Saturday, December 03, 2005
The Leaning Zip Feeds Tower of Sioux Falls, South Dakota
In 1956, my home-city of Sioux Falls, South Dakota became the pride of the world: The Zip Feeds corporation build the world's most modern feed mill in our town!!!
To quote the Argus Leader
An advanced electronic control system allowed one operator to move feed ingredients from trucks to one of 52 bins in the building. The feed was mixed in four-ton batches and bagged using the control system.
The advanced system also allowed the workers to mix different feeds. This was something most mills weren't able to do at the time.
However, the mill has long sat unused. Compared to thriving Downtown Sioux Falls (1) or Falls Park (2), the Zip Feeds mill (3) used a lot of riverside land without contributing too much:
Naturally, we tried to blow it
The Zip Feeds Mill thundered mightily:
And leaned frightfully:
And kind of just sat there:
In summary:
(It didn't fall)
They'll start with the wrecking ball on Monday.
All photographs are courtesy of the Argus Leader, who also made a movie of the attempted demolition available. Fox News and Reuters are also on the ball. Map courtesy of Google Earth.
Blogwise, demoncat4log, Habibbijan, Head Kid, Jim River Report, South Dakota Politics, and Zelda Connely comment.
Update: Also check out my photoseries of the twilight of Zip, or this flickr set
22:15 Posted in South Dakota | Permalink | Comments (2) | Email this | Tags: sioux falls, photography, photographs
Sunday, June 26, 2005
Gap and Seam China in Pictures
"Underneath the Chinese 'Miracle' - Photographs," India-Defence, downloaded 26 June 2005, http://srirangan.net/india-defence/node/310.
Tom Barnett often talks about the "Gap" and the "Seam," those regions that are either poor and unconnected or trying to climb out of the mud. SriRangan was kind enough to post an album documenting life in Seam and Gap China
"The wealth gap in Urban China."
"An elderly man taking care of his shoes made out of grass."
Life on the farm is hard for small children
"This 11 years old girl carries contruction bricks in order to pay for school. She carries 16 bricks each time and the bricks weight 40 kilograms. A mere 34 cents are paid for a 200 meter trip."
But some offer hope...
"People looking for jobs at a job fair in Shanghai."
View the entire set
18:30 Posted in China | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this | Tags: photos, photography, gap, seam
Sunday, January 30, 2005
Photos from Iraq
A new link to the left link list -- the Under Mars online photo gallery. But as everything in the world is now a blog, I guess it's a photo blog.
Under Mars
Most of the photos are of every soldier life. It humanizes our heroes in the best sense of the word.
Some are of happiness, and some are of sadness, but all are worth viewing.
23:10 Posted in Iraq | Permalink | Comments (4) | Email this | Tags: photos, photography