Two weeks at the Colony hotel in Delray Beach, Florida

Lately, we have taken to staying at the Colony Hotel in Delray while making our winter visit to my 92 year old father.  Built in 1926, the Colony allows one to step back in time to the relaxed, ornamental elegance of the late colonial period when uniformed staff, ceiling fans, white wicker, and large french windows open wide to the soft sweet nautical winds of time that blur the boundries of space and time transport you to back to 1920's Rangoon, Siam, Singapore, Macau, the Raffles Hotel, the mysteries of the orient, clothed in white linen suits and straw hats, flowing gossamer gowns of Edwardian aires,  sipping iced rum drinks served by obsequious uniformed locals on broad verandas open to the world and overlooking eternity of a still imperial empire.

That Delray and Colony Hotel still exist in the vibrant, organic form that they do, is a minor miracle and a testament to the hard work of those committed to battling the corrosive forces of neglect and urban renewal that have gutted America.  Everyone has taken these pictures of the Colony, some better, many worse, but the challenge here was to get it right for myself.  Its not as easy as you might think, but I think I nailed it given certain technical limitations.  This is the cornerstone of the renewal of Atlantic Avenue that runs from the beach all the way to Swinton Avenue and Doc's drive in, a tropical paradise that also just happens to sell great burgers and onion rings and the veggie burgers that looked and tasted home made (if you care about such things), and I have had my share of mediocre frozen ones, so I know...

The reinvention of Delray includes Pineapple Grove on 4th Street, which was originally intended to be the "arts district" but the art never took root, so like the rest of Delray, it consists of pricey eateries, high end boutiques, a couple of expensive art galleries, specializing more in decorative works that would look good over your sofa or in the guest bedroom, and the ubiquitous Florida condos with attached parking lots.  You just can't legislate an art scene, it has to be something organic that just happens.  But kudos for trying.

You can't fake authenticity no matter how hard you try, but at Kevro's Art Bar on 2nd Avenue, down by the railroad tracks in what was once the wrong side of town, you won't be disappointed.  They take their drinking and their art seriously.

Other points of interest are the Delray Camera Shop .  Mostly digital now, but it still has that old camera store feel.  They still sell film and some darkroom supplies.

The Trouser Shop/ Delray News stand are a retro/funky little anomalous blast from the past, on the otherwise very pricey, uber fashionable Atlantic Avenue scene.  Its a great place buy the Globe and Mail, and otherwise meet up with all the other Canadians milling around in  mid afternoon waiting for the truck carrying Le Presse, Le Devoir, the National Post and the Montreal Gazette in addition to the NYT, People Magazine and anything you could want.  I happened to stop by on February 12, the day after the pope resigned, in what would appear to stand out as his major accomplishment in that office. 

Spent a bit of time in the Delray suburbs which deserve more attention and a blog entry of their own. Here are just a few...

More to report on Delray later, but just to mention;  if you stay at the Colony, you get beach club privileges which are a pretty great perk.

                                                                       Pablo

Spent 2 days in Tallahassee...

and the only photograph I took was this one in Gullie Alley across from Andrew's Restaurant on South Adams Street where I had a couple of bourbons and a really great Mediterranean salad during happy hour.  The tables and people flowed out of the place onto the sidewalk and into the street filling Adams Street with a warm festive late afternoon deep southern feeling.  Thank goodness for Andrew's, cause it was just about the only show in town.

The reason for my lack of productivity was that there wasn't much for me to see.  Most of the original city had been torn down to make way for multi level parking garages, Soviet style, undistinguished, utilitarian government office buildings, and generic chain hotels.  Two and a half square blocks of renovated buildings housing lawyers. investment counselors, eateries, and a visitor's center etc., were about all that remained of the old city, of which Gullie Alley was a part.  There was some charming balconied southern architecture and a few other old buildings  reminiscent of New Orleans, but they lacked cohesion and there just weren't enough of them. The context was missing, so for me anyway, it was hard to get any sense of place, only a fleeting sense of what once was.  Of course part of the problem, as always, was at least partly, my expectations.  The Tallahassee I hoped to see, and which still exists only in old photos and imagination, is no longer there.  I wouldn't recommend going out of your way to see the town, but if you do go, don't miss the old capitol building which is beautiful and houses a great museum of Florida history.  

