OK, indulge me on this one!

Al Stewart's 1976 Year of The Cat, is one of the best albums of the 1970s. It's not always the case that very popular albums are good, and it's even less often that very good albums are popular, but in this case, Year of the Cat was definitely both. Stewart seems to have always thought of himself as more of a "folkie" than a rock star, so pairing him with producer Alan Parsons was something of a stretch, but in retrospect, it seems impossible to imagine anything else.

There's not really a weak song on the album, and "Year of the Cat", classic though it is, isn't even the best track, an honor won by the haunting "Flying Sorcery". I used to play "If it Doesn't Come Naturally, Leave It", as an audio argument against a particularly ill-starred project which was stomping us into the ground, and as I get older "On the Border" with its

In the village where I grew up, nothing seems the same, though you never see the change from day to day..

lyric seems more and more apt.

So anyway, I was very happy to see that Stewart was coming to Newberry last week. The Opera House is very easy to find from I-26, and seems to be run entirely by pleasant, retired women. It's quite a small venue, and Stewart brought only one other person on stage with him, guitar player (and Phd..) Dave Nachmanoff. Now, why Al Stewart, with one of the best known albums of the rock era is playing small town South Carolina with a one man band, I can't say. I'd like to think that it's because he's really more into the "folk" thing than the over-the-top "rock tour" thing, but you sometimes hear about how famous people were locked into bad record contracts, had expensive divorces or crooked managers, so who knows. The key thing is that he was in good voice and seemed happy to be in Newberry. The set list was pretty eclectic, and while he did hit a number of "Year of the Cat" tracks, he opted out of most of his other radio hits, so I heard a good number of songs that were new to me.

Afterwards both Stewart and Nachmanoff sat in the lobby chatting and signing autographs. It was quite an enjoyable and low key evening, and I could still hear the next day, and my sinuses weren't clogged up with smoke..

Video

Video

Video

The soggy aftermath at Forest Lake Shopping Center on the 26th:

Well, I was not actually going to make another post until the New Year, but I don't think I can let the Great Christmas Flood of 2009 pass without notice. As we headed out over the river and through the woods, we found out that in fact the river was over the woods this year.

As we tried to get to Trenholm Road, we found that creek (name unknown) was flooding Trenholm access from both Academy Way (first picture) and Sylvan Drive and that Eightmile Branch was flooding Gamewell Drive. Fortunately the WIllingham Drive bridge was still above water. At Forest Lake Shopping Center (Trenholm Road at Forest Drive) the Garden Center and Web Rawls Gallery in the old bank were flooded as was the whole of Forest Lake Park

In fact, water was coming over the Forest Lake Park embankment into Gills Creek at such great speed and volume that it made a line of waterfalls. As we watched, we saw several bits of flotsam & jetsam such as trash cans go over the falls. The park whirly-gig was entirely under water. We drove over to Zoe's parking lot, and I got some Quicktime video of the cataracts. There's not a lot of pictures because a) it was still raining cats and dogs & b) we were on our way out of town. By the time we got back mid-morning the 26th all the flood waters were gone though the Web Rawls and Garden Center folks were still working at recovery.

I think that makes two "100 year" floods here in the last 15 years..

UPDATE 28 December 2009: D'Oh! Video links were wrong, fixed now.

UPDATE 29 July 2010: Added the picture from 26 December.

Well, I suppose it's a bit of a cheat to do a closing for an event that will repeat this weekend, but hey, it's a closing for the 11 December viewing date only.

If you can make it to the coast this weekend (17th, 18th or 19th) the show is well worth your time. The gardens are lit as you see, and there are singers, bagpipers, food and drink.

I took my tripod with me this year, set the aperture to f2.0, the ISO to 80 and let the camera set whatever exposure it liked. Often it worked quite well, other times not so much (these are some of the ones I think did OK). The long exposures mean you can see blurs for people walking by in some pictures. It was supposed to be much warmer on the 12th than the 11th, but it was also supposed to rain, so I went out on the colder night. It wasn't too bad except when I was trying to feel the little buttons on the camera and could not find them at all in some cases!

It's all pictures after the jump.

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Well, The South Carolina State Fair was fun as usual. My only regret is that I did not get to ride the bumper-cars this year since I would have been the only one on the floor at the time I went by, and what's the fun of that? Oh, and I didn't manage to score a free yardstick anywhere this year.

