Virtual Vandalism Dept.: Tools and Fools

The sign for this nice little shop in College Town which peddles to the ardent fisherperson caught my eye. I realized that one little additional mark would create an alliterate condemnation of the sport:

Meet the New Sign, Same as the Old Sign*

I suppose this sort of thing happens all over the country, if not the world. Unfortunately, I don't get out of town that much, so I have nothing to which to compare my new town of residence. I hope this isn't just some sort of College Town thing, but come to think of it, I don't recall seeing this happening in Former Home Town.

I'm speaking of the phenomenon of new businesses coming into an existing building and not removing the signage of their predecessors. Here are three examples:

Number One: Augie's/Gogi's:

This is an old church in downtown College Town. It's on the National Register of Historic Places, and it has had quite an interesting history. Back in the early 1980s, the building was desecularized and turned into a nightclub. No shit. Later is was turned back into a church, called St. Augustine's. The church opened a coffee shop, called Augie's, in what used to be their community center or rec room or whatever they called their more-modern attachment:

Not long ago the church closed the coffee shop, and either sold, rented or leased the space to a new Indian restaurant with an oddly similar name - Gogi's. Gogi's owners put a lot of work into putting up new awnings and signs and other nice touches, but for some reason they left one Augie's sign on the gable end of the structure which overlooks the Transient Center parking lot. Maybe they took a quick eye-level glance at that end of the building and saw nothing that needed fixing or changing? Maybe it's an homage to Augie's? I don't know!

Number Two: Paradise's Place/El Taco Loco:

An interesting aside about this one: There is some kind of rule in California (and hopefully in many other states, because it seems like a good and sensible rule) against giving a business the same fictitious name as another already existing business. For example, in College Town there is a famous trio of restaurants (all under the same ownership) named Burger Hut. Once upon a time a nice man named Bo opened his own burger joint in Former Home Town. He may have meant no duplicity, but he called his place Bo's Burger Hut, perhaps thinking that the addition of his own name made it not a fictitious business name, or different enough from "Burger Hut" to fly. Well, the original Burger Hut didn't like that, and Bo was forced to change his place's name to Bo's Burger Island.

So in College Town we have a couple of same-owner restaurants called Crazy Taco. Then we (briefly - shockingly briefly) had the place seen above: El Taco Loco. Wait, doesn't that mean "crazy taco"? Why, yes, yes it does. Do the rules about same names not apply when they're in different languages? Or does that have anything to do with El Taco Loco's short life? The world may never know.

The evanescent El Taco Loco had moved into a restaurant building formerly occupied by another short-lived place by the unlikely name of Paradise's Place:

The name didn't have anything to do with a northern California retirement mountain town which may or may not be near College Town. Instead, they seemed to be trying to apply a sort of tropical vacation island ambiance to average American diner food. It didn't work, especially since other than pictures of palm trees and beaches on the menus, all the other decor was typical diner: statues of chickens scattered about and that kind of crap. The food wasn't good, either. When my great Australian friend came to visit, we had breakfast there. He wanted to try real American food, but he couldn't even touch the gelatinous hamburger gravy on his biscuits. That may have had something to do with being colossally hungover.

Anyway, the significant thing about the two preceding pictures of signs on the same building is that they were taken on the same day. El Taco Loco never bothered to replace or at least cover up Paradise's Place's sign above the front door. Do restaurant owners have stiff necks that prevent them from looking up? Do they not own ladders? Are they afraid of heights? I don't know!

Number Three: Tanning Salon/Tattoo Parlor:

This last entry isn't really a sign - more like a decoration. The building used to house a tanning salon. There is a second story or attic space that is probably used for storage. The tanning salon owners had the great idea of covering the inside of the window above the front door with a painting of two tanned, buff, sunglasses-wearing, shirtless dudes supposedly looking out of said window and "wowing", presumably about all the tanned babes going in and out of the establishment.

