Saturday, September 10, 2016 – Observations Along the Road

Observation Stew Now that the highway pages are done, and the water heater is repaired, I can start some stew cooking on the stove. Loads of interesting articles in here. I’ll group them the best I can.

Things Dying and Dead, But Then Again….

The iPod Classic. Nine years ago, Apple introduced the iPod Classic. Last week, they introduced the iPhone 7. The iPod Classic had 160GB in a spinning hard disk, for $349. The iPhone 7 can have 256GB for almost $850. Is this the replacement for the Classic, finally? Or, is it still better to get a 7th Gen iPod Classic off eBay, or from that drawer you’ve been hiding it in, and replace the hard disk with a Tarkan board, some solid state memory (I put in 512GB), and keep the classic. Going the Tarkan route is less than $400, and gives you more memory for about the same cost. Oh, and it gives you a 3.5mm headphone jack as well, so you needn’t pay for adapters or lost AirPods. Then again, the headphone companies don’t care. They’ve got product to sell you.
The Colony Theatre. Oh, the poor Colony. We thought you would survive. Now you’re having to rent out your space just to stay alive. And your poor subscribers: We’re left holding the tickets for shows that we will never see (literally — there’s no way I’m gonna see Patty Duke in Mrs. Lincoln — both are dead). Will the Colony come back? At this point, I’m highly skeptical. What they need is new artistic direction, a new board, and a new way of thinking about things. Their collapse shows the perils of keeping the same leadership for far too long.
The Advertising Jingle. Perhaps you hadn’t noticed, but the advertising jingle is dead. Who killed it? Cover artists and the licensing of modified lyrics, that’s what. Those are more easily recognizable. So, our hats are off to you, “I’d like to teach the world to sing”, “Like a good neighbor”, and “Plop Plop Fizz Fizz”. We’re just left with the Empire Carpeting jingle.

Los Angeles Development

Earl Carroll Theatre. It looks like a massive development next to the Earl Carroll Theatre (→ Aquarius Theatre → Nickelodeon Studios) is going to occur. We may get a preserved outside, but offices it will remain. Live theatre will not grace the space again.
Baja Fresh and Pinkberry. The owner of Baja Fresh has been sold, and they are now owned by the same folks that own Pinkberry. Is this a good thing? I don’t know. Now that Sharkey’s has moved nearby, we go there instead of Baja Fresh.
Paper Airplanes and Grand Park. Giant paper airplanes are soon coming to Grand Park. The shade structure appropriately titled “Paper Airplane” will be unveiled Tuesday near the oft-photographed Arthur J. Will Memorial Fountain (they’re actually made by “made of a mesh-like material”). Created by artists Elenita Torres and Dean Sherriff, it will look like a squadron of 11 giant paper planes floating across Olive Court. That’s the totally exposed area between Grand and Hill where food trucks line up during the weekday lunch hours.

Sensitivity and Culture

Tiki Bars. Here’s an interesting question: If you were going to add a third arm to your body, where would you add it? Whoops, wrong question. Try this: Are Tiki Bars offensive to Polynesians? NPR endeavored to figure that out. It is hard to know: Tiki bars are about as close to something really Polynesian as the Chinese Food you got downtown in the 1950s and 1960s was to real Chinese food.
Napalm Girl. The furor yesterday was over Facebook and “Napalm Girl” — the famous photo of the napalmed Vietnamese girl. First it was taken down. Facebook banned it. Then they reversed themselves. It makes me think about a debate that occurred many many years ago when that photo was first published: Should photos like this be published? When does news value override sensitivity? These questions are still relevant today.

