More Arched Suspension Bridges

As I drove toward Boulder today, I noticed several more arched suspension bridges like I wrote about several posts down the page. Since I was driving, there as no way to safely use the DSLR, but it was easy enough to use my camera phone to get this snapshot, hence the poorer than usual quality. Still, it beats no picture at all. One interesting feature of this bridge is its support cables are angled, rather than being vertical.

As I am posting this from the phone, that is also why this is a very short post. You cannot write the Great American Novel on a miniature keyboard.

More from Boulder

Boulder Theater Marquee

My last blog entry dealt with outdoor performers I saw on my trip to Boulder today. This post will have some of the other sites I enjoyed. As usual, click on any photo to load a larger version.

This first entry is one of a rapidly disappearing piece of Americana . . . the theater marquee. This one in good shape, as is the theater facade itself, seen in the photo below. I didn't go inside, so I have no idea how that part has fared, but hopefully it is being maintained.


Boulder Theater, Boulder, Colorado

As you can see in the photo below, some of the trees are beginning to bloom here in Colorado. This is a photo of the Boulder County Court House. It is a very attractive building situated along the Pearl Street Mall. Of course, if one is there as a defendant, I doubt the beauty of the architecture would be foremost on one's mind at the time.


Boulder County Court House

One block north of the mall is home to the next two buildings. The first is a very intricate and ornate bell tower at a church in downtown Boulder. The bell is too low in the tower to see much of it here, but you can see clearly the big metal wheel that is used to make the bell ring out. I particularly like the designs in the stone ornamentation that is near the top of each of the four cylindrical supports for the roof.


Bell Tower at Church in Boulder

The next thing that caught my eye is directly across from the bell tower. It is the Shambhala Meditation Center, a Buddhist facility established in 1974. The brilliant gold ornamentation on top really catches your eye as it reflects the bright Colorado sunshine. If you load the larger version, you will see two modes of common Boulder transportation parked in front; a bicycle and a motor scooter. These Boulder Buddhists are ecologically aware!


Shambhala Meditation Center of Boulder

I have just barely scratched the surface of things to see in this most liberal of Colorado cities. In a formerly "red" state that is rapidly turning "blue", Boulder is one of the deepest blue spots in the country. I know I will go back to investigate all that is there, as well as take more photos to share here.

More Downtown Denver

Late last month, I posted some pictures of public art I took in Downtown Denver. Today, I decided to upload a few more I took that day. The first one above is the Denver skyline near the main library, looking across Civic Center Park. The City-County Building (City Hall) is out of view to the left, and the Capitol building is out of view to the right. This photo looks north toward the heart of the city.

The tall brown building in the background to the left that has a white sign on it is the headquarters of Qwest Communications (Click the photo for a larger view). It is at 1801 California Street, and was once called Mountain Bell Center, then after the AT&T Divestiture in 1984, was the headquarters of US West, which was acquired by Qwest. I used to work in that building from 1997-2000. The top of the smoky grey building just in front of it was once called Anaconda Tower, then it became Qwest Tower when it housed the headquarters of Qwest before it merged with US West.

The tall building on the right with the rounded top is commonly referred to as the Cash Register Building. It has no cash register company inside, but if you were standing on the opposite side, it somewhat is shaped like the top of an old fashioned cash register (that would be a manual point-of-sale terminal for you younger readers!). The white, shorter building in the middle is home of The Denver Post.

The next photo is the south side of the main library building. This is a very unusual building, as it looks like several different styles and colors all attached together. This side of the library faces the Denver Art Museum complex.



The Denver Art Museum has some very distinctive buildings. The next two photos are part of the museum's downtown campus, known as the Civic Center Cultural Complex.



This really unusually shaped building is the Frederic C. Hamilton building of the Denver Art Museum. Look closely at its base, and you will see the whisk broom and dustpan sculpture I posted in a photo in my posting of February 24.



Remember our friend, the Big Blue Bear sculpture that peers into the Colorado Convention Center? The photo below was taken near him. He would be off to the left. The Convention Center complex is very large, and much of it is new. The Denver Regional Transportation District (RTD) has light rail tracks that go beneath part of the center. I like the architecture of this building a lot. It was part of a major expansion of the Center in recent hears.