The tanning salon was there for several years, and I always hated that painting - partly because it's crappy, and partly for the shallow, objectifying nature of it. And couldn't help having to see it because it also overlooks the Transient Center.

A few months ago the tanning salon closed, and a dodgy-looking tattoo parlor moved into the space. I thought that at last the horrible drawing would be removed, and indeed within a few weeks someone started to scrape the paint off of the window, but stopped after a few strokes. Several weeks later, another go was had, but not to completion, as seen above. Now the crappy drawing is almost indecipherable, and it certainly doesn't have anything to do with the current business.

Is this drawing made with some kind of super paint, and even the most hardy scraper has to quit after a few strokes? Are the tattoo people too busy being dodgy to focus on a simple task? Doesn't bode well for their attention to your body art. I don't know!

Come on, College Town small business owners - you can do better than this! You don't want Former Home Town to outdo you, do you?

*(Sorry, Goodtime Charlie - I had to do it, but here's a link)

Way of the Sky

In Butt County there is a very long road called Skyway which connects College Town with the Sierra Nevada foothill communities to the east. With such a name, you might expect flying cars or suspended gondolas, but it's just a rural road, albeit with some spectacular views above College Town before you reach the timber line.

In this section of marvelous views, there are a few very expensive looking houses clinging to the narrow strip of land between the road and the cliffs of the canyon which the road skirts. One such estate recently put up metal cursive letters on their wall by their driveway reading "Camino Cielo".

It took a moment before my junior high school Spanish classes kicked in and I realized what the name meant in English. My natural response was:

Of course, it should be "Camino del Cielo", but still, not bad.

Drinking and Fishing, Part II

I know it's been awhile since I wrote the first part of what was supposed to be a two part story about an interesting night of debauchery followed by a day of innocent fun fishing with my granddaughter. So much time has passed, in fact, that it no longer seems interesting enough. However, I feel badly that I've left it hanging, so I'm going to give it a go.

So, even though I got to bed around 3 A.M., I was determined to get up and take my littlest granddaughter fishing, as I had promised. And that's just what I did. I was rather badly hung-over, and nothing would have felt nicer than to just sleep in on a Saturday, but I bravely got up early. I wanted to go as early as possible because the weather report had predicted that we were going to have our first really hot day of summer that day, with temperatures in the triple digits. Hangover or no, I had no desire to be outside later in the day.

Beats the hell out of Bermuda off-season.

 The lake where Hooked on Fishing, Not on Drugs takes place is called Horseshoe Lake in what's known as Upper Wagergood Park (that's not its real name, of course, but this is supposed to be an anonymous blog, and I don't want to say the real name of College Town's founder whom the park is named after) . It was originally built as a reservoir, and is now used exclusively for fishing. It's not a pretty body of water, by any stretch of the imagination. The water level was fairly low, so there was a ring of barren earth around the mud-colored water.

We had to park a mile or so away and then catch a shuttle bus to the lake. Many families were bringing their own fishing supplies, but we had none. The sponsors of the event said all that would be provided, and they were true to their word.

At the entrance to the lake (if a lake could be said to have an entrance), booths and displays with tanks of fish from the lake were set up. GR2 got to make a bracelet with orange plastic beads which were supposed to represent salmon eggs, which came out of a zippered bag shaped like a salmon.

We then procured a fishing pole and a paper cup of worms and set out to find a spot on the lake. There were already many, many people there. It was hard to find a place where I didn't have to worry about interfering with other anglers' lines. We kept working our way round the lake, casting in different places. GR2 refused to touch the live worms, so I hooked them, which isn't a lot of fun when you're hung-over.

I hadn't fished since I was about 10, and it took me a little while to reacquire the knack. Once I had it figured, I showed GR2, and she showed great skill at it.

A natural-born fisherwoman.

Adorable.

