Click to enlarge. Photo for thegazz.com by Walker DeVille

Empty urban landscapes possess a chilling sort of charm. I was out and about near midnight on a Tuesday night, approaching the Interstate 64 westbound ramp near downtown Charleston, when this shot was snapped. Again, I am struck by the massive works of interstate highway pilings. They will be our anthropological post-empire ruins centuries hence.

Click to enlarge. Photo for thegazz.com by Walker DeVille

I heard on public radio this morning that Toyota is coming after the pick-up truck market, dominated by Ford Truck, built tough (queue annoying Toby Keith song…). West Virginia is the ancestral home of the pick-up truck, where there may be more of them per square mile than swallows upon their return to San Juan Capistrano.

Click to enlarge. Photo for thegazz.com by Walker DeVille

You could say a bunch of leftists live in downtown Charleston, since — at least from MacCorkle Avenue headed west — you must turn left to get there. Then again, when President Bush visited town recently, after passing a phalanx of protesters lining the South Side Bridge he met a whole lot supporters at a Shelley Moore Capito event at a South Hills home. It took a couple of right turns to get to.

That’s the Byrd federal courthouse across the Kanawha River. And isn’t it a shame, especially seen from this vantage point, that the beancounters cut the design budget so the building lost a planned Romanesque dome? It would have been instant eye candy for an overly boxy cityscape.

Click to enlarge. Photo for thegazz.com by Walker DeVille

The bridge over the Elk River into the city, passing the Charleston Civic Center on your right, is one of the more pleasing, non-rectalinear structures downtown. But it’s hard, because of the where it is and the traffic crunch in these environs, to really get a good vantage point on it. I propose swapping this bridge for the South Side bridge, for purely aesthetic reasons. A couple of cranes, a week’s inconvenience — how hard could it be?

Click to enlarge. Photo for thegazz.com by Walker DeVille

Autumn light illuminates the spray of the burbling fountains in front of the downtown Kanawha County Library. The fountains, with their weathered, watery patina, more resemble actual moss-covered stones in the forest, rained upon by a waterfall, which is why the fountain is such a welcome presence in the midst of the city.

Click to enlarge. Photo for thegazz.com by Walker DeVille

The Union Building along the Kanawha River, glimpsed rising from above a more modern office structure along Virginia Street, appears to have melded ito it.

Click to enlarge. Photo for thegazz.com by Walke DeVille

These planters along Virginia Street look like they hold last year’s live Christmas trees, they are so huge. For downtown regulars, they are among the familiar viewscape of the city’s infrastructure you no longer notice. Until you do — and realize how remarkably large these planters really are. If the Jolly Green Giant had porch plants, this is what they’d look like.

Click to enlarge. Photo for thegazz.com by Walker DeVille

This lamp jutting from the the entrance to the Renaissance Towers beside the downtown library on Capitol Street looks like something that might be hanging off the Wicked Witch of the East’s castle in the “Wizard of Oz” movie. I’ve met a few Flying Monkeys in my day, I tell you.

Click to enlarge. Photo for thegazz.com by Walker DeVille

This is either a) a fitness-conscious South Hills resident, who has just run into town for a smoothie with wheat germ at Ellen’s. Or b) a downtown cubicle-hound who has cracked after in-putting the 20th Excel spreadsheet of the month, ripped off his clothes and is fleeing to Lola’s restaurant in the South Hills for a cabernet. Other suggestions?

Click to enlarge. Photo for thegazzs.com by Walker DeVille

Capitol Street is THE place downtown to spot automobiles that stir our loins. Oh, wait, this is a family newspaper site, correct? Automobiles that gird our loins! Here is one we spotted in front of Ellen’s Gourmet Ice Cream Shoppe. I think banana ice cream would go well with this hot little convertible Porsche Boxter.

RELATED: We must have a thing for cornflower yellow cars Yet another topic to explore with ye olde therapist. But we’ll take orange, too.