It Don't Mean a Thing If It Ain't Got that Swing

There's a dance studio just a little south of my old studio location on North Weber, and they teach all manner of dance lessons, which sounds like a lot of fun to me. This is the back of the building. I love how they've painted not just the front façade but the whole thing with this great wraparound mural. There's no doubt what goes on in this little building! By the way, this is a cell phone picture, as was yesterday's. I normally use a real camera and I had one with me, but when I tried to turn it on I realized that there was no battery in it! D'oh!

And now, for your listening pleasure...

Running Rampant

I really have no idea what is going on in this picture. Last Thursday I had a personal errand on Weber Street, and afterward I came across a large number of young people (I assume CC students) wearing kooky costumes and running around in groups, seemingly at random. It was very odd. I managed to capture these two groups running toward each other from opposite sides of Uintah Street. It definitely looked like everyone was having a blast!

Davidson Dairy Company, Revisited

Over a decade ago I posted about the old Davidson Dairy Company building (see THIS post), located on the southwest corner of Weber and Colorado. Every now and then I get random calls or emails from people who've stumbled across my blog while searching for this or that Colorado Springs-related thing. This shouldn't surprise you since I use Blogger, which is a Google platform, so naturally my blog has great Google rankings! Anyway, usually when I'm contacted by John Q. Public about a specific post or photo, they want to either chat about Colorado Springs history, they want to buy a print, or they're asking for permission to use an image for some purpose or other. (I usually say yes to usage, for a modest fee, and my print prices are the same as I'd charge any wedding or portrait client.)

So a couple of weeks ago, I got a call from a very nice lady named Barb. She explained that her late husband's grandfather had been one of the original three partners who started Davidson Dairy over a hundred years ago, and that she's been doing some research. She came across my blog and wanted to know if she could share the post and photo with her late husband's children. But when I looked at that old blog post I could see that the photo was lacking, so I promised to try to get a better shot of the building. Hence today's post! Barb, I hope your family likes my photos of this very personal bit of our city's history!

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The intersection of Bijou and Weber streets, captured on March 23rd. Hopefully I'll have a more stimulating photo for you tomorrow -- this one's pretty dull!

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Looking westward from the intersection of Colorado and Weber, in a photo taken on December 11th of last year.

Change is difficult

Lately, a few big changes have been made downtown and in the Old North End to encourage and accommodate bicyclists. Weber Street from about the police station northward to Colorado-ish has lost a car lane and acquired a bike lane, and the same goes for Cascade Avenue northward from Bijou Street. If you're used to having two lanes on those two particular streets, you've had to adjust to only having one. I have to admit that it took me a couple of tries to get it right on Cascade especially, but I soon got used to it. As for Weber Street, I don't think that particular stretch of it really ever needed two lanes to begin with, so it's not a huge sacrifice to lose one.

A lot of my friends are supportive of the new bike lanes, but as usual when there's a big change to the status quo, others have been less positive. Here are my thoughts: many large cities learned to accommodate bicycles on their streets long ago, not just here in the U.S. but all over the world. It's high time we in Colorado Springs wrapped our brains around the idea and started sharing the road with serious cyclists like the guy in this picture, and even just schmoes like me on my old Schwinn. After all, we are the home of U.S.A. Cycling, the U.S. Olympic Training Center, and the U.S. Olympic Committee, not to mention the world renowned 7-11 Velodrome. There is a huge cycling community here. Given these facts, how is it we have never been terribly accommodating to bicyclists? That's just shameful! Progress means change and change is difficult, but we need to keep moving forward in this city or we'll continue to be treated like Denver's redheaded, backward stepsister. Those new bike lanes aren't going away, better get used to them!

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I've been very focused this week on the transition from my old studio on Weber to my new one on Bijou, so there hasn't been a lot of time to get out there and take pictures for the blog. I did have this nice shot in my archives from June 13th of last year, though, so please enjoy it while I try and get a little caught up on things. Cheers!