                                                                         Pablo

On the occasion of Barak Obama's Inauguration, a poem...

From the desk of Pablo, guerrilla poet, who might have been reading a poem at today's inauguration if only he had been in touch to let them know he was out there.  Just following in the footsteps of my Uncle Cyril, who could have won the Pulitzer prize, if only...

To our newly reelected president, who is too good for this country.  They say a nation gets the leaders they deserve, but with this thoughtful man, I'm not sure that is the case.   To choose to continue to want to preside over a country so consumed with hate...


                                            It is by different rivers
                                            that we arrive here,
                                            moving alone together
                                            in uncertain unison,
                                            tethered by a history
                                            not of our own making and
                                            sharing only the insidious
                                            distrust of familiar strangers
                                            bequeathed to us by our fathers
                                            who could not have known
                                            or wished upon us
                                            the bitter fruits
                                            we have been left to harvest.


                                                              Pablo
       

Into the Mojave...

As you probably know if you have been following this blog, I'm not much of a flora or fauna guy, but traveling through the Mojave, its all flora, a few angry horse flies, 4 or 5 jack rabbits, and the long empty road.  Artie is a fauna and flora guy, so I guess this entry is for him too.  At this point I have decided that maintaining an accurate chronology of entries has recently been working against me, productivity wise, so while things may not follow, one day, I will put it all together in the right order, but for now I just need to put it down as the spirit moves me, so here we are in the Mojave Desert.

That's me in the corner, that's me in the backlight of a late afternoon as the sun is starting to set and we have a long way to go to get to where ever it is we are spending the night.  The name is evocative, and I always pictured Edward Weston and Charis Wilson traveling through it, but I'm just not much of a nature lover, so the magic was not there for me in the Mojave, alas.  After a while, it all started looking the same, but I did a fairly good job of cataloguing the major specimens of desert plant life that inhabits the landscape.  The only plant I can identify for sure are the Joshua Trees in the second and fifth photos.

                                                                    Pablo  

Love it...Hate It, Don't really know anymore...

This one's for my brother in law Artie, who recently noted that he had been checking in on my blog and there was nothing new lately.  He was right.  Its nice to know that there's someone out there checking in on me, and that was enough, I hope, to shake me out of my mid winter slumbers and get back to work.

Not sure if I still share Nick Walker's exuberance expressed on a wall on Ludlow Street somewhere between Grand and Delancy Streets, but I love it.  Taken in late October, it may have been washed away by the deluge of Hurricane Sandy, if it had not already been removed by the graffiti police, so let me know.

My unremitting ambivalence with the city that nurtured me, raised me, educated me, amused me, and then abandoned me after I moved away,  remains and continues to unsettle me.  After so many years you might say I should be over it, and after all, wasn't it me who did the abandoning.  True, all of it, but who really wants to accept that you can't go home anymore.  But, how can anyone stay angry, post Hurricane Sandy, at a city that was as much a victim of circumstance as myself.  Victim of the crude hand and dull, crass imagination, or lack thereof, of Donald Trump and his ilk that has filled the skyline with easily disposable buildings as lacking in character as he is.  I read somewhere once that hurricanes were nature's eviction notice.  Who knows?

                                 Photo by Jackie

New York City looking north from Canal Street to 34th St dark, cold, wet, and post apocalyptic after Hurricane Sandy .  No signs of life.

Greene Street in the heart of Soho a week before the storm.  Res ipse locquitor...

A couple of Eurotourists on their NYC adventure.   I envy the fresh eyes through which they see the city and the adventure that awaits them.  

The north side of Union Square at 17th street.

Obviously the Vesuvio Bakery on Prince Street in the heart of what was once Little Italy.  The most photographed bakery in NYC.  People have been taking pictures of it since the 30's when it really was an Italian bakery.  They are still taking pictures of it now so I tried to shake it up a bit.   It is a great place. moderately expensive for what you get, but good.  Mostly cookies and muffins and pastries.   A true relic of the old city.

The new city is inhabited by strangers, at least to me anyway.  There is Hanksy, son of Banksy who I haven't met yet...

This guy...

Her...

Them...

And on a related note, this is a great piece of graffiti by Bumboy W C from LA who caught my eye while walking down Sunset Blvd. while I was out there, and while it is not NYC, it could be...

not sure I agree with the sentiment!!!  But you've got to love it.

