The Story of my quest to photograph every town in North Dakota aired today on The Story from American Public Media. To hear my segment on the show, download the audio, and head to 31:00.

I’m still busy posting all the dots I’ve shot to my Flickr photostream. I wasn’t sure which day the episode would air until I got an email from Flickr user ForgottenSpaces about my photographs. He also mentioned a photography project of his where he photographed billboard environs all over the Midwest.

For more background on my Everydot project, read my mnartists.org interview. To see some dots, go to my Flickr photostream or Everydot page.

Photos mentioned in the interview:

• The house in Ambrose
• Petrel, which consists of a sign
• De Sart, a spot in a field, with an abandoned house not far away

Dots across the state of North Dakota. I plan to have photographed every town in North Dakota by the end of this summer. I’m currently in Jamestown, North Dakota, at a coffeeshop called Babb’s Coffee, “A Taste of Seattle”. There’s a 10-foot metal space needle in the corner, and the sandwiches are named after neighborhoods in Seattle. The coffee tastes like something I might have in Seattle, though not at Vivace.

I’ve spent hours driving to nearly unfindable places, like Three V Crossing, which somehow merits inclusion on the DeLorme map of North Dakota. Google Maps and MSN Maps both know where it is, but only MSN Maps actually bothers to give it a dot on the map.

The DeLorme North Dakota Atlas has become my official standard for defining “every dot on the North Dakota map”. If it’s on there, I will photograph it. The MSN maps are somehow even more detailed, but I don’t feel too bad about neglecting to photograph a place that’s too small for DeLorme or Google Maps. If I were feeling particularly meticulous, I’d also include data from my SPV railroad atlas. That, however, would probably double the time it would take me to finish this state. When finding all these tiny dots on maps, I’d originally assumed that they all came from the USGS place name database. What I’ve found, however, is that there doesn’t seem to be some master set — USGS might not have a place that MSN does, or vice-versa. Therefore, I get to look at five different places (DeLorme, Google Maps, MSN Maps, SPV railroad atlas, and the USGS database) if I really want to find every single dot.

Missing municipalities. Checking my map near Beach, North Dakota, I noticed that the usually 6-mile-square civil townships that blanket much of the Midwest and Ontario were larger than usual, ten to twelve miles square. Then I noticed that some counties appeared to be missing townships altogether. It made me wonder just how relevant the township is in an area with a rural population density of 0.8 people per square mile. As it turns out, many townships in North Dakota have disappeared. The US Census Population Estimates Boundary Changes reports dissolution of six township governments and one city from 2000-2006. Five cities and thirteen townships were dissolved in the 1990s.

Now today, I find out that the county I’m photographing in is experimenting with ‘voting centers’ for today’s primary election. Instead of voting in small town(ship) halls, people vote in the larger city or cities in the county. It appears that one of the last visible functions of townships may be disappearing in North Dakota. In some ways, this makes sense, since these buildings are small, often quite cold on the first Tuesday in November, and an expense to repair. On the other hand, driving 60 miles round-trip sounds a lot less appealing with $4/gallon gas.

Unincorporated dots. Nearly any dot on the map with more than a couple streets is an incorporated municipality, called a “city” by the state, regardless of size. I started wondering just how big a place could be and not be incorporated. One of the larger and better-maintained unincorporated communities is New Hradec. The town has a Catholic church, a Catholic school, and a Catholic workmen’s hall. It seems as though a large Catholic church ends up drawing enough people in to keep a tiny place surviving, as is also the case in Fried and Leo.

Soda Signs. I just about crashed my car when I saw this last night. I’ve been photographing out-of-the-way places for seven years now this month, but this is the first time I’ve seen such amazingly preserved signage. At first I thought this stuff might have been new/restored, but as a friend pointed out, this wasn’t really the neighborhood for that sort of thing. I’m not a big fan of Coca-Cola signage, as I’ve mentioned before, but this sign is in great shape. I’ve seen places that have curved bottlecap signs like this before, though they’ve always been under layers of paint. I’m glad to finally see them. The only type of Coke sign I know I’m missing now is the once-ubiquitous “fishtail”, seen in a Stephen Shore photo of Philadelphia, and on “Sal & Angie’s” in the movie French Connection.

Electric Green. After photographing the store above, I turned right onto MLK Way (a day before the holiday, incidentally), and followed the street for awhile, looking at the progress of the light rail line (looks mostly done here). Near the Henderson Street station, I noticed a strip of green curling up into the hills. I could see an asphalt bike path weaving its way through the green, so I decided to pull over and go for a walk. As it turns out, this is a strip of land underneath a Seattle City Light transmission line, called Chief Sealth Trail. I followed about 2.5 miles of the line, first southeast, where I stopped at the Creston-Nelson Substation (complete with an electrical plug safety sculpture). I then followed it back northwest, past MLK Way, up to near Holly Park, and back to my car (for what turns out to be about a 5-mile round trip). It was really a great sight in the setting sun, especially with Rainier set beautifully against the pylons.

