It appears that my little exhortations to actually look at the ads violate Google Ads policies, so I have to change the text. I got a notice about a page from last year. The exact policy:

For example, your site cannot contain phrases such as "click the ads," "support our sponsors," "visit these recommended links," or other similar language that could refer to the Google ads on your site.

I thought that was the point of having ads. I can understand why they'd have a policy to prevent people from gaming the system, but is that really what I did? How is it different from someone saying "We'll be back after this important message from our sponsor," or encouraging people to patronize the advertisers to show their gratitude?

Of course, it's their system, and it's their rules; I'm under no obligation to insist they change to accomodate whatever tweaks or language I have on my site.

More to the point: how did they know? The text was in a graphic.

Which of course they index and translate.

 

Short shrift today; column night.

One little picture of the world from my office window. It's the edge of downtown, and not the most attractive view. Luxury apartment in the rear; the longest skyway in the foreground; on the middle left, a 60s motel that has not sunk to hot-sheet status. What stood out was the sole splash of color. It might be a Goodyear sign but I'll take what we can get.

They've been trying for years to make this part of downtown a bit more hep; two huge apartment towers went in. But retail consists of one (1) CVS and there are no restaurants. There's no reason to be here, except the views you get on the upper floors.

The church is still a going concern. It's the Gethsemene Episcopal Church, founded in 1856. The church was designed by Edward Stebbins, who also designed the S. E. Davis residence in Minneapolis - better known, for a while, as the house in the Mary Tyler Moore show. The site is notable for what's not next door anymore: the motel where the Beatles stayed.

The Leamington Annex was a blue-and-white addition to the big brick hotel with the same name, and I get requests for pictures now and then from historians who say the Beatles slept there. Apparently that sanctifies a place. The place went Welfare in the 80s, and spiraled down into an absolute pit. It was demolished few years ago, and that revealed a sign for the church that had remained undimmed by time for half a century. It now looks down on a plot of ground a local homeless shelter uses for a vegetable garden.

If there's anything that keeps this part of town from coming up, it's the structure on the center-right. A massive power plant, so ugly it's almost modern sculpture.

 

More tiny pictures from an album sleeve, blown way WAY up. These compilations were always popular.

 

The Wham of Sam. When did he stop being cool? Never, you might say. But he did. When I was growing up he got uncool fast, thanks to TV performances on all those ghastly variety shows. He seemed so insincere. So fake. He was swingin', but in the old sense of the word, the cool Rat-Pack sense, and now swingin' had a loose late-Sixties meaning at odds with the polish and professionalism of his work.

 

 

 

A change from abandoned old streets of small towns. Big cities are rich in old buldings in various states of disrepair or disuse; here we have something quite interesting. A changing neighborhood, reclaiming its old beauty. One long street dedicated to one product.

What do you think they sold here?

H . . . for what? I think I know.

Beautiful old terra-cotta, which no doubt once was smeared with grime and possibly sprouted weeds; things liked to grow in the cracks of old facades like this.

That H? Hud or Hup, you might say.

Two different buildings, once yoked:

You can read the space where some iron band stretched acrosss both facades, but I can't tell what it was, how it encompassed the windows, why the brick's a different color, or any of it. Renovation seems to be underway.

This one suffered, and suffers still:

The way the wood and door and grate seem to dimish the human scale is instructive; this is how you don't redo a facade. You can't look at it without knowing that whatever happens here now is less grand than what happened here before.

Ah, a ghost - and a tell-tale window line to let us know that the building on the corner was only one story tall.

It's near the convention center, but it seems that wasn't enough.

It would be a rich man's palace in Venice; here, a commercial structure for the ordinary businessmen to ply their trade. Glass blocks are better than wood, I'll give them that.

As you can tell, the street had great elegance. But what did they sell?

B. B is for . . . . well, it could be anything from Babcock to Bush.

Or the name of the dealer.

Dealer in what? you might ask.

The Marmon name has been cleaned, and ready for its second century:

The Marmon Grand can be rented for your events, if you'd like; there's a website, but it's been hacked as of 01.1.16, and redirects to sex sites. You'd think they would have noticed. A 360 panorama of the interior can be found here. Gaze upon the open space, and ask yourself what they could possibly have sold there.

This citizen's taken a pounding.

It looks industrial, but is it? What if those great windows let in more light down on the merchandise?

The clue to this building's purpose - and in fact the entire street's purpose - is right in front of your face.

So much money was sloshing around; everyone wanted their showroom to be the finest, the most ornate, the most modern, the best emmisary for their brand.

 

If you don't know what they sold, you'll have to wait until next week.

 

 

More tomorrow - with absolutely no exhortations to investigate the ads! GOD FORBID YOU SHOULD CL**K THE *DS.

 

 
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