Which Photo Is Truly Creepier?

Seriously.

The Old 8th District

The new 8th District cop house is big and practical, I'm sure. But on the outside, it looks like a new library, so of course I took no photos of it. I'd been in the old joint several times, visiting my dad. No, really. Visiting my dad. There was a pay phone just past the front door, then you did this half-turn as you walked up a few more steps, and then you had to be grilled by the watch commander. The empty parking lot looks sad. This is at 63rd & St. Louis, about halfway between Pulaski & Kedzie in our wonderful grid-pattern city. As I took thr photo of the parking lot, I saw the house with the wind vane at 63rd Place & Homan, a zig zag through the lot got me there. Another few blocks towards Kedzie I found this cool building--I'm sure the architecturally-inclined amongst you could tell me if that's Art Deco or not--and I took a far shot as well as one of the upper floor. That's a building to have a private detective's office slash apartment back in the 1950s.

Lois Lane Has Fetishes (And So Does Joe Shuster)

What a crazy dame she was during the Weisinger era, am I right, Bob? But the coolest thing is the fetish art by Joe Shuster, who created Superman along with Jerry Siegel. Sure looks like Lois putting the whip to Clark Kent on the cover.

Cheap Seats

Tomorrow the Cubs come back to Wrigley Field for the end of the season. Two things my dad will watch, the Cubs and the Weather Channel. Better than some people who watch Fox News 24/7. The photos I've posted are taken twenty years apart. The ticket is for the first night game, which happened to be a rain out. The night games played a big part of why the signage and the rooftop bleachers kept growing. And still are. The last time I was actually at a Cubs game was in August 1986, a month before my dad had his first stroke. Before they added walls around the outfield, I was able to get off the el at Addison and sit there, watching the game and writing in my commonplace book. Often quite windy, but now all you can see is a sliver of the field. For me, this week is the end of summer, and I'll watch some of the game tomorrow with my dad in a detached, sleepy sort of way. The shadows are sharper, the afternoon sky almost orange.

An aside. I've made several posts about Telstar, not just the song by the Tornadoes, but the entry about the Telstar three-fold I received from Marty Mundt and after a few weeks, encased it in Mylar and sent it along to Capcom. I happened to be reading up on it yesterday, and this is what made me throw this entry together tonight. Telstar was set to transmit an address from President Kennedy for a few brief moments--this was July of 1962--and to fill the void, a few seconds of a ball game between the Cubs and Phillies aired. Then JFK. And, a few hours later, a nuclear explosion in the stratosphere, code-named Starfish Prime, fried all of Telstar's circuits. Our government at work. They actually make the Cubs look good.

What Went Wrong?

Keeping this short as my keyboard's messing up, low on batteries. Actually got a lot done by handwriting, not typing. I had a bunch of photos I wanted scanned, and was able to complete that task as well. (I will let the spell-checker fix the words, as the n and c are not working. If that were the only problem, the space bar often does not work.) So I came across one I took of my dad circa 1980 or so, in the basement of our old house. I like that there are three of him in the photo. The reflection and the framed shot, which was taken in the parking lot of Old Chicago. That was a failed indoor amusement park, but you can still see the interior in the 1977 film THE FURY. So, there's my dad and then there's me. What went wrong?

63rd Street Skins of Buildings

I don't even know what they sell in the building with the Indian standing guard on the rooftop at the NW corner of 63rd & Pulaski. The eye care center is still down the next storefront, and there had been a cigar store there for decades. I believe it was a White Owl store, unless that brad of cigar is as common as, say, Old Style signs. Before I moved to Burbank, it had already turned into half tobacco sop/half crappy figurines in the windows. I have taken the opportunity to show how, if taken at the right angle, it looks as if the Indian has L'il Kaw-liga out for a visit.

The huge building on the NE side of the intersection is one of my favorite buildings, and I was always hypnotized on summer nights as I watched cheap window fans cranking silently in the upper windows. The third photo shows that First Lawn Bank was its anchor, but that had closed in the early 90s. I've written about an incident involving my dad, back when he was a cop, which occurred in this building. The story is called "This Old Man Came Rolling Home." The short end: an old guy died ad the neighbors called the police after a few days of not seeing him, my dad and a few other cops from the 8th found a paper about five days old, and the crime scene evidence showed that the guy likely fell and died in the bathroom. The funny (as in peculiar) thing was that the guy had two Dobermans, and they seemed quite content. That was because they ate the old man. Along with other bags of food in the pantry. The clincher was when one of the cops found a thigh bone hidden behind a couch cushion. The apartment is a few windows to the left of the shoe store sign, maybe three stories up.

I kept walking towards the viaduct at Central Park, to take photos of the old station house, and I'll post those tomorrow, along with pictures of what had been Traxx. I passed this bungalow where the owners seemed to have gone overboard with the lawn statues.

The Rest of The Roll

Mind you, this roll was developed a few days before the next, which has the great photos of 63rd Street. The photos go all the way back to the comic convention, which was the first week of August. So let's just get this over with. It was creepy seeing Superman & Supergirl never separating, seeing as how they are cousins. There's a girl from Sin City, then The Black Cat & Spider-Man, whose penis seems to be just smaller than his nose. The other two photos are from when I went by Marty Mundt for some free books. I dropped the camera and got this kinda neat blurry deal, and the scary Christmas decorations are on the apartment next door. Tomorrow its on to 63rd...