Other than that, you've got your french fries, Italian sausage, fried mushrooms, cinimon rolls, performing sealions, elephants, rides, art and lots and lots of neon. What's not to like?

You can pretty much stop here if you don't like lots of photos, that's about all that's after the jump. I'm a little disappointed in how my Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3 handled the neon. Last year my deceased Kodak DX3600 tried its little heart out to make sense of the low light conditions it was never built for, and I think actually got better saturation on the neon than the Lumix, even though the Lumix is a much better camera. On the other hand, I just locked the Lumix F-stop at 2.2 and let it do whatever it wanted with the shutter, there's probably a better neon setting somewhere. (The thing has the most driest, most snoozeworthy manual of nearly anything I've seen). Interestingly, whereas usually the JPGs I get by manually processing the camera raw files are more pleasing than the ones the camera creates, the opposite was true here. Anyway, even if the average quality wasn't as pleasing, I still think I got some very nice shots. So if you like that kind of thing, and have a while to download, hit the "MORE" link.

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OK, today is an anniversary of sorts. Three years ago today was the final day of operation for the Myrtle Beach Pavilion. As it happens, I was there, and made a video essay to share with friends and family. The fact of doing that, and not really having any good forum for something like that was one of the things that started percolating around in my brain and eventually led to establishing Columbia Closings.

Below is the essay pretty much unchanged from how I wrote it then, followed by a lot of still pictures (too many, I'm sure) that I took on that day and earlier in the year:

We didn't actually go to the Pavilion that often as kids, so the closing
shouldn't be that big a deal, but we always knew that there was the
possibility that we might go, and that possibility loomed large in our minds.

In the end, Burroughs & Chapin is a business, and they made a business decision to shut the Pavilion down. That said, they actually did it in a classy way. For the Last Ride celebration on Saturday September 30 2006, they presold tickets, each of which came with park access from 3PM to 8PM, free parking, and unlimited free pizza, burgers, corndogs, funnel cake and ice cream.

As I happened to be at the beach at the time, I reserved a ticket and took a CVS disposable video camera (as well as my regular film camera, and a disposable film camera) to record some last memories.

This page is devoted to the short videos I shot that day. I have converted the DVD which CVS gives you into an AVI file for each scene. While these files are not huge (except for the all-in-one file), you may not be able to stream them unless you have a fast connection. If clicking your left button on a picture does not start your movie player, or if the clip plays jerkily, I recommend clicking your right button over each picture and selecting "save target as" or the equivalent to download the clips. They should be playable with Windows Media Player on Windows, or "mplayer" on Linux.

We start off on the roof of the Pavilion parking garage, looking out at the roller coaster and other rides:

Moving to the South side of the garage roof, we look down at the lines forming to get into the Pavilion:

Coming off the roof, I took a brief shot of foot traffic on Ocean Blvd, noting the fact that the Pavilion Arcade is already closed:

Collecting my ticket and stepping inside the park, we see some kiddie rides:

More kiddie rides:

The very first thing I ever remember from the Pavilion is this 1905 German Band organ. The second thing I remember is the blow dryer in the restroom. I had never seen such a thing! I only remember Daddy being there on that trip, probably because he would have been the one taking me to the bathroom (which is alongside the organ), but doubtless Momma & Sus were around.

I was disappointed that Sugarbug could not see the organ on her trip to the park, but it was closed for repair at the time. When you consider that it is 102 years old, I suppose that's not surprising. I'm not sure it comes across in these videos, but the organ is loud!

The placards describing the organ claim some of the original cardboard punched music sheets are still used. Somehow I doubt that "Ob La Di Ob La Da" was that popular in 1905!

