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Below are the 4 most recent journal entries recorded in
ephemeral village's InsaneJournal:
| Monday, April 13th, 2009 | |
| 8:58 am | Woman fallen to cage with polar bears This occured in Berlin, Germany. 34-year-old woman fallen down to an open-air cage to polar bears. The woman managed to be pulled out, but one of bears has had time to bite it some times.  (4 photos + video inside) → |
| Thursday, April 9th, 2009 | |
| 1:10 pm | Grafton Hello again, I'm still home sick so here's another Rundown Town photodump! This time we'll visit Grafton, WV, a formerly booming railroad town.. now a hometowny little place looking for it's niche.  Grafton's hotel was an important railroad stop.. the lobby faced the tracks. It's been abandoned for many years but is being semi-protected and is theoretically "mothballed," so isn't falling into further decay, hopefully. The neighboring train station has been converted into a very nice museum. Anyway, Grafton has a lot going for it. It has a popular drive-in theatre, situated in beautiful mountains and rolling hills.. also it's a bit of a tourist spot as it is the site of the very first Mother's Day! The church where the first Mother's Day service happened, and the house of Anna Jarvis, founder of Mother's Day, are actually pretty popular tourist spots. The rest of downtown could really use some help, though! (I forgot to mention the other day that Fairmont was the site of the first Father's Day.) Okay, on with some pics. Here's the hotel again. Like I said, this building is abandoned... but Grafton was a very important railroad town, and you could get a train to Baltimore or New York or Chicago out of here... people from all over had to stop in Grafton to switch trains or continue on their journey.  Here's the train station. It has been nicely refurbished and well taken care of. I do hope the hotel can find a way to follow suit.  The tracks don't see as many trains as they used to.. and it's no longer a passenger stop.. but it's still a major rail-line.. as you can see by the number of tracks.  A building demolition revealed what is possibly the most fantastic wall of ghost signs I have ever seen in my life!!!! I can't get enough of this.  Here's a close-up.  Here's Grafton's theatre. It's technically abandoned but is theoretically going to be reused by a student group or some such. So far, not so run down.. but there are some storefronts and such that are in very poor condition.  These two are looking pretty good.. an occupied store and the masonic temple..  This one less so.. with apparent abandonment on the upper floors.  These two look really nice, but the blue building has some serious issues on the inside (leaks.)  Former Emerald City Shoe Store... in the left of the blue building shown above.  Poor condition storefront on the right of the blue building shown above.  This former bank is abandoned and empty, but is probably going to be restored sometime soon. All of this is a National Register district, which provides tax credits for restoration in many situations.  Here it is from the other side.  Here's the church where the First Mother's Day happened!  This block is missing a building and doesn't look too well, but maintains occupancy.  Sorry about the blur, but you can see some of the colorful parts of Grafton.  Grafton is the county seat of Taylor County, so here is the courthouse, a very strange building that has been remodeled many times.  This shop front has been entirely covered over with fakery!  A cafe, still open.  When's the last time you saw one of these?  This is the Four Corners Restaurant, a regionally-famous diner... known for it's home-cookin' and especially it's pies. The folks lined up for weekend breakfasts. Alas, it was sold and now there is a Walgreens ( :( !!!) on the site. There is a rumor it will re-open elsewhere, but it will never be the same. A terrible loss!  Oh yeah, Grafton has this great vintage Dairy Queen!  And this cool garage covered with vintage tin signs.  Here we are at the drive-in, a great place to spend a summer evening in Grafton!  :D Yay, I love the drive-in. So, all-in-all, a little better shape than Fairmont, but it was never as large as Fairmont.. more of a country town. It's a great place to visit.. so if you like that sort of thing I highly recommend it.. even if you just go to see a drive-in movie. Here's the rest of the Grafton set! Here's their official website. Thanks and enjoy! |
| Tuesday, April 7th, 2009 | |
| 9:20 pm | Long time, no post. Hello everyone. It's probably been years since I've posted here... but this week I'm home sick with a horrible cough and thought maybe I'd share some photos with communities that still seemed to be semi-active. Over the last year I've had a great time exploring a lot of small towns in my surrounding area. I thought you might like to see pictures from some of my adventures. I can break it up into chunks by town.. in fact.. I think I will. So if you like this I'll post a lot more!  The Masonic Temple in Fairmont, WV stands tall but abandoned. Fairmont is a bit of a rundown town. The county seat of Marion County, it has had quite a bit of population loss since it's heyday in the 1950s. It has a lot of (still very lovely) abandoned buildings, but a lot of local color and fun stuff to discover. Unfortunately, more buildings are demolished seemingly weekly... cultural resources are many, but not particularly well managed. It is by no means dead, though. I like to go there. I don't want this post to give a negative portrayal of Fairmont. It's got its troubles... but if you like the semi-quirky or under-appreciated.. well, it's your kind of town. Fairmont is home to some important state employers, but alas none of them really help the downtown area, which is what I will be featuring here.  Butcher School, an abandoned school in Fairmont.. it's been empty at least 25 years, unfortunately. Last time I was here, a little over a year ago, it was boarded up tight, but this time it was wide open. A kid on a bike yelled at me while I was taking this picture and told me he was callin' the cops. Thanks, kid. Last time I was here, kids were still playing on what's left of the playground. I found some historical pictures of this place but they are copyrighted so I can't post them or link to them, but if you check the online photo archives belonging to certain West Virginia libraries, they're easy to find. You can't tell in the photo, but it is a pretty big building. I didn't go in, but just by peeking in the many open doors, I can tell you that it's fairly trashed and stinky.  Fairmont's beautiful art-deco movie house (check out the peach vitrolite!) has been out of business for a few years. I never saw a movie here, so I hope it reopens so I can. :P I love theatres... it's the first thing I look for when I visit a town.  Now there's something you don't see every day... this was on the side of a comic book store near Butcher School.  Fairmont's old art-deco post office is empty... but for rent!  The BOE building, a former hospital.  I am told that despite the appearance of this Moose Lodge it is NOT abandoned.. and is still available for parties and banquets.. though I'm not sure why you'd want to have a party in a building with boarded up windows. Mafia parties? :)  I think a moose ran over the sign.  I love this sign. I saw an identical one in PA.  Abandoned near Moose Lodge.  Abandoned near Moose Lodge.  I think this curvy building used to be a tire store.  Empty storefronts.  I love this building. There's a shop on the bottom floor but I'm not sure if the upper floors are occupied or not.  Lupo's is closed, but not out of business. He just moved somewhere else.  NO.  This one didn't make it. :(  I love this old-school motel.. still in business!  After a busy day of running around old buildings, I recommend The Poky Dot Diner for a milkshake or sundae. I hope to take some more shots of Fairmont soon. There's a lot of it I haven't yet explored. A lot of nice old houses there, too.. though many great Victorian-era mansions have been lost to McDonald'sization. The rest of my Fairmont set is HERE. Thanks, if you liked it, I have lots more sets of lots more towns! |
| 9:20 pm | rundown_town @ 2008-04-24T20:57:00  hi! here the street pictograms collected from all world are placed </a></b></a> ![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} pictogramms |