Picture of the Day 05.26.2012

One of the amusing things about ivy-like vines and factory buildings… This sort of thing happens. I had a suspicion as I would walk by this door and building that the dormant ivy would explode to life. Amusingly I just didn’t think it would try to take over the door quite like this.. Or the overhang either. Makes me wonder whether this will be cut down or completely take over. We’ll see at the end of the summer, eh?

Picture of the Day 05.25.2012

Technically this picture’s a do-over because the picture that I thought that I had taken, didn’t really save. I guess my phone’s more than a little picky when it comes to when I can shut down the camera software and the picture being saved.

Surprisingly I had only learned recently that this is a poisonous plant. Little did I know this as a child as I had always been rather fascinated with the purple flowers and colorful berries that this produces. Equally surprising is just how common this plant here is in the Tundras of New England too. Why just walking around the block since learned this is Bittersweet Nightshade (Solanum dulcamara) I counted at least 10 separate plants growing in a one block radius (from the house). Up in my hometown, I used to see it everywhere… If only I knew back then, perhaps I would’ve been a bit more in awe.

Picture of the Day 02.01.2012

February… Valentine’s Day is this month, which means that people are going to be looking into romantic things for their boyfriends/girlfriends. For their husbands/wives. For their partners. For whatever title they give to the person that brings joys to their lives. While I was taking my daily walk to determine where/what I was going to take a picture of, I thought it terribly ironic not to mention condescendingly sarcastic to have seen this little piece of work on the road that I routinely walk to get to the laundromat: the Atwells Avenue Bridge near to Holy Ghost Church.

So this is today’s picture of the day. To the Impotent One who’s number is in Michigan and who’s sticker is here almost 1,000 miles (1,600+ km) east of where that area code originates.

Picture of the Day 01.29.2012

One of the fossils of a bygone era: the Mom & Pop Storefront. There are many such buildings like this one littered throughout the Federal Hill, Mount Pleasant, Olneyville areas where the first floor was some sort of store with the floors above being either the apartments for the owners or their families. I can remember from my childhood in my hometown as well as the occasional day trips to Providence that there were Television Repair and Sales stores, Bicycle Repair shops, Convenience Stores (not at all like the quickie-marts, 7-Elevens, Circle-Ks of today), stove and home appliance sales stores in select neighborhoods within the city. And of course, Hardware Stores were a time a dozen as well.

Some ethnic convenience stores are still around, but for the most part, since the spread of Superstores like Wal*Mart, Target, Lowes, Home Depot, Ace, etc. The Mom & Pop died quietly leaving many buildings like this throughout the city.

Pictures of the Day 01.23.2012

Despising the weather here in the Tundras of New England last weekend, I decided to make up for the pictures I didn’t take while the weather was being particularly miserable today while it was warmer (and grayer) before it starts to rain for this evening. First picture is the Avery Pettis House off of Broadway that was built in the mid-1800s. Called The Avery, it is still a night club three years later and at the time I had trudged through this neck of the woods was closed because it’s still too early for it to be opened. I might check it out during the summer just to see what sort of people from the area end up going to it.

Half a block up from The Avery is this “beauty”. A place that surely brings the statement to mind “how not to paint a house in an urban revival area that is attempting to make itself look like the colorful painted houses of Louisiana. Although I will say this much — with the bright yellow of the first two floors and the turquoise of the third, it certainly stands out among all the other houses that are muted browns, whites, off-whites and beige. Too bad though given the more colorful houses (that are also in better shape) are three blocks east of this place.

Holy Ghost Church on Atwells Avenue, and the border/marker between the better-to-do of Federal Hill, with the poverty area of Olneyville and Valley. The one thing that I have always liked about this church is the fact that when the windows are open from my house now (and my apartment that I used to live in back before I moved to the South), you can hear the bells ringing like clockwork at 7 in the morning for Morning Mass. While they don’t ring with any regularity as they did at the beginning of the 90s, it’s sort of a fond remembrance back when I was a child and could hear the bells of the church near to my apartment in my hometown.

Picture of the Day 01.10.2012

The front entrance to management offices for the old GE Mechanical Plant on Atwells Ave. Originally built in 1892, they had fiddled a bit with remote control door and gate openers on the front (as you can see) around the middle of the century that have completely stopped working when I remember seeing this building back in the 80s. While you can see hints of lights on in the building, there has never been a car in the front or back parking lots for as long as I remember. It’s currently up for sale. All 7 acres of it. My roommate thinks that they’ll probably try to convert it to residential apartments, but given that arsenic was used to clean tools and mechanical equipment at the turn of the 20th century — I can’t see that happening, even after they were to remove all the arsenic that’s seeped into the ground.

When I first took the shot earlier in the afternoon the sun was off to the upper left of the shot, completely glaring the lens and the picture to the point where it was unusable, at least later in the day it was still a bit bad, but at least a little better. I might have to check the settings if this continues to happen.