Chair Boneyard

I found this little chair and furniture boneyard while walking through one of the alleys in Old Towne. I don’t remember if it was behind an antique store or an old restaurant, but I like that the one table still has a tablecloth on it, like at any moment some classy hobos are going to dust off and pull up a chair for some fancy baked beans.

I wouldn’t mind taking those yellow ones for my backyard! Or the ornate iron ones and repaint them purple and green for a festive ice cream social!

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Centennial Storefronts

In honor of Glendale’s Centennial, some of the empty storefronts along Glendale Ave. are being decorated with old photos and memorabilia from the first 100 years. The pictures are fascinating.

And oops! Rookie mistake! There’s my reflection in the glass! 🙂

Peppermint Pig

This is the front door to the Peppermint Pig, a jewelry and home furnishings store in Downtown. Unfortunately, it is usually closed up and I can’t remember the last time it was open. Which is a shame becasue there were fantastic shabby chic treasures and tons of bling in that shop! 🙂

I love the paint scheme though. Kind of like it was a ladylike carnival of things to see and buy.

Ice Cream in a Still Sweltering Valley

There are so many different stories as to when Ice Cream was invented, by whom, and where, so I decided to just pick one.  I don’t know why September 22nd would be considered Ice Cream Cone Day. (oh, it was supposedly invented on that day. -Ed.) I figured even though it is officially the first day of fall, in Glendale it’s still up in the 100s and will be for several more weeks. All the more reason to head down and grab a cone.

As you can see, it is called Papa Ed’s Ice Cream. She also has tons of flowers in the “front yard” (which is actually the backyard, since her store is the guest house of an historic house/shop)
She also has an amazing actual flower bed, that when bloomed it resembles a quilt! I can’t wait to take pictures of it in full bloom!

Glendale Ivy

It isn’t English Ivy, but for a place that blazes 114 regularly in the summer, this is a pretty impressive wall of green.

Beet Sugar Factory

Right in downtown Glendale, just off the main street (Glendale Ave.), there is the shell of what was supposed to be the busiest factory in the West Valley. The Sugar Beet Factory was built, changed hands several times and prdouced sugar from 1903-1913. Although it was written up as a failure in the business books, its spirit and the potential it showed helped the small community of Glendale grow and open its eyes to new possibilities.

Now it is owned by a private investor, and there have been all kinds of ideas and false starts on what is to become of it (clean it up because of its historical preservation status, razed to the ground, etc.), I think I have an extremely cool idea: Sugar Beet Lofts!

It will become a two-story, New York style warehouse/factory converted loft apartment homes!

The windows are huge, meaning all that beautiful light could just stream on in! The roof is nice and flat, allowing for maximum use for solar panels (and after hours stargazing), and the bottom picture shows a smaller building (maybe foreman’s offices?) That would make an amazing caretaker office/toolshed.

Now if someone wants to give me the couple million dollars it would take to make this happen, I know people would be scrambling left and right to buy into this piece of history turned urban recycling-chic!