This used to be a skyway map. Now and then I'd see people paused, perusing, puzzling over where to go. The kind Minneapolitan stops and assists, since this is - or was, I guess - our pride, our unique system of navigating downtown. That's right, the second floors are occupied with shops and such, and they're all connected! You'll see that different skyways have different designs, and often empty into an atrium that's quite distinct from the last place you just visited.
Now it's shelves, presumably to filled with carefully chosen - sorry, curated objects d'art or knick-knackery. In a way I'm fine with this, although A) why wouldn't I, and B) who cares if I'm not. The old skyway map had a style that was very much pre-2020, almost a throwback to the 90s with its color scheme and graphics, and it had an optimistic cool fun vibe. If they redid it now it would be black and white with san-serif black block letters.
The whole view.
When nothing is pressing at the moment (and I should note that something is always pressing so I really should say”when I want to avoid that thing that’s hanging over my head by doing something that makes me feel as if I am doing something equally pressing and consequential, even though I know it cannot possibly rise to the level of the task I am ignoring”) I tinker with the archives. It’s a way of determining what have I accomplished, a subject about which I am becoming increasingly indifferent. The latest project has been photo winnowing. I take a lot of pictures, and hence have a lot of krep. The art-to-junk ratio is about 1:40.
Of course, not all photos have to be art - sometimes a candid brings back an event more than a staged composition. An off-kilter shot of the interior of a coffee house can bring back memories more than a nice snap of the outside.
This, for example. It took me a second or two, but I recognized it.
Took me all of five seconds to call up a map of London and find it. Sort of. It's in the alleywall to the right of the coffee shop.
This being London, it has a webpage with history. And a picture of the strange door and window.
Fitzroy Court in London is a small alleyway located off Tottenham Court Road, near Warren Street tube station, and is believed to have been named after the Fitzroy Market, a group of small tenements in the area, or potentially after the Fitzroy family, who owned the Manor of Tottenham Court.
So I don’t save that one, but I mark it for Natalie to find some day and remember how good the coffee was. We stayed at the adjacent hotel twice, and the last time we were at that particular Cafe Nero was when we were waiting for COVID test results to see if we could go back home. I remember that was a bit fraught. Otherwise I would have had to go back up to Suffolk and sit in quarantine.
Those were the days, weren't they. Criminey.
I suppose this qualifies as avoiding additional winnowing, which had qualified as avoiding checking some travel plans in the far-flung future. I am convinced somehow I got some dates wrong. Can’t bear to look, but must.
UPDATE: Looked. Dates are fine. I will repeat this in two weeks.
Another of the Dragnet openings, with some obeservations that have nothing to do with the crime at hand. Usually.
First of all, do we just assume that Joe Friday is a walking, talking biographer of Los Angeles and all its myriad details?
Second: he’s correct about the things, more or less. It was 1907, and the movie was The Count of Monte Cristo. Yeah yeah D. W. Griffith, fine. Then the Keystone Kops, which perhaps people knew because they played on afternoon TV. The usual rinky-dinky piano. The aerial shot: the Universal Backlot. I’m no expert but a Google search says that’s where the riverboat was.
We don’t know what movie this might be.
This source says it’s unknown.
Ince:
Remembered for many things, but it's his mysterious death on Hearst's yacht that continues to fascinate.
You wonder if Friday ever looked into that one. The precursor to his mortal event? "At dinner that Sunday night, the group celebrated Ince's birthday, but afterward Ince suffered an acute bout of indigestion due to his consumption of salted almonds and champagne."
That'll do it, I guess.
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