Rust Belt Gingerbread Spectacular 2009!

As good a time as any to explain what photos I post here and which I post on my Flickr pages. (This discussion takes place in the alternate universe where I've actually been posting 2-4 photoblogs a week here, not the real one where I'm so overwhelmed by the 1000+ photos I often take a week that I barely know where to start...) On Flickr I post images "artistic" enough to stand alone, and/or images that document an event or place I think needs to be documented in a way that will allow people to 1) easily search for it on Flickr 2) conveniently comment on it.

But photos that group well together and/or tell a story work well here (may include ones I've posted or will post to Flickr)...and that means I put some here that I don't quite want to "waste" space on Flickr for. Such as, well, a Stanley Cup in gingerbread, as you'll see later. Interesting enough to post, but I'm not putting a gingerbread Stanley Cup on Flickr unless it's one I make myself when--oh, you know when.

The first set of photos was taken in the Tower City shopping center in downtown Cleveland, after 7 a.m. on Sat. Dec. 5, after an overnight ride from Chicago on Megabus, long before the stores opened. Needless to say, this gingerbread display was a tad eerie at that hour.

After a Greyhound ride through Akron and Youngstown, both of which I once again really wished I could explore for real, I was in Pittsburgh, with all afternoon to kill in lousy weather before heading to Mellon Arena. I'd thought of going to the Heinz History Museum, but all the holiday displays downtown were tempting, especially when I saw a huge gingerbread structure exhibit. A lot of it was in window displays across from the ice rink and Christmas tree, while some was indoors with an impressive model train layout running through it.

LOTS of sports...here's PNC Park, where the Pirates play

 

And a Steelers fan

And where the Steelers play

Out of gingerbread, someone made...giant non-gingerbread cookies. Ridiculous? Brilliant?

The window display had a few trains running by

And a gingerbread trolley

And...yes. "Hail to the Chief"

And there's the Stanley Cup! But I didn't see a gingerbread Mellon Arena

But there's PPG Place, where the exhibit was

For comparison...

The Titanic? Wow. Okay, time to see the indoor display...

 "Christmas at McDonald's"

This was pretty nice

PPG Place again, this time more realistic

 

Gingerbread White House, with Santa stuck in the chimney

A diner! And other architecture, beautifully done

Gingerbread trains!

Real trains! Er, real model trains. This one, a streamliner, was my favorite.

start the year off right

and write about it when I get around to it...fortunately I've never boxed myself into the idea of posting in any kind of timely/linear fashion. so, New Year's Day, 2009. I did nothing on NY Eve itself...I'd had a good idea for celebrating in an abandoned building (which is what I did with Flickr friends the previous year, but I had a different place in mind)...but it was barely 20 degrees and I stayed in, hence the screenshot. my biggest excitement was probably immediately uploading a new photo to Flickr at midnight...wow that's sad.

From 1/1/09

well, at least I had New Year's Day plans to drive around with Sam, aka akagoldfish on Flickr. (we'd first met to shoot the CTA Holiday Train in December.) we met at the Oak Park Metra; I'd gotten there via a couple bus rides. I tried to get self-portraits of myself waiting for the bus and on the bus but it's quite challenging to do that without being noticed...while waiting I observed this vacant building in downtown Oak Park:

From 1/1/09

we headed out for a few hours driving around western and northwestern suburbs, looking for rail-related photo opportunities.

From 1/1/09

and anything else interesting...I don't know if I'd ever seen this before:

From 1/1/09

From 1/1/09

From 1/1/09

we agreed on the absolute bleakness of this. I made a brief trip here weeks later to get a good shot of the Hooters billboard overlooking this railyard, too:

From 1/1/09

I don't know why it hadn't occurred to me to stand above where Metra trains pass to watch them, but I've done it on Roosevelt Road and elsewhere since this:

From 1/1/09

a few random sightings, including a Walgreens corporate something-or-other:

From 1/1/09

From 1/1/09

From 1/1/09

that was around the Bellwood Metra station, and now Berkeley--I'd had an unfortunate delay at this station on a cold Sunday night, but now I got to see the plastic flowers in all their glory by daylight:

From 1/1/09

I love places like this and meant to go back and reshoot it, but I posted this shot on Flickr this week and it was very popular...maybe I got it right the first time:

From 1/1/09

we were a little obsessed with this one, in an industrial district I'd never seen before...it turned out to not be a thrift store, but some kind of thrift outlet for a candy? nut? company:

From 1/1/09

and now some other wanderings...

From 1/1/09

From 1/1/09

From 1/1/09

I don't know that they "originated safety first," but this old Chicago & North Western car was great to see, especially with that building behind it:

From 1/1/09

tank cars, train graffiti...I've been paying a lot more attention to these since I took this photo:

From 1/1/09

it's pretty much a law that I have to get a shot of myself next to any sort of "reject" or "discard" sign I see in an industrial setting, but it didn't really turn out and I don't post photos of myself here anyway:

From 1/1/09

we were going to visit a snack shop in Oak Park I'd never eaten at before, but they were closing early on the holiday, so we ended up in a bar/grill in Forest Park instead. and then in Oak Park...I've always found solar houses interesting, and Sam showed me this striking one, unfortunately just as it was getting too dark for my photos to turn out:

From 1/1/09

if this post has lacked color, then here's the BLUEST SKY EVER, after I was dropped off back in Oak Park, before meeting my visiting parents in the Loop:

From 1/1/09

these photos have been sitting in my Picasa albums for weeks but I kept delaying this post for reasons including but not limited to the fact that what I was going to write about it substantially changed; gone is the whole bit about how I had fun but I'm not going to be one of those people who's all obsessed with trains. and then somehow I spent January getting obsessed with trains. not because of this excursion, though that did help it along a little. but that's a story for another day...

Random postcard!

Dream of this, dream of this, dream of this, dream of this:

From Postcards

Bought in a used bookstore in Champaign, IL--and now there's yet another category of vintage postcards I'm interested in. This is the Orange Blossom Special, which apparently was famous (although not being much of a train expert--to be discussed in a post I've been putting off for a while now--I hadn't known about it). I don't think I can recreate the excitement this image evokes by riding on the Metra today and buying a bag of oranges, but we'll see. Oh, and I've decided to try writing notes for the pieces I've been putting off--it's not just the photo uploading that I'm having trouble with, it's getting writing done.