On a sun-drenched stretch of I-40 in New Mexico, conveniently situated between nowhere and Purgatory (but not the ski resort outside Durango—that’s in Colorado, silly), the weary motorist who can’t quite make it to Albuquerque might find this massive casino complex a welcome reprieve.It’s the Route 66 Casino Hotel, one of numerous gaming facilities in
The southward drive down Delaware State Route 1 (Coastal Highway) toward the beaches is long (by Delaware standards) and none too visually arresting, but peppered along the corridor are some whimsical finds that keep things interesting. I’ve pointed them out in the past. Now, just outside the small city of Milford we see another example
As I restore the content from my old computer to the new one, I’ll be resigning myself to some shorter posts through the rest of the year, with the hope that everything gets sorted out and I can resume posts of greater substance in early 2020. The serpentine road in the photo below may look
I generally hesitate before I dive into an article that focuses primarily on blight and disinvestment, in no small part because it carries with it a tenor of exploitation. And there’s evidence to back my claim: an early article I did on the now-demolished, life-after-people hellscape of Camden, New Jersey became not just one of
As I work slowly toward a goal of boosting my number of monthly posts through the occasional Mini Post of No Consequence, I’m forced to reveal that I can hardly resist a good pun. Unfortunately for my readership, I’m just as prone to capitulating on a really bad pun as well. I probably lost a
No doubt we can find whimsical people everywhere we go, but a established urban neighborhood, regardless of the socioeconomics, isn’t particularly likely to offer one of these: Somewhere, amidst the directional arrows for Key West, Cape May, and Bourbon Street, there seems to be a mailbox. And just down the street, there’s another oddity:Yes, the
It is completely unreasonable for me to use license plate background art as a synecdoche for a state’s prevailing ethos, but I’m going to do it anyway. Why not? The design of a license plate is broadly attempting to achieve this effect, more so than even a flag. Whether license plates originally intended this or
Regardless of the time of year, any coastal sunset should supersede something as stubbornly human-wrought as a church steeple. After all, the ephemerality of that palette reduces the comparable permanence of an opulent beachfront home—or even a charming fishing village—to banality.Yet here, along the north-central coast of California, in rural Sonoma County, far removed from
For a commodity as market-sensitive as petroleum (let’s call it “gas”), a featurette on pricing is less likely to be indicative of market trends than, say, certain perishable goods (which induced considerable hardship on dairy and grain farmers these last few years) or certain appliances (in which the decline in demand has bankrupted several high-profile
In the town of Buffalo, South Dakota (with 2010 population of 330), the main street, though austere, seems to have held together quite well.It’s not necessarily surging or growing in economic clout, but then, for the most part, neither is Buffalo, which has lost half of its population since 1960. However, compare that to many
On a sun-drenched stretch of I-40 in New Mexico, conveniently situated between nowhere and Purgatory (but not the ski resort outside Durango—that’s in Colorado, silly), the weary motorist who can’t quite make it
The southward drive down Delaware State Route 1 (Coastal Highway) toward the beaches is long (by Delaware standards) and none too visually arresting, but peppered along the corridor are some whimsical finds that
As I restore the content from my old computer to the new one, I’ll be resigning myself to some shorter posts through the rest of the year, with the hope that everything gets
I generally hesitate before I dive into an article that focuses primarily on blight and disinvestment, in no small part because it carries with it a tenor of exploitation. And there’s evidence to
As I work slowly toward a goal of boosting my number of monthly posts through the occasional Mini Post of No Consequence, I’m forced to reveal that I can hardly resist a good
No doubt we can find whimsical people everywhere we go, but a established urban neighborhood, regardless of the socioeconomics, isn’t particularly likely to offer one of these: Somewhere, amidst the directional arrows for
It is completely unreasonable for me to use license plate background art as a synecdoche for a state’s prevailing ethos, but I’m going to do it anyway. Why not? The design of a
Regardless of the time of year, any coastal sunset should supersede something as stubbornly human-wrought as a church steeple. After all, the ephemerality of that palette reduces the comparable permanence of an opulent
For a commodity as market-sensitive as petroleum (let’s call it “gas”), a featurette on pricing is less likely to be indicative of market trends than, say, certain perishable goods (which induced considerable hardship
In the town of Buffalo, South Dakota (with 2010 population of 330), the main street, though austere, seems to have held together quite well.It’s not necessarily surging or growing in economic clout, but