What Have We Done

 

A Typical Baltimore Street Scene

Nothing good, American cities didn't used to be the urban hellhole wastelands they've become. But maybe you doubt me and think "it's always been this way." No, it hasn't, here's a few before and afters:

Good work, Kansas City!

And well done, Council Bluffs. Now everything's better.

Yes indeed, Birmingham, you score high.

Yet more awesomeness from Kansas City.

And McKeesport's made some startling improvements! NICE.

But why, Milwaukee, live in a city when you can live on a road?

But I won't go on. Look up pretty much any US city, do a before and after search and you'll find they've been gutted and wrecked. And the point is this, we don't have to live this way and we shouldn't. Our cities and towns should be beautiful and they're not. Problem. Solution?

Kick out the degenerate nihilists who've captured our schools and teach that some excrescence by Damien Hirst's just as good as a Rembrandt. In other words, reclaim objective aesthetic value, and we don't have to reinvent the wheel. Form, proportion and all of that have been worked out long ago, return to this.

Just Look How This City Was Improved

Likewise, remembering the simple maxim that roads are for travel, cities are for living, plan accordingly. For example, Waxahachie has a pleasant, enjoyable center, such as it is for a small town. Why? Because the City Fathers in their wisdom rerouted industrial traffic out of down town and, lo and behold, this now flourishes.

Again, back in the '70s, the urban planning genius patrol in charge of Calgary, Alberta, were fixing to drive a highway along the Bow river through Inglewood. They were stopped, and Inglewood's now a congenial place to stroll around, albeit hideously overpriced thanks to Justine Trudeau.

Random Educational Meme

So, let's take our towns and cities back and make them beautiful again. We should not have to live surrounded by the brutal ugliness of Hell, and you'll note: The Left, in its rage against bourgeois oppression tore down its architecture, and the result? Now only the rich can live where everyone else once dwelt. There's a moral and an axiom there, if you care to draw it.

Architecturally Yours,

LSP

In Cars

 

Some days are all about gun, rod and church, others are about cars and that's exactly what went down today. The mission was simple, elegant even in its simplicity. Get a '71 El Camino and a '40s Ford Roadster hot rod out the door of the shop and into a hauler.

Great plan, but it fell apart on contact. The roadster wouldn't start for love or money so we pushed it out of the barn to make room for the Elkie, maybe that'd start and drive straight on through to the hauler and Californian Valhalla. No. It didn't.

Fire the Batteries

Go figure, the battery was dead, so we pumped it up via my rig and a neighbor's heavy duty cables. Throaty SS Chevy growl, the beast was in play and we let it idle. Roadster? After messing with carbs and battery it fired up like the show car it is. Drive that bad boy right up in the hauler.

The Elkie went next and got up to the ramps, and we left it growling at the foot of trailer triumph. Just look at those chrome exhausts and fat back tires standing on the runway waiting for takeoff. Great result. Then it stopped and died. Awful, hideous result.

Drive 'er up!

Maybe the fuel gauge wasn't working and the thing'd run out of gas. Someone went to get more and we refilled the tank. Still no result. Dam. The vehicle had to get on the hauler today and it wasn't running, utter disaster. What to do? 

Long, very long story short, it looked like the coil was busted, power in, no power out. This left us with one option, ratchet, no fooling the thing up into the hauler, which is what we did. A beast, but we got it loaded and off on its way California, harming no one, I think.

Elkie

And that was that. The hauler's long suffering driver was from Kazakhstan, curiously. "Where are you from?" he asked, "From England," I replied, ratcheted out. "Ah! Football! Which team you support?" Good question and I replied "Millwall," and he grinned from ear to ear, "Yes! Much fight! F*ck you Westham!" No kidding, and I grinned back. 

"In Kazakhstan I drink pints, many pints, and watch football, and we fight. Manchester United hates Liverpool!" He even showed me his Man U tattoo, right there on his arm, under the big sky of Texas, "People here, they think I am Korean, but I am from the Caspian Sea."

SS Runs Outta Gas

Respect. Fella sleeps out of his dually until he has the money to get his wife and two children to the land of what used to be the home of the free and the brave. Good luck to him.

Mission Accomplished

More on vehicular action as it plays out. God bless you all,

LSP