Some more pictures I took. I was here on Thursday but didn't have my camera, so I made a special trip today to get these images. The first thing I had noticed on Thursday was that the building next door had about two dozen satellite dishes on the roof.

This seemed a bit excessive to me. Turns out there's a perfectly logical reason for it.

Yes, it's a news station. They need these satellite dishes so that they can receive government-produced propaganda pieces disguised as news and air them on their local telecasts, and at the rate the current administration is spewing out crap, they need way more than one to make sure they don't miss any of it. So that makes sense.

(You may say I'm too cynical. If so, I say you don't read enough.)

Meanwhile, here are some of the images I actually went back to get.

My first thought when I stepped out of the stairwell and saw this was to wonder what the view of the church used to be like. I guarantee that the church far predates the parking garage. I rather doubt the church would have been built there in the first place if the parking garage had been there first.

I've never been a religious sort, but I have to admit, some churches have really nice architecture. The trees also help a lot. They don't make them like this anymore.

Same church, different angle. The only thing I don't like about this photo? See those wisps in the upper left? My hair got in the way. I'm not sure what the structure in the far background is. I don't think it's currently a church. I expect it was at one time. There are churches everywhere around here.

And just down the street from the church is a library that used to be a church. And behind that, possibly another church. I really can't keep up.

And the other way down the street from the church? Well, I don't know if that's a big church or four small churches, but I wouldn't be surprised either way. I suppose I could have gone down there to find out, but I just didn't care enough to bother. Let's see if we can find something without a church.

Ah, here we go. A crane. You can see some of the steelwork for the two-year theater project, which is currently entering its sixth year and is not being constructed on the same property where the project began. The site of the original project is affectionately known as "The Hole In The Ground," where work began, a huge hole was dug, some of the foundation work was done, and then work stopped due to a lack of funds and the city's enormous debt and some lawsuit filed by a guy who contested that the city didn't actually technically in a legal sense own all the land they were building on. The company that began the work and then had to stop has since gone bankrupt because the city never paid them for the work done. (This is a little slanted, but it's all true. The bottom line is, the mayor screwed up big time and ran the city completely into the ground.) I've never understood how a city with this much debt that can't afford to pay its own workers and is constantly trying to cut corners and actually can't even afford to give Main Street the paving it desperately needs can somehow still afford to go out every Saint Patrick's Day and paint the double yellow lines on Main Street green for the parade. I dunno. It just strikes me as odd.

Looking over the church, we see one of the more ornate bridges in the area.

That's another thing you don't see anymore. Detail. Nobody puts structures like that at the ends of bridges these days. It's purely utilitarian now. You build a bridge that has just enough material in it to hold together safely, and you let people drive over it. You can actually appreciate a bridge like this. Now they all look like they're spanning an interstate. We've lost our sense of art somehow.

Same goes for buildings. This one has detial under each window. It's got a ledge below the top floor. It's got a detailed overhang all the way around the top. You don't notice that in most of the buildings in this direction:

Another thing you don't notice in this direction is a church. I'm sure there are plenty in that direction, but in an odd twist, you can't actually see them.

And finally, a view out over the news station, across the valley, out to the horizon. Right in the middle, of course, is a steeple.

I showed these pictures to someone shortly after I took them. He looked at them, as best as he could make out on the little display built into the camera, and commented, "Wow, the city actually looks nice from up there." Yes. Yes it does.