Hotel Calvert. I saw the Hotel Calvert in Lewistown, Montana on a trip across Montana earlier in the year. I really wanted to stop to stay there, but it was only 2pm. I got a chance this time, and I’m glad I stayed. The hotel was originally a dormitory for those attending the high school across the street. I’m sure that was a useful thing, given the great distances some kids had to travel just to get to a school, and given the horrendous winters in this part of the continent (both of which can be seen in the movie The Slaughter Rule). The Hotel Calvert website says that the dormitory opened in 1917, and it was sold and conversion to a hotel began in 1928. When I showed up at around midnight the hotel, there was no one at the desk, but there was a couple phone numbers given to call. I called one, and got no answer. The second one finally got me someone, who then apparently had to drive over. He apologized for having no rooms with a bathroom available, but I was actually glad to get a room that probably hadn’t been renovated in the last half-century. This turned out to be mostly true, except that the walls had been covered in wood paneling, presumably in the 1960s or 70s. Presumably the doe-eyed clownchild was added around then as well.

Moccasin, Montana is the closest to a ghost town that I’ve ever seen. It’s not completely deserted, but it’s close. There’s still a post office and grain elevator, but that’s about it.

Trainspotting? Though I’m many forms of geek, railfan isn’t one of them. Then why would I pick up SPV’s Comprehensive Railroad Atlas - Dakotas & Minnesota? I picked it up because most Everydots that I’ve photographed were built along rail lines, and some of the tiniest dots only have signage thanks to the railroad. The SPV atlas shows current and former rail lines, and current and former stations and sidings. Since the existence of many of these tiny towns was defined by the railroads, these maps end up being pretty comprehensive. It also helps explain why some maps would list some of these basically nonexistent spots and others would list different ones — the data for those must have come from railroad maps. For me, this means that if I want to be comprehensive, I now have even more dots to visit. While I expect that most of them will have nearly nothing that indicates they were a town, sometimes finding the smallest piece of evidence that they existed feels like a great discovery.

I had the pleasure of visiting the Goodridge (Minnesota) Historical Society yesterday, and I came across this beautiful butter box. Daisies are quite popular imagery with dairy products, especially butter. My favorite is a packaging company’s sample imagery for “Best Butter” (not a real product). Now, I’m sure the Goodridge butter packaging wasn’t made specifically for that creamery. It looks like the brand name would have just been stamped in the happy puffy cloud near the daisies. Still, I love seeing that small enterprises could actually have things that had good design, and it’s nice to see any sort of product that came from such a small town.

Everydot: North Dakota. Earlier this summer, I drove to and from Minnesota. The route passes through North Dakota, of course, and so I had to work on my project of photographing every town in that state. I spent a solid day photographing dots on a diagonal path from Marmarth, North Dakota to Lemmon, South Dakota and North Lemmon, North Dakota. The most challenging dot to photograph was Petrel, North Dakota, which I reached by driving along US 12 in South Dakota, taking a gravel road back into North Dakota, and then walking half mile along a grassy path.

The next day turned out rainy, so I headed in the direction of home. On my eastward trip, I’d really hoped to find some big old brick hotel in some downtown where I could get a cheap room with a bathroom down the hall. I knew such a thing had once existed and figured it might still. I saw a brick hotel in Lewistown, Montana, but I didn’t feel much like quitting for the day when it was only 2pm. In Sand Springs, I saw a billboard for the Northern Hotel in Winnett, 44 miles in the opposite direction. I ended up driving to Miles City, since I new there was a big old hotel there, the Olive Hotel. I went to the counter and was delighted to find that they still had rooms available. I was less delighted when I discovered I’d be staying in the Olive Motel across the street.

On the way back to Seattle, I passed up an old wooden hotel in Scobey and passed by an old brick hotel in Plentywood that I only now discovered existed. Instead, I ended up a hundred miles down the road in a smoking room an icky 1980s hotel. The next night, however, I ended up at the Ryan Hotel in Wallace, Idaho, purely by chance. It was exactly what I was looking for, and was unrenovated except for the added convenience of a toilet and shower in the room (in place of the next room over’s giant closet perhaps?).

Everydot: Douglas County, Washington. This past weekend, I drove across the Cascades into eastern Washington. I exited I-90 at George, Washington and drove northward. I was again on a search for old brick hotels, and this time I vowed to stop and get a room no matter how early in the day. Early in the evening I hit Waterville and came upon the striking Waterville Hotel. I met Dave and Amy, who run the place, and Dave gave me a tour of the place and directions to Alstown. On the way there, I passed a very dry cemetery surrounded by miles of stubbly fields. The next day, I photographed almost every town in Douglas County. I returned to the Waterville where I sat out on the porch, recalled the day’s adventures, and had some wine and cheese (all of which was a nice change from sitting on a smoky motel bed and eating a microwaved sandwich).

Another Secret Crush. Back in April I discovered a 20+ year old Orange Crush bottle inexplicably sitting in a flower box. This weekend, while looking to see if anything remained of Matthiesen, Washington, I found an old garbage dump. Whoever was dumping their garbage there was a fan of orange soda, and in particular, Orange Crush. I had to grab a fairly well-preserved Crush can just because it was such an odd occurrence.

Geodata. On my Douglas County trip, I brought along my old Garmin eTrex Legend handheld GPS unit. I hadn’t done anything with geotagging before, but I figured I’d haul the unit around and see if I could get anything out of it later. Before I left I went to the tracklog menu and saved what was already there, hoping that I might be able to get geodata from past trips where the GPS rode around in my car. A few days after I got back, I decided to pull off the tracklogs. What I ended up with was about 2/3 of my most recent trip timestamped and ready to be synced with my photos, plus the trips I saved (from 2003, as it turns out) sans timestamps. Rather counterintuitively, saving the tracklogs on this unit preserves some data while destroying others.

