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June 19, 2008
Providence
Power Plant at Night, Providence
We visited Providence, Rhode Island, the capital of "the biggest little state in the union." Our friend Brett found it "cute" and even "cutesey" at points. I suppose in contrast to Los Angeles, it could be so considered.
I thought it had that cool college town feel that many places do; both Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design are located there, right next to each other, in fact. We stopped to see the RISD Museum, which I suspected would have a lot of design-oriented stuff. They did have that, but they also had a bunch of more traditional art such as ancient statuary and European paintings.
The RISD Museum, Providence
That museum is on Benefit Street, which is an old historic street with lots of old houses. Shawn insists that I put in a picture of one of them, so as to give all you dear readers a sample of the old crap that one can see there.
Aston House (built 1790), Providence
In contrast to several other college towns, the college angle doesn't seem to be overdone in Providence. You do not have a lot of ratty bars that cater to the drunken carousing of students, nor numerous mid-quality fast food outlets that pass off sandwiches that are merely overpriced as "gourmet." It might be that this is because Brown and the Rhode Island School of Design are both top-notch schools, or it might be that the city's raison d'être is not just the schools. In any case, it is a very beautiful place with some very interesting offerings.
I wanted to specifically note a place called The Meeting Street Café (220 Meeting Street), because it was incredible. They are more-or-less a deli, but not of your specifically Jewish variety. They have soups and sandwiches, as well as some other entrees and desserts. Everything we had there was really tasty, and incredibly huge. Unfortunately, I was so overwhelmed with the eating experience there, I didn't get any photos.
Apart from the cutsey old homes, there are some killer buildings in the downtown. Among them are...
The Bank of America Building, Providence
...and...
Court House, Providence
...and...
Citizen's Bank/Apartments, Providence
...and...
Some Random Building, Providence
We also had some good Italian food in Federal Hill, and went to a pretty cool gay bar named "Mirabar."
I'd tell you about our shocking hotel fire alarm experience (5:30 am!), but I don't have time now. That'll probably be related in a summary of our hotel experiences in a later posting.
Posted by crispy at 09:09 AM | Comments (2)
June 13, 2008
A Look at Boston
Shawn in Chinatown, Boston
The above shot was taken in Chinatown, as was this one of a bilingual Dunkin Donuts sign.
Dunkin Donuts in Chinatown, Boston
The Theatre District is next to Chinatown, and one gets the "border effect" of sorts at the Wang Theater.
Wang Theater, Boston
Let's just say that I was greatly disappointed with that place. Not so with the Museum of Fine Arts.
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
They have a great Asian section, as well as an incomparable section of portraits of several early Americans.
Portrait of Paul Revere, MFA
They have a lot of pre-American stuff too, like the British lion on top of the Old State House, seen below.
Lion, Old State House
This is one part of the Potato Famine Monument, which shows an Irish immigrant woman looking back to the Old Country.
Potato Famine Monument, Boston
This building has fire escapes that are all spiral staircases.
Buildings with spiral fire escapes, Financial District
These are homes in the South End.
Residences, South End
These are in the Union Park area of South End.
Residences near Union Park, South End
These last two were not taken in Boston itself, but rather in Milford, an outlying town where Shawn and I spent the night. This first one was such an oddity that I had to include it. I figured readers (apart from those who live in Oregon) have not seen full-serve gas for a long time. It was roughly the same price (or cheaper) than the self-serve gas places in neighboring towns.
Full-Serve Gas, Milford
And the former smoker in me has to gasp at these cigarette prices. Note that these are on sale.
Cigarette Sale, Milford
Posted by crispy at 09:28 AM | Comments (3)
June 12, 2008
Specialists Admitted in Rear
General Hooker Entrance
It's even funnier because it's an entrance for the State House.
Posted by crispy at 06:03 PM | Comments (1)
June 08, 2008
The Photograph That Helped al-Qaeda
MBTA Advisory, Riverside Station
I was snapping this very photo of a sign at a train station for a collage I'm going to make once we return to Mexico of signs telling of all the things Americans are not permitted to do when I heard a voice asking, "May I help you?"
"Oh!" I exclaimed, having not seen him walking over. "I'm just taking a picture of the sign."
"You're not supposed to take any pictures of the equipment," he told me.
"No photos of any equipment?" I asked, not exactly sure how a sign was equipment.
"No," he replied with a sigh, indicating a mild annoyance.
I suspected I knew the reason for this, despite its being utterly ridiculous. Recently, I have been stopped from taking any number of seemingly innoccuous photographs like the one above.
The first time we ever ran into the phenomenon, we were in Minneapolis, Minnesota and Shawn was going around to see the locations used in the opening credits of one of his favorite shows of all time, The Mary Tyler Moore Show - the house where she supposedly lived, the park where she walked, the street where she tossed her hat in the air. When attempting to take a photograph of the escalator she rode in the Nicollet Mall, he was stopped by a private guard that wouldn't allow him to take a picture "for security reasons." At that time, it actually took us a while to figure out how a photograph of an escalator could be a threat to anyone's security, but by now, we've heard it as often as we've heard the one about putting your liquids in three-ounce bottles in a clear Ziploc® bag in your carry-on luggage.
