Truth or Conseqences, NM

Signs in the twilight.

Place Name: Truth or Consequences

Type: City

Population: 7,289 (2000 census)

Location: Sierra County, New Mexico, USA

Latitude: 33.133611 

Longitude: -107.252778

Truth or Consequences. People hear of this city because of the movie of the same name or on a list of strange addresses next to DISH, TX and Santa Claus, CA. I doubt many actually visit. The history of the name change is simple enough: tourism. A popular TV game show in the 1950s promised a visit from the host and other promotional benefits if a city would name itself after the show. T or C, as the locals and the Weather Channel calls it, was thus born.

In a sense the name encapsulates the anything for a buck Western capitalism and the harsh reality of living in the arid and unforgiving environment.

T or C was originally named Hot Springs after ample springs and man made wells that tap into the aquifer below. The springs make up an important part of the city's tourist based income. Many hotels and small resorts in the old downtown area cater to America's small but enthusiastic hot spring community.

Today the city is a very Western mix of a sleepy old town lost in time, hippies and counter-culture, and Jeffersonian individualism with a heavy Hispanic influence. The one main supermarket still used the square carts I last saw in the early 1980's when I was in kindergarten. The Walmart up on a hill near the interstate only opened two years prior to our visit. There's a spattering of chain restaurants and shops but many local establishments still remain. The local hamburger drive-in still serves malts and closes at 8. 8:30 on the weekends.

We spent two nights there in a small converted motor-court turned unique hotel with a private outdoor bath out back. Our days mostly spent in the spring or being lazy in the hotel. Besides the springs, the English accented lady at the tourist information office suggested having a picnic at the local ghost town 45 minutes down the road which we enjoyed.

T or C with it's unique geological features, preserved downtown with some great old buildings still in use and it's beautiful landscape makes it worth inclusion on my list of extraordinary places. No wonder J.B. Jackson chose New Mexico for his home. 

Date of Visit: March 28 ~ 30, 2012

The beautiful, Romanesque U.S. Post Office. Looking at this building makes one yearn for the ideal America that you know could exist.

Signage for the local drugstore in a style that was once ubiquitous but now rare in the metropolitan areas of the west.

 

Yokkaichi City, Mie

Behind A Ramen Shop - Yokkaichi, Mie

I recently got a Holux GPS logger to help make maps of my trips and geocode my photographs. Trying to do the latter led me to download and tryout the new Lightroom 4 beta. I've been using Lightroom since 1 and currently run 2.7. The improvements in 4 are wonderful, although the publishing to flickr is a bit confusing. Most likely I'll sick with Jeffrey Friedl's plugin. I'm extremely happy about the lens correction that gets rid of a lot of the warping and stretching that always annoyed me about my zoom lens. These three photos are a bit of a test for my new workflow.

Tory's Gets a Kiss - Yokkaichi, Mie

I took a stroll down through the shotengai and nightlife district in front of Kintetesu Yokkaichi station last Saturday. The mizushobai district was quite large for the size of the town. There were some interesting snacks. The Suntory Tory's character making an appearance on a snack sign. while another nearby snack was called 酔人 "Drunk Person." There was also a pretty beat up looking x-rated movie theater down a little alley. All of this next to the city's children's park which had a really fun looking playground and rental riding toys. Gotta love spatial relativism.

Ropponica Theater - Yokkaichi, Mie

This was my first time to explore a Mie, Pref. city since walking around rather rural Kameyama a few years back. I was surprised how modern and clean the most of Yokkaichi's ekimae was. With many new buildings and pedestrian walkways. The influence from Nagoya was noticeable here just as the lack of influence was when I arrived in Matsusaka later that day. I was surprised to see a Lalaport run mall, an Animate store, and Vedett-a white Belgium beer-being advertised by a modern looking bar all right there next to the station. However, this modern, clean Japanese landscape quickly faded into the shotengai and mizushobai streets to the east and the old neighborhoods to the west. Not to mention the very bubble-esque  Kintetsu department store that served as an anchor to the entire area.

Hyogo: More on Meibutsu

A larger PDF of this page is available here

After writing last week's post about Toyooka and its bag industry I got the Hyogo prefecture citizen's newspaper in my mailbox... well everyone in the prefecture did. What did it have on the cover? A map of the meibutsu food items produced around the prefecture.

A few of the generally known ones were there:

• Octopus たこ from Akashi
• Beef 肉用牛 from, well, all over the prefecture
• Onions たまねぎ in Awaji
• Tanba Black Beans 丹波黒 in Tanba, although they put the picture in Taijima and Harima also.
• Crab かに in Taijima

 Some suprises:

• Chrysanthemums きく in Settsu
• Eggplant なす in Tanba
• Figs いちじく in Settsu

~ Bonus geography lesson ~

The internal divisions of Hyogo that follows the pre-Meiji era boundaries more or less are as follows:
([name in kanji]:[color on map])

• Settsu (摂津: green) is the area that consists of the urban Hanshin area centered around Kobe and including Nishinoimya. Where I live.
• Harima (播磨: orange) is the area of mixed rural and industrial use land spanning from Settsu to the Okayama prefecture border centered around Himeji. Spanning the coast from Akashi to Ako.
• Tanba (丹波: blue)is the rural agrarian highlands that are above the Keihanshin (Kyoto-Osaka-Kobe) urban area. Centered around the town of Sasayama.
• Tajima (但馬: pink) consists of Hyogo's Japan sea coast and the agricultural areas in in the northern reaches of the prefecture. Centered around the city of Toyooka and the onsen town of Kinosaki.
• Awaji (淡路: purple) consists of the agricultural island between Hyogo and Shikoku. This area has only recently seen a boom thanks to the Awaji bridge built in the 90's.

The entire paper is free to download from the website here. [in Japanese]