The timestamped tracklogs got synced perfectly thanks to gpsPhoto.pl. Since I’d already uploaded the photos to Flickr, I synced those separately, with GPSTagr. This was great, because I ended up with all the photos I took on a map.

Now I wanted to do this for the other 6000+ Everydot photos I’d taken. I figured I’d be able to get geodata for them by connecting the tags I’d put on them with a place name database and adding that via the Flickr API. I downloaded the database from the USGS’s Geographic Names Information Service. For places in Canada, I used Natural Resources Canada’s Geographical Name Search Service. All this was glued together with a Ruby script, and before long, nearly all of my 430 or so Everydots were geotagged.

On a long walk through Seattle with my friend Max Action, Max pointed out to me distinctive markers of tunnels, from purple glass sidewalk-windows to giant grates. To him, I couldn’t help but point out vestiges of long-dead businesses painted, carved, and built into buildings.

On my walk home, while listening to Evan Doorbell narrate a phone trip, I noticed curved lines in the sidewalk concrete, and changes in the material of the curb. As I looked, I could see that the business on this block had changed over time, and driveway/alley cutouts had been added and removed. This is a tiny, tiny thing, but as we walk over ground (literally or figuratively) hundreds and hundreds of times, we start to recognize patterns, whether it’s conscious or not.

Max has an excellent ability to recognize subterranean patterns from above; similarly, Evan Doorbell can hear the smallest click, thunk, or ka-chunk in the old analog phone system and know just what it is. For me, once I saw how these old urban commercial nodes mapped so directly to the Minneapolis streetcar system, I couldn’t stop seeing urban design patterns that persisted 50 years after the end of the streetcars.

Seattle Subways. The Seattle Monorail Project was far from the first abandoned transit plan for the city. Seattle had interurban and electric streetcars over a century ago, but by 1926, there was a desire for real rapid transit, like in Chicago or New York. By 1928, there was a comprehensive proposal that included station drawings, route maps, projected traffic graphs and numbers, and lots of stuff you’d see in modern transit planning.

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Anydot? Everydot. A very nice spread of my photos can be found in the mnartists.org supplement to the Rake magazine this month. Unfortunately, the issue cover and index both identify my project as Anydot, instead of Everydot. Hopefully those googling for me might find this post if they search for “anydot“.

Orange Crush. On a walk down Bellevue Ave this sunny afternoon, I saw this Orange Crush bottle caked with mud and sitting in a flower box outside an apartment building. It feels a bit weird picking up something that seems like it can’t be that old, yet the graphic design is quite a few generations old. I’ve encountered this particular design before, at the Orange Crush laundromat, though I wouldn’t have guessed that design would have shown up on a bottle that seems so (relatively) recent. Such a bottle occupies a particular space in time — it’s a round 16oz glass bottle, with a styrofoam label, a UPC, and no Nutrition Facts or other nutrition info. I sort of know these bottles as ones I might have occasionally gotten as a kid — but by the time I was buying many sodas, they were in plastic bottles, save for Jolt, which kept the 16oz glass bottles a little longer. Before these chubby nonreturnable bottles, there were the returnable bottles with the pry-off tops. I vaguely remember a bottle vending machine at the ASCS office in Warren. While Orange Crush comes in 20oz/600ml plastic bottles like everything else now, it’s come full circle and is available in 12oz glass bottles with the other “speciality” sodas (along with some other revived brands like Bubble Up and Dad’s).

I’m In Print! I was recently featured in the mnartists.org newsletter. That same feature will be partially reproduced in the mnartists quarterly arts supplement in The Rake, which hits the street April 30. There may be some more publicity coming in the near future, but I’ll hold off on that until I have a firm date for things.

New Site. I’ve started a new site, using a name I’ve held for awhile, oddmart.com. I have a few notes on books: the How to Show Telephone Numbers On Letterheads booklet by Ladislav Sutnar and Asmara: Africa’s Secret Modernist City, as well as a couple that originally appeared this site. On oddmart I’ll also be selling some of the import-only graphic design books, as well as some reprints of out-of-copyright design books.

Balkan Foods. At a Balkan market in Fargo, I found a few pieces of Extant Design that have a definite Soviet air to them. The Zlatni Puder evokes memories of lots of late East German graphic design (which I mentioned previously here in Extant DDR). They’re particularly enjoyable because it seems most post-Soviet packaging design has been thoroughly Westernized, usually with the latest swoosh-twist-3D-glow effects.

Soviet-era Design Books. I love the book SED: Stunning Eastern Design and its miniature half-clone DDR Design, and now I’ve discovered a newer, bigger book on DDR (East German) design, called DDR Design (unrelated to the other DDR Design above), by Günter Höhne (English-language info here). It’s in German only, but lots of large color pictures make it a great piece of extant design porn nonetheless. In the same series as DDR Design, but by different authors are DDR Kochbuch (DDR Cookbook), DDR Backbuch (DDR Baking Book), and DDR Getränkebuch (DDR Drink Book). They’re in German only, and more text-heavy, but design freaks, and English-speakers who care to translate recipes to attain some weak sense of Ostalgia might still get from them some enjoyment.

