Armet and Davis style Denny's on Colorado Blvd. PooBah, one of the all time great record stores, is across the street. Also across the street are more examples of the (once common) Googie architectural style that is slowly disappearing from along the route.

Surplus Surplus Sign

This surplus store, C&H Sales Company, on Colorado Blvd. in Pasadena, CA went out of business. I'm glad they left the sign when they sold off the surplus inventory, but fear that the next tenent may scrap the sign. Before they closed I had the opportunity to browse the shop one last time and dig through boxes of cast-off electronic and mechanical parts for 'who-knows-what?'.

David Schwartz Photo Blog: 1st Showing of My Route 66 Photography

David Schwartz Photo Blog: 1st Showing of My Route 66 Photography

Inspired by 'A Drive to Inspire'

Wow, what's not to like... a road trip down Route 66 in an alternative energy version of my all time favorite, the 66 Pontiac GTO. All I can say is that CNG Route66 is my kind of blog. Stay tuned, I'm going to find out more about this project.

Time for Bernanke and Geithner to go

Gentlemen,

Thank you for your service and wisdom in saving the US banking system from complete and total annihilation. We are deeply grateful for your efforts,but your services in this capacity will no longer be needed.
We the people understand that the policies and policy makers that brought us out of the crisis are not the same as those required to take us where we need to go from here. We also understand that we were required to foot the bill for dragging our economy from the brink.
We never expected your friends, those wealthy bankers who profited off of trading worthless derivatives and destroying the 401Ks of millions, to pony up. Why would they when they had the gun to our heads, and stood to profit further from your policies. So it worked. Economy saved, bankers enriched, credit markets still breathing.
Now we're going to find some new policy makers that will help us heal and get us back on the path to jobs and prosperity. Nothing personal.

Love,

The Vanishing Middle Class

Had Enough of Too Big to Fail

If they're too big to fail, let's make them smaller. Move your money to a community bank or local credit union. Move Your Money

Corporate Robots

We no more want to give corporations the rights of persons than we do robots. Either one will doom democracy. Corporations don't (and shouldn't) act like people, they are purely selfish. That's why they need to be regulated. I would not loan money to a friend, hoping and arranging things so that they would not be able to pay, so that I could make more money. But that's exactly what the banks and financial institutions did to their customers.

Senator Graham’s ‘blame the victim’ mentality in this situation is a perfect underhand pitch to the financial industry. Not to mention the reporters, commentators, and clowns on financial ‘news’ channels like CNBC who latch on to this myth. These folks must surely awaken every day amazed that they still have a job. That would explain why they spend so much air-time scrambling for new ways to keep up the charade that they’re competent. Don't forget that these are the same people that held up Bernard Madoff and Sir Robert Allen Stanford as heroes of unregulated free-market capitalism.


President Obama pointed out:
"Americans don't choose to be victimized by mysterious fees, changing terms and pages and pages of fine print. And while innovation should be encouraged, risky schemes that threaten our entire economy should not," he said. "We can't afford to let the same phony arguments and bad habits of Washington kill financial reform and leave American consumers and our economy vulnerable to another meltdown."

The President gets it.

Feature Evangelist vs. Product Evangelist

I've seen a lot of start up companies over the last few years that came out for the gate with really exciting, clever, and popular products only to see them stagnate. Lately I've given some thought to the cause of this phenomenon. One problem I've seen is when the product team focuses too hard on a specific feature request from a specific client. Typically, this is a big, well known, or VIP client with an internal 'friend' or evangelist for the start-up's product.

The scenario goes like this...
The Evangelist calls up the Product Manager and says that there's some growing traction for the product among senior management. A deal is likely, but that the start-up needs to make some changes to the feature set to make the product meet all of the features in the Request for Proposal that the potential customer has been sending out. The Product Manager, getting pressure from Sales and Marketing, is eager to help land this great account. One of the worst parts is that at some point, and probably unbeknown to the Product Manager, the sales person has promised a deal to the client that has all but precluded any profitability on the account. So now the start-up is in the situation of having to spend time and resources on a new feature for a product so that they can sell this product at a loss.

This happens more that you'd think, and it's too bad. The solution is not to ignore the customer (that comes later, if you're a Geoffrey Moore fan) so much as to be aware and on the look out of the customer or client that is too focused on a few features. Ask yourself if the client really is a strong supporter of your product, or are they simply using your product to advocate for a pet feature that does not represent an overall product improvement

Hollywood Park

I heard recently that the Inglewood City Council is likely to vote to close Hollywood Park, and replace the racetrack with a 'Multi-use, residential, retail complex'.

