Random impressions

I've been socializing a lot lately, which often means going into Spookytown proper. I do this either by catching a bus to the Metro (but the bus doesn't always appear in the most timely fashion, and also the buck twenty five for the 8-minute ride is in no way transferable to the train, whereas the bus transfer coming from the train allows for just 35-cent rides home, and I find the illogic irritating) or by driving to the Metro (making me feel like a suburban lameass). So the Spookytown Metro system gives me all kinds of deja vu, since it was built by the same Italian company that put together the Bay Area Rapid Transit system, with which I am quite familiar, but what is really impressive is that they managed to make it spookier! One way is by having really deep stations and thus enormously long and steep escalators reaching up up up, which isn't great for those of us with a fear of steep inclines. The other way, not yet pictured here, is by significantly underlighting every station so that it is eerily dark -- to the point where the station signs are sometimes difficult to see. A clever idea for a town with a really high rate of crime and lots of bumbling tourists. But some aspects are still aesthetically pleasing, like some of the ceilings (at least the ones in the better-lit stations, then you can actually see what they look like).














I went to a rather diplomatic part of town the other day to see an exhibit of Central Asian textiles (insert your own snide comment on my nerdiness here), and was continually struck by the oddness of the things printed on building plaques en route to and from the museum. It's like every Spookytown building has a plaque of some kind, and you would never be able to predict what will be written on the plaque based on location or building type.

Many of these diplomatic-type buildings are standard looking Spookytown three-story red-brick buildings, but some have interesting architectural details.

And then, of course, if you are very very lucky you can see garishly painted ceramic pandas, apparently some kind of leftover from an earlier "Panda-monium" (ick) series promoting Spookytown. Like the Chicago (or Prague) cow series. It seems peculiarly apt that it is a caged animal, one imported from a far-away land, and usually dissatisfied to the point where it needs to be tricked into mating and reproducing, which is being presented as a symbolic representation of Spookytown.