Everlasting Inventory. Not just a good synonym for Extant Design, Everlasting Inventory / Permanentny Remanent, is a book on “promotional graphic design in the Polish People’s Republic” that I’m anxiously awaiting. My credit card has been charged 123.99 złoty, and I think an email may have told me that my order has shipped. In the same series is Not Only the Poster / Nie Tylko Plakat, on “promotional graphic design in Poland between the wars”. The website Reklamowy oldschool shows a number of “oldschool” Polish ads. I’d like to find more postwar graphic design from other trans-Iron Curtain states, but the closest I’ve otherwise found is the pre-WWII-era Obraztsy graficheskogo dizaina / Образцы графического дизайна (Graphic Design Samples), from Russia.

Spooky School. This former school building sits unloved but not abandoned, in Lockhart, Minnesota. It seems massive for a town of this size. There are three floors of classrooms. The top two have roofs and floors collapsing into them, but the bottom floor is yet uncrushed. A sign scrawled where a chalkboard once was exhorts (other?) vandals to get out now.

Downtown Cow Town. Melvin, Minnesota has sidewalks, which is rare for a Dot this small on the map. What’s even more rare is that it also has curbs. Unfortunately, anyone trying to walk on the sidewalks is met with 25,000 volts, since this part of town is now a cow pasture.

More Dots. This day, I visited Melvin, Greenview, Beltrami, Hadler, Anthony, Heiberg, Flaming, and Sundal. Greenview was identified only by business (once a grain elevator?) alongside the railroad. Flaming seemed to be nearly nonexistent and was only on one of my two maps. A different map used in 2005 made me conclude that Sundal was also nonexistent, but I revisited it and found I’d been in the wrong spot. Sundal, near Rindal, does exist, in the form of a church and an abandoned creamery.

The Como-Harriet Line. It’s now just a tiny museum line in southwest Minneapolis, but it once served downtown Minneapolis, the university, and the capitol. Much of its path was down city streets, where the signs of streetcars are long-gone. Through Como Park in St Paul and Linden Hills in Minneapolis, however, the line had its own right-of-way, off city streets. If you look carefully, you can still find signs of this.

The Como-Harriet museum line ends at Linden Hills Blvd, near Lake Harriet. From there, the only evidence of a streetcar line is a gently curving path of oddly placed alleyways and greenspace. I followed this pathway to France Ave and the streetcar suburb of Morningside, which merged with Edina in 1966.

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November. It’s that time of year again, when the clocks change and suddenly at 3pm western faces are burning orange and by 5pm all the skies scream shades of blue. It’s like a condensed summertime experience, in the space of a few hours, every day. It lasts for a couple weeks and then something changes. The sunsets get short and meaningless and they lose the stretch of illuminated blue skies.

It was a brilliantly sunny day here, and brilliantly short. I couldn’t believe I was seeing the orange of a 9pm summer sunset at 3pm. Lucky for me, I happened to go out when I did. 5:30, facing west, on October 31 will give you an amazing gradient. Barely visible at the horizon is the last orange fringe, and yet the top of the sky shows nothing of a sunset at all.

I first noticed a couple years ago that these beautiful sunsets occured around the first couple weeks in November. This particular photo is from about November 3, 2004.

New Everydots. Following a trip from Seattle to home (northwestern Minnesota) and back, I have a few new photos. Wallace, Idaho is a mountainous town under and along I-90. It’s interesting in that it appears to have a tourist draw, but at the same time it’s still got some nice stale 50s and 60s-ness to it. Hebron, North Dakota is the Brick City and home to, of course, Hebron Brick. Killdeer, North Dakota, on Highway 200, feels a bit like the Wild West, except for the well-paved streets. Florian, Minnesota is not much more than a crossroads, but it’s known for its church and park. Girard, Minnesota is quite literally just a wide spot in the road, near Crookston. Finally, there’s Eldred, Minnesota, not far from Girard, but still with a few visible bits of town, plus, most importantly, a sign.

Shinola, Postum, Pizzaroma. Last summer I spent some time in the Hamre House at the Pennington County Historical Society’s Pioneer Village, photographing the packaging in the kitchen, pantry, and bathroom. Products range from the fairly recent Pizzaroma to Malted Milk Powder that looks as though it may have accompanied Shackleton or Scott to Antarctica.

Faded Signs on Glass. From Gilby, ND, the ghost of the Red Owl. I think the Owl was gobbled up around 1990 by Supervalu (which just recently swallowed up Albertson’s as well). Long-gone Supervalu logos can be found in Karlstad (also here).

Tea? On a rare sunny Seattle afternoon, I snapped this. It’s a Lipton sign with the same sort of lettering as for Salada tea in Gardenton, Manitoba. I remember “Salada” being on the windows of a northern Michigan gas station in a John Bellairs book. Thanks to Amazon, I’m reminded that it was Gert Bigger’s store: “Bigger’s Grocery Store was surrounded on three sides by a dark forest of pines. The store was just a white frame house with a plate glass window in the front. Through the window you could see rows of stacked groceries and a cash register and counter in the rear. Some green letters on the window had once spelled SALADA, but now they just said ADA.” Apparently remembering the smallest details from a book one read at age twelve is no obstacle to finding a complete reference within seconds.

Hellenic, Wild Soon to be covered by Seattle condos, a jumbled mess of Hellenic Wide painted on brick.

Something to Drink. I shot some more soda signs to slurp on. It’s always fun to find ones that have loomed over you and you’ve never noticed, like the Sprite sign below. The Diet-Rite is on a bench in front of the Birchwood Cafe in Minneapolis. I’d been meaning to get that one for a long time, and when I finally did, I discovered that Williams Food & Video (which was later to reveal Orange Crush on one side and Cliquot Club on the other side is now the Clicquot Club Cafe. I actually spotted the Dad’s below on a Star Tribune article on the impending sale of Joseph’s Market in west St Paul. Finally, there’s Royal Crown Cola sign at the “Public Food Market”. That’s not THE market in Seattle, mind you, just a corner store
apparently closed but not yet emptied of goods. Peer through the windows in the next feature below.

