One of my favorite photo apps is Hipstamatic. It is a photography app with a huge amount of filters, fashioned as different “lenses” and “film.” I love the all the technology that goes into dumbing down the excellent iphone camera into photos that look like cheap film cameras from my childhood. I love that look. I don’t think that anybody else does either. My Hipstamatic tagged photos score the lowest likes of any of my Instagram photos. That interests me but doesn’t bother me.
So today at lunch I went for a walk and came across a few sites.
Pretty close to the office is the once grand “Plaza of the Americas.” It used to be nicer with fountains and a bust of Simon Bolivar donated by Citgo before they moved their headquarters to Houston. Now the bust is at the Gilcrease Museum and the plaza is a favored place for housing challenged people to hang out.
I walked a little further to Civic Center Plaza. Burning hot in the summer, freezing cold in the winter it is pretty useless except don’t tell the midcentury modern fans of architecture. They swoon all over the place. I like this sculpture though. As you can see it used to be part of a fountain. The fountains leaked and were too expensive to repair. So no more fountain.
I turned around and a reflecting pool that doesn’t reflect much any more.
I don’t mean to diss Tulsa. I love Tulsa but I am fascinated how fast new ideas and memorials fade and are replaced by new ones but the ghosts of the past never quite seem to go away. It seems like we get amnesia about every five to ten years and we want something new.
On the lighter side, near the fountains was a food truck. I love how people are ambivalent to some lines. You can see that people are wondering where else they can eat besides the food truck. I also like seeing how people regard their personal space. I confess I do little experiments in elevators such as if there three of us in an elevator and somebody gets off, the other two respace themselves. I often don’t do that and I can tell that increases the tension of the other person. I love little things like that about people. People watching is my favorite sport.
Have a great week folks!
One of the problems with civic architecture is that someone has to maintain it. When problems arise and maintenance is due, cash poor city governments often opt to simply abandon the monument. I don’t know that I would ever favor a water feature in a public facility. Sooner or later it will experience the same fate that you have shared here.
Glad to see you’re back from vacation.
Those pictures look a whole lot better than the pictures I took years ago, but probably that has as much to do with the photographer as with the app. You are more than a people-watcher…. maybe a people researcher? Forgot to say thanks for hosting SWF in my comment above.
Really is too bad about the fountain but in today’s world it’s difficult to hold anybody’s attention more than a few minutes.
When I was in college, as an adult, I used to change my seat every class which confused students. We are such creatures of habit. And those habits are fun to watch.