City of cyclists

Look at this guy. He's a serious cyclist. He's tricked out from head to toe and that bike probably cost thousands. He's committed! We have tons of cyclists like him here. Colorado Springs is a city of cyclists. The Olympic Training Center is here, and yes the US Cycling Team is out there riding on our streets (especially in my neighborhood). Yet we hardly have any bike lanes on our roads. I don't understand this! It's downright dangerous for these guys sometimes. They did recently add several blocks of dedicated bike lane to Weber Street, and people (i.e. non-cyclists, of course) are actually griping about it even though that street has plenty of room for sharing. When I'm elected Queen of the Universe, I swear there will be bike lanes all over Colorado Springs the next day. That's a promise! 😉

Like a mushroom

This shiny new apartment building on the corner of South Weber Street and Pueblo Avenue went up overnight, it seems. Like a mushroom. I first noticed the construction a few weeks ago, and when we drove past it last week, voilà! "Now Leasing", the sign reads. Kind of an interesting spot to put an apartment building. I hope it's a success. I'm glad to see that there are many projects lately to bring people and life into our city's center, like this one. So much growth has taken place on the east side, the older parts of town have languished. Finally, the city's leaders have seen the wisdom of nurturing a thriving downtown.

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One of our many picturesque Victorians in the downtown area. This one is on Weber Street, next door to my chiropractor's office. According to my research, this beauty was built in 1905, and clearly it's well loved and maintained.

Tree: 1, Car: 0

I noticed this unfortunate situation on Weber Street near my studio last Saturday (sorry for the bad picture, it was taken from a moving vehicle). It looks like the high winds we were experiencing that day caused a big fat bummer of a disaster for whoever owns this poor Chevy! Talk about bad luck! Looking on the bright side, it's free firewood, right? ;^)

Hot dog? Respite for thirsty pups!

Don't despair, thirsty Old North End dogs! This house on San Miguel Street between Nevada and Weber has some ice cold water waiting for you! I spoke to the homeowner, Vic, for a few minutes and he told me that his own dog passed away a couple of years ago, but he continues his daily summertime habit of freezing blocks of filtered water in a dog bowl and putting it outside for thirsty neighborhood pups. What a nice thing to do!

Drive Time Now

Yesterday afternoon I was driving down Weber Street when I came across these protesters in front of KRCC, the radio station of the Colorado College. When I stopped to take a picture they explained their cause to me: they are advocating on behalf of Democracy Now, a popular nationwide daily syndicated radio program. KRCC is public radio, supported by donations. It's where you get your local daily dose of NPR, All Things Considered, A Prairie Home Companion, Car Talk, and so on. Apparently the station is considering dropping Democracy Now from its programming. Currently it airs at 7:00pm. In effect, in a world with 24 hour news, airing it at 7:00pm is airing it half a day too late according to these protesters, Eric, Codie the dog, and Nazli, representing Occupy Colorado Springs. They are demanding that Democracy Now be aired at 7:00am, morning "drive time", giving it a much larger local audience. The logic follows that the program won't be cancelled if it has a chance to reach more pairs of ears. [And completely aside from all of that, Eric is someone I've known for years -- it was so funny to run into him like this, though not unusual to find him agitating!]

Amy Goodman, one of the two journalists behind Democracy Now, will be speaking at the Colorado College on Thursday, April 23rd, about the importance of social movements. I think that this little group of protesters, advocating on her behalf, proves her point quite handily! For more information on her upcoming appearance, click HERE.

Runaway truck

Yesterday I was driving north on Weber Street, and when I got to Kiowa Street the traffic light was dead, and this truck was the culprit. As you can see, the driver took the truck completely up onto the sidewalk, where it collided with the enormous pole that holds the crosswalk signal and a city street lamp, knocking it to the ground. I hope there were no pedestrians on the sidewalk when this happened! Getting hit by a truck this size, going fast enough to knock over a street lamp, would almost certainly kill you. What an idiot! I have three theories as to what caused this accident: 1) texting while driving; 2) the Colorado Springs Beer Fest was going on only a few blocks away, perhaps this driver had too many beers; 3) a combination of too many beers + texting and driving. Whatever caused it, it's ironic to me that the accident occurred literally almost on the steps of the Municipal Court Building. No doubt this yahoo will face his day in court mere yards from where he totaled his truck!

