Columbus Day City Walk/The statues are everywhere III

While we celebrated Columbus sailing the ocean blue with a day off from work last Monday, I decided to sail myself around another place, where the air was brisk,yet the sky was sunny.

Just perfect weather for a nice walk, and to go exploring around downtown Salt Lake City.

Dad, I thought of you and wished we could go hear this guy speak together. By the time 7 pm was near, B. had gotten home late from work (no holiday for him!) and he wasn't up for heading out the door again. Neat to consider this is a regular event; I will have to gear up for it the next 2nd Monday.

Jeff warned us that Halloween was a HUGE event in SLC.

I guess so if that is how they dress up the front of a regular bar for the Spook Season.

I'll admit that the dangling spiders were an inspired touch of creepy detailing.

Now I had seen these wind mill like structures on the side of the Convention center, but always thought they were just rather odd bits of art.

It is always important to read interpretive material. These windmills are part of an art design to create sound as well.
Hmmm....I just had to go inside to see what that was all about.

So I stepped inside the side door of the Convention Center. The Convention Center is also known as "The Salt Palace", the original pre 1900's building was sprayed with high pressure salt to make a glistening surface; now glass serves for shiny effect.

Inside was a multi storied circular room made of glass and supports.

Inside it was like THIS. Isn't that wild?

This is what is making those peculiar sounds!

B. actually attended a convention here once, and had step out of a meeting to take a call, and kept hearing this weird sound pattern. Imagine trying to figure out what it is if all you can do is just hear the random percussive sounds.

Further inside the building were these supports with golden lights overhead.



A closer look at what is making that sound.

Half a block up from the CC: A funky bit of metal sculpture that probably needs a new coat of red paint. No, I have no idea what it is all about; it is just a series of fluid dynamic shapes designed to engage one's eyes.

Then this bit of whimsy. I think the cranes in the background add to the structural interest.

Cow, with jato (jet assist take off) heading over moon.
Sure, why not.
Kids would love it.

A red flying anvil, being held aloft by I don't know what...

And this.
Dunno. You tell me.
Maybe the discs spin if there is wind.
Dunno.

Fish with feathers. Actually I like this one the best of the four. Be sure to enlarge this one!

The Art Center with fountains pressing up, and the sky line reflected in the glass behind. Enlarge this one too, the reflections are cool.
Note the reddish column in the glass...more about that later.

The fountains seemed to get higher and higher as I watched.
And yes I had made sure I "went" before I went, if you get my drift...

The reddish column: A Dale Chihuly blown glass sculpture.
Two stories high!

(If you have never heard about Dale Chihuly before, read up and enjoy. I've had the pleasure of seeing a documentary about his life and works, and am a huge fan of his creativity. I've seen his work on cruise ships and at the Dallas Museum of Art. Addictive stuff!)

I was shooting the picture through the glass window, and wanted to be sure I got the top of the sculpture, which was in a glare, so I shielded the glass to take the picture. That is a shadow of my gloved hand in the shot. Oh so artsy, don't you think? I can't wait to get INSIDE the building and see this thing up close.

Looking back at the water feature, and at the SLC Temple, just to orient you to where I am.

All over the city are these poles with what looks like bike wheels attached, and cupped shapes that cause them to spin in the wind like pinwheels.

Each one is a little different; but they all spin in the wind, and I keep wondering if they are some kind of place marker, like where to get a cab, or stop on a tour or something.

I haven't found any clues about them yet....

All the cranes in the backgrounds of so many of my pictures are part of the city center development called Downtown Rising. It will be about six acres in size, and have condo, business, hospitality, green belts, retail and grocery buildings. It is really going to be something when it is all done; and the "gateway" to this city inside of a city will be...you guessed it...the Temple Square.

The City Creek city center development won't be done for another couple of years, but it is fun to "flirt" with the idea of living in the City Center world.

A pigeon sitting on an eagle.
Wonder if the eagle minds?

I do so appreciate that the city actually does have a walking tour that you can follow, with signs to read along as you go along.
The pigeon was hanging out on the Eagle Emporium Building. You can read about it if you want. A water powered clock was involved with this stop. It wasn't as much fun as the Vancouver Steam powered clock, although I think they were about the same age.

Another "dunno" sculpture. There were four pieces to this public art installment. I thought they might be benches at first, but...

Then I thought maybe they are supposed to be like confetti? Above is a second piece.

They didn't really look like you could sit on them comfortably. They were rather fun just being there in the middle of the side walk, under the trees.

This building brought me memories of St. Gallen in Switzerland, where the buildings all seemed to have lovely motifs and embellishments. Salt Lake Mormon emigration pulled a lot of people in from Switzerland; perhaps that accounts for some of the similarities.

I like the two faces on this building, one up high on white granite or marble (another dunno) and the lower one on gray. Both faces were quite charming. Were they modeled from actual people or a re-mix of Grecian art?

