MetaChat is an informal place for MeFites to touch base and post, discuss and
chatter about topics that may not belong on MetaFilter. Questions? Check the FAQ. Please note: This is important.
20 April 2006
Build MeChapolis→[More:]We've got the mansion. We've divvied up chores. Now that we're on the downhill side of the week, why not spend a few minutes desiging the ideal town and neighborhood to surround the Old Homestead?
In the downtown, I'd like an old-fashioned smoke and magazine shop, with the hand-painted signs outside fgeaturing the scrollworky "Te Amo" and "Optimo" logos. One that smells like cigars and sells tobacco products, lottery tickets, and smoking accessories and, most of all, a comprehensive assortment of magazines, from the mundane to the urbane to the profane. Somewhere I could buy No Depression and Paste and the Oxford American, page idly through food magazines to steal recipe ideas, browse the travel slicks, and all that. What a way to while away the late afternoon.
Plus, they have a stack of cigar boxes in the back, which they'll let you have for free. You might want them for the beautiful package design, or just to keep little findings and secrets and ephemera.
1) Makeout spots under old bridges and overlooking trainyards
2) Clone of Powell's bookstore
3) Dingle distillery
4) Music store that's the combination of everyone's favorite obscure indie and/or jazz and/or industrial and/or oldies and/or classical and/or world and/or country and/or whatever store ever.
5) Honkin' radio broadcast tower
6) Specialty car club and repair garage run by Triode
7) Fabulous little music venue with wooden stage, heated outdoor smoking area for the smokers, and good ventilation and smoke-free environment for the non-smokers. And it's legal to smoke weed there.
8) Best cheese store ever
9) CUPCAKE STORE!
Used bookstores. (Bonus points: a store where I can get a book about a dragon that looks like a lhasa apso, but then the dragon becomes real and I can use it to chase some bullies into the dumpster. That'd be rad.)
Must have a street with stores that are sometimes there and sometimes not there. Must have a creperie and a coffee shop with good carrot cake.
A store filled with glass bottles in weird shapes and sizes with strange things inside. A store with all kinds of paper and stationery and inks and pens.
Ooh, I hope the distillery gives tours, and has a tasting room.
I hope Triode's Garage has cool old pinup calendars and auto-parts ads everywhere and has that oily-rusty-metal smell, and a radio on from somewhere you can't see. And that he wears coveralls with his name on the patch.
Oh, and there must be a Burdicks. (Store in Cambridge with the best hot chocolate in the world).
Actually--scratch that. There should be a chocolate fountain in the town square. The town square must be large and spacious with those great round cobblestones, and in the middle will be a beauteous fountain that will spout warm chocolate day and night, with tin mugs on a rack next to it.
And it has to have a big clock tower with real bells.
And a field that is always sunny and has nice soft grass and shady trees where you can lie and read for hours but never get sunburned.
I humbly demand, or bodly request, a miniature Akropolis in the center, exact replica of the Akropolis in Athens complete with ruins and scaffolds. Not to be overshadowed by the Chryslers. For the sake of your two beloved mecha-greeks. You know who!
* An amazing public transit system
* A park full of puppies
* A separate park full of kittens
* A house I could afford without having to live with stupid jerks
* A bar with a pool table that is reserved for me
* A library with every copy of every newspaper ever printed in America on
microfiche, with a top notch index
* Armoured bears
There is a dive bar with a great jukebox and very cheap beer. The bartenders are very friendly but not pushovers and of course they believe in buy backs.
How about a gold chalice at the public drinking fountain, just to demonstrate how honest everyone is, you know, like Vlad the Impaler did, but without all the impaling.
It would be exactly like the town of Springfield in The Simpsons - a place that is both a small town and a big city, with a harbour, mountains, a desert, forests, a mall, but without the nucular power plant.
Oh, and a Dairy Queen. If it hasn't got a Dairy Queen I'm not going.
There is also an outside cafe that serves great food. They are the kind of place that doesn’t mind if you sit all day with a cup of coffee. It also has a view of the ocean. It is a great place to have a beer at sunset.
Oh yeah there needs to be a beach. Not a touristy crowded beach. But a take long walks with dogs kind of beach.
hee, carmina! Let's add to that the wonderful outdoor markets, plus stoa from Salonika (with farm-fresh-veggies, sea-fresh fish, oven-fresh bread... ah, the sights! the smells!).
I love that so many people here mentioned so many things that jumped immediately to my mind...
