B12 Solipsism

The Longhorn Saloon – Main Street, Scenic, South Dakota, originally uploaded by swanksalot.

I kid you not, this *is* Main Street, in Scenic, South Dakota, right outside of the Badlands. Unfortunately, I did not have time to stop in for a beer.

[ maps.google.com/maps?f=d&saddr=Rapid+City,+SD&dad... ]

Next time.

I think the sign says, “Indians Allowed”. Check out the large version to read the lettering (though since I enlarged a small crop, it is a little “soft”)

from 2008. Apparently it is for sale. No, not just the Longhorn Saloon, but the whole town:

For less than the price of a one bedroom apartment in much of Manhattan, you can buy a whole town in South Dakota. The catch: it’s right on the edge of the remote Badlands, 50 miles from the nearest town of any size. The population is 9.

One-time rodeo star Twila Merrill, owner of 12-acre Scenic, South Dakota is selling up due to an illness. According to Coldwell Banker agent Dave Olsen, everything in Scenic (“so-called because it’s beautiful,” he said), is included in the sale: an old-fashioned Western saloon, two shops, and a dancehall, among other buildings. They mostly date back to the town’s 1906 founding, and Olsen hopes the new owner will preserve them as relics of the Old West.

Scenic has been on the market for two months, but there wasn’t much interest beyond local business people until the Rapid City Journal filed a story on the listing on Monday. In the last 24 hours, CNN and ABC got in on the act, and a shocked Olsen told Forbes that the international press is descending on tiny Scenic.

(click here to continue reading Entire South Dakota Town For Sale For $799,000 – Clare O’Connor – Filthy Rich – Forbes.)

Tracy Arm Alaska, originally uploaded by swanksalot.

If I’m not mistaken. Somewhere close in any case.

17% better if viewed in Lightbox:
www.flickr.com/photos/swanksalot/5766084280/in/dateposted…

Went back and processed a lot of photos from summer of 2007, including dozens from our Alaskan sojourn. You can see them all here, or if you are patient, click here to start the slideshow (Flash)

Susie China, originally uploaded by swanksalot.

store front on Lincoln (?) Ave. Love some of the details – probably meant something to the original owner. The only symbol I’m sure about is the Chicago Y in the upper center – symbolizing the three branches of the Chicago River.

The restaurant itself is closed now too. I should revisit with my better camera

(this was taken in 2006 with a D70 – my current camera is ten times better. Well, at least in name, D7000)

doorway at 833 West Randolph, originally uploaded by swanksalot.

Former location of Marché, soon to be reopened under new management:

Nellcôte (833 W. Randolph St.; no phone yet), the previously unnamed venture by Jared Van Camp (Old Town Social). The restaurant is named for Villa Nellcôte, the mansion on the Côte d’Azur where the Rolling Stones threw a notorious house party that somehow spawned the album Exile on Main Street.

“Over-the-top luxury without pretense” is how a spokeswoman describes the look. “There will be white Italian marble, wrought-iron gates, [and] cartouche crown molding, but also irreverent accents like bohemian pop art,” she says. The menu will feature a changing-daily lineup of house-made foods using local ingredients, including pizzas and pastas made with house-milled 00 flour. The flour mill is a 9-by-11-foot leviathan that the kitchen was built around, and the finely milled flour will be available for retail sale. Van Camp is targeting November or December for opening.

via
Chicago Mag – Dish

Sounds somewhat intriguing, the proof will be if it is a place that Gram Parsons would hang out in while consuming heroic amounts of opium derivatives.

Harmony in Yellow and Red, originally uploaded by swanksalot.

A woman parking her bicycle in front of the Peninsula Hotel, Chicago. I assume she was a guest.

If you look in Lightbox:
www.flickr.com/photos/swanksalot/5672020601/in/photostrea…
you can see that her glasses even match her shoes and bike tires.

If I was slightly more brave, I would have interviewed her. I’m sure she had a good story to tell.

Solemn and serene, originally uploaded by swanksalot.

