Sunglasses, please

To the regular followers of this irregularly-posted blog, I must offer one apology and one correction.  The apology is offered for the severe breech of protocol in posting a photograph of Columbia in the daytime.  That is not supposed to happen on this blog.  Ever.  But here it is.  In my defense, it was late evening in the summer, so it just looks bright out.  It really was more of an early dusk than a daylight.  And the correction?  In my last post I lamented the fact that Columbia's architecture seems hellbent on a course towards the bland, corporate, and unenjoyable.  That much is true.  However, in my short list of existing things that are still interesting to look at downtown, I believe I left this building out.  And it should very much be in.  This is the rear portion of the Cycle Extreme building, on Sixth Street.  This building has an original beauty and style that stands in remarkable contrast to the blandness darkening the blocks to its east.  It is difficult to get a photograph of this building by night, so here, I offer a daytime image.  I promise, this will never happen again.

Coley's, South Sixth Street

I don't think I've captured it yet.  There is something to Coley's...the slightly arcing, lighted sign with its wavelike form and its sense of direction.  Impelling casual passersby to follow its vector and continue southward up Sixth street, then to cross the dark chasm of the alley and onward past the bike shop.  There is something there in the skeletal form of the lights, and the sudden drop into a dark alleyway, and the dark street beneath absorbing the stray light pooled on the sidewalk.  I've stood here on half a dozen nights and tried to capture and render this scene in the appropriate way...but I still don't think I'm there yet.  This is Coley's on a warm spring evening.