Signs in Long Beach + Bridges in San Pedro

Check out this old school sign for Don the Beachcomber...

This was one of those kitschy tiki places...one where you could probably get a stiff tropical drink. It will have to be next time...

Chinatown by way of Hi-Fi

Leaving Silver Lake...

we headed over to Chinatown...

and passed through Hi-Fi..

Scenes from Chinatown, Glendale and Burbank

With lunch from Nick's Cafe behind us...

We made our way over to our hotel by way of Chinatown...

S3 Coffee fail, so Plan B was take the long way to Subterranean Coffee Lounge

 I felt like a doofus...

Assuming that S3 Coffee was open on Sundays for some reason. I could have checked the four letter site and gotten my answer right then and there, but no.

The dark interior told us the same.  We drove all the way out here and our original plan for coffee was dashed, But not to worry since Plan B was up my sleeve...

The end of an era! New sign for KD's Donuts

It's the end of an era for an infamous South Bay donut shop sign.

From this...

(October 2010) - it had been like this for YEARS I tell you.

which morphed into..

Star Dust sign is gone

Gone is this...

the iconic missing letters sign for Imperial Beach donut institution, Star Dust...

Snapshots from Morro Bay's main drag plus Morro Rock

As we walked down Embarcadero St. in Morro Bay, I couldn't help but think of how old some of these places were...

You could tell that the fonts were on the 'groovy side'...

Random stuff from the past few months

Another compendium of odds and ends from the past couple of months...

It took me about a year to finish the first damn book. I think I'm doing better with the second one, "Clash of Kings". Just a few more chapter to go then I can start on the third book and be caught up with the seasons for HBO's "Game of Thrones"!

I must confess, I "cheated" and read ahead on certain chapters in Book 3. Let's put it this way...for Season 3 and Book 3, Ygritte is TOTALLY wrong when she says, "You know nothing Jon Snow...."!

Can you spot the difference?

Before:

(photo circa December 2010 and current up to maybe one month ago or even less)

After:

(photo taken today!)

SOFA KING HILARIOUS!

For those of you that don't know where this is, it's the corner of Third and Palomar in the western side of Chula Vista.

It was only a matter of time before someone messed with the sign and took off the "K"!

It's the end of an era...

Odds 'n endz

Just clearing out my memory card now...

Some Filipino snacks from Seafood City.

I call the Boy Bawang cornick (it's like corn nuts but smaller) Filipino breath freshener. The garlic flavor which I realized is not pictured here...D'oh!

Around Oakland again...

After our awesome lunch at Uncle Dougie's Italian Heroes downtown, we went back to the Piedmont area. This was the same neighborhood that had Fenton's and other cute shops. We wanted to get dessert but weren't sure what was around there...

We wanted ice cream...

As seen in Little Saigon...

We interrupt the Road Trip posts with these photos snapped in Garden Grove (part of Little Saigon). These were taken yesterday on our way to lunch at Brodard Chateau (post will be forthcoming).

Here's an interestingly named business on the corner of Beach Blvd and Bolsa Ave.

How do they answer the phone? I wonder if they get crank callers?

Driving Around Manitoulin Island...

The Canada posts are back! Continuing Day 6 in Canada...but day 2 on Manitoulin Island.

We thought we would take a quick drive in the morning to check out a few museums...

C lives in the town of Tehkummah. She and her husband and toddler daughter live on their cattle farm that has over 700 acres.  Her mother in law lives on the farm next door and her parents live up the road from them. The island really has that small town feel where everyone knows each other.  That morning it was overcast and a bit chilly.

We saw several of these along the highway. I need to ask C's husband again what these conical structres are are but I believe they store salt.

Ooh, a real barn! There's tons of barns out here. Lots of greenery. It's so quiet too. The only noise you hear are occasional cars. We never saw so much unspoiled land before. It was really pretty seeing all the fields.

Mindemoya is a small township in central Manitoulin Island. According their 2006 census, they had about 1,944 people living there. The high school I work at has 2300 students. Wut?

Here's TC in the middle of the road. There were hardly any cars that we passed up that morning. She was laughing as I took this shot.

Farquhar's is their locally made ice cream. It is not sold anywhere else. They also produce milk and butter. When I tried looking it up online, it turns out that their creamery shut down in 2007 but they still produce ice cream and other products using another dairy's equipment.

That summer we were there was election year. The Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) is the name used in Canada to describe the combination of the federal Goods and Service Tax (GST) and the regional Provincial Sales Tax (PST) into a single value added sales tax.  I'm not sure if it passed or not. But man, they have taxes up the @$$ here!

A shrine that we passed up...Looks like the Virgin Mary. I think this was near a Catholic Church.

Next up, the Ojibwe Cultural Foundation

El Cajon Blvd Street Banners

Cool street banners seen last week during our foray into El Cajon.  Love it! There were three kinds of scary things...



We took the "scenic" route from the Himalayan restaurant (see that post here) to get to Adams Avenue. A few days ago, there was a huge festival during the weekend so me and my GF's weren't able to check out Mariposa after our dinner at Tapas Picasso...

On our way to Mariposa Ice Cream!