Public Food. From what I can tell, this little corner store (the Public Food Market, see the sign immediately above) was closed. I checked it for a few days and there seemed to be no change, yet there was still food sitting on the shelves. Press your face up to the glass and see what you can see.

Ostpaket. After a long and grueling trip through Deutsche Post and DHL (which are not yet, unfortunately, a completely merged organization), my Ostpaket has arrived. The Westpaket was a care package sent from the West to East, before the fall of the Berlin wall. Even though the miracles of capitalism and western brands have returned to eastern Germany, some DDR brands are still alive and well. This is useful for those with Ostalgie or for people like myself who just enjoy outdated graphic design. This Weizenin cake flour has some of the best examples of Extant Design: it’s rather simple design, sparse text, a product image, and a flat color background. The blue-on-white seems to be quite popular in extant design. See, especially, Marshmallow Fluff and Jiffy Mix.

Happy Halloween. Heavy-duty staple + super glue + (corn syrup + flour + corn starch + red food coloring) = bloody fun.

Extant Delicacies. From the shores beyond the continental US, I bring you three new pieces of Extant Design. In a gourmet grocery in the Pike Place Market, I found Celles sur Belle butter. In a Hispanic market also in the Market, I found Goya Flan. And from a British import shop somewhere in downtown-Seattle-office-complex-ville, it’s Tunnock’s Tea Cakes.

Extant DDR. The particular circumstances of the DDR (Deutsche Demokratische Republik, or East Germany) meant little focus on marketing and little attention on design. Even before the fall of the Berlin Wall, some of this design began to be recognized. The show Design in der DDR in Stuttgart in 1988 was perhaps the first recognition of extant design. Taschen puts out two books (with nearly the same content) of some of these Wall-era products: the smaller but newer DDR Design and the larger SED: Stunning Eastern Design. If you’re looking for more instant DDR gratification, the website DDR Alltagskultur (Everyday DDR Culture) provides images for an amazingly wide (and still growing) list of East German products. The site is in German, but language skills are not necessary to enjoy the design, just scroll down in the lefthand frame. Language skills may be needed to enjoy all of the books on their Buchtip(p)s pages. I plan on purchasing one or two in the hopes that they’ll include plenty of color pictures. Finally, a key to the images: on the left is the East German Club-Cola (now available again [de] for those with Ostalgie). On the right is the modern (but still very Extant) Pepsi Schwip Schwap[de] (a German cola/orange drink, not unlike OK Soda). Poor Schwip Schwap seems to be heavily outmarketed [de] by Coca-Cola’s Mezzo Mix [de].

The Legacy of a Label.The image on the left is a Durkee’s Mayonnaise label in 1957. The image on the right is a Durkee’s Mayonnaise label in Japan in 2000. As you can see, very little has changed in 43 years. There are so many things to love about that label, Extant Design-wise, from the plain white space to the very odd font to the gold foil with blue grid label. The label on the right is courtesy Sue’s Mayomania (in Japanese, but once again, you can enjoy pictures even without the language — you will, however, have to click randomly). While Durkee’s Mayonnaise has long since disappeared from the US market, it was still being made for export to Japan. Sadly, the Durkee’s brand seems to have disappeared and has been replaced with Lightship instead.

Chicago. This weekend, I visited Chicago. I hadn’t really intended to take pictures, but after seeing this sign for a second time, I knew I had to stop and pick up a disposable camera. (The first time I saw it, if I remember correctly, was on this crazy kidnap cab ride we were on.) After Chicago, I took the train to Ann Arbor, Michigan to visit the University of Michigan. Ann Arbor is mostly too pretty to be anything I’d want to take pictures of, though I found a few things to shoot.

Dots. Before leaving Minnesota, I went a couple Everydot trips. True to my style, I’m posting it about three months later. I finally took pictures of the crazy little town I’m in by far the most, Karlstad (home of my employer). I also shot in a number of North Dakota towns, some of which I’d been to before. I’m trying to replace some of the bug-splattered windshield shots with much more calm, careful, and contemplative ones. By far my favorite town to shoot was also one of the largest dots, Devils Lake.

Road Closed. Not far from the city of Devils Lake, the lake Devils Lake is rising, flooding miles and miles of land. In one area I drove through, the main road has been continually raised to stay above the water, while side roads have not. Roads lead off away from the highway and straight into the lake. In some places, the only way to see a road was once there is by the perfectly straight lines of weeds that lead off to higher land. In the distance, you can see old farmhouses once on hills are now islands in the ever-expanding lake. In one place, a pickup truck sits at the new end of a road, waiting for water to go back down so it can finally cross.

A Fresh Helping of Extant Design from Seattle. Rcent grocery store explorations in Seattle have netted me a new batch of products with Extant Design. Some have come from one particular Safeway, others from corner stores. Neither, strangely, came from my local QFC, or earlier, the Safeway that I frequented. Some of these products are easily found in this area, while others are, I think, fairly unique finds. I’ve also added some explanations about Extant Design, and I’ve created thumbnails to help browse the ever-growing gallery.

