Talk Elections

Today at the parking lot of the Vögele clothing store in Zell am See (Austria), where I bought some new clothes and talked a bit with the hot sales chicks ... ;)

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Deichmann (the green shop with the "D") is a shoe store.

DM is a drugstore chain.

My current or my home?

I was hoping to see more come out of this thread, so I guess I'll have to post myself.

The first picture is from the upstairs window of my suburban townhouse.

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The second picture is looking out my ground floor sliding glass door.  Behind my fourplex sits a ravine, and beyond that is an apartment complex.

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I'll start with the more picturesque bits.  Here's the older part of the neighborhood, about half a mile west of my house:

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This, I believe, is the oldest structure within a one-mile radius of my house, built around 1810.  They're having one of those annoying "Pennsylvania Dutch" festivals in front of it:

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Most of the neighborhood isn't as festive.  Here's my street.  BRTD's worst nightmare, I'd presume.  This Google picture is probably 3 or 4 years old.  There are actually shade trees by now:

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The older part of your neighborhood kind of looks like were my Aunt lives over in Pittston, PA.

Here's the view from my bedroom window this winter.

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The above picture is when the duck was in town. The second picture is my neighborhood, Oakland.

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:'( :'( :'( :'(

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This is Newkirk Plaza, just a little bit north of me.  Newkirk Plaza is a unique and wonderful place- an open-air pedestrian mall that was built on top of a train station all the way back in 1907, back when the train, which runs in an open cut, was the Brighton Beach line to Coney Island (now it's the B and Q to Coney Island).  They spruced it up about five years ago (it used to be kind of run down for awhile), and now it's quite nice but it's worth noting that the stores there are really not fancy and upscale at all.  If you want anything fancy you go one stop north to Cortelyou Ave., which has a couple blocks of that sort of stuff.  I don't think there's another station in the entire city with this sort of plaza setup, which is a shame.

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Coney Island Avenue is a major arterial just to my west.  It's the center of Little Pakistan, a large immigrant community of-you guessed it- Pakistanis.

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We also have leafy tree-lined streets with Victorian houses on 'em.  Some of which have gotten historic neighborhood designations (a development I'm honestly kind of ambivalent about)  Yes, in the middle of Brooklyn, side-by-side with apartments and subways.  This is what suburbs should be like. :P

No, I do not live in one of these houses.  Though some of them have been subdivided and are rented out by the floor.

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Go over to the east of me and you'll hit Brooklyn College, as well as the well-named "Hot Spot Tot Lot", a pocket playground decorated with parrots in tribute to the flock of green parrots that live there (escaped pets, presumably, but they've been around for years).  They hide in the athletic field lights when things get cold.

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This real estate office in the middle of the woods, circa 1906...

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is now my subway station.  (This is an old picture; they've added some rocking chairs that don't rock as an art installation since then.  But this picture gets the surroundings better.)

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To be honest, I don't venture south all that much.  There's a little-used freight line that people sometimes talk about converting to an outer-borough light rail option... and then it's mostly various flavors of Orthodox Jews as far as the eye can see.  Midwood is not as monolithic as Borough Park, though.

Currently:

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Taken last summer.

I never knew Albany was so picturesque, Averroes.

That's my home, a small village of 2'000, called Rietz:

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That's about the view I have from my house. Rietz is no entire village, but actually there are just some groups of houses that make up Rietz. That one on the picture is one down in the valley; I live in another one more uphill.

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That's the view you have from the state road down in the valley to the main parts of Rietz.

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That almost looks like the valley when you drive from Saalfelden to Lofer (especially pic 1) ... ;)

Since I live in the middle of the old town that's my immediate neighbourhood

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And since this is the Atlas Forum I can throw in this tidbit as well:

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On the plus side it's a beautiful place to live and almost everything I need is within walking distance. There are many bars, cafés, restaurants, cinemas etc. in this area so there is always something to do if you want to go out.

On the negative side, there are many bars, cafés, restaurants, cinemas etc. so it can be very noisy at weekends. Also, the lane where I live is in the area of one of the officially recognized prostitution zones, and some of the sex workers can be quite aggressive in the way they offer their services.

But all in all I enjoy living here and plan on staying for a while.

Austria looks so beautiful!

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Scotland really does have marvelous architecture. Pity it does not make up for its suck climate, but I digress.

Here's the view from the top of a mountain near my house. Another winter shot.

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This is Boone, NC, my hometown. It's okay- it manages to be a outpost of leftism in a very conservative area, and it's actually pretty walkable, with the exception of some rural/semi suburban areas on the fringe of the city (although they've tried to improve by adding bike lanes, sidewalks, etc.).

Of course, there are issues- it has fairly expensive housing market, and the town has very bad relations with the more conservative hinterland, which leads to very hostile local politics, often intertwined deeply with conflicts over culture-war type issues( there was a recent controversy over book banning, which I was involved in) and development  (the rural areas are  very strongly opposed to zoning and want development over environmental preservation (often creating eyesores, as such policies have been implemented in nearby counties; look up Sugar Mountain in Avery County sometime)). There is comparatively little focus on economic development or poverty reduction, despite high poverty rates.

The strong polarization between Boone and the rest of Watauga County has led to a great deal of conservative dislike of their county seat. The Local Board of Elections recently tried to combine Boone's 3 precincts into one (http://www2.wataugademocrat.com/News/story/Elections-board-actions-draw-criticism-id-012269), which thankfully fell through, and the GOP-controlled County Commission recently switched to a tax-distribution system (http://www2.wataugademocrat.com/News/story/Commissioners-vote-down-tax-distribution-request-id-014749) designed to punish Boone for their zoning regulations, as well as give more money to rural pubbie voting communities.

Anyway, pictures. These aren't super recent photos, but they're all current- no new or old buildings, etc.

Downtown:
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ASU:
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A less picturesque area, out towards the southern section of town:
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Boone's main chain commercial strip (with Applebee's, Chick-fulla-Hate, etc.)  is to the left, while I live on the hill in the right edge of the photo.

The town from above:
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Attribution:
Image 1: "Boone NC- King Street" (http://www.flickr.com/photos/52508177@N00/ree3198408059/) by Jeremy Mikkola (https://www.flickr.com/photos/jeremy512/) is licensed under CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en)

Image 3: "Boone, NC" (http://www.flickr.com/photos/pixwix/12140959274/) by Jackie O (https://www.flickr.com/photos/pixwix/) is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/)

Image 4: "I love this town" (http://www.flickr.com/photos/28617453@N00/1693206077/) by allison (https://www.flickr.com/photos/scrapstothefuture/) is licensed under CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en)