More Street Signs

Okay, still more about street signs. Are you getting bored with it? This is an example of how Houston has changed from the standard green signs to special signs for different parts of town. Each district is distinct from the others, and this example is from the Upper Kirby area, but actually on S. Shepherd.

This brings me to another thought. The block numbers on Houston's street signs are quite useful. This sign tells me the sign is in the 3500 block of S. Shepherd and the 2100 block of Colquitt. The number goes with the street name, and helps you know which direction to turn at the intersection to get to where you are going.

When I first moved to Colorado, Denver's signs were quite confusing. They do it just the opposite. The name of the cross street appears with the hundred block of the street you are currently driving on. Very odd, and after 13 years here, I still have trouble with it. It just is not very intuitive. There should be a standard, and I would vote for Houston's method to be adopted nationwide. Easy to use, and makes more sense, at least to me.

Big, Shiny Signs

Street signs come in a variety of types. I will be posting more about them in a few posts to come. In any case, this is a good photo to see a very unique type of street sign. This photo was taken going eastbound on Westheimer approaching Sage Rd. in Uptown Houston, also known as the Galleria area.

That big, chrome-like circle suspended above the intersection is actually a street sign. To the best of my knowledge, these signs are unique to the Uptown Houston district, being deployed along Westheimer and Post Oak, and maybe a couple of other thoroughfares. If you click on the photo, you will get a much larger version. The one thing these signs don't have that standard signs do, is the block number. Still, they give a very striking and futuristic look to one of the busiest areas of town.

Not far from this location, just a few blocks to the southeast, is the Williams Tower, formerly Transco Tower. It is the tallest skyscraper outside of a central business district. It is a very interesting building, made of dark, reflective glass; and shaped like the classic art-deco design. On top is a rotating beacon that can be seen for many miles at night. While it was being built in the early 1980s, I worked across the freeway, and watched as it got taller and taller.

As an aside, take a look at the traffic lights. The backplates are elliptical, and have a convex shape to them. They are mounted on highly-polished chrome posts that match the street sign. You don't see that everyday either.

More street sign postings to come!

Is it a Bump or a Hump, Chump?

Being the road geek that I am, it is high time that I start a series of entries about roads. Specifically, this series of posts will be about road signs. I have always loved travel by automobile, and even as a small child, could navigate the highways by map. I also used to pass time by drawing street maps of non-existent cities (yeah, I was a weird kid I guess). Now I enjoy a somewhat similar passtime in the form of the computer city simulation, SimCity 4.

Anyway, here is the first picture we will talk about:



Now this looks like a typical suburban neighborhood, and it is definitely that. This is a street in my parents' subdivision. A quick glance will tell you that this is not a new street, as the sidewalk at the corner ends at the curb, rather than a ramp compliant with the Americans With Disabilities Act, or ADA. Also, the mature trees are an indicator that this neighborhood has been around for a few years. In fact, this subdivision was built in the mid-1970s.

Along this street, the city has installed a type of what traffic engineers call a traffic calming device. The one used here is usually known in the United States as a Speed Bump. Traffic calming is a way to divert or slow traffic in an area. Other traffic calming devices include the Traffic Circle (known in some places as a Roundabout), rumble strips, and curb extensions. Speed bumps are effective, but have a number of drawbacks, especially in that they can slow emergency response vehicles. Before one gets to a speed bump, there is typically a sign to warn about it, giving the driver the opportunity to slow down before hitting the bump.

Why is the sign above a bit of an anomaly? Let's take a closer look:

Notice, the sign says nothing about a "Speed Bump", but rather warns of "Road Humps". Now my readers from places like the United Kingdom and others may think, "So what"? That is the term that is used in many parts of the world. However, here in the United States, it usually isn't used.

It has always been a source of humor to me, as I think of "hump" as what a dog will do to your leg! I don't associate it with a road, so it just comes off as an odd way of wording it. Still, if one doesn't have the mental snap to figure it out, it will probably only take them one time hitting the "Road Hump" at full speed to get the idea!