                                                                           Pablo

Anti-Fracking Rally, Albany,NY

It's January 9th 2013, the day that our lovely governor gives his state of the state address spouting all of the empty, platitudinous boiler plate about gun control, jobs, fiscal responsibility, bi-partisanship, casinos, women's rights etc etc and whatever else he feels will play well on the national stage for future reference.  Now if he can only learn to smile.  Nepotism and a sense of entitlement will only get you so far (ask Mitt).  In the end the public has to like you, and he is not his father by a long shot.
According to the pundits and insiders who seem to know about these things, the issue of fracking was not on the agenda for reasons known only to Andrew, his supportive corporate interests and his 2016 strategists, hence an anti-fracking demonstration that was held in the warm, dry, claustrophobic confines of the lower concourse of the Rockafella Plaza in Albany.  It was dim, loud, disorganized, unfocused, and the lighting was terrible, anathema for the non-flash photographers in the crowd (me).  On top of that, I had the mis-fortune to be standing next to a gregarious AARP hippy who sprayed droplets of spittle when he spoke.  I couldn't get away from him fast enough and I'm quite sure a droplet landed in my mouth.  Icky at the best of times, but with the flu running rampant across the country, I cringe at the possibilities.  The overall circumstances did not provide photo ops suited to my take on things, but I did get this one nice one on my way out that made up for the overall misadventure of being there.

Hope I will be ok.  Also hoping that Devora, who is literally a "Soldier in Rain", on an army base somewhere in Israel right now, where it has been raining incessantly, is ok.  While going through the archives for material I will be using on an upcoming blog, I found this nice picture of her taken on a warm summer at the National Gallery in Ottawa last year.  Irrelevant to anyone but me, but so what.

She is my favorite model because I usually never have to tell her to "stop smiling!!!".   Don't know what happened here. 

                                                                      Pablo 

Dazed and photofatigued in Sioux Falls, South Dakota and a few other odds and ends deposited here for the time being......

We finished our route 12 adventure and made a mad dash to Sioux Falls to spend the night before the last leg of our 10 day journey back to Minneapolis where we would spend a day or two resting up and seeing what there was to see before heading home.  Wasn't intending to take anymore pictures, but driving along 12th street, how could I help myself...

Took my life in my hands to get the last one now that the DeLux has been turned into an SRO for homeless, druggie desperados who seemed to just be waking and working on their first cup of coffee while I was at work.  Lots of questions about what I was doing.  "Taking pictures" didn't really seem like the greatest answer to a bunch of guys who probably didn't want their pictures or whereabouts made public knowledge.  Snapped a few quick ones and left pronto.  Was worth it, though.  Don't see many or any motels advertising "salesman stop" at a time and place when having a phone and/or TV in the room was still a luxury.  The things we now take for granted!!!

The next few photos were kind of orphaned and homeless, so while they were NOT taken in Sioux Falls, they did seem at home here and and since they needed a place to be, here they are...

Don't know when this motel was built.  Looks like the mid 60s,  when certain people began to aspire to become a member of the mile high club.  Not sure that figured into their thinking at the time this place was built, but once they did become aware of what they had I'm sure they had a laugh and saw no reason to change things.  So if you are ever passing through Prescott, Arizona and entertained thoughts of becoming a member of the mile high club, here is your big chance, and it will be our little secret.  Before you check in, don't forget to stop at Lefty's (not literally, however, since it is not in Prescott).

St. Augustine, Florida

This tangent appears to provide a good segue into some Route 66 stuff, the first of which was taken in a very little town called Amboy, California which is in the southern Mojave where we picked up the 66, heading into L.A. to meet Devora for the long awaited Hollywood trip.

The gas station and cafe were open, the motel to the rear left looked like it had been closed for years.  To the right is Route 66.  It was late in the day, and Jackie wanted to see the Bagdad Cafe about 10 miles down the road before it got too late, so we didn't have time to hang around.  As it turned out, the Bagdad Cafe was nothing to look at, the lighting was bad, and I did not take a picture.  You'se not missing anything, according to m, anyway.  When we got home, we rented the movie (Bagdad Cafe) and the building looked just about the same.  The movie was quite good, and it is recommended.

                                                                  Pablo