YeLPar

So it's a casual Saturday afternoon in Nevada in 1951, you've just had lunch, maybe you chatted about those damn commies and the threat they posed to your freedoms. Dads on the patio reading the newspaper for the second time today, mums doing the dishes and the kids are playing in the yard. Or maybe you're having a swim at the motel pool, or a gamble in Las Vegas or maybe you're hanging out with the neighbours after a street BBQ. Then you all stop, you stop and look up, you're all looking for the same thing - a flash and a boom and then a big mushroom cloud. Yep, welcome to life in the 1950s, where you could watch a nuclear bomb being detonated from your living room. I don't think it gets much more bizarre than that...

OLD PERTH # 12

Some of the pubs and hotels that used to dot Perth, some are still here in a renewed form but most are gone forever (I think I have all locations correct?!) oh and I think you'll soon get a bit sad like I am that these were all demolished once you click the links and see what replaced them..... The Adelphi Hotel, cnr Mill and St Georges Tce. Demolished to build this . The Palace Hotel, St Georges Tce. Only the facade remains with the hideous Bankwest tower climbing out of its back rooms. I'm not a big fan of facadism , but I guess they at least left something The Melbourne Hotel, Milligan and Hay st. Now known as The Old Melbourne Hotel, thankfully restored and still operating Hotel Australia, was next door to the old Boans building in Murray st. Demolished to build the Myer Building The Great Western, still there, you know it as the Brass Monkey The Bohemia Hotel, now part of the Wentworth Hotel on Murray and William The George Hotel, Murray and George st, West Perth, demol...

OLD PERTH # 6

A Cautionary Tale Once upon a time there was a city called Perth, it was the remotest city in the whole wide wide world and in this city there were a group of old buildings that were a sight to behold. People used to get all dressed up and go into these buildings where they would laugh and smile and enjoy a thing called live theatre. It made people very happy and the city was very content. One of these theatres was called the Ambassadors Theatre and it was on Hay St. The Ambassadors Theatre Ambassadors Theatre on Hay st Ambassadors Theatre Interior Slowly but surely live theatre had to compete with something new, it was called a movie, people loved movies. Then one day an evil developer came into the city telling everyone of this wonderful new thing called the Cinema Complex. It was all the rage in a far away land of bountiful opportunity, that people admired it and wanted to be just like it, it was called America. At these Cinema Complexes you could watch a numb...

LET ME EDUCATE YOU IN THE ART OF COOKING FLAMINGOS

I guarantee nobody will ever find my blog by googling the above sentence. So anyways I was eating Peking duck for dinner the other night and (oh by the way this is gonna be a long train of thought post which should end with a story about an ancient Roman gourmet and a restaurant I once owned) I was contemplating how duck has become so popular over the past years. It used to only be chicken but these days people are just as cool eating the dark bird. Personally I love duck, so many ways to cook it, so good. So I started to wonder what would be the next big thing in "birds for dinner", as you do. It was then that I remembered a recipe I once saw for cooking Flamingo - :pause: - yeah I said Flamingo, I know you're probably screwing your nose up right now but when did we start being so fussy with the animals we eat? People in the past have eaten swans, ostrich, cranes and even peacocks. Okay I'm probably just talking about ancient Romans and the like here but eat them ...

LOOK AROUND, THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE IS ALREADY UPON US

Twenty five cents for brains is pretty cheap, unless of course you're a zombie. Not that zombies may not have any money, they just lack the coherence to count the coin, plus if they can't turn door handles then I'm fairly certain they lack the dexterity to pull coins out of the coin pocket on their jeans. Don't think they can drive either so the above is fairly useless to them. Plus they're zombies for chrisaskes, they will look to eat your brains for free. " But there's no such thing as a zombie Stu " I hear you say, " I beg to differ " I respond Let us assess the current state of affairs by doing a simple google search for recent zombie like attacks, prepare to become very worried... May 27th, 2012 - Man eating victims face shot dead by police. June 6th, 2012 - Miami man tries to bite police officer and smashes head against wall . June 21st, 2012 - Man bites off chunk of mans arm. June 38th, 2012 - Man bites wife's...

POMPEII

Time for some more Italy pics, this time Pompeii. It was one of the main reasons for my trip this time round. I'd never been and I regretted missing it last time. I took maybe 100 pics, so hard to choose which ones to put here. If you want you can scroll through them all here . I think these capture the highlights though, nah there's heaps more, scroll away This is one of the main streets of Pompeii and that's Mt Vesuvius in the back ground Like any great Roman city it had an arena, you can't help but stop for a moment and think about all the death, all the exhilaration, all the sweat, lust and anger that once filled this space. Your mind drifts to all of this and yet you still can't really comprehend any of it. One of the coolest things was seeing the frescoes on the walls of the houses, still fairly vibrant and colourful in all of their gaudiness. Loved it These where something I'd heard about many times, archaeologists discovered cavities in the metres o...

PERTH BEER FESTIVAL

AKA Perth You Kinda Suck Festival Perth you do sometimes kinda suck. You would think that a city in Australia, a beer drinking powerhouse, would be able to organise a beer festival and do it well. You would wouldn't you? Yeah you would. But no. $20 a ticket, which mind you gives you nothing more than admission, sure there's a few live bands but no one to write home about. That's the first atrocity but we were willing to get past that, it's Perth and not much happens here so you have to support stuff like this, but to arrive and then see this... Seriously?!! We have to line up for almost an hour to get in? No fucking way. Why is there only 2 small gates in and those at the same entrance? Why are you searching everyones' bags? I mean it's a fucking beer festival, no body is going to pay you a $20 entrance fee and then sneak their own beer in. The whole point of the exercise is that we want to sample the exciting exotic beers you have on offer, you do...

OLD PERTH # 15

Perth Airport These arrived in my email inbox this afternoon, so pumped to get them. Only a few days ago I was thinking about the old Perth airport and in particular that wall of clocks which had a map of the world and a clock over every major city. As kids we used to rush up and see what time it was right now in New York and London. Wasn't technology awesome? I can barely remember the airport as I think it was redone before I even became a teenager, although parts of it remained until at least the 90's I think. But these pics have jogged a few memories, esp the pond with the swans... Main entrance Interior garden with pond and viewing deck Just wander up to the edge of the runway and greet your guests another shot of that pond and the black swans, no doubt with clipped wings so the tourists got to see them These next two show the old main lounge and I really remember this bit, I always thought it was very cosmopolitan. Mainly because on t...

YE OLDE BEAUFORT ST

I do loves me a little then and now action...

ANGKOR WAT 1906

Some quite brilliant shots of Angkor Wat from 1906, you can also play spot the stylish Pith Helmet. All photos via The Memory of the Netherlands

Powered by Blogger