Year: 2009

Good Riddance

Way back in 1982, I bought my first VCR at Circuit City. It was a Sanyo Beta format machine, and it was my high school graduation present from my parents. That might have been the only Circuit City shopping experience I was ever relatively satisfied with.

Circuit City has for years topped my list of worst chain retailers in the US, beating out both Rite-Aid and Albertsons. How they managed to stave off liquidation as long as they did is a mystery to me. Circuit City did everything wrong. The sales staff were like vultures (until you needed them), their selection was poor, and even if you could find a product you wanted, the floor model would invariably be the only one in the entire store, and this didn’t just apply to items that were on sale.

Then, a few years ago, they made no secret of the fact that they were firing their highest paid and most knowledgeable workers, none of whom were earning many gold stars to begin with. That was pretty much the last straw. It seemed every time I walked out of a Circuit City, I was pissed off. I soon stopped walking in to begin with. I don’t even look at their flyers in the Sunday paper anymore; in fact, tossing them aside became something of an amusing little ritual for me.

Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who had this reaction. Economic implications and sympathy for the workers who will lose their jobs aside, Circuit City’s meltdown couldn’t happen to a more deserving company.

Is This Really Necessary?

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Driving down I-40 between Winston-Salem and Kernersville today, I saw this electronic message warning me about potential inauguration traffic next Tuesday.

On I-95.

In Virginia.

Three hundred miles away.

These signs were repeated all the way to Durham, at least. This is sort of like driving on the 101 in San Francisco and being warned repeatedly about a  potential upcoming traffic jam on Highway 99 in Bakersfield.

The Heat Saga Continues

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It was a frosty 48 degrees in the living room this morning, after Herb’s temporary boiler fix broke in the middle of the night (when it was somewhere in the mid-teens). He’s back now, having finally acquired the necessary replacement part, so I’m hoping I’ll stop being cold soon.

Yes, the heating repairman and I are on a first-name basis now. Remember that, guys: the secret to establishing a succesful relationship is calling back after the first encounter.

My Kind of Preservation

This atricle about the fragility of electronic and technology-dependent information is a couple of years old, but it’s a good overview of one of my primary areas of interest within my new field. It’s actually a big topic among librarians and archivists, but I don’t think it can be emphasized too much.

Obviously, the big stuff is going to be preserved. Things like the video of the first moonwalk or of the World Trade Center bombing are in no real danger. Original masters of Disney movies will continue to be lovingly stored on their little satin pillows under perfect archival conditions for the foreseeable future. But an amazing volume of less visible material (like the census data mentioned in the link, or the first generation of websites, for example) is at considerable risk. This is the kind of stuff I’m interested in, things like snapshots of the web at a given point in time, or recordings of full days (or even just hours) of commercial broadcasting, with commercials and voiceovers included. As usual, my excitement is over that ephemeral, everyday kind of material, which is also why I’m so obsessed with the history of supermarkets and other commercial/retail architecture.

I’ll spare you the details of my home media preservation projects other than to say that backing up everything I have on magnetic media (e.g. cassette tapes) is priority number one. It’s kind of sad, though, that the very technology that made it possible for my generation to preseve so much information also makes all that extra information so much more unstable.

Mmmm. Doughnuts.

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As I’ve said before, it seems most of Krispy Kreme’s problems started when their shops stopped looking like this.

This one, for reference, is in Spartanburg SC. It actually isn’t open anymore, but they keep it in pristine condition right across the street from its replacement, with counter, stools, original signage, and all. I’m not 100% sure why; it’s almost museum-like, similar to the McDonald’s in Des Plaines. But a Kripsy Kreme museum would presumaby be in Winston-Salem, not Spartanburg.

Videolog: Pictures of the Homeland


November Group
Pictures of the Homeland, 1982

Sorry. I now feel compelled to present any “new” videos I can dig up by this band (and even to update old entries when I find better quality versions). This is from the first EP that also featured “We Dance”.

Buy American?

I just saved over twenty bucks on a textbook by buying it from Amazon’s UK site rather than the US site. It’s the same book, but it apparently costs less to sell it and ship it across the Atlantic than it does just to transport it across a couple of states. Go figure…

Scary

The high school friends people I barely knew and didn’t really like in high school have been coming out of the woodwork and accosting me on Facebook of late. I don’t really do Facebook; I find it rather annoying, and I keep my account open mostly for school purposes and because I’ve occasionally been contacted by old friends I actually did want to hear from again. But I’m thinking of pulling down my high school affiliation because there’s pretty much no one from those days that I ever want to hear from again.

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On a completely unrelated note, it was a beautifully cold, gray, rainy day today, and I noticed this view out my window at work. The photo doesn’t really capture it at all, but the combination of the rooftop, the smokestack/chimney thing in the background (that you can’t really see), and the overall gloom sort of gave this really enticing Dickensian London feel.

Again, the photo doesn’t really capture it. maybe I should’ve skipped it. Oh well.

Distress Sale?

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This article about a group of downtown Winston-Salem condos going up for auction at potential bargain basement prices was no big surprise. The project involved struck me as a little bit questionable right from the start. It’s sort of far-removed from the “action” and it’s one of those generic, tacky, cheap-looking (and overpriced) developments that you’re seeing downtown in almost all cities now, with a barely-concealed first floor garage and some pitiful and essentially useless street-level retail that’s included because of zoning ordinances rather than because anyone really wants it. These types of developments invariably look almost more like subsidized housing than the “luxury” units they’re supposed to be.

But get this:

Selling the remaining 17 residential units, along with one remaining commercial space, has become a sticking point that’s holding back future phases for the project, Furman said, which led to the idea for the auction.

Let me get this straight. They’re auctioning these things off for next to nothing so that they can move on to the next phase of the project and build even more of the bloody things even though they couldn’t even unload the first group?

Meanwhile, of course, actual downtown housing that people might actually buy has languished for two years  across from the new downtown stadium (which itself displaced a whole downtown neighborhood), so that it can eventually be bulldozed to create parking lots or sports bars or whatever the hell is planned for that area.

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Of course, building additional housing in the stadium area might have (gasp) involved working within the existing urban framework rather than wholesale clearance (and wouldn’t have resulted in government subsidies for the stadium). Even worse, the existing residents of that area were insufficiently upscale and white, which doesn’t look good when you’re doing “”Emerald City” planning, which is apparently the only kind that’s been considered in most inner-city areas for the past decade or so.

Right now, this (lack of) planing has resulted in Winston-Salem getting two blighted areas for the price of one: the one that was built and then abandoned for no good reason and the one that probably shouldn’t have been built to begin with.

Dine Free Unless Delighted

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Great article in today’s LA TImes about my favorite eatery in downtown Los Angeles (or anywhere in Los Angeles, for that matter). Every time I see Clifton’s, I’m afraid it will be the last, but I’m really encouraged to see that the family now owns the building, at least.

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I need to visit Clifton’s again. It’s been almost six years.