Brilliant Corners

I was working with Google Maps for something I’m dealing with for work and thought I’d take a look and see if the “Street View” vans (or cars, or whatever they use) had been down the street we used to live on in Dallas. little StreetView trip to our old house–our first house–in Dallas. They have:

It’s odd looking at the house from this perspective. First of all, it’s no longer our house. Secondly, the current owner has been adding all kinds of changes to the front yard. It looks like he’s adding some big flower beds or something there. From the Street View, they’re still dirt so who knows what the final result will be. I’m sure he had a blast going to the Dallas Preservation Society meetings to get those changes approved. We had to go several times ourselves: first time was to let us remodel the inside, one time to get the fences approved, another time to let us tear down the old garage, and another time to get the “O.K.” to have a new front porch poured. It was a hassle of paperwork and useless meetings, but in the end we didn’t really have many problems.

Next time we’re in Dallas we’ll have to drive by and see what went into the new flowerbeds, since I doubt Google will update the views anytime soon. I don’t really have that strong of an attachment to the house anymore, but it is a strange experience seeing it from the angle of ex-owner, and seeing the changes that have happened since we sold it.

And as long as he keeps the trees that we planted, one after each child was born, then I’ll look on the changes with approval. Otherwise, he’ll need a talking to.

manhattan: tony bones show
Originally uploaded by Polish Sausage Queen.

Well, what do you know. The local graffiti artist that I’ve come to know as “soler” and “soyler” also has another name: Tony Bones. I came across the photo above in one of my Flickr friend’s photostream. Apparently, she attended an art show featuring the non-graffiti art of Tony Bones/soler/soyler. Here are some other shots that “Polish Sausage Queen” took at the show.

Here are a few other links I’ve now dug up relating to this artist:

• soler on dallaspolice.com
  
• Tony Bone’s personal homepage?
  
• Tony Bones at Dallas Arts Revue

I love his little drawings all around Dallas, and it’s certainly interesting to see that there’s more behind this graffiti than I originally thought.

KERA’s Glenn Mitchell passes away over the weekend. This is sad news indeed. I’ve loved his show on KERA since day one. He’s a great interviewer and his “Everything you wanted to know” Friday shows were my favorite. R.I.P. Glenn.

soyler/soler back in town?
Originally uploaded by billturner.

Here’s a flickr post, just to see how it works.

Cross your fingers.