast was $7.00 including coffee).
I’ve been obsessed with airport cafes lately (yeah, I know I know… “lately”) and I finally have a chance to catch up on some of the local places. First up is Nat’s Airport Cafe at Hawthorne Municipal Airport (a.k.a. Jack Northrop Field). The corned beef hash was perfunctory but amazingly inexpensive - breakfast barely cracked $5.
HHR’s terminal building is classically 1970s civic down to the zig-zag walkway shade out front and the big Saturn mural on the side. There free wi-fi if you need it and a small museum on the northwest side of the field.
SpaceShipOne notwithstanding, aviation milestones have been kinda boring lately - another billionaire flies around the world, etc. However, nothing is cooler than landing a mystery helicopter on the summit of Mt. Everest. More photos and videos on the Eurocopter site.
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