I noticed that several of the Hmong families, who had plenty of their own gear and really looked like they knew what they were doing, seemed to be focusing their efforts on those islands of reeds visible in the picture above. I cast close to the reeds, but the line got snagged on something and I ended up breaking it. We worked our way further around the lake until we got to one of the stations where friendly volunteers fixed your line problems. We halted one of the roving Boy Scout groups who had beverages and chips in a wagon. I bought GR2 a lovely orange meal (to go with her salmon egg bracelet) of Cheetos and an orange soda, and just a water for me. That was all my poor stomach could handle.

We had gotten a break with the weather. An unexpected thin cloud cover was keeping the worst of the sun off of us. We had no luck catching a fish, although I think we came close at one point. Our worm came out of the water half-eaten. I didn't know worms had intestine-like things, but this one did, which was also fun to contemplate in my condition.

Thankfully, the thoughtful organizers of this event had provided tanks with fish already hooked on the ends of lines, so all the littlest anglers had to do was walk up, grab a pole and pull the fish out. This is what GR2 and I ended up doing, and we got a lovely female catfish:

She put up a hell of fight. Not really.

Then it was time to get in line and have our fish cleaned (or whatever you call it). They had an efficient sort of production line set up where one jolly volunteer bonked the fish over the head with a club then passed it down the line where it was beheaded, betailed, befinned, bescaled, gutted and washed, then put in a bag with some ice for the trip home, all thankfully behind Plexiglas windows so spectators didn't get splattered with viscera.

Post-clubbing, pre-desecration.

I don't know if any one else experiences this, but when I'm hung-over, it seems like everything has a tinge of the sinister, with a little foreboding thrown in for good measure. Watching that pretty fish butchered in such a perfunctory manner was almost enough to turn me vegan. Almost, but not enough. I got over it.

There was one little fellow, about four years old, who did not enjoy this grisly spectacle at all. He was balling his eyeballs out as his father carried him away from the scene of the carnage. I remember thinking, "Well, there's one kid who will probably be hooked on drugs, not on fishing."

We got to ride a fun but slow trailer thing with seats facing sideways behind a tractor back to our car. The ice was melting quickly, and I was worried what effect the heat was going to have on our raw fish. I was regretting not having thought of some sort of cooler to keep the fish fresh on the ride home.

I grudgingly let GR2 play for a few minutes on the playground by where we had parked, then we hustled our former fishy home. The ice was long gone by then, so I rushed him into the fridge. The next day Lil RC fried the fish in a corn meal batter, and GR2 gobbled it up. I got a couple of bites, and it was quite good.

So, all in all, it was a pretty good weekend. Sunday I spent still recovering from my excesses of Friday. Guess I'm getting a little too old for such fun.

Virtual Vandalism: Lost Dog

I don't know about you, but sometimes I have an urge to modify messages and images I see in public - vandalism I guess you'd call it. Being a responsible (hah!) grown-up (hah! hah!) type person, I resist these urges. So I've decided to commit them virtually, with the help of my camera and my computer, and share them with you lucky readers. Here is the first installment:

I've seen several of these posters stapled to utility poles in the neighborhood where I take my lunch-time walks. Don't worry, I didn't remove this one from a pole; I found it loose upon the ground, and having no stapler handy, I decided to take it home.

What amused me about this poster was the fact that apparently the only picture the owners had of their dog had another dog in it (presumably theirs, but who knows?). I just couldn't help wondering what was the story on that uncircled dog. Here is what I came up with:

Click to embiggen subtle difference.

Awesome Temporary Art

Some anonymous (well, not really anonymous - he or she did sign it; I just didn't get to watch them do it) artist just stone cold free hand drew this amazing Mayan-like skull mandala thing in blue chalk on the sidewalk at the Transit Center. I would like to know how long it took.

Just Don't Call Him Late for Supper

This poster for a missing cat amused me because of this part: "[...] is named Simba...but, he is a cat, he'll do what he wants and may or may not answer to that."