Yes, this one WAS a real bench. The branches looked like rose canes, without the thorns. Even so, the person seated on the bench looked in danger of being enveloped by the web like growth.

I do like glass high rises, and the one pointing at you here is the Wells Fargo building. It plays a trick on you: from some angles it appears to be a building only as wide as the front tiny edge.

When I first saw it, I kept wondering why anyone would build a building that tall and have it only be one office wide. Then we went around a curve and the rest of the building came into view.

Very geometrically clever!

A German deli/restaurant drew me in. Doesn't it look very European? How fun it would be to sit on those stools and people watch?

(That is exactly what B. and I did tonight. I had goulash and spaezle, he had corn beef Ruben and spaezle. Then we sat at the window and watched the people go by. It was quite interesting, and I'll post about that another day...)

If you enlarge this and read the menu, be prepared to become very hungry for German food.
Very, very hungry.
If you could smell the food too, you would likely go crazy with wanting a nice German dinner. Good luck with finding one! There seems to be so few German restaurants around.

I wonder why that is. Million of Chinese and Mexican restaurants, but German restaurants and Canadian restaurants are few and far between.

Think about it. When was the last time you were able to find a good German or Canadian food restaurant in America?
Yes, I think something should be done about this sad state of affairs.
I'll bet there are at least a hundred people every day all across America who wish they could eat German or Canadian food, if only they could find a restaurant specializing in that cuisine.
It's such a pity, isn't it.

Just up the street from the restaurant is a performance art center. While we ate tonight we watched musicians walking down the street carrying their instruments, and teenage girls in prom dresses, clearly dressed up because they were going to "the theater"! Along the side of the theater are these painted replicas of thank you letters from school children who had had a chance to visit the theater on a field trip.

Isn't that a great way to celebrate the wonder of children?

The theater caught my attention because the date it was built was while my grandfather still lived here in SLC. It is kind of funny; I go around noting dates of building, and reflect on whether or not my grandfather would have been likely to have seen or visited it. My great grandparents also lived here, and so did my great great grandmother, but I only knew my grandfather, so I tend to want to picture him here, and not the other ancestors.

Isn't it a pretty building?

I'm so glad they kept this theater up! They have all kinds of theater preformance troupes too...surely I will eventually get to go there to see some kind of live performance.

Next to the theater was a vacant lot with late season hollyhocks shivering in the late day breeze.

An old historic hotel was next.

The doorman held the door for me to enter and explore. It was so tempting to flop down on a couch in the lobby and join the other guest reading in front of the invitingly warm fire.

But instead I kept on walking for another half a block, crossed the street and went up the elevator to our apartment to make dinner.

My walk was two blocks up, two blocks over, two blocks down and back to home...about two hours of poking around, and reading restaurant menus, getting ideas of where we might want to dine, seeing lists of documentaries that are scheduled to be shown, gallery installations that will open soon...so much to do and see!

But on Columbus Day evening, I was happy enough to be simply dining with my darlin' Mr. B, right at our own little table at home.

Flirting with the idea....

What a view, huh? The big red building in the distance it the University of Utah.

And you turn a little to your right to see this....the Wasatch mountains.

More to the right there is this....

Then you start seeing downtown....

And all the high rises. Imagine how pretty that view would be at night.

This is the view from the living room and balcony of a 9th floor condominium on South Temple, a street which happens to have been declared to be one of the prettiest streets in America.
We were in the condo because we have a new real estate agent, and because we are flirting with the idea of buying a condo in a high rise building instead of a suburban house.

Just flirting, mind you...

Our new agent is a delight. That's her chatting with Bernie. We asked her to show us just one condo so we could meet her and get a feel for how it would be to work with her when the time comes to seriously look for a house. (No nibbles on the Houston house; this truly was a dry run.)

Bernie and I are finding life in a small 700 square foot apartment to be quite charming. And the downtown location to be terribly exciting and convenient.
That three to six minute commute is fantastic! Walking to restaurants and to the park is delightful. Church bells and trolleys, high rises and cityscape fascinate us.

It is all so different than how we have ever lived before.

We are having a hard time thinking about living in the suburbs again, and doing the homeowner-ish stuff like trimming and mulching and taking in the trash cans.

Anyway, for now, we think and talk and pray and flirt with the idea of urban living. And we both keep coming to the same thought:

We just don't know what kind of housing we will get in the end.

So we're just going to enjoy living life in the city in an apartment for as long as it lasts.

This is the front of the condo building from the street. It has flowers everywhere, and inside there is an atrium, an indoor swimming pool, workout center, HEATED garage...

Fun to think about living there. But until our house sells, it is just thinking, just for fun.

