urban bicycle journeys

Fayetteville, home to Fort Bragg and several other military installations, feels like a foreign country compared to Chapel Hill.    While small parts of it date to the 1700’s, most of it is miles of tract housing.   It sort of feels like a smaller version of Norfolk / Virginia Beach, or Jacksonville Florida, minus the beach and otherwise picturesque landscapes.   It is just houses and shopping centers.   But there is some modernism, if you bike around there enough.

First, liberals apparently do exist there, in small numbers

And there are plenty of interesting buildings to look at

Today, Richmond seems quite the happening place.    Because of its universities, and ample stock of old industrial buildings, the place has an urban feel that sometimes feels positively hip.   Sadly, that was probably not the case in about 1962, when modernism was the rage elsewhere.    Richmond’s staid past is probably why there are not a lot of modernist buildings.   Still,  on a recent bike ride I did find a few:

I know I need to get a life, but I swear I have been staring at this 1950’s building for at least thirty years.   I took this photo last weekend while driving at sixty-five miles an hour.   This highway (I-95) has not been called by this name for also about thirty years.

A little off-topic:   I got a good shot by bike of these guys on a Saturday afternoon, standing around the Confederate Memorial Chapel in the uptown Richmond Fan district.   I wonder if they are locals, or from out of town.