Packaging. I’ve slaved over a hot scanner for *you*. Check out old product packaging from the 50s and 60s, including some background on the classic Extant packaging, Jiffy (then|now). Also included is some sample packaging (no such product actually existed) for a daisy-themed muttarbargerine, a bit like the Nucoa below.

Seattle Sign Slides. On August 14th, I shot some of the signs of Seattle on a roll of Kodachrome. The film was sent to the last Kodachrome processing center in the world, in Dalandzadgad, Outer Mongolia. They tell me the film makes a torturous trek by bus, mule, and bicycle to a little photomat in a mud hut on the edge of this Gobi Desert town. OK, maybe it wasn’t quite that bad, but from what I understand, Kodachrome processing is only done by a few places, one in Kansas and one in Switzerland. I was under the impression that Fuji sent film to Kansas and Kodak to Switzerland. I used Kodak, but it hardly seems like it took long enough to go to Switzerland and back. I shot on two Seattle streets, Lake City Way and Ranier Ave. Lake City Way had a definite ‘highway town’ sort of feel and Ranier was more of an aging urban neighborhood, but both had some nice signage of similar vintage.

Plus de margarine. At a grocery store in Greenwood, I found yet another example of Extant Design, and, quelle surprise, it’s a margarbutterine. I’m amazed at how one particular foodstuff can defy design updates for so long. Are people fiercely loyal to their margarine/butter that no amount of flashy packing could lure them away? Are people such disengaged butter/margarine consumers that they just grab the closest thing on the shelf? Has anyone on the entire planet besides me noticed this? If so, do they care?

Dot Dot Dot Dot Camera! I visited five Washington towns yesterday: Aberdeen, Hoquiam, Pe Ell, Chehalis, and Centralia. In downtown Aberdeen, I picked up four cameras at a place called Clevengers. It’s sort of like a used department store — quite huge, and full of lots of random things, including a ton of cameras. I grabbed a Polaroid 450 (an excellent amateur Polaroid packfilm camera), an Ansco Cadet II (a 127 format camera), a Kodak Pony 828 (an 828 format camera), and the superbizarro Traid Fotron II (also 828, but in a proprietary cartridge that was to be developed by the manufacturer). I created a Wikipedia entry for the 828 film, as it was not yet represented. I also plan on making an entry for the Fotron, because its weirdness must not be left undocumented.

Soda Soda Soda Soda Soda Fizz! This weekend and last I made some nice additions to my strange obsessive Soda Signs series. One grocery store in Seattle managed to provide me with three different signs, as well as some old Coca-Coca metal medallion thingys. In Pe Ell, I found yet another variety (albeit rather boring) of 7-Up signs, strengthening my opinion that 7-Up signs are the most diverse.

Cemeterial. About a year ago (9 October 2004 to be exact) I took some photos of two cemeteries near Mavie, MN. It was a bright, sunny, and very windy October day. It was pretty hot out for October, actually, close to 80 I think. I drove to the first cemetery and it was near a church, right on the edge of a field. There were no trees around, so it was incredibly bright. The grass had pretty well died, and the fields were golden with dried plants. It’s a hot bright windy day, and all I can see for miles around are the yellow and orange of grasses and tree leaves. I took some photos of the headstones and things. It was about as un-scary as a cemetery could get. The second cemetery, the Germantown Cemetery, was out in a field as well, but this one was surrounded by trees. The grass in it was still green, and there was a lot of shade from surrounding oak trees. There was no church near this cemetery – a marker told that it had been torn down. A farmer was plowing or something in the field nearby and either didn’t notice me or more likely just didn’t care that I was there. Nearly a year later, I finally looked at the photos. I picked a few of them out and have posted them in a section called Cemeterial.

The Bell System Watches Over Us All. An ancient Bell System logo and a poem (an adaptation) to go with it. Click for an enlargement and to get a better view of the faded logo.

Figgy Fun. A visit to a Hornbacher’s grocery brings a single solitary new piece of Extant Design, Zion Fig Bars. Hornbacher’s also had a rather old-design butter, but I decided it wasn’t Extant enough. I’m now quite convinced that the two top categories for Extant Design are butter and kosher foods. I can’t explain it, but I have the most numerous examples in those categories.

Swell Chicken-Flavored Design. The Extant Design just doesn’t stop. More from everyone’s favorite Extant Designers, Croyden House. Inside my brain, Croyden House and Fluffernutter are fighting it out for the title of Best Extant Design.

For those who aren’t familiar with Extant Design, it’s the idea that there are products that sit on store shelves whose package design hasn’t changed in decades. The products leap out at me, sometimes for good design and sometimes for bad (or no) design, but they all look like they could have been sitting on that same shelf since before I was born.

Kosher Extant Design. More Extant Design, this time, from a shopping trip to Fishman’s Kosher Market. This opened me up to a whole new world of food products whose graphic design has remained mostly unchanged for decades. There’s a lot of margarine. I couldn’t resist — four different types of margarine, huddling together, oblivious to the outside world. Too bad I didn’t find any of this margarine. It’s not all margarine, don’t worry — there are also donuts, frozen fish, and pizza sauce.

Book. Last winter, when I was bored, I made a book. It took a while to get it printed and I gave away all the copies as soon as they were bound. I did a second run of the book, but by the time that was done, I had gotten lazy and didn’t bother to update my website. But finally, it’s been done. So here it is.