My advise is don't do it. Once you do this, you'll never get it back. This is the type of short-sighted, misinformed thinking that got this country into the economic mess it's in right now.

My prediction is that this city council will commission some big study at great expense that will undoubtedly come to the conclusion that if they do all this fancy re-building like other cities have done over the past decade, that they will see this giant gain in tax revenue, and earn the eternal gratitude (and votes) of the people.

Except... that won't happen. Instead, we'll look back on this in twenty years and say, "Gee. How sad it is that the city of Inglewood decided to destroy the things that were unique, and gave it an identity. Didn't they see that at the end of the day they were trading that uniqueness for a sameness that could not compete?" Trying to be more like Santa Monica, Westminster, or El Segundo is a losing game for Inglewood. The forum will be gone, Hollywood Park will be gone, and with them any opportunity to preserve the thing that makes towns and cities great: uniqueness.

Seligman and Ashfork, AZ

I took some pictures as I drove through Ashfork. But nothing came out.

It was getting dark, and I’m a bit rushed since by this point I still haven’t figured out the whole plan. The other thing is that I’m still not sure what the goal is. Here in Arizona, I wish I were back in Erick, or Elk City. There’s this odd sense that I’ve been too antsy, too quick to move on that the next stretch of road and not spending enough time finding the interesting stuff in each place. Post trip research reveals that many of the buildings in Ashfork burned down in the 1970s.

In Seligman, I took some pictures of the Rusty Bolt and another building (I think) that sells souvenirs and groceries. I think that's the building pictured here.

Yikes! I forgot to get gas in William!

This damn-near ruins the whole thing. Here I am in the middle of the night, don’t know how far out of Seligman I am, and the gas light comes on. Since this is not my car, I have no idea how long I can drive without running out of gas. I’m going up and down some hills, so the light is on while I’m going up, off on the way down. I’m starting to wish that I’d done more paperwork and mileage checking. Nah, it’s sort of funny. Running out of gas would suck, but only because I’d feel so stupid. Fact is, I have clothes, cash, a phone, I’m on the interstate, and I’m not even very hungry. It could be a lot worse. I gotta figure you can go 50 miles once the light goes on solidly. That seems reasonable, and I figure it’s about 55 miles to Kingman. No towns that I know of between here and there, but there’s likely a truck stop. So, I could turn around at the next exit, but I don’t know how far I’ve come, and I’m can’t remember the last gas station - but it was some time ago.

Williams, AZ

I stopped for dinner at Rod’s Steak House. Rod’s is where I went with the family back in 1975 or so. I only recently learned that this is where my Dad always stopped on his way across country. Back in 1975, when we were driving through Williams, we had dinner there. The thing that stuck in my mind was that Dad always teased us (or, maybe just me…) about Rod’s. I have a vague memory of this night. What I remember most, is that someone (probably me) spilled a drink, or threw up or something. Anyway, the dinner was ruined, and from then on, Rod’s Steak House was synonymous with kids ruining dinner-out. Remind me not to make fun of my kids for the dumb stuff they do and spoil their childhood memories.

William is a cool little town. This is the place to spend the night. Next time, I won’t make that mistake.

Recession Babies

My dad was a Depression Baby. While I was born on the tail-end of the Baby Boom, Dad was born in 1930 – right at the start of the Great Depression. People who were kids in the 30s developed a certain perspective on spending and wastefulness. My parents carried those perspectives with them their whole lives. A lot of the clues to my parent's upbringing could be found in small gestures, like re-using paper towels, saving corks, and huge jars of nuts and bolts. There was another thing too... my parents were reluctant to spend money to fix non-essential features that broke on things. Like the channel knob on the TV set, or the antenna on the radio. If the back hatch on my dad's minivan wouldn’t stay up; Dad would have never dreamed of taking the car to the dealer and paying to have it fixed. Dad would have gone out to his work shed, found a length of 2x4, cut it to length, and tossed it in the back of the car so it would be there when he needed it. That’s the type of thinking that I think we need to get back to.

This weekend I replaced a set of struts in the car. Both my family and my neighbors expressed more than a little surprise that I would attempt my own automotive maintenance, particularly on something as seemingly (to them) as difficult as that. For the most part, many of my friends and associates come from a culture that sees nothing wasteful in paying someone to change a set of wiper blades or pump their gas. I’m all for supporting the local economy through spending money, but I need to save money as well. The decision to build/fix vs. buy/hire was probably much easier for me since I’m among the recently laid off. But I would argue that everyone should start considering taking steps like this... now. If you’re unemployed and living off your savings, you need to save your cash wherever you can. If you’re working, you might want to think about spending a weekend or evening saving some cash and adding it to your emergency fund. Plus you might be learning a skill that could help you save more if you find yourself out of work. I'm going to track the $ money I save on the car repairs and report back...

