construction on floaral avenue part two: the empire strikes back!

this is fairly self explanatory, no?

floral avenue construction pt. 1

i’m not really sure what’s going on here, but for the last few weeks this street has been tore the fuck up.  first there was a giant, gaping hole right smack, dab in the middle of the road, and then that hole vanished [seemingly overnight] but was replaced by a similarly sized gaint, gaping hole about 20 feet down the road. it’s madness, i swear.

the highway dept.

right across the street from the town of thompson highway department is… the town of thompson highway department! the old building was, well, old. it needed to be redone and updated, so rather than spend the money to fix it the decision was made to build a new one right across the street. unfortunately, and fairly predictably given the town, nothing at all was done with the old one. it just sits there, looking empty and ugly and messy. just like everything else around here.

deitch’s shopwell

in what appears to be an abandoned warehouse, there was once a giant supermarket called deitch’s shopwell. it closed years ago, in the early 60s i believe, and there is no trace that it was ever anything but a big, white building except for on the starburt side where there is a large, painted on sign that says ‘OPEN ALL YEAR’

the parking lot behind the old boob tube

there was a time, in the mid-90s, when the boob tube was the coolest video store around. in a time when every town had at least 3, maybe more, going to the video store was an event, a reason to get excited. there were always the obvious new releases, but in the boob tube they had something even better, something special- wall to wall shelves of the most obscure, absurd, random, and ridiculous movies you could ever imagine. from your favorite childhood movie to your new favorite horror movie that you didn’t know existed, you could find it at the boob tube.
now of course there is netflix, bluckbuster, a million and a half other chain rental places and downloading sites, you never leave your house, you never stumble across the most brilliant cover you’ve ever seen and spend the next two hours of your life in complete cinematic rapture. alas. there’s always the leftover parking lot.

jeff’s place

the other day, while wondering around, i came across a large empty building across the street from the government center and the shortline bus station. so being naturally inclined to trouble as well as hobos i went right on in, it turns out it used to be a restaurant called jeff’s place. a southwestern looking place that now appears to house my friends, the hobos.

de fillipi’s bakery

somewhere in the black mountain hills of north dakota there lived a young boy named rocky raccoon… that’s not true at all. but! there is a bakery on broadway called de fillipi’s where everything tastes vaguely of lemon. it’s been there since, actually i have no idea, for as long as i can remember and in that whole time i managed to always have a friend or relative working there so i could stop by and get a free cookie or two.
things are a bit worse for the wear on broadway these days, with all the shootings and gang activity, but the bakery remains open and apparently doing well.

the broadway theatre

in honor of my dearly departed movie theatre i present to you… another departed theatre [of the performing variety]. the broadway theatre was, in it’s day, quite the extravagant place but just like everything else it seems, it’s closed down and fallen apart, left to the graffiti and garbage.  once upon a time though, it was glamorous, you can tell. you can still see it, you can almost feel it.  you just know that men wore hats and ladies wore gloves, it was an event, it was an occasion, it was glamour.

miscellaneous monday

sorry about my absence last week, i was sitting shiva. my beloved movie theatre has closed, and after employing me since the tender age of 14 [that's 10 years for anyone interested in counting] i was slightly devastated.

our last day of business was monday, i worked a double that day because, despite the official silence, everyone knew what was coming and i wanted to hold on as long as possible. around 6pm we closed the doors and fred, our boss, sat everyone down and thanked us for being ‘good kids all these years’ and then we did what any reasonable group of people would do in that situation: we tore that shit apart. we ripped the metal line poles out of the floor and used them to bash in the windows and glass counters and knocked down the track lighting from the ceiling. we pulled the floor boards up and sawed down a candy counter, took all the posters off the walls and then took whatever we wanted as souvenirs.
it was a strangely fitting farewell.
goodbye, old friend.

verizon building

the verizon building lives in the old bell atlantic telephone building. much to my massive disappointment there are no girls skating around with giant headphones on saying ‘one moment please’ and plugging wires into tiny coloured holes, like i always secretly wished. there are, however, lots of mysterious tall metal things with holes in them and wires protruding every which way in a variety of colours.
the building itself is old, very old, at least a hundred years. the insides though are brand new. i love the juxtaposition of an antiquated building with all of those victorian touches full of cell phones and computers and all sorts of modern technology inside.