Tuesday, April 28, 2009

New York - By guest blogger Noah

Hi everyone. I spent last week in New York! This blog post details my many adventures.

I'll bet when I said 'New York' everyone thought sky scrapers, the statue of liberty, the empire state building, times square... Well I didn't see any of those things because New York is actually just a city in the state of New York! The place I went is called Jamestown, New York. It's in the bottom left hand corner of the state, some might call it the dodgy end.

I always heard that the Hamptons are the best places to stay in New York. Here is the Hampton I stayed in:


I had a nice view of the local cemetery from my room.

Jamestown was the home of Lucille Ball, Mitch Anderson (a fellow Dr. to Doogie Howser), and Natalie Merchant and 10,000 maniacs, I now know where they got the name for the band. If you forget that Lucille Ball was from Jamestown, there is a helpful sign on every corner that will remind you. From the late 1800's to early 1900's the town boomed, then it hasn't done much since. Jamestown used to be the 'Furniture Capital of the World', Sadam Hussein had several fancy chairs that were made in Jamestown, so were most of the doors and windows in Bill Gates' house.

The guy I went to Jamestown with, Bob, actually lived there for twenty years so he took me on a tour. Bob showed me Lucy's house and where Sadam's chairs were likely made. He also talked a lot about the architechture.

I'll get back to that in a minute. Back in my early teen years, I was a lot like other boys my age when I started noticing the ladies. We used to get really nervous around them and in a short time, girls went from being stuck up cooty farms to, well, something nice to look at. My father had a large collection of art books at home, I never took much interest in them until once during those days I noticed a book called "Painted Ladies". That sly dog, I thought, my dad hiding a book filled with paintings of ladies among his other art books. I looked around and made sure nobody was watching when I pulled the book off the shelf...

Back to the Jamestown tour: So Bob said "these houses are called - ". I cut him off, "They're called Painted Ladies" I sighed, then continued "They were popular in the late 1800's to about 1910. They're named Painted Ladies because they have fancy wood working that is highlighted with several different paint colors. They're a type of Victorian era house." Needless to say Bob was quite impressed with my thorough knowledge of Victorian architechture. Check out this painted lady:



I decided not to tell him how I came to know so much about painted ladies, let's just say I had an interest in them at one time. Here are a few more pictures of Jamestown:


Not sure why people aren't flocking to Jamestown, you can pick up any one of those houses for under $50,000.

5 comments:

  1. That made my morning Noah. I never knew why you had such a fascination for painted ladies. It all makes sense now.

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  2. Wow, these are gorgeous! We have a total of three buildings in Provo which would fit in. Otherwise, it's all cookie-cutter. Thanks for posting these1

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  3. I would love any one of those houses! They are very cool. I also love the Painted Lady story. Classic.

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  4. Wow! Under fifty k? Portland is full of Painted ladies. I always kept my eye out on the prices while I was down town. You can't get into one of those in Portland for under $600 k. Oh, and did I mention that Portland has the second largest unemployment rate now. Maybe the prices will go down here as well. Cool story pervert!

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  5. I'd love to go to New York! It's my goal someday. Love those houses!

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