Wednesday, September 1, 2010

random photo time!

I often take photos with my iPhone, but they never manage to make it to my computer. Here's some photos I've taken over the past few months:


Arts Alley Rendering
A rendering (ca. 2002) of Arts Alley, one of a series of recently-completed alleys in South Silver Spring that doesn't look as busy in real life.


Proposed Building in Downtown Silver Spring, 1980's
Drawing of a proposed building in downtown Silver Spring from the 1980's. I'm not sure where this building was supposed to go. I found this in the Department of Housing and Community Affairs, two floors down from my old job at the County Council.


Student Town Project, Park and Planning
At Park and Planning a few months ago, students from a local school were invited to make a model of their ideal city. I don't know any of the details about it, but I love seeing projects like this.


Hilton Ga_den _nn
Looks like the Hilton Garden Inn in Calverton got punked by that storm late last month.


Pop's Tattoo, Wheaton Plaza
There's a tattoo parlor in Westfield Wheaton Wheaton Plaza now, in the wing where Hecht's once was - and where Costco will soon open, though I wonder if Westfield's got a similar deal to open a Pop's Tattoo in all of their malls. Funny how it looks (or at least reminds me of) Hot Topic from the outside. There's also a gold-buying store in the mall now, if you're into that.


Suburban Stoop, King of Prussia Mall
Like all suburban malls, Wheaton Plaza lays awake in bed at night and dreams of being like King of Prussia Mall outside of Philadelphia, the largest mall on the East Coast. (At 2.8 million square feet, it's literally twice the size of Wheaton.) King of Prussia's probably the most diverse place in the Philadelphia area, because everybody likes to shop and they all come here.

It's funny to notice how quickly people adapt to urban habits when inside a [semi-]public space. Here, you can see people sitting on the stoop outside of Hollister (you'll have to squint a little). Imagine what they'd do with an outdoor stoop.

5 comments:

Cyndy said...

That's a nice assortment of pictures!

Sligo said...

I can tell you exactly what the second drawing is of. It's apparently a re-use of what was once the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab, which stood where the Lee Building is now.

Unknown said...

I'm so happy Wheaton Mall isn't anything like KoP. Battling traffic up the Schuylkill coming from Center City was such a drag-- then once you managed to get off the highway it was a multilane, congested strip-mall-and-big-box-store clusterf. It's a fair trade-off, IMO.

WashingtonGardener said...

The JH Physics Lab looks like the warehouse in Xanadu that they converted to the roller rink disco club - too bad it no longer exists... we could REALLY use that in downtownSS right now.

Anton Crowley said...

gotta give props to Pops tattoo. The wife and i both have had ink done their recently. Clean, professional, friendly, just about the exact opposite of many tattoo places these days. I'd take them over your average 20 something mall booth piercer any day!