The old Piggly Wiggly on Weber Street

...Or is it? I came across this old photo captioned "Piggly Wiggly*, 717 N. Weber Street, ca 1929-35", and naturally I had the strong urge to locate the building and take a snapshot of it. Once I compared the two images, though, I saw that there are some discrepancies between the 1920s building and the current building. For one, half the building is missing today. More importantly, the facade is different. The old photo shows a stucco facade with a gentle arch, and the modern facade is brick with a second, smaller arch topping the large arch. Also, there is a chimney in the modern building that is missing in the older photo.  Hmmmm. Perhaps the building had a facelift or two at some point in its evolution. That's entirely possible. My best guess is that it started off as a brick building, then received a stucco facade with the modified arch (and looking at the black and white picture, the front looks very much like a false facade), then was restored back to the brick at some point, revealing the original small arch. I don't know where the chimney comes into the picture, though. You'd think there would have been a chimney all along. Perhaps the stucco facade was tall enough to obscure the chimney from the street. (?) Also, how did they cut off the right half of the building like that? You can see there's now a newer, generic brick building that butts up to the old one.  Ah, the mystery! I love it! I wish I could find an old timer to answer all of my questions!

On a side note, I lived one and-a-half blocks away and across the street from this building for seven years and never paid it any attention at all. It never even occurred to me that it must have been a storefront at some point. Oblivious!

*For those of you unfamiliar with Piggly Wiggly: it's a chain of grocery stores -- they are more prevalent in the midwest and the south; I've never seen one in Colorado.

June 6, 2017 edit: The Piggly Wiggly picture was mislabeled! The actual address of the building was 402-404 S. Nevada Avenue, just south of the Pioneers Museum, I believe. Unfortunately the building no longer exists, but you can see another photo of it pre-Piggly Wiggly HERE. As you can see, it matches the second photo in this post, so the mystery has been solved! The building on Weber Street was never the Piggly Wiggly, although in the 1950s it was apparently a D&P Superette Grocery. Now I can sleep at night ;^) I will see if I can get a picture of the spot where the Piggly Wiggly once stood. I believe there was a gas station there for many decades but it's recently been torn down and replaced yet again -- if I'm thinking of the right corner, anyway. More to come!

Rose of Sharon Temple

Sorry to have been away from the blog for so long, dear readers! I did not mean to be asbent, but I caught the flu bug and was sick for over a week. When I finally started to feel human again we were hit with a severe cold snap, which didn't exactly inspire this sick girl to go outside and take pictures! In the meantime, I didn't have any decent photos in my archives to share, hence the abrupt halt in blogging. Thankfully I'm almost back to my old self.  Yesterday while out running errands I took a camera along and snapped a few pictures for you here and there. The above photo is of the Rose of Sharon Temple, located on Cucharras and Weber streets. Lately I've become obsessed with the idea of buying an old church, renovating it and living in it (and running my business out of it). I've had my eye on this particular big old church -- I don't know why but I think it would make a great house! Unfortunately it's very much in use as a church and it's not on the market, and even if it was, I doubt I could afford to buy it. But one can always dream!

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This is one of the few surviving Art Déco buildings we have in Colorado Springs. I believe you can count them on one hand, there's so few of them. You can find this beauty on Weber just south of Colorado, next door to Godec's Photo Supply. Don't you love the Art Déco details?

Colorado Springs By Night

Pat and I went out after midnight yesterday to capture our city in the dark. I got a handful of great images that I'll share here over the coming week, starting with this one. This building is located on Colorado Avenue between Nevada and Weber. I've always been attracted to the purple neon "Colorado Springs" over the entry, and the symmetrical 1930s architecture. In fact, this building is the home of an architecture firm, and you can see that it's been lovingly maintained (in a past life it was an auto parts store). I'm glad I finally got a photograph of it.

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The cornerstone of the City Auditorium, on the southwest corner of Kiowa and Weber streets downtown.

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New Covenant Church, on the corner of Weber and Platte. I was stuck at the traffic light there right around 6:00pm and couldn't resist getting a snap -- it just looked so pretty in the late afternoon light. Speaking of churches, a much grander church, on the other side of the planet, is filling up with wedding guests as I type this, and the entire world is watching. The excitement is building as Kate Middleton and Prince William prepare to tie the knot! Best wishes to our British friends across the pond, and congratulations on your royal wedding!