Topic: Weekend March 18th to 20th

[Kai-san]

This week I found a beach with some nice patterns created by strong winds and different colours of sand. Quite fascinating!

Nikon SP / Nikkor-S 1:1.4 f=5cm / Rollei RPX400 in HC110

[Bryan]

Beach theme!  Cool patterns Kai. 

Bolsa Chica State Beach and Huntington Beach, California.  Leica IIIc using a Leitz Summitar 5cm f/2 lens, Ilford FP4+ developed in Beer.

Gone Surfing by Bryan Chernick, on Flickr

Arranged Sticks on the Beach by Bryan Chernick, on Flickr

Huntington Beach Pier by Bryan Chernick, on Flickr

[Francois]

Makes me really miss the sea....

[02Pilot]

[astrobeck]

I'm so late to the party, it might be over...
but here I am!
Lovely beach theme of which I have nothing such to offer.
What I do have is a Ricoh KR-10 shot with that no nameplate Ricoh 50mm f/2 lens you all helped me identify a few years back.
anyway, back to the story...
Petes' is a hole on Route 66 that I've been making photos of ever since we moved here in 2003.
Now, Pete's is gone! They scraped it off the Earth two weeks ago and I watched it go.
Even the tree is gone. They left some of the other trees that were on the periphery but that gorgeous old Cottonwood is gone. I have some grief, but not as much as I would have had, had I not made any photos of the place at all!!!
Enough babble...here's the photo. Beware there may be many more in the future...I never filed them with the place, but with the camera used at the time, so it will probably take a while...if ever.

[Francois]

They really should have kept that tree, it was really nice.

We've had a few super cheap watering holes around here when I was a kid. Some of them were pretty mediocre places.
There was one that the bus used to drive past on the way to school. The place was pretty derelict and I never even seen a car parked in front of it in five years! Now it's a small church.
And there was a very sleazy bar just next to the grocery store. It was named The Frankenstein for a while... they tore it down to build a gourmet bakery which is now abandoned, just not enough to be of any interest photographically.

That's a bit the problem here, things never get to an interesting state of degradation before being either refurbed or just torn down.

[astrobeck]

that's interesting about the watering hole turning into a church.
There's an old derelict bar down the road from where Petes' used to be that is now a church.
A few years ago I was parked in front of it making photos of the place when the owner saw me and stopped by. (The place was already closed and going downhill by that time) He wanted to know if I was a buyer as it was for sale. I said no and explained I just liked taking photos of places that I thought might not be around for much longer.
He said the bar was constantly harassed by police parking just down the block waiting for people to come out of it and then they would pull them over and give them tickets, and he was fed up with it.
It stayed vacant for years and now it is a Mexican church.

Pete's on the other hand never had a chance. I think it was always a rat hole "dive".

[kentish cob]

Always good to record these places before they're gone.
The photos become a genuine historical record.

Reminds me of The Waterboys song, "Nearest thing to hip":

Now I need to get out of this hullabaloo
And I remember an old-fashioned bar that I once knew
With an old-fashioned barman wearing old-fashioned clothes
But when I get there it's been bulldozed

[Francois]

that's interesting about the watering hole turning into a church.
There's an old derelict bar down the road from where Petes' used to be that is now a church.

I guess that churches are on the lookout for really cheap pieces of land to convert...
those taverns can't possibly be worth much, especially when it comes down to commercial ventures as they are often either badly located or carry some stigma that no business want to be associated with.

[Bryan]

That's a sad loss Becky, it looks like one of those historic Route 66 buildings that they just let stand vacant until they collapse.  We just lost one of my favorite dive bars, the Cozy Inn Tavern.  They said the building was too old and run down to be repaired but I'm sure COVID had something to do with it.  I'm sure it will be replaced by an apartment building or condo like everything else around here.  It sat on a great piece of property overlooking Lake Washington.  It had a deck to sit outside when the weather was nice.  I think it started out as a house and was added onto to make it a bar.  Some of the interior walls still had exterior siding that they never bothered to change when they expanded.  I drove by the other day and saw the sign had been removed.  This is the only photo I have, taken at night with my Kodak Brownie Hawkeye. 

Cozy Inn Tavern by Bryan Chernick, on Flickr

[Francois]

I somehow have a hard time understanding that condo building craze.
We had the biggest bowling alley in Canada. It was on a super busy stroad in front of the hospital. They tore it down to make some old age people condos... The location is horrible for a residential building, the new construction is really ugly too. You know, in that too average to even be slightly interesting...

[Bryan]

I somehow have a hard time understanding that condo building craze.
We had the biggest bowling alley in Canada. It was on a super busy stroad in front of the hospital. They tore it down to make some old age people condos... The location is horrible for a residential building, the new construction is really ugly too. You know, in that too average to even be slightly interesting...

It's all about profit, they are going to build what they think will give them the most profit.  Right now in my town there is a housing shortage that is driving home prices sky high.  A one bedroom apartment rents for around $2,000, a new house is over a million.  They just ripped up the community garden in my neighborhood to build 5 houses.  That was one of my favorite local places to take photos.  They crammed five 3,000 square foot houses onto tiny lots and are selling them at a starting price of $2.3 million.  They take bids for a week then select the best offer.  My neighborhood is only zoned for single family homes so they maximize profit by building the biggest house on the smallest lot.  It's the high paying tech jobs at Microsoft, Amazon, Biotech, etc driving these prices up, the rest of the people making normal wages are pretty much screwed. 

Some photos from our community garden, RIP: https://www.flickr.com/search/?user_id=60348236%40N07&sort=date-taken-desc&view_all=1&text=bothell%20community%20garden

[Francois]

Here, it's a bit different as there are no high paying jobs to justify such gentrification yet there seems to be only one recipe.
Now, the city has realized that they will need to build a new sewage treatment plant to accommodate the additional requirements that these condos bring.
And that is one thing we learn in city planning that every planner in position seems to forget: people need services while industry and offices don't.
While condos bring additional taxes to the city, it also brings the need for parks, schools, aqueduct, sewers, transport, arenas, libraries, pools and so on. All these cost a lot of money.

BTW, I just found one of the few pictures I have of the bowling's mythical sign.
The place was really hard to photograph properly without being run over by heavy traffic.

[astrobeck]

man! A lost bowling alley!
That is really sad. They tore down one of those here that was iconic and put up a new car sales lot! It's disgustingly over lit and just sad!
Even sadder is that I never made a photo of the place because of course I thought it would be there forever.

Bryan, I love the community garden photos. There is always something interesting in them. Sorry it's gone.
Sigh, big sigh.
This just makes me more enthused to get out and make more photos of places that might not survive much longer.

[Francois]

When they closed down the bowling, they were liquidating everything, so I got me a bowling pin as a souvenir.
There were some people buying the wood from the alleys. That would make some great hardwood floors.

I too need to keep a keener eye when it comes down to these places.
In a neighboring city there's an old masonic temple that's been in limbo for decades. One of these days it's either going to be demolished or it's just going to crumble on itself as it's very far gone. I'll have to take a few photos before it's just a vacant lot.