And the Rest…

A Ren Faire Musical. A Renaissance Faire themed musical is being penned by the creators of Legally Blonde – The Musical. This isn’t going to end well, is it. The musical, titled Huzzah!, is supposedly is about a family-owned mom-and-pop-type operation that is threatened mostly by its own family dysfunction.
Munchkin Arguments. No, not about the movie and whether they did Dorothy. (ducks and runs). Rather, about the Steve Jackson game and its endless, and I do mean endless, variants. Here’s the article to link to when arguments about Munchkin occur. You’ve been warned.
Language Arguments. Here’s an interesting opinion: Speak to your kids in a foreign language. They suggest Yiddish.
Going with Grace. The US Navy is naming their cyber center after Adm Grace Murry Hopper. This deserves a huzzah!
Dim Sum. LA Eaters essential Dim Sum restaurants. Do you agree?

userpic=roadgeeking

Labor Day weekend. A traditional time for me to do computer updates, be it writing code while on vacation in Hawaii listening to the Jerry Lewis Telethon when I was in college, or doing updates in the early morning while on vacation (while looking at I-15 in front of me, near one of the most spectacular bridges on that route). Hopefully, these will take less time than the last batch. [Update: They didn’t, which is why I’m finishing things post-vacation at my desk, listening to the music I picked up on vacation.]

Updates were made to the following highways, based on my reading of the papers (which are posted to the roadgeeking category at the “Observations Along The Road” and to the California Highways Facebook group) as well as any backed up email changes. I also reviewed the the AAroads forum. This resulted in changes on the following routes, with credit as indicated [my research⁽¹⁾, contributions of information or leads (via direct mail) from Mike Ballard⁽²⁾, Coatimundi @ AAroads⁽³⁾, Concrete Bob @ AAroads⁽⁴⁾, DTComposer @ AARoads⁽⁵⁾, Jonathan Ledbetter⁽⁶⁾, Sparker @ AARoads⁽⁷⁾, Scott Presnel (ACSAMapCollector) @ AARoads⁽⁸⁾, Quillz @ AARoads⁽⁹⁾, Max Rockatansky at AAroads⁽¹⁰⁾, Joe Rouse at AAroads⁽¹¹⁾, and Joel Windmiller⁽¹²⁾: Route 1^(7,8,5), Route 2^(1,8), Route 4⁽¹⁾, I-5^(1,7,11), I-8⁽⁶⁾, I-10⁽¹⁾, Route 11⁽¹⁾, Route 14^(2,11), I-15^(1,7), Route 17⁽¹⁾, Route 29⁽¹⁾, Route 37⁽¹⁾, LRN 43⁽⁷⁾, Route 45⁽⁷⁾, Route 49^(1,11), US 50⁽¹¹⁾, Route 58^(7,11), Route 59⁽⁷⁾, Route 65^(7,4), Former US 66^(1,7), Route 76⁽¹⁾, I-80^(1,12), Route 85⁽¹⁾, US 97⁽⁶⁾, Former US 99 and current Route 99^(1,7), US 101^(1,7,9), Route 102^(7,11), Route 107⁽⁷⁾, Route 116⁽¹⁾, Route 120^(1,7), Route 140⁽⁷⁾, LRN 161⁽⁷⁾, Route 167⁽⁷⁾, Route 172⁽⁷⁾, Route 180⁽⁷⁾, LRN 190⁽⁷⁾, I-210⁽⁷⁾, Route 262⁽⁷⁾, Route 263⁽¹⁾, Route 271⁽⁷⁾, Route 276⁽³⁾, US 299/Route 299^(1,10), Route 371⁽¹⁾, US 395^(1,2), I-405^(1,8), I-580⁽¹⁾, I-710⁽¹⁾, Riverside County Route R2^(7,10). I’ll note there were some particular good background information posts on AAroads — I’ve hopefully been able to capture that information so it isn’t lost into the void (with attribution, of course).

Added a link in the FAQ to California’s Postmile Service, an interesting site to map postmiles to geographic locations. Hat tip to Jonathan Ledbetter for the link.

Noted a post by Quillz on AAroads on 7/16/2016 that provided the sign specifications for the 1934 “bear” shield signage. This was put on the pre-Interstate numbering page.

Added some observations on the chronology of LRNs from Sparker at AAroads.

Day: September 10, 2016

Some Tasty Afternoon Stew

Changes to the California Highways Web Site – July / August 2016