It's frah-JEE-lay!

Have you ever seen A Christmas Story? It's only the best Christmas movie ever made! For the uninitiated, it chronicles one Christmas of a boy named Ralphie in 1940-ish Indiana. It's very nostalgic and also very, very funny. If you grew up there, you know this film totally nails winter in the American midwest. As for me, I was born in Wisconsin, so believe me I get it! Anyway, in the film there's a hilarious vignette in which Ralphie's father has won a rather unsightly lamp in the shape of a woman's leg clad in a fishnet stocking. Naturally the mom is horrified while Ralphie and his little brother are titillated. Worse yet, Dad proudly positions the lamp in the front window of their home, in full view of the street. Ultimately Mom wins the battle by "accidentally" breaking the lamp. So funny! This house on Nevada Avenue displays a replica of the infamous "leg lamp" every Christmas, and I managed to get a shot of it this year. 

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Another location scouting grab shot. This was taken from an alley between Nevada and Tejon, looking north toward Kiowa Street.

Who You Gonna Call?

I think you know the answer to that question! This Ghostbusters themed van can usually be found parked outside the Auto Zone on Nevada and Fillmore. Love it.

And now, for your listening pleasure...

Just kidding. I won't curse you with that ear worm. 😉

Trivelli's Goodness

Grabbed a couple of sandwiches at Trivelli's for dinner on Monday: Philly cheesesteak for Pat, vegetarian for me. Yum! I snapped this photo while I waited for my order. Trivelli's is an Old North End/Roswell institution. It's been around since the mid-1970s. This is old school Colorado Springs, friends. It isn't a sit down restaurant; you order at the counter and take your food with you. Trivelli's moved around a bit over the last decade, trying out the sit down business model -- first a couple of doors north, then a few more blocks north, and then all the way east, just outside Peterson Air Force Base. A couple of years ago it returned to the little hole in the wall spot where it started, on North Nevada next door to Murphy's Tavern, and that's definitely all right with me!

Biking Across America for Multiple Sclerosis

I was driving north on Nevada Avenue yesterday when I saw this cyclist with an interesting mission, so I sped up and pulled my car over several blocks up, then got ready to fire off a few frames when he caught up and passed me. I think he must be part of THIS organization, and what a worthy cause! If you look at their routes, there's one that goes right smack through Colorado Springs. There is a page on their site where you can make a donation.

Ivywild Pharmacy

Ivywild Pharmacy has been around forever -- for as long as I can remember and then some. Is it one of a dying breed? Nah, locally owned pharmacies will never go the way of the dodo thank goodness, but my fear is that this small business may soon be forced to relocate and that cool old midcentury building with its wonderful signage that I have always loved (that font!) will be demolished. This section of South Nevada is undergoing some major gentrification, and a lot of long standing buildings there have, for better or worse, been torn down and replaced in the last two or three years. I hope that Ivywild Pharmacy gets to stay put, because even though I'm sure it'd thrive just as well in a different location, the corner of Nevada and Ramona wouldn't be the same without it.

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Last of the cool murals behind Core Power Yoga on Nevada Avenue. I like this one best, not because of the subject matter but because of the colors. By the way, this place used to be a wonderful, wonderful diner named Bell's. It was there for decades. It was a true mid-century diner, old school, serving burgers and fries and shakes and all manner of wonderfully delicious and fattening food. I lived in this neighborhood for years and I especially loved going to Bell's for breakfast. It was an absolute travesty when they closed their doors. I think it was sometime in the early 2000s when that happened. I was heartbroken! I believe it became a physical therapy place for a while, then eventually it turned into a yoga studio. Ugh! Not that I don't think yoga is awesome, but it just seems wrong that the best ever diner in the world turned into this. 😢

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As far as I've ever noticed, there are only three Italianate homes still standing in Colorado Springs. This one, at 1232 North Nevada, has obviously been subdivided into apartments and looks a little worse for wear, but even so, its lovely architecture stands out. According to my research this home was built in 1890, which was as the Italianate had begun to wane in popularity. I wish someone would paint this old beauty!

Arrested Development

The creation of this mural on Nevada Avenue must have been interrupted by the Covid-19 shutdown because it's been like this for weeks, and it was at the most awkward stage in the process! Ironically, I think the artist is the same guy who painted a mural in progress that I captured at a similarly awkward yet somehow opposite moment back in December of 2009.

Peak-A- Boo

Ah yes, it's hard to avoid. The mountain makes itself known practically anywhere in the city. This photo was taken on Nevada Avenue between Pikes Peak Avenue and Colorado.

March 2020 Theme Day: Municipal Building

The first of every month is Theme Day for City Daily Photo bloggers everywhere, and March's theme is municipal building. I went around downtown yesterday and took photos of several of our municipal buildings, and in the end decided that City Hall was the best candidate for today's post. It was built in 1904 in the Classical Revival style and is on the National Register of Historic Places. Oh and there's a scaled down replica of the Statue of Liberty on the lawn, that's my favorite part!

To see more municipal buildings in cities all over the world, check out the CDP Theme Day portal HERE. Enjoy!

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Taken this afternoon on Nevada Avenue, looking northward toward Pikes Peak Avenue.

Running Man

I spotted this red clad runner today on Nevada Avenue north of Palmer High School. I thought he stood out nicely.