This is a beautiful hardbound volume (buy! buy! buy!) of 42 of my photographs. The book is called Sunsets because there are no sunsets anywhere in it. Actually, I have my back turned to the sunset in nearly every photo — in other words, you see the long shadows and orangeness of the setting sun throughout the book. The book isn’t directly related to Everydot, but it does contain photos from a few little towns that I visited to take pictures for Everydot. The design of the book is based on The English Sunrise. That book is all of photos of the sunset motif everywhere in England, and it consists solely of photos and an index in the back — its design was also what Walker Evans wanted to base a Polaroid book of the alphabet on.

So, if you’d like a copy (buy!) I have plenty to sell. If you want one, you can email me at andyf@yahoo.com. And yes, I can take credit cards (buy! buy!) via PayPal.

Booklet. Additionally, in my dead-end bureaucratic job at the Municipal Water Board I’ve produced a small handbook called the Municipal Water Board’s Infrastructure Handbook #1: Township Road Signs. (Note to those not familiar: the Muncipal Water Board is only as real as the University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople, Symbionia, or Plain Layne.) I expect the Municipal Water Board will be producing a number of books in the Infrastructure Handbook series. Each book contains snippets of some obscure and incredibly dull thing — this one is all about township road signs. Township road signs, while dull, are still far more exciting and varied than regular county road signs. Expect future topics to be one or more of the following: telephone pedestals, telephone booths, burglar alarms, typefaces, or manhole covers. Manhole covers, while an especially MuniWaBo-worthy subject, have already been done quite well in the book Manhole Covers by Mimi and Robert Melnick.

Physics. University science labs tend to collect ancient relics. That’s as true for the people as it is for the equipment. I went through Hagen Hall at Minnesota State University Moorhead looking for some non-human relics. A lot of the old equipment has typefaces that haven’t been popular in decades. Some of the equipment and boxes of stuff have a very dull, sterile, dated look, while other stuff, such as the building itself, have a very bright and colorful look. The result is an odd confluence of styles, mostly this very bright 1950s/1960s look combined with the dull grey industrial look which could in some cases be the 1930s as much as it could be the 1970s. Take a look.

Dots. I’ve posted 33 new Minnesota towns and 12 new North Dakota towns to Everydot. That brings the total to 183 for Minnesota, 73 for North Dakota, plus 16 in Manitoba, and 8 in Ontario. Check out the North Dakota ones (see the links to the right) for photos shot in the late orange evening, my favorite time of day.

Bacon. Finally, I’ve also begun to accumulate photos of modern household products with particularly interesting examples of particularly outdated graphic design in a section called Extant Design. You might ask why I’m doing this (of course, if you’re still asking questions like that, you probably haven’t looked at most of my other stuff). On a simplistic level, it’s just because these products are little time capsules, showing earlier (and usually simpler) graphic design. I also like to examine trends in design, just as the Ball and Swoosh design was popular during the dot-com days. That design wasn’t particularly graphically complex, and it was easily copied — that meant that you didn’t have to be a particularly good graphic designer to have a design that looked modern. I think the same is true for some of these products; their designers weren’t particularly avant-garde or really even unique. But because of this, they’re easily identified as dated. I think that good design can never really look dated. Real “classic” package design can be seen at the online American Package Museum and cheap, trendy, and/or sloppy package design still available can be seen here at Extant Design.

I went to Berlin about a year ago, and I took a bunch of pictures. I was also in Auckland (New Zealand) more recently and had my digital camera (among other things) stolen. The thief neglected to take my ancient Polaroid packfilm camera, however, so I’ve posted the photos I took there as “picture postcards” at the Municipal Water Board.

Lots more stuff is coming soon, including Everydot updates, strange outdated design, and more — but not tonight.

More Everydot photos,including a trip through the Emerson area, and another from Thompson to near Fargo. Favorites: Hunter, ND,Crookston, MN, Erskine, MN, and Dominion City, MB. Oh, and remember, that Salada Tea is Delicious and that Sportsman Cigarettes are rolled with ALLWEATHER waterproof paper!

I also have a new Groceterial sort of section called, unsurprisingly, Groceries. Here you can see glimpses a land where Cheez Whiz comes in something smaller than a #10 steel can and there is no olive bar, sushi, or soymilk.

I have lots of new photos, some in semi-new categories, and some scattered about in the existing categories. Go to photos to see ‘em all. Some examples:

if you got here from actionsquad.org, go to photos to take a look at some of the photos max action mentioned. if you want to email me, my address is andyf@yahoo.com.

there are a few more photo collections up: these include everydot, which is a set of photos from lots of little dots on the map. there are also a couple new mini photo collections, like milk, for example.

changes to the front page: west are my photos from my aug 2002 trip around the western half of
the continent. the old photo section moved to collections. small town photos will soon be coming to
everydot. there’s a new section in collections, too, called soda.

it’s new, it’s different. it’s the new page design. some stuff is unlinked (but it’s still there). it will be reappearing shortly. the photos section is all new. it’s sort of my “hope for spring”. it’s still all cloudy and cold but sometimes the sun peeks out — I tried to capture that in some of my pictures.

yum, dr pepper. but what about the not-so-peppers? like mr pibb, dr shasta, dr thunder, dr rocket, and dr best. well, i tasted ‘em all. check them out in the new section, weird food.

warning:
never eat anything that contains the so-called "fruit" durian. do not eat this. trust me. it’s only a fruit in the horticultural sense of a fruit. it’s not sweet. i think it tastes like garlic, onion and chicken boullion. coming soon: weird asian foods, and the dr. imitation battle. by the way, my old webpage from high school is http://www.geocities.com/siliconvalley/2484. it’s got photos of us as juniors. well not me, since i was taking all the pictures.

