In the landscape of the American roadway, four colors seem to reign supreme for background signage: green, yellow, orange, and blue. Green (with white lettering) is the status quo across freeways and most municipal markers for value-neutral guidance and wayfinding. Yellow (with black lettering) is most pervasive in signaling a permanent aberration: e.g., a change
By 2026, it has achieved a cult following, receiving more attention from dead mall aficionados than most of its peers. In fact, most of the vloggers who make a career out of documenting liminal spaces feel compelled at some point to visit this one. It’s hard to say why this particular dead mall is so
As we approach the Chinese Year of the Fire Horse, food halls are everywhere. The largest metropolises, college towns, tourist traps, the repurposed warehouse in that shady part of town, office parks, strip malls. Originally primarily the domain of large, old, horizontally-oriented buildings in urban districts, they seem adaptable to almost every building shell and
In an era when almost every interstate exit offers the requisite gas/food/lodging, what is the function of publicly financed rest areas? I ponder this subject not because I have any major beef with their existence. I still use rest areas fairly often and have featured more than a few in my blog. Though most operate
Hot on the heels of the previous article, in which I explored how an Iraqi bakery (temporarily) replaced an old Quiznos, this time I touch on internationalism with a much, much larger retail footprint—an entire mall. The mall in question is Security Square, a few miles to the west of Baltimore city limits, at a
I don’t have a reason to visit College Park, Maryland all that often, even though it’s only a handful of miles away from my current home and hosts a major academic institution. But when I do visit, the small city reminds me what an outlier it is: a freestanding municipality encompassing a major flagship university,
Far be it from me to turn into a crotchety old killjoy who lambastes every pocket park I find, but I already did it once a few years ago, for a tidy but neglected little mini-playground in Alexandria, Virginia. Since a bigger, higher-profile, and splashier (literally) play area stands just a few blocks away, my
So sue me: I’ve covered more than my fair share of public restrooms on this blog. To the best of my recollection, I’ve only featured the restrooms themselves; not the patrons. If there were ever a hint of another person lurking within the frame captured by my camera’s lens, I’d be a total creeper. But
Throughout the life of this blog, I’ve come down hard on malls. And I’ve done this, not because I fundamentally dislike them—they’re a paradigm for consumerism in the automobile era, whether we wanted it or not—but because malls in general have shown a diminishing ability to adapt to the shopping patterns of the last twenty
It sure seems like the Mid Atlantic states have more than their fair share of Giant supermarkets. No, I’m not talking about anything on the scale of the one I blogged about in Fairbanks, Alaska a few years ago; that was a Fred Meyer (now a subsidiary of Kroger, the nation’s largest grocery chain), and
In the landscape of the American roadway, four colors seem to reign supreme for background signage: green, yellow, orange, and blue. Green (with white lettering) is the status quo across freeways and most
By 2026, it has achieved a cult following, receiving more attention from dead mall aficionados than most of its peers. In fact, most of the vloggers who make a career out of documenting
As we approach the Chinese Year of the Fire Horse, food halls are everywhere. The largest metropolises, college towns, tourist traps, the repurposed warehouse in that shady part of town, office parks, strip
In an era when almost every interstate exit offers the requisite gas/food/lodging, what is the function of publicly financed rest areas? I ponder this subject not because I have any major beef with
Hot on the heels of the previous article, in which I explored how an Iraqi bakery (temporarily) replaced an old Quiznos, this time I touch on internationalism with a much, much larger retail
I don’t have a reason to visit College Park, Maryland all that often, even though it’s only a handful of miles away from my current home and hosts a major academic institution. But
Far be it from me to turn into a crotchety old killjoy who lambastes every pocket park I find, but I already did it once a few years ago, for a tidy but
So sue me: I’ve covered more than my fair share of public restrooms on this blog. To the best of my recollection, I’ve only featured the restrooms themselves; not the patrons. If there
Throughout the life of this blog, I’ve come down hard on malls. And I’ve done this, not because I fundamentally dislike them—they’re a paradigm for consumerism in the automobile era, whether we wanted
It sure seems like the Mid Atlantic states have more than their fair share of Giant supermarkets. No, I’m not talking about anything on the scale of the one I blogged about in