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Fog and Nostalgia
Feb. 4th, 2006 07:11 amThe rain is back, right on schedule, and it brought some fog with it. It smells a bit like mushrooms and lettuce, with hints of fresh cement and the cold that comes from a walk-in freezer on a hot summer day. Unusual smells for rain and fog. Shortly before it began, I heard a motorcycle start up a block or so away. It occurred to me that motorcycles are a bit like skunks in that, just as a skunk smells oddly pleasant from a distance, but is stinky up close, a motorcycle sounds best from a distance and annoying when too near. I wonder if the addition of skunk smell would make the air tonight more interesting, or if that would be a little too much olfactory stimulation? I doubt if any skunks would be out in this rain, so I probably won't find out.
A while ago the Internets presented me with another old photograph I found interesting. It dates from the 1920's, and shows a Hollywood Mediterranean style commercial building with a movie theatre called La Paloma in it. It was (and still exists, as I discovered) in Encinitas, a small town near San Diego, since engulfed by that metropolis. In the photograph, the building has that odd look of something that was mistakenly built in the wrong location. The city street which fronts it gives way just beyond to a country road lined with exotic eucalyptus trees.
Thus the picture provides several things I find engaging-- an old building (when it was new), a street scene, a piece of vanished Southern California landscape, an incongruity between urban and rural elements, some of my favorite trees, and even a row of parked 1920's vintage cars. In addition, there is at the far left side of the picture a fragment of a filling station, in the form of one of those old glass-topped gas pumps I remember occasionally seeing in the back-country when I was very small. (I wrote about them once, but can't find the entry now.) Though this building still exists, I don't recall ever having seen it. Now that I know it's there, I'll probably have an urge (unlikely to be fulfilled) to go to San Diego and look at it, though I'm sure its surroundings are entirely different today. I enjoy looking at the picture, though. I also enjoy the opposite view, along the street toward downtown Encinitas, which is featured on the front page of the theatre's web site.
I see by the growing light that the rain has diminished, and the fog has grown thicker. I think I'll go out and see what it smells like now, before I go to sleep.
A while ago the Internets presented me with another old photograph I found interesting. It dates from the 1920's, and shows a Hollywood Mediterranean style commercial building with a movie theatre called La Paloma in it. It was (and still exists, as I discovered) in Encinitas, a small town near San Diego, since engulfed by that metropolis. In the photograph, the building has that odd look of something that was mistakenly built in the wrong location. The city street which fronts it gives way just beyond to a country road lined with exotic eucalyptus trees.
Thus the picture provides several things I find engaging-- an old building (when it was new), a street scene, a piece of vanished Southern California landscape, an incongruity between urban and rural elements, some of my favorite trees, and even a row of parked 1920's vintage cars. In addition, there is at the far left side of the picture a fragment of a filling station, in the form of one of those old glass-topped gas pumps I remember occasionally seeing in the back-country when I was very small. (I wrote about them once, but can't find the entry now.) Though this building still exists, I don't recall ever having seen it. Now that I know it's there, I'll probably have an urge (unlikely to be fulfilled) to go to San Diego and look at it, though I'm sure its surroundings are entirely different today. I enjoy looking at the picture, though. I also enjoy the opposite view, along the street toward downtown Encinitas, which is featured on the front page of the theatre's web site.
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La Paloma The La Paloma Theatre opened in 1928, in Encinitas, California, a small town since engulfed by metropolitan San Diego. |
I see by the growing light that the rain has diminished, and the fog has grown thicker. I think I'll go out and see what it smells like now, before I go to sleep.
