Rock-A-Hoola: water park in stasis

Rock-A-HoolaBoing Boing posts about a run-down kiddie amusement park in Egypt and I was reminded about Rock-A-Hoola.

Rock-A-Hoola is (was?) a mostly closed-but-not-quite-totally-abandoned water park out in the Mojave Desert in Newberry Springs, CA. The park has been kicking around irregularly since at least the early-70s – I remember ads for Lake Dolores (as it was known back then) airing on KTLA in the cheap post-midnight airspace alongside Truckmaster School Of Trucking and Cal Worthington. Presumably the idea was for it to be a tourist/camping stopover on the road between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. I couldn’t imagine anyone being excited to to there – it’s too far for a day trip from LA and not much there to give you a reason to stay. I suppose there’s always the Vegas crowd, but it seem like they always REALLY want to get to Vegas.

Anyway, I snagged some photos of the place in October 2003. The main water slide part of the park was fenced off (and patrolled by dogs) but I got some pictures of the surrounding facilities. I still have to question the long-term viability of a water park in an area with little water and abundant evaporation, but that’s not stopping folks from dreaming.

Lake Dolores / Rock-A-Hoola on Wikipedia
Rock-A-Hoola in better days.

The Coliseum Theater – A life in Flickr

The Coliseum TheaterKrazyDad posts about an airplane he took a picture of and commented on how soon after posting the picture, a commenter ID’ed the plane and posted links to another photo of the same plane after it had collided with another plane on the ground.

I had a similar experience late last year. On the trip east in January 2005, I was randomly driving around New Orleans, taking pictures, gawking at houses, all the usual tourist stuff. Suddenly I ran across the most amazing looking movie theater – an art deco wonder that reminded me of the old May Company building on Wilshire Blvd. here in L.A. Clearly, the theater was the winner of the neighborhood “which one of these is not like the other” architectural game and a picture was an absolute must. I remember that the intersection was pretty busy and I had to circle the block a couple of times before I could get something in focus and that’s what is over there on the right. In retrospect I should have just parked the damn car.

After Katrina, I had wondered what happened to the Coliseum and late last year I got an email from someone who ran across my photo and pointed me to some aftermath photos – the groovy facade took a heavy beating, but the building was still hanging in there. In October, some tarps went up and apparently was being restored and transformed into a studio. I hadn’t thought about it for awhile until I read KrazyDad’s post on the kindness of helpful strangers, remembered the random post-Katrina emailer and took a look.

The Coliseum burned to the ground in February of this year and Flickr is there to hold the documentation and the memories.

Update: Cinema Treasures’ page for the Coliseum.

CLUI wins award – Dauphin Island

Congrats to the CLUI for winning the 2005 Lucelia Artist Award.

CLUI is currently running a “greatest hits” package with mini exhibits of “Emergency State,” “Loop Feedback Loop,” and other recent shows along with the main “Vacation: Dauphin Island” exhibition. I’ve seen plenty of “dead vacation spots” collections, but the Dauphin Island set is incredibly striking – I’d shell out for a coffee-table sized book of them.

Dauphin Island (more of a sandbar than an actual island) itself is even sketchier shape than Grand Isle area of Louisiana. As you might have surmised, Katrina practically sank the island and it’s only barely reopen now – just in time for the next hurricane season.

I had no idea it was there… I wish I stopped in on the road trip east last year.

Happy 50th big metal boxes!

Everyone is talking about the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, but I had no idea that it was also the 50th birthday of the lowly and omnipresent Shipping Container…

It may not be printed in red on your calendar, but April 26 is an important date in economic history. Fifty years ago, the Ideal-X, a war-surplus oil tanker with a steel frame welded above its deck, loaded 58 aluminium containers at a dock in Newark, New Jersey. Five days later, the ship steamed into Houston, Texas, where trucks took on the metal boxes and carried them to their destinations.