We must have lots of relaxed people-watching cafes, not too trendy-chromey-blah.
Fountains!
Streets and avenues with overhanging trees; exotic sweet-smelling flowers, like magnolias, etc. Ivy. Lots of balconies, terraces, courtyards and patios.
Zeppelin landing ports... and, of course, yes, Panzerbjorne!
plz add one scary haunted (or is it?) mansion, with spacious, rambling grounds of wild and overgrown gardens surrounded with rusting elaborate wrought iron fences and intriguing locked gates.
also, ruins. We must have ruins. And a mysterious abandoned settlement (why did these people evacuate their dwellings suddenly and en masse, leaving dinner on the table, cookpots half filled with food simmering over now long-cold fires, and garments hung up to dry on tree branches? Will we ever untangle the mystery of the abandoned village of Lepurious?
A boathouse and dock so I can teach you all how to row. You haven't lived till you've seen the sunrise over the mountains while you're gliding like birds over the surface of the lake, the only sound the simultaneous whoosing of the oars.
Bonfires every weekend on the outskirts of town, with s'mores and ghost stories.
An ancient theater with gold on the ceiling, where you never know what's playing until you're inside, but it's always good, and there's real butter on the popcorn.
A pub that has Carlsberg on tap, a rock and roll jukebox (Radiohead does not belong on a jukebox goddamn it!) and no bloody sports. Or at least have the sound off.
next to
A kebab shop like the one near me - the best kebab shop in London.
next to
A convenient and cheap cab office to take me home at the end of the night.
An enormous bunny statue in the center of town, at the intersection of MeChapolis's two major thoroughfares. The two roads separate into a traffic circle around the statue. The plaque at the foot of the statue says simply, "Bunny! OMG!"
No driving on Wednesdays or Sundays. No professional sports franchise.
The bunny statue/traffic circle should be a huge zocalo, like in a Mexican town. A band stand, people selling stuff, lovers making out, etc. And the bunny statue concealing a big ass wifi antenna.
*a record store. one that still sells albums & 45's and has great selection and no snotty-assed clerks.
I agree with this, but insist that the record store is staffed with one or two really cool record store chicks. I loved a couple in my time, and would like to revisit.
I would like a downtown block closed to traffic with coffee shops and wicked Italian, Greek, etc. restaurants.
All I ask is for a splintery dock where I can tie up my houseboat, the bookstore described above, a hardware store with lots of nails, screws and fasteners in wooden bins, a butcher shop, a fishmongers and a cool, dark bar with one dollar drafts that I can wait for death in. Thanks.
Lovely soft afternoon thundershowers twice a week to watch from the ivy and bougainvillea covered balconies, terraces, courtyards and patios. But otherwise sunny with puffy clouds for aesthetics and a very slight breeze.
A run down storefront with huge swags of velvet curtains in the window. From the front it looks small, but once you're inside, well, you may never be able to find your way out. Dark corners. Clocks quietly ticking and chiming at odd times. Suits of armor. Old prints, antlers and swords hung on the walls. Mannequins dressed in crumbling lace wedding dresses and three-piece suits. Bottles filled with odd looking liquid. Huge armoires filled with old clothing. Trunks that look like they've been around the world - twice. Old globes. A sarcophagus with a mummy inside. Old jewelry and hats. Faded rugs layered onto creaky wooden floors. Books that look as if they'd fall apart with a touch. A glassed in cupboard full of scrolls. Ratty peacock feathers in brass spitoons. Framed maps leaning here and there. Fake limbs. Umbrella skeletons. Tables set for tea with broken china and mismatched linens. Chairs and couches that let out a scent of yesterday when sat upon.
The MeChapolis Gazette, one of the few remaining small-town daily newspapers, is published out of a 1920s era brick building across the street from the bar. Staffed day and night, the Gazette reports all the latest gossip and goings-on in town. Around 1am, after the paper's put to bed, the staff all heads over to the bar and knocks back a few drinks.
As long as you are all there and there is one of these, I will be as happy as a pig in shit.
Ooh, bowhunting, cool - but you have to clean and eat anything you kill.
There needs to be a large lake in the centre of the huge park that is in the centre of town. Around this lake is a road that, on Sunday mornings, becomes a closed track for those of us who are are so inclined to race each other while the others look on and cheer from the cafes that line said road. After that, we will all recount our fun in a friendly drinkand musicfest for the remainder of Sunday. Hangovers are no problem, as work is banned on Mondays and all businesses are required to remain closed for the entire day, without exception.
