There are only crickets in here...

[BlackBart]

......chirp............

There's a shop in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle that is taking 544s and 122s with one engine rebuild too far, and swapping in an electric drivetrain, mostly to keep them on the road and because it's about a wash for the customer.

X-Ray Auto, old Ballard....
http://www.xrayautomotive.com



.....chirp........ (do crickets say chirp..?)

[BlackBart]

Here's a nice green wagon for sale on the ipd classifieds.

104322020-02-14CARS FOR SALE: VOLVO 122 (AMAZON)
Nice wagon for sale. Garaged. Needs a new home. Located in NE PDX. Can be a daily driver or a collector. No rust issues. All trim. IPD ignition. Good seats and glass. No oil leaks. Fan and wipers work fine. Was from a 122 collector. $11,500.

https://www.ipdusa.com/classifieds.asp

Pretty high for as grimy as that engine compartment is. Chrome wheels have to go. Has side marker lights - does that make it a '68?

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[volvolugnut]

Ohh, I like this one!
But then, I like them all.
volvolugnut

[matthew1]

There's a shop in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle that is taking 544s and 122s with one engine rebuild too far, and swapping in an electric drivetrain, mostly to keep them on the road and because it's about a wash for the customer.

Seattle has that ethos. I stopped in a MB shop in Belltown circa 2002, and they were doing biodiesel conversions on 300-series MBs. And probably a decade before that even.

Ballard is a gearhead neighborhood. It's heaven if you like cars. Rockabilly guys n gals mostly. Awesome American iron, Swedish iron. Ballard had a gigantic Swedish heritage influence when I moved there in 1999. "Viking Bank" etc. Now, not so much.

[BlackBart]

We had old ladies speaking in tongues at the grocery store. Houses had either a Norwegian, Swedish, or Finnish flag on the porch. We were not allowed to move in until we bought a used 240 wagon - it’s in the bylaws or zoning or something. We had five 240s just on our block. Norwegian Day parade was a big deal. Sons of Norway lodge in downtown Ballard. Swedish pancake breakfasts. Propeller shops working through the night to get boats back out fishing.

We loved Ballard.

[matthew1]

For a guy who's trying to choose a Quote of the Month for the March 2020 MVS newsletter, you're killing me.

I have two already. Now I have three.

I like how you made "We loved Ballard." its own paragraph, BB. It brings me back to Seattle.

[BlackBart]

Ballard is a gearhead neighborhood. It's heaven if you like cars. Rockabilly guys n gals mostly. Awesome American iron, Swedish iron. ...

Ballard had a grit to it that I loved. The "real" Seattle to me was down on the waterfronts and canals - the ship repair docks, the welders, the warehouses, the fishing fleets in marinas, container ships and rusty tugboats, the UW crew team practicing at dawn in the rain. It's a different town than the one up on the freeway bridges with people commuting in their Teslas to a downtown high-rise. (Full disclosure: I worked in a 1914 high-rise for some time, the Smith Tower. I was bike commuting mostly. It was cool to be 20 floors up in the fog looking over the water.)

Another interesting town was Tacoma, 30 miles south. It was supposed to be the terminus of the transcontinental railroad, spent a lot of money to be ready, and then was left high and dry after sneaky deals changed the route. It's played second fiddle to Seattle ever since.

When I was there, if not now, it was a gritty but genuine place with interesting old characters on the street (more rockabilly guys) and funky old cars all over. Grimy muddy waterfront before all the museums and condos arrived. Not a lot going on.

The new museums are really cool, I should say - the glass museum, the state history museum in the Union Pacific depot, the promenade on the old waterfront - it's nice.

[matthew1]

Do you like the downtown library? Damn I like that place. So awesome.

I toured the Smith Tower circa 2002. My ex gf worked at the Back Door Ultralounge, a club somewhere near the Smith Tower. That was 2001-ish. Probably long gone.

I worked at an ad agency on Pioneer Square in 2003 to 2005. https://www.google.com/maps/@47.5997591 ... 760!8i2880 Top two floors of that building.

In 2006 C&W moved here https://www.google.com/maps/place/221+Y ... 22.3305704 and that was a fun area. Now I don't recognize it and get lost in South Lake Union. It's like a silvery tech Gotham.

[BlackBart]

Yeah, that Ballard library is cool! I'm an architect so that stuff is so fun. That firm is very talented. It has the feel of an old wooden ship hull while still very modern, which is a skilled trick. It was built after we moved, so I haven't gotten to go in and study it. The old library was actually kind of 50's Viking modern and we hated to see it go. It was on 24th, just uphill from downtown Ballard. That is wall to wall apartments on google view now! - wow.

Smith Tower was cool. Brass and copper cage elevators with operators in green tuxes. You'd shout to them as they zipped past your floor..."DOWN PLEASE!!" I would walk up the stairs to the 42nd floor "Chinese Room" many days to eat my lunch when it was closed to tourists. It was built by the Smith Corona typewriter AND Smith & Wesson guy, showing off his wealth in 1914. Tallest thing west of the Mississippi, 4th tallest building in the world. We once got to go up in the cone at the top and climb the ladder into the glass ball at the point - that creeped me out, I will admit! We moved out in 1998.



I see they automated them and got rid of the manual operators, bummer...
https://www.geekwire.com/2017/end-long- ... operation/

Although, when we worked late and the building was empty, it was a real chore to get the last operator's attention to come get you and stop at your floor. I walked 20 floors down many times, with all my bike gear.

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The Chinese Room was the original observation floor at the top of the building. Donated to Smith by the Empress of China. Old Seattle history.

Smith-Tower-Chinese-Room.jpg (62.68 KiB) Viewed 1343 times

That sweet brick building you linked in Pioneer Square is so nice. I walked through there and ate my lunch nearby a thousand times! I worked at 1st & Jackson for quite a while.

That new building on Yale is all completely new to me. I agree, I'm lost in that new South Lake Union neighborhood! You have no frame of reference to what was there before and you can't figure out where you are. That's where the construction crane collapsed a few months ago. That was just a low rise storage and industrial area - a West Marine, warehouses, a Best Buy-like store going down the hill towards the lake....I don't see any of that. We used to go to the park on the lake, and hang out at the Wooden Boat Center, which I think is still there. They built a nice big park on what was the Naval Reserve land on the lake.

Up in the Denny and Belltown neighborhood, which was empty and dumpy, was an old ski shop I'd go to. There was an old school Cadillac dealer and a Land Rover dealer. That's all condos and shops now. I think the Amazon bubbles are down in that area maybe. I feel a little out of place when I go there now - an outsider now!

[BlackBart]

EDIT - you meant the downtown Seattle library, didn't you? That is very cool as well, but very different from Ballard.