Road Signs of Detroit

As I was driving through the streets of Detroit and Michigan I kept thinking how the road signs are so different from the United Kingdom. So I decided to capture them.

'School Crossing' and 'No Parking'.




Side walk Ends



Speed Limit 40



Different directions



Speed Limit 25



Turnings at cross roads



The main roads and highways either run from South to North or East to West. This is to help you know which direction you are going. For example, people may explain where to find a particular location in this way: On the corner of John R and 12 Mile Road, South of 12 Mile (in this case John R runs North to South and 12 Mile runs East to West - all the mile roads run East to West and can have alternative names, for example 16 Mile road is also called Metro Parkway, Big Beaver and Quarton).



Awareness for Icy roads



Speed limit 45

There are deer in the tree and wood. In area more known from deer there are warnings because they could jump out infront of a moving car.

Give way sign

In Michigan especially with the bad weather during the winter the roads have so many pot holds and it a very bumpy drive because they don't have any road maintenance unlike in the UK so you can adopt a road which mean the street is named after you and you then have to look after the road and make sure if anything is needed to be repaired then the person who owns it has to pay. If they don't pay they can be sued unless they declare bank rupt.

Round about signs

Warning to give way ahead

In Michigan at certain traffic lights if the light is red during certain time you can turn if clear when the light is on red.

Instate Signs

Signs on the highway for speed limits

Signs for library

Signs for Michigan Uturns

Signal ahead

Sidewalk closed due to road works

Road work signs

Road work signs

Road work signs

Road work signs

Warning that the road bends slightly

Some area have these were the roads were quite bad and trucks arent aloud to go through they would have to go a different way

Pavement ends

We were travelling down an unsteady slippery road filled with shrubs and trees so the drives way were quite hidden

Signs warning the roads are narrow but compared to the UK they are the size of our standard roads.

Road turns

Follow the roads and 35 mph area.

Warnings to be careful when passing other vehicles

Intersection Hidden

Another sign warning people the road bends.

Madonna

Madonna's High School on Michigan, Detroit

Robert Frank (Americans)

Frank's American Road Trip

Frank's noncommercial work started to get noticed. In 1954, he applied for a Guggenheim fellowship proposing to create an "observation and record of what one naturalized American finds to see in the United States." Photographic legends Walker Evans and Edward Steichen wrote references. Frank got the grant, bought a used Ford and headed out.

"I was absolutely free just to turn left or turn right without knowing what I would find."

He set off in June 1955. His first stops were in Pennsylvania and Ohio, then Michigan, where he was allowed to photograph inside Ford's River Rouge plant in Dearborn.

"It was so hot and the noise and the machines. And then the workers would see me and for some reason they all started to scream. [It was] just a release," Frank laughs.

His photograph of the factory is a grainy blur: two lines of men at work, blacks and whites side-by-side and facing each other across the assembly line that runs up the middle of the picture.

There were some hairy moments. In Arkansas, Frank was stopped by state police "for no other reason than that he was a foreign-looking person driving an older car," Greenough says. "When the police stopped him, he didn't speak with a good southern accent." He was jailed and interrogated for several hours.

"He described it as one of the most terrifying experiences of his trip," she says.

Frank was a foreigner with a bunch of cameras at the height of the Cold War. Police thought he was a spy. In a way, he was.

During his trip, Frank shot 767 rolls of film yielding about 27,000 images. He edited that down to about 1,000 work prints, spread them across the floor of his studio and tacked them to the walls for a final edit. Out of a year and a half of work, Frank chose just 83 images.

Frank doesn't like to go back and analyze them. But he will talk about one of his favorites, a private moment on a hill in San Francisco. At the top of the frame is a broad gray sky; below are the city's hills and houses in stark white. In the foreground, sitting on a hill overlooking the scene, is a couple, the man turned to the camera with an angry scowl on his face. The invisible photographer had been caught.

"All I could do is just stand there with my camera and just keep photographing, but a little bit away from him so he could think and accept that maybe I photographed the panorama of the city," Frank remembers.

"Those are the difficult moments every photographer has to get over and get away with it and not be discouraged," he says. "Because if one is sensitive, it has an effect on you. So maybe it's better not to be sensitive as a photographer and just go on. Many photographers today have that but I never had that. I think it's nice to be sensitive as a photographer and maybe it's harder."

Frank rarely spoke to his subjects; he chose to point, shoot and move along. His pictures, however, eventually struck an emotional chord. The Americans became a hit as the '50s gave way to the '60s. Americans began to see his photographs as relevant — even prescient. But by then, Frank had already moved on. The year The Americans came out, he set aside still photography and made his first film.

Images from Robert Frank

Taken from http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=100688154

Silver Dome drive thru theatre.

Today went headed out to the "Silver Dome" an outside theater. Unfortunately it was closed due to repairs to the speakers. It not only have a outdoor theater but the dome can be used for other events for example Lacrosse

The first drive-in theatre was invented by Richard M. Hollingshead who was from New Jersey, USA. He mounted a 1928 Kodak projector on the hood of his car and used it to project onto a screen he had nailed between trees. He placed a radio behind the screen for sound, then started to test his idea.

