Every winter, sometime after the holidays, when it’s too cold outside my dad will haul out the Atari 2600 console in an effort to counter “cabin fever”. While visiting one recent day I noticed the game on the coffee table. I plugged in Asteroids and away I went to a “Retro Galaxy”!!

Well, it took a little time to get the hang of it again, but I was soon blasting my way through crudely drawn space boulders, staring eye to eye with murderous martians, and stockpiling extra “lives”. A fun, quick little space blast from the past! Frogger, Pac-Man, Space Invaders, etc.

I’ve played (briefly) a couple of newer games that the younger generation are playing now, and I did enjoy the complexity and realism of the games. But while playing an Air – Sea battle of the old Atari game Combat, today, it struck me how I was still able to get into it considering the simplicity of it. Was it just nostalgia, or was my imagination kicking in, or was it my competitiveness? Or maybe all of the above.

I purchased a book recently that satisfies my fascination with “then & now” photos. It is doubly satisfying because the photos are from Buster Keaton films. Harold Lloyd, Laurel & Hardy, & Buster Keaton are my favorites from the silent era. The book I refer to is Silent Echoes by John Bengston. It’s a remarkable collection of detective work, discovering movie locations in and around Los Angeles. And it also gives us some insight of the making of some of Keaton’s classic films. It was published in 2000 so I guess that instead of “now & then” the comparison is more like “not too long ago & a longer time ago”. More recently Bengtson released a similar book based on Chaplin films called Silent Traces.

The photo on top is a scene from Keaton’s “The Navigator”. The photo below was taken by the author ca. 1999 on Divisadero looking north from Pacific to Broadway. He states that it was an easy location to find just by driving around Pacific Heights because it was at the crest of a hill.

The book is filled with a ton of these fun photo comparisons!

Continuing the vacation/highway theme I started with the Stuckey’s memories, I just found these pictures of motel signs. Why do I love these signs? Can someone explain? Could it be the pleasant childhood memories? The pleasing shapes, the creativity? All of the above?

The town in which I grew up did not have many motels so when I did see these things it usually meant we were vacationing, and that’s a good thing! Funny how I seem to remember my parents always complaining about something in these places like the air conditioning not working, or the rug was too dirty, or the bed’s too hard. But that stuff mattered little to me as I was excited about the adventure of living in a new “house” for a night — exploring the nuances and idiosyncrasies of the room. Hey, I was already in a good mood from not having any school work or chores to do!!

If anyone can point out some more sites with motel signs please list them here.