Where are you from originally?

I'm from London, OH. I grew up in a borough in the south west of the city, in streets like these:

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/pr...D8zrz_gN9hvh4Q...https://static.homesandproperty.co.u...niel-lynch.jpg

London is built on clay, and with clay (bricks). You have to travel about 25 miles out of the city if you want to see an outcrop of rock or a farm animal, but the city has some nice parks, and of course a river:-

https://photos2.spareroom.co.uk/imag...4/23441683.jpg
This photo is taken at about mid-tide: the river will rise about 5 feet and cover the concrete ramp. Alternatively, it might drop 5 feet and expose a band of mud and gravel three or four times wider than in the pic. As the mud gets sloppier, walking to the water's edge at low-tide is a struggle between curiosity and mild disgust.
And notice the airplane? The flight path to Heathrow Airport follows the river for safety reasons, though no pilot has ever made an emergency landing in the Thames afaik. If you stand on a London bridge, there's always a plane in the sky: as one disappears to the west, the next one rolls in from the east. (Pre-covid data :( )
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And how about you, OH? I get the impression that if you're not actually from Florida, you at least live in the south east. Am I right?

I grew up in Atlanta - officially within the city limits but in a very white and financially privileged suburb. It looked like this https://i.postimg.cc/C1HxycJ6/399940...94-E18-DDD.jpg

I was fortunate to go to probably the best public high school in the city and it wasn’t all white as people might expect. It was right on the nose 49% black due to busing. The law allowed for non-whites to make up to 49% of the school and no more. The black students were picked through academic achievement so the black kids earned their way there but I was there by default by districting. White or black, graduating seniors went on to college at over 99% and drop outs were unheard of. I took advantage of that and went to a good college out west. Back then working your way through college was a real thing and I hated my parents more than working so that’s what I did. I stayed out of the south for a good two decades then I made the worst decision of my life and moved to Florida.

How did you end up in Mexico and do you figure on staying there?

That's interesting, OH . Thanks for sharing some background info.I'm sure I've seen that house a million times in the movies, most recently in Stranger Things, with a newspaper boy cycling past in the morning. Strange to think of you in that innocent setting, if I may say so. ;)
Why was moving to Florida such a bad move?

I sent you a PM with an answer that is perhaps more than you bargained for.
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Three big pics, because, unlike many modern buildings, each elevation is interesting:



At first I reacted with the horror of an outraged purist, but now the original shock is over, I rather like it.

https://www.e-architect.co.uk/images...ui_r271011.jpg

Palace of the Parliament of Romania

Blood and coffins are heavy I guess.

That's a beautiful photo of an extraordinary building OH.

In fact, MicShazam and me talked about it some time ago. Surely, before you posted, you read the previous 376 posts in this thread ? :confused:

I don’t have my source at the ready but I remember reading or hearing the stat that it’s 70% empty and I know that’s sometimes cited against Romania’s abandonment of communism. And in Ceausescu’s defense it was completed years after his assassination execution murder. I know that most people will think it’s ridiculous to believe it would double as a homeless shelter under Ceausescu’s form of communism but he’s a very enigmatic historic figure.

“ We will resort to Capitalism when pigs fly. Don't be quick to applaud... modern genetics have made considerable progress” -Nicolae Ceausescu

That’s a real quote.

This may not fit perfectly in the thread, but I thought it to be close enough - there's definitely architecture in the video.

Wuppertal is a city in Germany that is well known for its suspension monorail, called the Schwebebahn. It was built in 1901. In 1902, someone recorded footage of their monorail trip on 70mm film. Of course, it was originally in black and white. The film was made public by the Museum of Modern Art recently, and someone took it upon themselves to scale it to 4k, stabilize it at 60fps, and add colorization to it. Check it out, really cool stuff.



Hard to believe the film was recorded 118 years ago. Almost seems like a different world. To put it in perspective, this monorail was built 30 years after the carbon arc light was invented. 30 years after the first practical electrical light, Germany was building flying trains (in an age without computers, laser-measurements, and drones to scout terrain). Just incredible.

For comparative purposes, here's a side-by-side video where you can see the footage above, compared with what taking a trip around on the same monorail looks like today

Wow, incredible stuff. That definitely fits in here. Some solid structural engineering to say the least. Looking at how they tied those footings into the buildings and the use of webbed beams I thought how amazing that it's all still there, then I checked the wiki and it looks like they've done some major reconstruction in the early 00's.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuppertal_Schwebebahn