Bite of the Living Dead
Rob and I often lament that the rest of the world doesn’t operate on our natural schedule - waking a few hours before dark and heading back to bed some time after dawn. In the Hollywood area, many industries have adapted to the unconventional schedules and privacy concerns of the Tinseltown elite by offering expanded hours.
One dentist has opted to alert her clientele to late night hours with a series of advertising posters designed by Adville to look like campy horror film posters.
The ad campaign announces the 6pm - 2am availability of Patty Ross, DDS, also known as La Contessa Nocturna and The Dentist of Darkness.
Now if only this would catch on, maybe we’d have somewhere to go at 2am on a Tuesday after getting our teeth cleaned and hitting the 7-11.
via Neatorama
The Modern Ruins on Bannerman’s Island
Bannerman’s Island is home to the most beautiful examples of modern architectural decay I have ever witnessed firsthand. Bannerman’s Castle was built by military surplus dealer Francis Bannerman as a storage warehouse in the early twentieth century. The words “Bannerman’s Island Arsenal” were proudly displayed in 4 1/2 foot lettering on the building’s facade, thus popularizing the name “Bannerman’s Island” for the tract of land more properly known as Pollepel Island.
The European-style fortress was Francis Bannerman’s hat tip to his Scottish heritage. He personally designed every turret and embellishment, every curved wall that became part of Bannerman’s Castle.
The island sits in the Hudson River, just a couple of miles south of the Beacon-Newburgh Bridge, and can be seen from the window of the train if you’re heading to Poughkeepsie. Bannerman’s Castle has remained vacant since the Bannerman family deeded the property to New York State in 1967.
The castle first sustained serious damage in 1920 when some of the stored arsenal exploded, sending portions of the building and the island itself cascading into the Hudson River. A mysterious fire laid waste to all of the island’s buildings in 1969, and with each passing year, nature reclaims more of Bannerman’s Island.
The state of New York still owns Bannerman’s Island, and the parks department has designated The Bannerman Castle Trust as the official “friends” organization. Members of the trust are attempting to secure the funding and resources required to preserve and stabilize the buildings on the island.
While the Internet is rife with images of Bannerman’s Castle, most pale in comparison to Shaun O’Boyles stunning and evocative photographic essay, Bannerman’s Island. The above images are selections from O’Boyle’s work, which you can support by purchasing a high quality, fine art print from his site. For more on the island, see:
Bannerman Island Arsenal (Hudson Valley Ruins)
Hudson Valley Ruins: Forgotten Landmarks of an American Landscape
Lost in New Jersey on Bannerman’s Castle
Bannerman Castle (NY) (Images of America)
Thanks to BLDGBLOG for recommending Shaun O’Boyle’s photography of modern ruins. Shaun’s photographs are, if possible, even more memorable than the castle itself.
Creepy Abandoned Chi-Chi’s
Behold, the crumbling turquoise and salmon stucco:
A nasty hepatitis A outbreak in 2003 was the beginning of the end for the Chi-Chi’s chain - the last U.S. restaurant closed its faux Southwestern doors in 2004.
But the Chi-Chi’s legacy lives on in the abandoned cantinas that remain in dozens of mall parking lots across America, and the Creepy, Abandoned Chi-Chi’s blog is there to document each and every fading hot sauce mural and squatter’s pallet. Many of the restaurants are like eerie Tex Mex ghost towns, the strands of tacky colored lights still hanging forlornly from the ceiling, begging for suburban explorers to stake their claim.
via Slashfood
The Castle Halloween Museum
With Halloween behind us, it’s time to start conjuring up activities to help stave off the inevitable Christmas nonsense that starts earlier and earlier each year. A trip to The Castle Halloween, perhaps?
Located in Benwood, West Virginia, The Castle Halloween Museum is a year-round ode to all things Halloween. But this is no haunted house - The Castle Halloween is a thoughtfully curated “archaeology of Halloween and its periphery in facts, fiction, and fantasy.”
The scope of the collection is 1860 to the present, and the content ranges from antique postcards and signs, to folk art and movie collectibles. There are more than 15,000 individual Halloween artifacts in the Museum.
photo credit: Akron Beacon Journal
Check out the virtual tour on The Castle Halloween Web site for more photos of the collection.
Castle Halloween is run by Pamela Apkarian-Russell, the official Halloween Queen®. (Yes, she trademarked the moniker in 2003. Note to self: register a trademark that makes me queen of something.) When she’s not writing books