A Child Of Atom

Today SHORPY (one of my favorite blogs) ran the following photo:


It is a 1905 photo of Savannah, GA, where I consider my hometown. I was instantly curious to see if I could figure out exactly where it is. I knew right away that it was downtown, there are cable car tracks in the lower section of the photo, and they only really ran down there. There are a limited number of streets in the downtown area that have medians in the center as this one does, looking at Google maps I narrowed it down to Jones, Liberty or Oglethorpe. All of which run roughly east to west, so this photo was facing either north or south. You can see the river in the distance, so it had to be north.

Then it was a matter of picking out details. This building is the old county jail, now a SCAD building, and is on Habersham. You can also see a few of the tombstones from Colonial Cemetery, in the middle area of this closeup. So, it had to be north of Jones, and was most likely Liberty.

This bell is visible on the left of the photo, and I knew it to be a fire bell that used to be in front of the old fire department. I looked up where that was and discovered that the bell was on Oglethorpe. It is no longer up in that tower, but has been dropped to the ground and is part of a fireman's memorial now, but it is in the same place as it always was. That pretty much confirmed that this was Liberty street, but I still couldn't make out where exactly. I thought that it had to be Bull street, judging from the positions of the jail and bell. It bothered me though that the building weren't still there. They are barely over 100 years old, and downtown Savannah hasn't changed that much.

I know that SHORPY uses photos from the Library of Congress archives, so I went there to see if I could track the original. After finding it I was able to get an uncompressed archival version of the photo, which was much higher resolution than the photo that SHORPY posted. I was amazed that upon zooming in I was able to see this:

On the corner of the building are the street signs for Liberty, and hidden behind the shutter is "YTON" or Drayton street. Amazing!

This corner of Liberty and Drayton now houses the Drayton Towers, an abomination of International Style architecture that I doubt would be allowed to be built in the historic district of Savannah today. I even lived there very briefly in the mid 90's!

This was a serious obsession with me for about 3 hours this evening, panning back and forth in Google Street View trying to figure this out... thankfully I was able to work it out, and I don't have to obsess for days on end.

Sometimes I wish I could be more excited about the things I get to do because of my job... backstage at Madison Square Garden for instance.

Look, Brooke Shields obviously thinks that my eyelashes are too thin. She keeps telling me, (via ads on Hulu) that I need to start taking Latisse to thicken them, she's even been showing me freaky time-lapse video of her new lashes growing in. This is JUST like 10 years ago when every other commercial was all about how ugly bald people are and how you should take some drug to stop yourself from being ugly... and then my hair thinned! And now I find out how ugly people are without eyelashes... what if they fall out too?! Ohmigod, ohmigod, ZOMG!!!

Seriously... are there people out there SO concerned about how thin their eyelashes are that they are willing to take a drug everyday that may also give you dark sin around your eye lids, and could possibly ALTER THE COLOR OF YOUR EYES just to thicken them up? Where the fuck am I living? Don't you thin lashed freaks have better things to worry about? If you don't... drop me a line. I have some suggestions for you.

One of my favorite authors is fighting with one of my favorite net-denizens... I have a feeling that I would ultimately come down on Ze Frank's side... but don't make me choose boys!

One of my goals for myself after returning for the summer is to get back into the habit of carrying my lunch to work everyday rather than buying it. I figured out about this time last year that my share of the a grocery could feed both Kid Flash and myself both lunch and dinner 5 days a week for about the same as what I was paying for lunch.

One of the things that makes that doable is my nifty Japanese Bento box. Here it all, all packed up with tomorrow's feast:


It is pretty small, about 8"x3"x4", but it holds an enormous amount of food, far more than it looks like it would. (Tomorrow I'm having some samosa, grilled artichoke hearts, baba ganouj, and a yellow lentil spread with pistachios.) If I want to pack less I can skip the second tray.


My favorite part about it though is that it packs up tall and square. Most American alternatives that I tried in years past when I tried to pack lunches were dish shaped. While I carry a bag every day, a dish shaped thing doesn't fit in it, nor does a dish shaped container keep the food well. They tend to get all mixed up, and slosh around, and you end up with a big plate of mess.

All packed up this provides a self contained, airtight container that fits down in my messenger bag perfectly and keeps my food well because it sits in the bag upright! On the return trip it packs up even smaller since the second tray nestles inside the first. There is even a little slot on the top to contain chopsticks, although I don't actually use that. More reasons to love the Japanese!

My friends and I reached the following conclusions tonight:

1. Moose is NOT the new talapia.

2. Gravy boats are the most transsexual of serving dishes.

3. Our new favorite name for a child is La-a. ($1 to the first person who can pronounce it correctly.)