All the same, I like to hear them say it. I put the camera down and asked him.
"Why is that?"
He looked at me for a moment with a corner of his mouth raised and issued a brief snort, and replied simply, "9-11." He stopped just short of following that with, "...smart-ass."
I thought I'd try to lighten the mood a little, so I asked him about what caused us to notice the sign in the first place: to reach the exit of the station, one has no choice to cross the tracks (visible at the lower left) about five feet from the location of the sign telling riders it is FORBIDDEN. I asked him how one was to get out of the station if they adhere to the mandate of the sign.
He was not amused.
"You exit down there, in the yellow zone," he said, pointing to a strip painted on the ground.
It was late. He didn't need some joker taunting him about the rules; people probably hassle him about the contradictory signage on a daily basis, each one thinking they're the genius that was the first to notice it. I abandoned my hopeless mission to turn his frown upside down and exited the station as he had indicated.
In my defense though, I wouldn't have joked with him about it if I could have just taken a photo of the sign. In his defense, he seemed, by his manner and tone of voice, to realize that it was ridiculous that I couldn't take a picture of signage at the station.
It made me wonder exactly how long people will continue to actually enforce such ridiculous knee-jerk prohibitions in the United States that were pushed on them in the wake of the September 11th terrorist attacks. I mean, honestly. Even if I took a photograph of the entire station, it's a train stop in a suburban town in Massachusetts. It's unlikely to be a high-priority target on even the most unambitious terrorist's list. I would be open to consideration of the idea that high-resolution photographs of more serious targets (Grand Central Station, airport terminals, Fort Knox) might be of aid to those wishing to do harm to the United States and its citizens, but one would be an idiot to think that a tourist's snapshot taken in a train station, especially one that simply shows what a sign says, is helping terrorists.
I know, it's easier to just write a blanket law that uses language like "transportation facility" and "equipment" than to exhaustively list which manifestations of those things are subject to a law and which are excused from it. I understand that such vague terminology has certain advantages to legislators writing the laws and those who enforce it. Yet when will the old chestnut of selective enforcement of such laws start to kick in and give people a little relief from the martial law effect in the United States?
Even the guy that told me to stop taking photographs seemed to find it ridiculous, but he had to do his job. Will life in the United States be like this for the rest of my life?
Posted by crispy at 10:59 PM | Comments (8)
June 01, 2008
Toronto: What I Liked
CN Tower, Toronto
Two and a half days in Toronto is not much time. It is not enough time to experience a decent sample of what the city has to offer, let alone to get a good feeling of what the city is really like.
Given that our stay at the Sheraton Centre Toronto was the worst part of our trip (I won't go into that here; let's just say that the $18 veggie burger was not the only rip off there), I wanted to talk about some of the great things I liked about Toronto.
View from the CN Tower, Toronto
Toronto is a huge city. It is big not only in population and area, but in vertical space as well. Unlike Shawn, I am not a huge fan of high views, so I let him go on his own to the CN Tower to get his fix. The pictures he took there show how massive the city is, in terms of big, tall buildings. I have yet to reach New York City, but Toronto is in many ways how I picture it: skyscrapers cluttered together perilously close and teeming with surging masses of people betweent them.
View from the CN Tower, Toronto
I also liked that the people here are of all different types. Half of the population here is foreign-born. We had a cab driver from Kenya that told us about being thrown into jail in the United States at a border crossing and being held for six hours in a crowded cell just because the country where he was born (but hasn't lived for more than 20 years) is on "the list." We heard all kinds of different languages on the radio here, many that I couldn't identify, and of course, the ubiquitous French.
Multilingual Signage, Royal Ontario Museum
I love Mexican food. I have found a number of places in Guadalajara that have tasty delights that I miss already, having been on the road for a couple of weeks. Yet the ethnic diversity results in a great diversity of ethnic restaurants, the likes of which I'm not even sure they have in Mexico City. We didn't eat there, but yesterday we passed an Eritrian restaurant. We were so taken with Full Moon Vegetarian Restaurant (638 Dundas Street West, 416/203-1210), a place that serves a huge selection of all-vegetarian Chinese dishes, that we ate there twice. We also had great Indian and Thai food too.
Full Moon Vegetarian Restaurant
This was a sauteed eggplant with vegetarian ham, which had a beautiful palette of rich colors.
Eggplant with Vegetarian Ham, Full Moon restuarnat
Big cities always have the best graffiti, and Toronto has some of the best I've seen in a while. Moreover, one doesn't tend to see all that many boring, crappy tags, but when there is graffiti, it's almost always the elaborate kind that demands real artistic talent.
Graffiti, Toronto
I don't like to see Shawn in pain, but this was one of the funniest unexpected things I saw on the trip. I looked up from taking that last shot and saw him bent over and rubbing his back next to this sign. I quickly snapped another shot just because the symmetry was so funny.
Shawn In jured, Toronto
Posted by crispy at 11:45 PM | Comments (3)