Out & About in Springfield, MA

Okay, here we go! I made a brief video at the bottom of Longhill Street in Springfield, MA, yesterday. As I recorded it, I was twice distracted by folks who wanted to get my attention. The first person was a woman asking for directions. She got quickly annoyed with me, however, as I took my time explaining various turns while the cars behind her got backed up. So she just drove off. The second person was some chick shouting out "Hey, a camera! Hi!" - and she waved merrily as the car she was in sped by me, which was funny. See the video, below. I also wandered around Springfield and snapped a few photos (scroll below the video).




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Earlier in the day, I strolled down Chestnut Street and stopped to take a couple of photos of the stairway opposite the Museum of Fine Arts. The stairs lead from Chestnut Street down to Dwight Street, and were apparently meant to be used by folks trekking from the Museums to the Civic Center.



Unfortunately, the area is currently gated and locked. The banners inside that I saw were old and torn. (Nostalgia trip... ~*~`~..*..... I remember using the stairs as a teenager back in the `70s to get to the Civic Center for rock concerts.... I don't remember much about the rock concerts.... perhaps because of the drugs and alcohol....~*~`~..*)




I don't know if the stairway/park is always locked up or not, but every time I walk by it, it is. Why is that? I don't know, but I suspect the usual suspects: vagrants and drug addicts.



The picture above shows the lower part of the stairway/park, next to Dwight Street. There's a drained pool there at the center-left, and also a statue of a naked chick to the right.

It's a beautiful little urban park, and a it's shame that it doesn't get any use these days.

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Meanwhile, on another part of my travels, I spied these pigeons (above) roosting between the steel beams of the railroad underpass at Dwight Street, just before coming out onto the Lyman Street intersection. There's a fairly thick layer of bird yucky all along the walls, there, and also covering the lights.



Yeah, I know. Woop-dee-doo.

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And finally, below are just a couple of extra photos I had left over from my daily walks. The first one is of an old abandoned car on the lot next to the closed-up "Louie's Auto Body" on East Columbus Avenue. The photo below that is of a vagrant's house parked in the doorway of a vacant building at the corner of Main Street and Adams Street. (Both photos are about a month or so old.)




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