Ma Bellbottoms

Remember when payphones were everywhere? I still do. It was just over a decade ago when going out with friends meant making sure I had an extra 35 cents in case I needed to make a call. Except in the biggest cities and some other odd places where they may still be found, payphones were taken off the hook everywhere. In the years after September 11th the huge increase in the popularity of cellphones marked the death knell for many payphones.
For many decades payphones were ubiquitous in all areas of the United States, and found in many public places. The image of Clark Kent transforming in a phone booth is embedded into American culture. Tony Montana never had much trouble finding them around Miami in Scarface. The Jim Croce song "Operator" has an extra outdated-bonus - not only is the singer on a payphone, but the song takes place back when calls only cost a dime!

It is at Mr. Croce's alma mater (and mine!), Villanova University, where this picture was taken. In the middle of a busy plaza, a small but garishly yellow sticker against a black light pole. I always assumed it was a sticker for some long-dissolved student band, with a picture of a cassette tape. Then one day while lounging in the area I happened to notice - wait! That cassette tape has a rotary dial and handset! So of course I had to look closer.

If the sticker is to be taken at face value, there are a few things to be learned:

1. There was a payphone out here in the plaza or near it. There aren't any outdoor payphones here anymore, and I'm not sure if the nearby buildings still have any inside. Maybe the Connelly Center does since it hosts a lot of outside functions. I'm sure in the past all of the neighboring buildings had plenty of payphones inside.
2. Students loved to hack said payphone for free calls. Not so surprising; students still like free stuff, even when it isn't really "free".
3. The sticker was designed, if not placed, in 1975. Judging by the two baffled students in the drawing, 1975 looks like a feasible date at least for the design of the sticker. Look at those pants! And what's up with that girl's outfit too?
3a. If that sticker was put up at any time after 1975 it would have looked dated already. Disco invaded. But I guess AT&T was too busy with the whole monopoly breakup drama to care about trivial things like that. Wait, maybe it was Pennsylvania Bell who put it up using old stickers they had lying around?

The irony about the sticker and its message is that it was not abuse in the end that made most of the campus' payphones run away on their comically-thin legs. It was changes in society, and changes in technology, that made them whimper off into the sunset, never to be seen again.

Hoboken Streets and Gas

The title of this blog was inspired by my love of finding old anachronistic pieces sticking out of the modern landscape; specifically, my love of cobblestone pavement. There was no cobblestone pavement out in the suburbs where I lived, but in Hoboken there were streets here and there that were still paved with them. Even on the streets which were paved over with tarmac, you could sometimes see the original cobblestone pavement where the newer pavement had cracked and worn away. So blue-grey and enduring. And bumpy. They're pretty but bumpy.

Radnor Trail

In college, for my first ever geography course, I did a project on the Radnor Trail. It's a lovely re-purposed trolley line that now serves as a multipurpose trail for the community. The line, formerly part of the Philadelphia and Western Railway, was abandoned for over half a century before the trail was opened to the public (The portion of the P&W that still operates is known as the SEPTA R100, by the way). Google tells me that now there's some serious interest in taking the Radnor Trail past Radnor into Haverford and Tredyfferin Townships. I wholeheartedly would love to see that come to fruition, especially if it means the trail approaches near my alma mater (which is pretty much inevitable).
Unfortunately I seem to have lost most of the photographs I took for my project, save for one which stood out for its subject's bizarre appearance:

The Radnor Razor

My professor suggested it was a razor monument. Others claimed it might be a giant capital T. I think it's either the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey, or the remaining pillar of a P&W station overpass. Realistically, it's probably the latter. I know it isn't some sort of crumbling long-abandoned alien technology, but due to its towering height it is a little bit unnerving. I promise you though, the rest of the trail is beautiful. Not just aesthetically, I mean it's a great trail as far as trails go - no grade crossings, nice and wide, paved well, and in a safe area. Best of all, just like most other roads in the Philly area, it ends at a Wawa.

Chicken Town

Last fall I visited central Florida, a region of the Sunshine State known for its tourist attractions. Interstate 95 leads to Interstate 4 which leads to the Most Magical Place on Earth, not to mention a bevy of mini-golf courses and outlet malls. Should you find yourself on Alafaya Trail instead of International Drive, as I did one fine day, you may find yourself face-to-comb with the chickens of Oviedo.

Menacing creatures, huh

Well It Says "Public Access" . . .

Once upon a Thursday in May, or maybe it was still April, I went gallivanting on a search for intriguing architecture from the Colonial era to the present in a quiet Philadelphia suburb. My journey, conducted entirely on foot, took me past an elementary school where recess, thankfully, is still held in the afternoon. While walking past, I couldn't help but notice that hidden in the shrubbery alongside the playground were a pair of stone gate markers. Not too unusual, since there were many estates in the area and a few still remain today, either as private residences or in some type of institutional use.

Though it was an interesting sight, it wasn't as exciting as following the trail that ran behind it.

Why This Blog?

I already have the sparsely-updated Maps in Pixels at mapsinpixels.blogspot.com - why another blog? Well, because I felt that I needed one.
I wanted to make Maps in Pixels about GIS, geographic information science. I wanted to blog incessantly about the Google Maps API and how navigational software is kickin' rad, so to speak. Lately I've found my interests veering away from that, to a "softer" appreciation of geography. At least, that's what I find myself more inspired to write about.
This is a place where I hope to picture and write about places I've been, places I've never been but only heard of, places that once were and places that will be. Places like cobblestone roads with trolley tracks, peeking from underneath cracked tarmac. I want to give love to the little things we pass by every day, or not nearly enough, that form part of the landscape. Micro-geography, if you will. And I want to share the minutae of the landscape with you.