Richard tested sound with the windows up, down and half way. He tested many weather conditions, using his lawn sprinkler he simulated a rainstorm. Richard liked what he saw and heard. One main problem did arise in his test. That was if cars were parked behind each other, the cars at the rear would not be able to see the whole picture, due to the car in front. This did not stop Richard, he lined up cars in his driveway spacing them at various distances and placing blocks under their front wheels he was able to find the correct spacing and the correct angles to build ramps for the cars front tires to park on. Thus the first drive-in theatre was born.

Richard registered his invention at the US Patent Office on August 6, 1932. On May 16, 1933 he received a patent number of 1,909,537 - the first drive-in theatre patent ever. Later in May of 1950 the patent was declared invalid by the Delaware District Court.

Louis Theroux

Theroux was born in Singapore, the younger son of the American travel writer and novelist Paul Theroux. His mother, Anne Castle, was Paul's first British wife. His elder brother is the writer and television presenter Marcel Theroux. He is the cousin of American actor Justin Theroux. He moved to the UK when he was 4, and was brought up in London.

Theroux was educated for a couple of years at Allfarthing school then moved to Westminster School (where he was a friend and contemporary of the comedians Adam Buxton and Joe Cornish). Another of his contemporaries was Liberal Democrat politician, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg with whom he travelled to America. He then went to Magdalen College, Oxford where he gained a first class degree in modern history and was noted for his film reviews for the Grapevine magazine.

His first journalism job was at Metro Silicon Valley, an alternative free weekly newspaper in San Jose, California. In 1992 he was hired as a writer for Spy magazine. He was also working as a correspondent on Michael Moore's TV Nation series, for which he provided segments on off-beat cultural subjects, including Avon ladies in the Amazon, the Jerusalem syndrome, and the attempts by the Ku Klux Klan to rebrand itself as a civil rights group for white people. When TV Nation ended he was signed to a development deal by the BBC, out of which cameLouis Theroux's Weird Weekends. He has guest-written for a number of publications including Hip-Hop Connection and he continues to write for The Idler.

Taken from Wikipedia

Theroux offical website:

http://louistheroux.com/

A brief History of Chicago

Louis Jolliet, a Canadian explorer and the French-born Jesuit Jacques Marquette were the first Europeans to discover the Chicago area in 1673 with the help of local Indians.

The first permanent settlement was founded in 1781 by Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, an African American from Santo Domingo. The location at the mouth of the Chicago river was chosen for its strategic value for a trading post as the river connected the Lake with the Mississippi river. Later the area at the mouth of the Chicago river was occupied by a military base, Fort Dearborn. The Fort was regularly atacked by Native Americans, until Chief Black Hawk was defeated in 1832. One year later, Chicago was officially incorporated as a town and four years later, when the population reached 4170, as a city. Its name was derived from the native indian's word describing the area.

On October 8, 1871, the Great Chicago Fire destroyed most of the city's central area. It started in the lumber district on the city's West Side. Mrs. O'Leary's cow allegedly knocked over a kerosene lamp that started the fire. By October 10, the fire had destroyed nearly four square miles of the city, claimed at least 250 lives and left 100,000 residents homeless. More than 17,000 buildings were destroyed and property damages were estimated at $200 million.

Painting of the great Chicago Fire

An image of fire fighters trying to put out the fire

An image of what Chicago looked like after the fire.

After the fire, a greater Chicago emerged. Internationally acclaimed architects flocked to the city for its reconstruction. Within a few years, Chicago was resurrected and chosen to host the 1893 World Columbian Exposition for 27.5 million visitors.

At the close of the Exposition, the city experienced a financial decline. However, Chicago reorganized to grow and once again to become economically sound.

Today, Chicago is a dynamic and culturally diverse city. It is an international center for both business and leisure travel, due in part to the city’s transportation accessibility, a thriving business community, and world-class hotels, restaurants, shopping and attractions.

Chicago City

Family I'm staying with in Detroit, Michigan

When in Detroit, Michigan I am staying with my best friend and her parents who I have known since I was very young.

Taryn Coetzee (my friend) is a student like myself and is studying:

Terri Coetzee (my friends mother) is a house wife

Mike Coetzee (my friends father) works

I met them when i lived in South Africa. Taryn and I went to the same Primary School and have been friends since then.

Brief information about Niagara Falls

The Niagara Falls are the most powerful waterfalls in North America. These voluminous waterfalls are situated on the Niagara River, straddling the international border between the Canadian province of Ontario and the U.S. state of New York. The falls are 17 miles (27 km) north-northwest of Buffalo, New York and 75 miles (121 km) south-southeast of Toronto, Ontario, between the twin cities of Niagara Falls, Ontario, and Niagara Falls, New York.

Niagara Falls were formed when glaciers receded at the end of the Wisconsin glaciation (the last ice age), and water from the newly formed Great Lakes carved a path through the Niagara Escarpment en route to the Atlantic Ocean. While not exceptionally high, the Niagara Falls are very wide. More than 6 million cubic feet (168,000 m³) of water falls over the crest line every minute in high flow,^[3] and almost 4 million cubic feet (110,000 m³) on average.

The Niagara Falls are renowned both for their beauty and as a valuable source of hydroelectric power. Managing the balance between recreational, commercial, and industrial uses has been a challenge for the stewards of the falls since the 19th century.