05 July, 2019

Summertime Perambulations: Sex and Chocolate

Previous perambulation

In our last exciting episode we left off as I was exiting Tangent after having had a spot of lunch and a most salutary gruit. It didn't take long for another ghost sign to come into view. All of ten feet or so.

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The front of the building also has a ghost sign – "STORAGE" – but I neglected to take a photo.

Strolling down East Washington I couldn't help but be somewhat amazed at all the tall buildings. Well, tall for Madison. This despite riding a bus past the Constellation, the Galaxie, the Sparx, etc. every weekday to and from work. While I perceive them as normal parts of the streetscape, I suppose, these "skyscrapers" are still new to me having gotten used to a street without them for so long. They get 10 out of 10 points for ridding us of empty lots but minus several million for style.

At Paterson Street I find myself in front of the old Gardner's Bakery with some of a ghost sign visible from down below.

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Just across Paterson in front of the still shiny new Hotel Indigo is another decorated utility box. I find this one much more pleasing than the faux fabric of the box at Winnebago Street and Riverside Drive.

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On a building on the 1000 block of East Wash I spied some metallic star hoolies.

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I had noticed similar things a couple blocks up on the Gisholt building during a previous walk.

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Anyone care to take a guess as to what they were for? Mounting points for awnings or some such things, perhaps? I cannot find any historic photographs showing any awnings, however, nor anything hanging off the facade.

Across the street is a harbinger of things to come.

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This nice little pocket of greenspace will soon be no more as an 11-storey mixed use building is soon to be erected. And behind it will be the Madison Youth Arts Center.

Continuing my trek, I walked by the city building where fire trucks are kept in working order.

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But now that the city has a fleet services building on the way, I suppose this one will be sold and developed into yet another mixed-use affair.

By this point I needed chocolate. But before I would be able to fulfill that desire, I had to take a photo of some locally-sourced graffiti lovingly spray painted in honor of one of the best rock bands Madison has ever produced. This has sadly been painted over since.

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Just listen to the glorious "King of Sex". Listen!

Crossing the river I came to my next destination: CocoVaa. The proprietor is my wife's cousin and she makes sinfully tasty chocolates.

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Vata won some fancy schmancy award last year and she most certainly deserved it. Her chocolates not only taste magnificent they also look like works of art. Now if I could only get a steep family discount.

I threw the bonbons into my backpack but a pain au chocolat was quickly gobbled down as traveled the riverside east to Lake Monona.

To the shores of Monona Lake

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