Click to enlarge. Photo by Walker DeVille

Summertime and the fountains are easy… for boys in short pants to find amusement within their cool depths. This, of course, is the elegantly simple fountain sculpture in front of the downtown Kanawha Co. library at Quarrier and Capitol streets. Dad was out of frame off to the right, eyeballing the boy as he probably tried to loot the fountain of its pennies.

Click to enlarge. Photo by Walker DeVille

Charleston certainly has a constant flock of iron birds flitting right over downtown, several times each day, it seems. If you glance up at just the right moment, you can snap up these birds like this one grazing the Kanawha Valley Building’s apex.

Click to enlarge. Photo by Walker DeVille

One thing about Charleston, for a relatively mid-small city it is a pleasure to walk the streets of its downtown. That said, I do love the red brick sidewalks in the heart of downtown, but have tripped on a jutting edge at least 3 times in the last 10 days. Maybe I should not walk and shoot at the same time.

Click to enlarge. Photo by Walker DeVille

Charleston Gazette staff writer Jim Balow wrote an excellent historical look back at the intial hopes for Slack Plaza (above) in the Monday paper, the disappointments over the space through the years and its current denuded, forcibly depopulated state. Read the piece, it’s worth it — and is a good example of the kind of important civic discussions that can have such an impact upon the way a downtown looks and feels. I continue to feel the plaza needs re-invention from the get-go. Aside from the important questions of safety and comfort in the plaza itself, raised by the Mayor, the layout forces you into an annoying zig-zag, obstacle-running circuit as you move from downtown to the mall, the two foci of life in downtown Charleston.

Click to enlarge. Photo by Walker DeVille

You got your pretty angles on the state Capitol building and then you got your fast food/urban clutter angles, like this one seen from the nether end of Washington Street, standing near Rally’s. And yes, thanks for asking — I was feeling kind of blue ….

Click to enlarge. Photo by Walker DeVille

If you weren’t there, I’m sorry you missed it. Not the music and dancing and crafts at the Memorial Day weekend Vandalia Festival on the state Capitol Grounds which were as fine and reliable as usual. I mean to say the most satisfying fair food this side of crispy, oily french fries. I mean, of course, the roasted corn on the cob, seen here in this cheesecake photo on the ledge of the W.Va. Division of Culture and History.

Click to enlarge. Photo by Walker DeVille

One regrets to see venerable downtown Charleston institutions like Boll Furniture run a white flag up the pole and surrender to the brutal exigencies of the marketplace. But there you have it after more than 70 years. The Boll building, the corner of Virginia Street and McFarland Avenue, is festooned at the moment with comic book-colored signs announcing its liquidation sale and some strange stuff out for sale from the vaults. (I’ve photoshopped up the saturation on this shot to match the signage.) Note the actual human being manning the sign at lower right — he was a Memorial Day laborer Monday afternoon, bobbing for liquidationeers.

Click to enlarge. Photo by Walker DeVille

The view from the very tippy-top of the Carriage Trail (camera held aloft on extended arms) looking down upon the Plains of Charleston. This would be the view (to crib from that story in the Bible) from which the Devil would slap Jesus on the back and say, “Buddy, all this could be yours if you just give me props…” (That’s from the ‘Urban King James’ translation of the Holy Book…) Here is an alternate, previously published view from this vantage point.

Click to enlarge. Photo by Walker DeVille

In general, it’s easy to tense up meeting strange dogs in the wilderness. Au contraire, when it’s a goofily grinning black Lab, gallumphing along the Carriage Trail, taking his owner out for her morning walk.

Click to enlarge. Photo by Walker DeVille

There are some seriously tall trees along the Carriage Trail. Given the swaths of greenery and enclosed dell in which the trail climbs, you can forget — while looking up into the branches — that there’s a capitol city a half-mile to your back.