This was the beginning of the container revolution. By dramatically lowering freight costs, the container transformed economic geography. Some of the world’s great ports – London and Liverpool, New York and San Francisco – saw their bustling waterfronts decay as the maritime industry decamped to new locations with room to handle containers and transport links to move them in and out. Manufacturers, no longer tied to the waterfront to reduce shipping costs, moved away from city centres, decimating traditional industrial districts. Eventually, production moved much farther afield, to places such as South Korea and China, which took advantage of cheap, reliable transportation to make goods that could not have been exported profitably before containerisation.

Via Telstar Logistics, who also just created the “Big Metal Box” Flickr group for “photos of cargo containers, container terminals, container ships, and container-based architecture.”

One last thing, it’s also Captain Sensible’s birthday!

Cat army annihilates destructive rats

This is the most cheerful news item I’ve read all week…

Cat army annihilates destructive rats
(China Daily)
Updated: 2006-04-12 09:36
A group of villagers recently prepared a sumptuous fish banquet for more than 200 cats to thank them for eradicating rats from their farmland.

Yangmei villagers in Sanjiang Township of Xinhui District in the city of Jiangmen, Guangdong Province, are expecting a good harvest this year thanks to the hard-working cats.

The village committee spent more than 12,000 yuan (US$1,500) to buy more than 200 cats, which they released onto farmland to help wipe out the rat problem.

Sanjiang Village has 86.67 hectares of rice fields and 13.33 hectares of other crops and suffered from a rat infestation after most of the snakes were caught and slaughtered by local villagers in previous years.

UC Irvine awards Gregory Coleman a full Master’s degree

James writes…

Today is a great day! Today I received for my father his Master’s degree in music from the University of California at Irvine. I have to blog & run, but I’ll be back to post more details tonight.

The Register article is online now…

IRVINE – It was Gregory Coleman’s dying wish.

On the day he died, Coleman, his body tumor-ridden, could barely scratch out his initials on a letter asking UC Irvine to award him a master of fine arts degree in music.

He died from cancer in September just a few classes short of completing the curriculum.

“The last thing I told him that day was, ‘You will get this degree,'” said his son, James Coleman. “I promised him that. All I did was help him speak beyond the grave.”

Tuesday, UC Irvine awarded Coleman the diploma his father earned. University officials granted the master of fine arts degree in guitar after a several-month process of determining that Gregory Coleman’s professional and teaching career in classical music had satisfied any missing degree requirements.

His CD “Isla California” met the degree’s final requirement of composition and was called an “exceptional accomplishment.” Coleman’s degree is only one of five that the university has awarded after a student’s death.

“Getting this degree emphasizes the importance of formal education that was so vital to my father,” Coleman said. “When he taught guitar, he wasn’t just teaching music – it was about teaching life.”

James Coleman, 33, began his quest for his father’s degree shortly after he died. Almost like a lawyer, he put together evidence of his father’s work and accomplishments.

Ron Purcell, director of the International Guitar Research Archive at Cal State Northridge, entered Coleman as one of the pioneers of American guitar. He cited “Isla California” in which Coleman plays traditional music from the rancho era, as an example of the preservation of California’s historical music.

Associate Dean Colleen Reardon, also a musician, played a key role in Coleman’s quest. She demonstrated that Coleman’s numerous performances, his CDs and the extra classes he took were part of his “intellectual curiosity.” The music department’s unanimous support sealed the case.

“This was a long process,” said Fernandez. “In the end, this degree has more value – it was earned. It’s so nice to give that satisfaction and closure to the family. He was one of the best. He was agile, expressive and totally committed.”

Coleman’s battle with melanoma began 18 years ago when a student spotted a mole on his neck. Doctors removed it, and for 15 years he was symptom-free. In January 2003, doctors found eight tumors in his body. Coleman suspended his studies at UCI to go through intensive chemotherapy and radiation therapy.

Mark Westling, Coleman’s friend and student of 30 years, played “Romanza” for him the day he died.

“He was an extremely elegant and passionate player,” said Westling. “This is a wonderful closure for Greg. A fitting award to an accomplished musician and someone who loved education.”