Another interesting view: A pile of rubbage on the street that is a routine event in SLC. They have regular neighborhood heavy trash days, when everyone just dumps all their discards into the street. As I drive around SLC, I'll come around a corner and EVERY house has a pile of junk out front.

What really surprises me is that almost every house has either a sofa or a mattress to discard. Guess they must be hard on beds and couches around here!

I stopped and picked up clay flower pots for our balcony garden from one pile. I guess that would officially make me a trash picker.

Oh well.

I was glad to have the pots for free!

Homeless folks walk along and get all kinds of treasures...it would be hard not to want to go trash picking regularly as I've seen lots of very usable stuff out there.

You could probably furnish a whole house that way if you weren't too fussy.

Want to start a whole new life, cheap and real easy like?

Just head for SLC, rent an unfurnished apartment, and start poking around town.

This just might be just the solution to America's woeful finciancial problems.

Don't worry if your retirement income has gone with the wind.

Just come to SLC instead!

Everything you need will be found somewhere on the streets!

The views are wonderful above...(my attempt at splicing two pictures together. I need to work on it a little more if I want to create seamless panoramic shots.)

I guess I am just going to have to admit that this is a pretty trashy post

I just thought that the tiger striped trash trucks are pretty interesting too.

Although I would appreciate it if they would stop being so interesting at 6 am on Saturday mornings!

Have you ever imagined what it would be like to live downtown in a major city?

Does the idea thrill you, or scare you?

Would it be an adventure that you would chose to go on if you could?

And do you think having an endless view and a garden balcony with perhaps a fountain, small table and chairs, potted trees and vegetables growing in pots could ever be as satisfying as having your own front yard and a garage that had a door right into your house?

Is knowing that you will NEVER have to shovel snow be worth giving up a garage to store your stuff?

We have lots of things to consider. Feel free to flirt with the idea along with us.

Point out the the pros and cons as you see them.

We're still very open to suggestions.

Like mother, like son

I used to garden a lot when my son and daughter were little. I had over 300 different kinds of flowers and plants in my garden back then.

The two of them seemed to enjoy the flowers and plants, but didn't really work with me much as I gardened.

Later Jeff had a Boy Scout project where he grew a vegetable patch. He did quite well at it, but it wasn't until he got his own place to live that the gardening gene seemed to really kick in.

Now I am just amazed at his garden. I had to take pictures of his autumn flowers before the frost set in over the weekend.

The dahlias above ranged from saucer to salad plate size, and you might recall that when I first arrived in SLC, I photographed a single dahlia opening over a few days time.

Now the dahlias are simply rioting!

I haven't asked, but I do hope they were covered and survived the snow storm and frost.

Of course I have to include a picture of my grandcat.
Meowsie is just amazing; I just love being a cat grammie! And the best part about it is he has never given me cold or anything like that...like some grand children I hear do.
(winking at you know who you are...)

Out in Jeff's front yard the little tree is doing its best to look properly autumnal. This same tree was the backdrop of last Christmas' snow man.

For a little tree, it is doing up the seasonal colors just fine!

A snowy autumn day/First snow

Hart's seeing his first snowfall. He decided it was a bit cold sitting there, and moved to couch moments later.

The snow fell all day, with flakes the size of nickles. The streets stay clear, but the trees and grasses were coated with white froth.

We went to church, then headed up into the mountains, hoping to see the aspen in snowfall.

My BGF Gail assures me that aspen turn golden and then drop their leaves just days later...and then the fall color is over. A chance to see snow fall upon aspen leaves is not always a seasonal given!

We stopped for brunch at Goldminer's Daughter's ski resort in Alta: it was their last brunch of the season.

From now on through ski season, people who stay get breakfast and dinner included, so no more open to the public brunches until spring time.

(The home baked bread was awesome, and I liked the seaweed salad as well. Another plate had the eggs and curried chicken, and I skipped all but a spoonful of the desserts. So tasty, but so filling!)

Down the canyon is the floor of Salt Lake City, with sunshine breaking through the clouds, highlighting blocks here and there.

Photographers were out with enormous cameras with lenses the size of telescopes. I think I want a SLR camera for long distance views too.

Back in town the snow still fell, and yet the flowers seemed unaffected by the storm.

We stopped and shopped at REI, trying to figure out what kind of gloves I should get, and what kind of winter coat. My black leather coat clearly isn't going to keep me warm all winter. I'm thinking a knee length down jacket...but want to shop around a bit more before I decide.

I did decide on one thing though: Warm gloves and plush fur lined crocs!

Oh yeah...toasty warm toes around the house, and maybe I'll even wear them to work.

Next we went for our weekly free massages, then we headed home to finish the Sunday with cozy cats, good books, snowfalling outside and church bells chiming in the distance.

A nice warm fire would be nice today too...but Tiggs is doing his part by supplying a steady background melody of purrs.

I think that is almost a good as a crackling fire, don't you?