Diablo

It's been a while since I've featured the general on this blog -- General Palmer that is, our city's founder. This statue of him astride his horse Diablo sits right smack in the middle of the intersection of Nevada and Platte Avenues. Some people have an issue with that, but really, how hard is it to drive around a statue? It's been there since September of 1929. You'd think that people would have figured out how to navigate around it by now.

Ironically, it was a riding accident that killed the man. I don't know if Diablo was his choice of steed that day, but I've heard that Palmer had been trying to do some kind of stunt at a full gallop and fell off his horse. He was paralyzed, and though he lived on for three more years, I'm sure his overall health was quite negatively affected by the accident. He died in 1909. Now he's immortalized in this statue, right in front of the high school that's named after him.

Happy Independence Day!

Here's our city's small scale version of the Statue of Liberty around twilight yesterday evening, with the Stars and Stripes in the background. The other banner, in case you don't recognize it, is the Colorado Springs city flag.

Have a safe and fun Fourth! Don't forget the sunblock!

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I took this photo over a year ago, on April 5th of 2017, then forgot all about it. I thought it deserved to see the light of day. I like random street scenes like this. I just happened to have a good camera sitting on the car seat next to me as I waited for the traffic signal to change, and these people walked into view and for a moment were framed just so between the cars.

An artifact

In the spot where the King's Chef's second location is now, at the corner of Bijou and Nevada, there used to be a business called Norton Office Supplies. It was there well into the 1990s or even the early '00s -- I can't remember exactly when it closed. When I worked at the camera store downtown, I used to volunteer to be the one who walked over to Norton's whenever office supplies were needed. In turn, the Norton folks shopped at our store too, whenever they needed film or photofinishing. The Norton family were well known and loved, old school Colorado Springs. I remember that they had an adult daughter with Down's syndrome. I'd estimate that she was in her forties. She'd occasionally come to the camera store, which never failed to brighten our day. Eventually, after many, many years in business, the Nortons retired and closed up shop. I'm sure the prevalence of big box office supply stores didn't help.

Downtown is very different now from the way it was then. I do miss Norton Office Supply and the other small businesses that have closed down in the last 15 or 20 odd years. I was pleased to notice last weekend that in the alley behind their old building, an artifact of their tenure lives on.

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A fire escape crawls down the back side of one of our beautiful old downtown buildings. This one is on Kiowa Street, between Tejon Street and Nevada Avenue.

The 2018 Women's March on Colorado Springs

One year to the day from last year's inaugural march, multitudes of Colorado Springsians once again gathered downtown to make their voices heard loud and clear. I participated with Pat and our friend Rachael and it was freezing -- 24° F with wind gusts up to 40 MPH. I mean cold, cold, cold! Even so (and with a football final playoff game happening right smack in the middle of it), I estimate the turnout was a good two to three thousand hardy and determined people. A number of causes were represented, among them DACA, #MeToo, universal healthcare, climate change and the environment in general, equal rights, racism, science, the Russian investigation, and the personality and tweeting habits of the current occupant of the Oval Office. I took lots of pictures, but not as many as last year because the weather was far more inhospitable this time around, so we left earlier in the festivities before we could succumb to frostbite!

Weather aside, it was just as energizing as ever to be part of an enormous, motivated and purposeful group of people. I was pleasantly surprised by the huge turnout. We marched in a chanting throng from All Souls Unitarian Church to City Hall, a distance of eight blocks. As happened last year, the police resorted to closing down traffic lanes for us, as there were far too many people for the sidewalk. There was about half an hour of extremely energetic chanting and demonstrating at City Hall, then the crowd began to head back to the church. We were shocked to find that as we were walking back to where we started, there were still huge numbers of people making their way in the opposite direction!

Here's a little slide show I made with some of the moments I was able to capture. (It uses the same music as last year's slide show, sorry about that but my free time last night was limited!) It bears mentioning that if you happen to fall into the opposite camp on the aforementioned issues, this slide show will likely do nothing but irritate you, so you should probably skip it and come back to the blog tomorrow, when I will return to being pleasantly apolitical. 😉  Cheers!

Sheldon's Luncheonette

My favorite little diner, the Detz Café, closed down on October 31st. It had been operation for 26 years. I heard that the owners simply wanted to retire. Before it was the Detz, it was the Quality Café and I have great memories of going there in the wee hours and having coffee and late night breakfast with my crazy friends.

The Detz was great. It had a Formica lunch counter and wood paneling on all the walls. All the senior citizens would go there after church on Sundays -- when Pat and I went, we were almost always the youngest people there. The food was wonderful and I loved the servers. Darn it! Where will we go now? Sheldon's Luncheonette, that's where!

Sheldon's is a Colorado Springs institution, having been around for nearly 50 years. It's located on North Nevada, over by the dog track (there's also a second location on 8th Street). I've lived here for decades and I'm ashamed to say I've never eaten at Sheldon's! My mom and I decided to try it out for lunch yesterday and it was delightful. We sat at the counter and I noticed that the server knew every patron's name. That's a good sign. My friend Kirk happened to be there (I always seem to run into Kirk at restaurants!) and he told me that Sheldon's has the best open faced turkey sandwich in the universe. I'm a vegetarian so I opted for grilled cheese, but I did get a peek at someone else's order of the open faced turkey sandwich and it looked delicious!

Pat actually went to high school with the son of the people who started Sheldon's Luncheonette. They had an interesting back story involving a sailboat and New Zealand. I don't know all the details so you'll have to use your imagination. All I know is that it was dumb of me not to go to there before now. And I can't wait to have Sunday morning breakfast at Sheldon's!