Shot with my Hipstamatic for iPhone
Lens: Chunky
Flash: Off
Film: BlacKeys SuperGrain

April showers continue, and continue, and continue

Better when viewed in Lightbox

Near Buckingham Palace, on Constitution Road¹, in the middle of a fairly hard rain. We were huddled underneath an old, big tree, waiting for the rain to subside, when these ladies whizzed by on a bicycle, laughing hysterically. I was mad at myself that I didn’t get a chance to focus properly, but conversion to black and white (TRI-X 400 emulation) captured the essence of the moment.

Lightbox version

1. methinks, I am guessing based on a perusal of Google Maps [↩]

Traffic Lights Turn Blue, originally uploaded by swanksalot.

minor snow flurry last night.

Modestly tweaked in Photoshop, but not much.

Better viewed in Lightbox:

We have no hours. We are always closed, originally uploaded by swanksalot.

Shot with my Hipstamatic for iPhone
Lens: John S
Film: Kodot Verichrome
Flash: Off

might be true in upcoming weeks at least

Cougar on the Prowl, originally uploaded by swanksalot.

Or whatever this cat is called.

Grand Avenue

better in Lightbox.

Lightbox is better. Less distracting.

I was too cold walking home to even consider using a tripod, so instead, rested my camera on a ledge, focusing on the Merchandise Mart (lit for the Christmas season), and a train happened to come whizzing by. If I had brought my tripod, perhaps the deep focus might have been a little sharper, but I don’t mind, I quite like how this turned out. I did bump up the color contrast a bit in Photoshop, using a Velvia emulator in a new layer, then changing the opacity to about 60% or so.

Busker – Marble Arch Station, originally uploaded by swanksalot.

Marble Arch, London

Playing either Bob Dylan or Radiohead, can’t remember.

This is Marble Arch

Marble Arch is a white Carrara-marble monument at the junction of Oxford Street, Park Lane, and Edgware Road, almost directly opposite Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park in London, England. The arch is on a large traffic island, which also includes a very small park, in the midst of swirling traffic. The traffic island is directly across from the Marble Arch tube station.

The name “Marble Arch” also refers to the locality in west London where the arch is situated, particularly, the southern portion of Edgware Road. Historically, only members of the royal family and the King’s Troop, Royal Horse Artillery, have been allowed to pass through the arch in ceremonial procession.

Lightbox version

photograph © Herman Leonard –¹ Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington at the Downbeat Club

I’ve always loved this photo, especially Duke Ellington’s expression of unmitigated joy…

Duke Ellington sits at the piano in a blackened theater, a brilliant shaft of light casting him in heroic silhouette.

Billie Holiday (sic – actually this is Ella Fitzgerald) stands before the microphone, lips slightly parted – as if in mid-phrase – smoke billowing softly behind her.

Oscar Peterson performs in close quarters with bassist Ray Brown and guitarist Herb Ellis, Peterson’s hands a blur above the keys of his piano.

The black-and-white images could be the work of only one man, Herman Leonard, perhaps the most revered jazz photographer of the 20th Century and the subject of an exquisitely produced new book, “Jazz ” (Bloomsbury, $65). Though not the first, and probably not the last, published collection of Leonard’s photographs, “Jazz” captures the textural sumptuousness of Leonard’s photography, while crystallizing his personal philosophy about the music.

Leonard, in other words, chose to celebrate the jazz life, rather than demonize it. While many jazz lensmen sensationalized the dark side of jazz – as in those ghastly photos of a drug-ravaged Chet Baker toward the end of his life – Leonard went in the opposite direction. To him, jazz musicians were to be admired, not scorned or pitied. He saw poetry where others saw melodrama; he portrayed romance where others focused on decay.

(click to continue reading A new collection of Herman Leonard’s photography, ‘Jazz,’ portrays the music in a heroic light – chicagotribune.com.)

1. Tribune typo labeled this woman as Billie Holiday [↩]

A little while of Terra Paradise
I dreamed, of autumn rivers, silvas green,
Of sanctimonious mountains high in snow,
But in that dream a heavy difference
Kept waking and a mournful sense sought out,
In vain, life’s season or death’s element.
—Wallace Stevens, 1879-1955
Montrachet-Le-Jardin

Wallace Stevens

Photo of downtown buildings, Chicago Loop, cross-processed in Photoshop.