Note: If you want to keep up with this blog (and why wouldn’t you) and get almost daily not-so-exclusive yet interesting content that doesn’t appear here, please check out the blog’s Facebook page. Many photos and links that don’t make it here due to my laziness and procrastination, frequently appear on Facebook, where you can just as easily comment and like what you see.

Now let’s finish up with my vacation report.

After visiting Seattle, taking the Coast Starlight and then driving the most scenic of the American roads, we returned to San Francisco for the last three days of our vacation.

San Francisco is the city where the War on Drugs was lost. Many times throughout the day, in different parts of town, one walks through a cloud of the familiar yet unusual in the streets of Kansas City smell and immediately takes another whiff just to make sure it’s not a mistake. In the middle of the day in the touristiest of the tourist areas, next to expensive stores and restaurants, a nicely dressed woman produced a mini-bong out of her pricey purse and turning her face ,to the wall, proceeded to treat her glaucoma (if you know what I mean). When my kid came out of the store, I started to recount that mind-blowing event, but then realized that she may not know the meaning of the word bong. She knew. Thank you, O-e School District for taking care of that awkward conversation!

San Francisco is beautiful city, with many different faces, amazing food of a mind-blowing variety, endless number of things to do, enough weather changes to keep an army of meteorologists busy, and more homeless people than an average resident of Midwest will encounter in a lifetime. My only advice is that if you are not in the greatest of shapes, visiting the Crookedest Street in the World is better done on a bus. It’s not that exciting and you almost need a  Sherpa to get up on the damn hill. If you have time, check out SF Playhouse, we really enjoyed My Fair Lady, much better choice than a magician we originally set out to see.

And now we move to the visual part of this post.

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On a long list of things that I am lacking, somewhere between being sporty and good looks, is the ability to do the Yo-Yo thing (shut up, Chimpo). I am not sure if the Life magazine ever ran these photos taken in June of 1961, so here is your chance to see them.

I have a strange feeling when I look at these photos – these Kansas City kids are about 60 years old now, their own kids are likely to be older than they were in these shots, which captured just one second of their summer almost 50 years ago.

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Despite my bad memory some historic dates will probably stay with me for the rest of my life. On this day in 1941 the Nazis crossed the Soviet border as part of the operation Barbarossa and began what became known in the USSR as the Great Patriotic War. I wrote about the War many times before so I won’t repeat myself. Even the youngest veterans are 85-90 years today and there are fewer and fewer of the every year. The memory of the War was something my generation grew up with, hopefully it will not be forgotten by our children.

I literally heard this song thousands of times (translation slightly clumsy but will do).

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNGQ_dAFY0M

The huge country is rising
Is rising for the deathly battle
Against the dark fascist force
Against their cursed hordes
Refrain:
Let our noble wrath
Seethe like waves
The national war is going
The Sacred War
Will resist the oppressors
Of right notions (ideas)
Rapists, bandits
People’s tormentors
Refrain:
Let our noble wrath
Seethe like waves
The national war is going
The Sacred War
Don’t their black wings dare
Fly over our Motherland
Don’t the enemy dare tread
Our immense fields
Refrain:
Let our noble wrath
Seethe like waves
The national war is going
The Sacred War
Lets hammer bullet into the brow
Of the rotten fascist vermin
Lets make a strong coffin
For such breed
Refrain:
Let our noble wrath
Seethe like waves
The national war is going
The Sacred War

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Today’s trip to the past of the Johnson County,KS takes time travelers to historic downtown Overland Park.

Then:Voights Building
Black and white photo of the Voights building at 80th and Santa Fe Dr. taken from opposite corner showing intersection of the two unpaved, dirt streets. There are two men sitting on bench outside of drugstore. A horse-drawn carriage is parked on one side of the building and an automobile is parked on the other visible side. The building itself is brick with striped awnings over the windows and doorways. There are several large windows at the store front. The window behind the men on the bench says “DRUGS.” Also visible in this picture is a wooded “Rail Road Crossing” sign, a telephone pole, a tree, and another brick building in the background.

Apparently Voights Building (1911-1927) burned in 1927 and was rebuilt as a one story building where law offices are today; we also find out that it was located at the North-West corner of 80th and Santa Fe. Another mention of the historic building is here.
And here is what it looked like today:

This look at the past was brought to you by the Kansas City Lunch Spots : Where Lunches and Spots Meet In The Open. Also sponsored by: My Job: Weekdays Off, WTF. Additional financing by: Old People: We Were There When the Old Building Burned.
Previous posts here and here.

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Preface:

Hundreds of thousands of people with better cameras and better photography skills vacation at the same places as me.

Hundreds of thousands of people are better at travel writing than I am, better at writing in general, and are clearly better than me at speaking English.

Go read their damn blogs….

I love to travel. It helps me to relax; feel in charge when I am planning my next trip, buying tickets and making reservations; learn new things; change the scenery; feel better (or worse) about my hometown. Most importantly, it helps me not to raise a moron. This year we traveled to the Pacific Northwest, a place that until now remained a blank spot on my travel map. We visited Seattle, took an Amtrak train to San Francisco and drove 450 miles along the Pacific Coast on Highways 1 and 101, stopping for a night in Monterey. The trip turned out to be even better than I imagined.

The next several posts will be about these places illustrated with tons of photos (I brought back 1,214, which would probably weigh tons if I was using film).

Face:

If there was a god, the Pacific Northwest would have been his reward to the people who didn’t quit going West in the middle of Kansas, and, instead of making “Ad Astra Per Aspera” their motto and giving up, continued to endure and persevere for months and years, slowly consuming their mates on the way. When these people, exhausted and with little hope remaining, saw the water in front of them (after the rain stopped and the fog cleared 6 months later), they knew it was all worth it, and everyone they ate on the way would have wanted it that way. Over time they proceeded to cut and kill most of the things so abundant in the area, swindle the Indians, build depressing slums and fill the void with homeless people, Mexican radio stations, French-speaking tourists and a special breed of people who ride the Ducks.

Over time, people had an epiphany, and after multiple fires and earthquakes, the Pacific Northwest and Northern California (I have no idea if these are considered one geographical region) are an American jewel, a place where the nature, weather and landscape combined with the architecture, city planning, atmosphere and a number of Asian restaurants approaching infinity make one understand why people are willing to pay mind-blowing prices to live there.

If I had to summarize Seattle in one photo, it would probably be this shot of a redheaded, bearded guy in a cap, wearing sandals and smoking a pipe.

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