As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I'm up to (well, now I'm way past) my arse in work but today, on the day designated Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and made memorable by the two excellent radio stations in RVA (WCLM, and WRIR) playing his speeches throughout the day, I went to a metals recycling facility on the south side.
I can't help but post all the pictures that were taken. You drive through a large bay and onto a scale. The guy who reviews your metal, and determines that it is worthy grunts and motions you to go out the door, to the right, and in the direction of a bunch of machines that are flinging metal around like the grizzlies flung Timmy Treadwell and his girlfriend.
Navigating the world of the manly man, as most people know, is no fun- every new place I go- whether it's to a place that makes air filters for HVAC, the hardware store, or the lumber yard has a completely different language and set of codes that all the guys that belong to that particular club revel in making others feel outside of. I never know any of the right terms and need to gesticulate wildly, draw in the air, and (recently) bring in digisnaps, all the while wondering if the burly man I'm waving my arms in front of is going to smash me beneath his paw, or call me a fag, or ask if I'm a Jew, or accuse me of being Catholic, or Middle Eastern, and warn me that I'd better leave quick.
When the hanging, swinging magnet drops into the bed of the truck and is activated by the guy in the thing that swings the arm around, you can feel your truck (well, it's your truck if you're not a wuss renting yours from Uh*%l) begin to lift a little off the ground. The guy in the thing though is a master and knows just how much to activate the magnet and you are not lifted and thrown into a pile of scrap.It was awesome.
I also saw this:
In lieu of old tennis shoes hung over power lines, someone in R is throwing clusters of baby dolls over the wires. Kim and I saw some on the north side the other day and I saw these tonight in Cary Town. Has anyone else seen this. Anywhere? Did some hipster go to Br*$Klyn recently and come back with an idea? I like it and think that tomorrow I'll head over to Pleasant's and see if those guys over there know anything about this recent development.
2 comments:
I love the photos - the recycling center and the far-flung baby dolls.
1) I remember going there with my friend's uncle as a kid. I think I got some change from the stuff he recycled.
2) I navigated the world of the manly man far too much in high school and early college. My first two cars were 40-year old Fords and I insisted on trying to fix them myself.. with mixed results.
3) All hipster ideas in Richmond come from New York or beyond. That simultaneously makes Richmond awesome (good mix of small town and big city, in the south but not of the south) and really depressing (like the baby brother of the east coast who can't do anything himself).
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