The only actual ride I remember from that (presumed) first trip to the Pavilion is this boat ride, which I thought was possibly the neatest thing in the world:

No trip to any amusement park would be complete without the Bumper Cars:

My attempt to film while driving a Bumper Car ended quickly when the
attendant stopped the ride. I thought I had broken a rule, but he was
after a kid who was old enough to ride, but not drive:

The swings is a nice ride because it goes around, but not enough to make middle aged stomachs queasy:

I hopped aboard a wooden pig for a ride on the carrousel. While not as old as the band organ, it is pretty old. I noticed that the carrousel music was coming from a sound system and not the antique music box. Perhaps they didn't feel it was worth repairing for the time left. I have no idea what will happen to the carrousel or band organ. It would be a shame if they were left to rot:

The Log Flume is the park's intermediate water ride. More wet than the
"boats", less soaking than the "river ride":

There was a pretty good beach band playing at the amphitheatre. The name escapes me, but they had just finished a very good version of "Carolina Girls" when I started filming. This song was well done, but not one I would call a classic:

I wrestled with whether to ride the big coaster or not. On the one hand, I was coming down with a cold and had something of a headache, on the other hand, I'd never have the chance again. Riding the intermediate coaster "The Mad mouse" decided me I wasn't ready for the big one, but here are some people who were:

Here's another shot of the Carrousel, which was strikingly pretty with
the setting sun glinting off the mirror panels. I like this one a lot; there's so much going on in this shot and some appropriately elegiac music for the last sunset on the working park:

Finally, we finish with the band organ again to take us out:

This is the whole video in one 306 megabyte, 20 minute lump:

After running out of video, I stayed until the end of the day, and rode
the final run of the Bumper Cars. It was somewhat of a melancholy experience, but I'm glad I did it.

Still pix after the jump..

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I remember three events coming to The Coliseum with some regularity when I was growing up. They were the The World Famous Royal Lipizzaner Stallions, Ringling Brothers, Barnum & Bailey Circus and Holiday On Ice.

I think I saw the Stallions, though I can remember nothing about it, and I saw the circus at least twice. I'm pretty sure I saw Holiday On Ice only once, and am also pretty sure (through the 'Green Giant' connection) that this was the year I saw it.

Ice skating was (and is!) pretty exotic in Columbia. I think Rockbridge club has had the only rink in town for ages, and it's private (though I did get to go there once with scouts -- unfortunately I hadn't mastered even roller skating at that point, and ice skating was a total debacle). Also, there weren't sports channels where you could see it every day as there are now. Pretty much, you saw it if you watched the Olympics, and that was about it -- Unless you saw Holiday On Ice.

I can actually only remember one thing about the show though. One segment was called "The Age of Asparagus" which 12-year-old-I thought was just astoundingly clever, and featured skating vegetables. That's the part where "The Jolly Green Giant" made his appearance.

It appears from Wikipedia and Holiday On Ice's own web site that they have exited the North American market, and now tour in Europe, Asia & Latin America -- I guess for us, The Age of Asparagus has passed.

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I suppose it's a silly thing to get pre-nostalgic about, but to me as a child, a big part of the adventure of going to the State Fair was the getting there. The first years I can remember, my father decided that he didn't want to face the hassle of fair traffic and parking fees, so we would catch the SCE&G Fairgrounds bus at, I believe, the corner of Main & Blossom. These were the only times we rode the bus as kids, and it was very exciting!

Later, I think my mother was less than thrilled at riding the bus and we started to drive, but it was still an adventure -- sort of an imperfectly organized chaos where you followed a bunch of cars, hoped you were in the right lane, and then tried to figure out which guy waving a flashlight you were supposed to follow as they invented a parking lot on the fly. Of course if it were dry, the dust would be flying everywhere, and if it had been wet, it was a long slog through the mud, but it never really occurred to me that the Fair should have anything other than a dirt/grass lot.

As you can tell from the pictures though, that's about to end. It appears that next year, we will have a "real" parking lot at the Fairgrounds. Oh well, as long as they still have the rocket and the handwriting analysis computer, my childhood won't be totally gone!

I first became aware of Robert Ariail when I was at USC, and he was a student cartoonist on the Gamecock student newspaper. He did a riff on the old National Enquirer cover "Buy this magazine or we'll shoot this dog". I think his was something like "Read the Gamecock or we'll pluck this chicken".

As far as I know, I never met him, but when he was hired by The State, it was a nice "fellow student makes good" moment. I confess that I saw his work only sporadically after I left town for Fayetteville in 1985 -- I'd read the paper on weekends when I was visiting home, but I never subscribed on my own when I came back.

It appears he was caught in the latest round of RIFs at The State and moved on when they made him what seems to me a rather insulting (given his national stature) offer of part-time work. It all seems penny-wise and pound-foolish, but that's the newspaper biz today.

It appears that he has set up shop online, and I'm sure he'll continue to find work.