Urban Inspection 4: Night Disturbance

On a whim, I decided it was time to take some more night photos of Tacoma. It turned out to be a fortunate decision.

You may have noticed this is heavily back-dated. I should have posted this back in September, but I've been quite sick this week.

One of the old brick alleys of Tacoma. I understand that the old brick can be nice, but this is so uneven that not only is it intolerable for auto traffic, but it's even difficult to walk on.

I always thought graffiti looks better than mismatched grey paint, but I also understand all the complicated reasons behind it.

Most of the streets, like this one, are pretty empty after midnight.

Downtown Tacoma is quite a center of public art.

We witnessed a driver knocking over a recycling bin, although I didn't quite get a photo of the act itself.

We heard police sirens and they stopped right in front of the bar ahead of us.

We were presented with this bizarrely delightful scene.

The lady with this wonderfully swooshy garment stopped by us to make this comment, which seems to explain everything about the situation:

Finally, as we made our way home, we saw Caution the Cat who works in the Office of Consumption. There used to be a small wooden plaque with words explaining his situation, but they went missing at some point along with the clock hands.

Learning Russian / Tbilisi at Night / Metro

I've also decided to show some photos of my favorite Metro stations to supplement the previous post. Rustaveli station definitely has the nicest exterior with its concrete mural. There is always one and only one door open in each direction at every Metro station and you must always go through that open door and never open any other. Apparently that's an unwritten Georgian law.

The Technical Institute station has the nicest interior design, I think, and is better-lit than most stations. It is all grey, but the ceiling provides its own contrast. It also directs attention to the mosaic-mural.

Finally, Tsarateli station certainly has the most vivid use of color. It's darker inside than my photos indicate, but I felt like editing them to show how it would look if properly lit. Many of the other stations are less interesting and even more poorly lit, but these show off the best of Tbilisi Metro. The best-designed stations seem to have been built in the 1970s.

A side note about police in Georgia. Apparently this country used to be pretty unsafe and the police were unreliable and generally useless. Now the nicest buildings in all of the small towns are police stations, and in Tbilisi they get quite grandiose. It is said that the all-glass walls symbolizes police transparency, but you might notice that half of the panels have walls behind them. XD

Sent from my Olivetti Lettera 22

Characters, day 2: Gertrood Burse

Typed on my SCM Classic 12
on the deck in the sunshine, beautiful day!