Meanwhile, I think I'll go out to Dad's shed and find those old black and white TVs with the vise-grip knob turners and take them to the e-waste center

The Wigwam

The cop who pulled me over in Holbrook gave me directions to the Wigwam Motel. It seems that I’d past the turn off. I also took some shots of the deserted Sun n’ Sand across from the wigwam.

Holbrook

I pulled into Holbrook just to see and photograph the Wigwam Motel. Just inside town, I saw this gas station and pulled over. What caught my eye are these pillars that seem to be painted to look like they were moved here from the nearby petrified forest. There was a man inside the fence who saw me stopping to take pictures of this abandoned gas station. I felt a bit like I was intruding since he kept looking my way with this angry scowl. As much as I wanted to go chat with him and find out the history of the place, I didn't get the sense that I was too welcome. I would love to hear the history of this place, and find pictures of the station at it's heyday. Since there's no signage it's hard to research from afar. Here's hoping to get some help from the web.

I'm getting the sense that there are some people on the road that feel they're being treated like animals in a zoo. Here I am, looking like a tourist with out of state plates, taking pictures of what looks like a failed business. So, I guess I can understand that.
Too much rubber-necking I guess because I was pulled over by a cop and warned… at least no budget-busting ticket for me. Hey, that might just be a first!

I should have thought to get the cop's picture.

Save Jobs, fire Kudlow

Once again old Larry Kudlow is eager to sacrifice jobs for bond holders, even if it means everyone loses. Isn't it odd how Kudlow never complains when average people lose money on dumb investments and scam artists, but he can't stand to see the little guy get a break. Now he's screaming about the bond holders of GM getting a worse deal than the unions. Hey Larry, why don't you and your rich friends go build cars instead of sit around and complaining if the auto workers have it so good? Oh, maybe you don't want to soil those expensive pinstripes....

Winslow

I didn’t see the standing on the corner park. I drove through town, saw a sign that directed me straight ahead, but I never saw it. I did see a sign that said ‘100% American Owned and Operated”.

What does that mean? There I am driving down Route 66 and I’ll come across a beat up motel with a sign that says ‘100% American Owned’. I don’t get it. Are there that many people who don’t want to stay at a motel if it’s owned by a foreigner that this makes good business sense? Is this just pure racism?

I would propose to the innkeeper that instead of competing with the ‘un-American’ hotel, why not join up and compete against the corporate chains that represent the real threat? ‘100% independent’ is a better way to get my business.

I didn’t take any pictures in Winslow.

Whiting Bros. Motel on Route 66

Grants, NM

I took some pictures of the Whiting Bros gas station outside of Grants. From the weed-filled parking lot you can see Interstate 40 pass by to the south. I’ve been thinking a lot about things that aren’t here anymore. What ever happened to Whiting Bros? For that matter, whatever happened to Stucky’s?

Gallup, New Mexico

I stopped in Gallup and took some pictures of the Hotel El Rancho. Again, here’s one that must have a million photos floating around the Internet. What I’d like to see is a complete catalog of every building still standing along all alignments of Route 66. There are a few motels here, like the Blue Spruce Lodge that have historic signs, and no doubt have interesting histories. I’m not sure I’ve ever been to Gallup before, and I didn’t know what I’d find.

By now I’m regretting that I didn’t spend the time and $ for the tour at the Elk City Museum. I could pull over at every town, and by now I’ve discovered that I should take the business 40, at least, where I can. But, the pressures of getting back to LA and jumping into an increasingly dismal job market are pulling me on.

Tucumcari

I rolled into town around dinner time, thinking that the lighting was just right for photos. I took some pictures at Del Rios and the Blue Swallow. Sadly, these were fuzzy and not well lit, but why worry? It’s not like the world needs yet another twilight photo of the Swallow. In fact, the neon was dark anyway.

Dinner/first quarter of Monday Night Football at the Pow Wow Motel/ Lizard Lounge. I'm starting to wonder about making this a family trip. It's just a few weeks before the election and it seems there's just a whole lotta one viewpoint around here. At least on the radio. I don't get how these markets in the middle of the square-state part of the US can support 2 or even 3 radio stations with the same host. For mile after mile, I'm forced to listen to this clown named Hannity rant about Obama. Just silliness, too and increasingly shrill. Glad I brought my iPod.