Highlights of a Parade

The Ladder Company from Oak Lawn

The perfect place for that Cigar

Bag Pipes from two of Dallas' Best

The St. Patrick's Parade kicked off down it's usual Greenville Avenue today with the distinction of  a new name and a new logo. The parade is now-The Dallas St.Patrick's Parade. Outside of that the crowds were wearing the green and lined up along the barricades between Blackwell (just North of Northwest Highway and SMU Blvd.( the old Yale Street) just North of Mockingbird Lane.
It was a fun time and I boarded the DART rail with a burning suntan! It was 82 degrees and a little wind. What wasn't sunburn was wind burn.

All this week I will be posting images from the parade and they get more fun as the week expands.

 

Make Ready for the Parade

Barricades for Greenville Avenue

It's gonna be a good parade this year!

The Touchstone for March 17th. This one is nearly as old as I am!

The flatbed trailers have started to be stationed so that the police line barricades can go up fast and come down fast for Saturday's parade. The weather is gonna be great, but for a photographer, maybe a bit on the warm side. The temp range started out at near 80 degrees but as the models are refined for Saturday, the hi for Saturday is not set for 83*. The kicker is a stiff wind. That means a baseball hat rather than the wide brim fedora (which I prefer). But the aerodynamics in a stiff wind gets that hat airborne quickly. Rather than chase it or loose it, it's just better to reach in the bag and pull out the baseball had. It's gonna be a water jug day, too.

It took a bit to find the lucky charm, but it has been around for a long time so it's retired and awakened every year like a ritual.

 

Dallas AFI International Film Festival

Buena Vista Studios Steak-bed film truck

Some of the film companies trailers parked in Deep Ellum.
Michael, you have come a long ways from the old painted  bus: California or Bust.

Star Trailers



The Dallas AFI Film Festival is scheduled to begin April 4 and run through the 14th. It's always fun to have the excitement of seeing film crews in town filming and all the theatre venues filled with patrons screening many,many films in those 10 days.

 

So be on the look-out for the film crews filming on the streets and off and be sure to get your tickets early for the films that you want to review. And the parties will be mostly closed but you can still see some of the starts in town if your lucky.

Have fun and enjoy the shows.

 





Hot Rolled Coil Steel in Texas

A train load of steel coils. That's a lot of slitting and leveling and stamping.

The destination of this load is uncertain, although there are large truck plants and other industry that uses this material in the area. It's a bit unusual for me in as much as this is a structural area, not a manufacturing and stamping operation area. Still, it's something that thrills me.

The tags on the coils show that it is .241-.256 gauge hot rolled which would make it fit the quarter inch gauge range  and that is great for leveling into plate or fabrication for containers and dumpster bins.

Each coil is approximately 48,000 lbs. loaded three to a flat bed rail car. There is  as many flatbeds behind this photographer than there is in front.Just think, Andrew Carnegie made this all possible.

Selling these make me so happy. This is prime material. The secondary market is just as good.

A Little Isle Across the Pond

 

The Dallas St.Patrick's Day Parade 2011


This parade is every bit as large as the Chicago,New York or Boston Parade. Who would have thunk !!
This year, the parade will officially be know as the Dallas St. Patrick's Parade but it all started where it continues today--on Greenville Avenue in the M Streets and Lower Greenville Section.

 

This year's parade is set to step off on Saturday, March 16,2013. It looks to be a good day weather wise, though weather can change. Since the parade has taken on the Dallas name....... and a new logo make-over ---there is a big push to take the focus toward a "family style" parade now.

 

That means the drinking and a bit of rowdiness is being tamed down or attempted to be tamed down. It often seems people try to tamper with things that are successful and  the power-mongers-to-be  suddenly want to try to standout with their attitude  --hey, look at me--and suck attention from the fun and the things that made the parade as big and as large and as successful as it has been for more than 30 years.

 

Yes, everyone understands the "family style" atmosphere, but in past years, that didn't stop the parents from bringing their kids to the parade, either. Lower Greenville is (besides being a residential area)  restaurants and bars and clubs.  It's a typical political issue  with the homeowners. They don't want the traffic, the parking issue, the noise, the trash, or an occasional urination on the back side of a building.  The Park Cities has that too.

 

It never fit my fancy for those that tried to hop on the band waggon when  everything was fine, but couldn't be found when the road got a bit rough. The fake smiles, the fake attitudes, the back stabbing, never makes a person, short-term or long-term, win anything.

 

 It would not like make me happy to see the parade move to another part of town or to see over thirty years of work go down the tubes because of a few belly achers either. That almost happened last year because the home owner associations pressure on city hall about the parking issue.

 

Across the pond, on that little isle they call Ireland, this kind of bickering would not be an issue. It would have been settled long before it got started and the party just keeps the tradition going and going and going.





Meet an Old Friend at the Drug Store!

When I was growing up there was not a Walgreen's in our town. There was a Rexall Drug Store. When we went for serious shopping, we went to a bigger town. They had a Walgreen's Drug Store and it had a lunch counter. The fountain drinks were tasty and the food was a treat even though you might have had some of it at home,too. But back at home, I still remember going to the grocery store to get a six-pack of coke. The six-pack was just that......but, it was six-six ounce green bottles.Here was the best part. They cost five-cents per bottle with a two-cent bottle deposit because the bottles were glass. You could put them in the freezer and when the caps were removed, you only got some brown cola foam because the neck of the bottle was frozen solid. It would take several minutes before the frozen plug thawed enough that you could drink the coke and it was cold and a fun treat all at the same time.

Today, I went to the new Walgreen's near my house. I like having a Walgreen's that close. I like to buy the Russell Stover maple eggs at Easter, Halloween, Christmas and St. Valentine's Day. The new Walgreen's does not have a lunch counter, though. But, I wish that it did. There isn't many Rexall Stores like I remembered around anymore. So, over the years, things have changed from a business stand point. As I left the Walgreen's on my way to the grocery store, as I came around the side of Walgreen's to the curb-cut for the street, there sat my old friend. It just struck me---I was hungry again for a toasted tuna sandwich with lettuce and pickle and a big paper cone in a stainless steel cup holder filled with crushed ice and Coke! Oh, somethings change but I'm sure glad my old friend Coke has stayed the same--pretty much!

Parking Lot Carnival Is Back In Spite of LBJ's Construction

Looks beautiful but there was a 40 MPH wind blowing!

The Tea Cup Ride still shows up at Carnivals

Part of the main midway

A regional carnival and amusement company is back at a redefined Mall parking lot in spite of the LBJ Construction between Preston Road and North Dallas Tollway segment. The project stretches 11 plus miles from the Dallas High Five to the North South connection to I-35E.

The spot where the carnival usually sets up is covered in steel, pipe,wire,forms,gravel,chunks of torn up pavement and all the orange barrels that goes with such a project. The HOV lanes will be below grade level in the middle with the East West lanes at grade level. When done in 2015, one of the worse congested corridors of traffic will be well ahead of the traffic for the next several decades. When connected to the High Five on the East and the busy I-35E Corridor on the West, new flyways and HOV lanes up in the air along the right and left side of the main traffic lanes going South and North.

However, even with the Valley View Mall about to undergo redevelopment, in the shadows of the Galleria Mall that is less than three or four football fields down the block, the carnival draws a large crowd of families, especially on the weekends,.because of the toll way and  635 LBJ.