everybody’s taking advantage of cheap domain names! troy, jake and ben have their webcam at www.threeguys.com, krome (you know, the band) is at www.kromeband.com, chris has www.palmerclown.com, and blake has www.efreestylin.com.

i’ve decided to share with the world my favorite parts of the twin cities. read my opinions on pizza places, computer stores, grocers, and cinemas. i’ll be adding more periodically. i’d like to rate every grocery except for cub and rainbow (which eliminates almost all metro groceries except for some lunds and byerly’s). cub and rainbow get boring after awhile, so why not find somewhere else?

truly amazing. I haven’t updated this place in a month. wow. so, what’s going on? well, there’s another iopener-like device out there. it’s the virgin webplayer. they just stopped offering their internet service, so now tons of the things are up for grabs. also, i’m working on what i believe to be the world’s first ever toaster pc. details to follow.

i went to recycling again. i got three more monitors. another 21-inch sgi. this one doesn’t need sync-on-green. and 2 17 inch monitors, an hp with 5 bnc connectors, and an ibm with a regular vga connector. plus i got a mouse (to match the keyboard i got last week) for jeff’s mac plus macquarium. i also got 2 200mb scsi hard drives to go in the ps/2 model 85 server. the hard drive was in there likes to die every time i send a print job (which isn’t a real good thing for a print server). so now it’s got mirrored drives.

ooh, i got all sorts of cool stuff from recycling. i got a microchannel ethernet card for our crazy novell server, a ps/2 85. now the the pay-to-print in middlebrook may finally work. but that’s boring. the fun stuff: a 21 inch sgi monitor. beautiful. but old. it was made in 1991. it needs sync-on-green, so i need an adapter or a card that will do sync-on-green. i also got a 17 inch sgi granite monitor. cool. the corners are warped and discolored. i’d should get one of those magnetic tools to fix it (or so i’ve heard). plus i got a 17 inch ibm monitor, i haven’t tried that one yet. it’s a nice workstation monitor though. plus a badly beat-up sgi personal iris. i also picked up a couple ancient ibm laptops, a thinkpad 360cs (a 486). and an ancient 386 pre-thinkpad: a black/white ps/2 note n51 slc (doesn’t quite roll off the tongue like ‘thinkpad’). unfortunately, the darling’s got a broken screen. it’s a real artifact though. it uses 30-pin simms, it’s got the microchannel bus, a black rubberized case, and is built like (and is as heavy as) a tank. obviously a thinkpad ancestor. much cooler than any of the other ps/2 laptops. (which were huge, white, and more brittle). pictures to follow soon!

i tore my $199 nic (new internet computer) apart today. the motherboard is very cute, all-in-one, no slots or anything. plus it’s a super 7, so i think it can handle 500mhz k6-2’s even. unfortunately, the pads where the rca connector attach apparently don’t carry the tv signal. i went into the bios and turned on the tv out signal, and i soldered in an rca cable. i attached it to the video-in on the tv, but nothing. there must be something else that has to be done to the board. i don’t see anything missing on the board (unlike the mediaGX boards, which were missing an ic.) anyway, i’ve got more photos in the stupid hacks section.

i love old computer stores. really. like raymond commodore-amiga. i just wish i could find more like them. does anybody know of more in the twin cities? i’ve got the U recycling center too, but it just doesn’t have the personality of raymond commodore-amiga.

i added a link on the stupid hacks page to the legopc. how could i have forgotten!? also, for a fruitier version of the legopc, there’s a whole bunch of macintosh lego computers at applefritter.com. (not lego actually, but mega block). a guy at netscape has a lego computer too (he used a lot more bricks than ben and i did). lego has bulk ordering now too. but it’s still not quite reasonably priced for building very large items out of legos (100 2×8 bricks for $8.99, not bad, but could be better). if anyone knows where I could get, say a big box, of generic super bloxx or some other lego copy, tell me! (andyf@yahoo.com)

“geek” or “hacker” has become cool. don’t ask me how. just watch hackers. (even though it was horribly horribly inaccurate, i liked watching it.) in real life though, most geeks are more like kevin mitnick than jonny lee miller (of hackers(imdb), and, i just realised, trainspotting). i’m sort of an non-stereotypical geek. i don’t play many games (like none at all!) and i don’t like science fiction (nor do I crack websites and steal credit card numbers). yet i manage to spend far too many hours on the computer. most “geeks” around me are into games, never seem to do their homework, and are pretty antisocial. i try not to be. unfortunately, like a geek, i spend way too much time not doing my homework. that’s the difference between geeks and nerds. nerds do their homework right away. geeks would rather do something with technology than do homework. I get my homework done eventually (unlike some geeks). and now, that is where i go, off to do homework.

i’d like to collect more old technology pictures, like the pet pictured above. i’ve got a couple in the weird photos section. some day, i may have to scan my old stacks of magazines (if mom hasn’t thrown them all) and post some of the ads from them. i’ve got pc magazine and pc computing from the 80’s, and radio-electronics from the 70’s. if anyone has any more sources for pictures of old computers, let me know (andyf@yahoo.com)

welcome. i can’t imagine why you’re here, but i’m glad you came. sit down. take a load off. have a look around. sample our fine wines and cheeses. most of all, have a good time. and don’t forget to water your lawn.