A chandlery with a chart shop / maritime bookshop next door, on Divine Wino's dock. Lots of antique naval relics, brass diving helmets, that kind of thing. The chart shop should have old yellowed maps and charts of places that may or may not exist. There should be at least one pirate treasure map hidden inside an old musty copy of Kidnapped.
Would mike9322's boathouse be on the dock or on the lake?
- a gigantic dog park bordering on an enormous library, with a Parisian-style cafe next door. If you don't own a dog, one will be given to you for the time you are at the park. Arrangements can be made to own, pending the usual background checks.
Plentiful buslines, but even better is a fantastic host of electric cars spread around town, Flex-car style.
Zeppelins in the sky.
Professional sports teams for both genders, with equal crowd participation and backing.
A gigantic old mansion (just like ours), only it's a combination movie theater-record store-restaurant-nightclub.
A rambling winery built from the remains of an old monastery in a valley.
A long, white-sand beach.
Okay, that's enough.
Absolutely NO: corporate towers, officeparks, stadiums named after dorky tech and/or insurance firms, "downtown core", suburbs, malls, or churches.
A sizeable schooner for overnight excursions of a dozen to twenty, fitted out with cast-iron coal stove and plenty of enamelware for making good coffe e and breakfast biscuits;
And a true ship, three masts, square sails on each mast, for ceremonial occasions. Of course, plenty of deck-iron for loud harbor salutes.
[pedant] Sorry Miko but, to be considered a ship, it must have at least four masts with square sails on each mast. Most of what are referred to as "tall ships" are not ships at all.[/pedant]
But I agree that "tall ships" means just about nothing. The designation "Tall Ship" is just a nomenclature used by ISTA/ASTA to designate a sailing vessel (of any hull shape or rig type) of which at least half the crew are unpaid trainees under the age of 25.
Sorry guys, but in point of fact any maritime vessel can be a ship as long as it has one of those horns that goes:
"Weeeee-oooooooooogh"
and a dude with a squint.
As long as we're still wishing I would like my dock to be next to the dock with the variously masted sailing vessels (but not too near) and V. Splintery and sagging on one side. It should smell (mildly) of fish guts, gull shit and gasoline and strongly of tar. I second the chandlery, I would happily run the dinghy rental concession (on a part time basis).
An endless desert, no dunes, not even actual sand but just a nondescript sort of grit, not really grey or yellow but somewhere in between, plus you can't really make it out because the dull haze that hangs in the air spreads out the sun's glare 360° around the horizon so there's no direction you can really focus on without squinting and the one lone tree has dried out a few years ago making it not worth it to trek out the 1.5 Km to see it, especially as the gritty surface has worn down all forms of wheeled transportation and all the riding or pack or any-at-all- animals have long ago died of enui so you'd have to walk and it's hot and sticky and did I mention the glare? so there's not really any place to go, and the cable's down, as is the net connection and you've already read all the Good Housekeeping magazines from the '50s which are the only reading materials in the house and there is not a single topic left which you haven't screamed at somebody for going over for the Nth time or been yourself screamed at for the same reason so what you gonna do?
Miko, I think I have to give you the first round:
Term: ship (n)
Definition: Any relatively large ocean-going vessel.
Term: ship rig (n)
Definition: A sail plan for a large vessel comprised of three masts, each with a lower mast, a topmast and a topgallant mast, and a full complement of square sails, together with as many as four foresails.
That's the best I can do on the Internets with the limited time available to me at work, but I am certain that the original literal meaning of the word "ship" was a wholly square-rigged vessel of at least four masts. I will search through my Grandfather's old nautical textbooks over the weekend and see if I can prove myself right and the rest of the world wrong.
I would like a boardwalk on the beach and beach cottages. At one end the beach should turn rocky and craggy and waves will crash into it a lot. I would like tide pools also. I would like lots of colorful fish, coral, and kelp in the water and glass-bottom boat tours. The boardwalk must have several killer taco stands. I would like an AmoebaMusic store.
Behind the beach cottages there should be a bohemian artists community, gift shops, and furniture stores that are not overpriced.
I would also like a really nice gym, free to the public. It will have great yoga classes, a full-service spa, and a lap pool.
photo by splunge
photo by TheophileEscargot
photo by Kronos_to_Earth
photo by ethylene
