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Quote of the Day
From Mike O'Hare, after visiting the Monterey Bay Aquarium over the weekend:
Cannery Row has become at least thirty percent more schlocky and touristy over the last decade, but this is not necessarily a bad thing: I loved Coney Island back in the day and there's a place in the world for penny-squashing machines.
What with inflation and all, shouldn't these now be quarter squashing machines?
...
Well, admittedly, it costs like 50¢ to $1 in addition to the penny being squished.
I haven't been back to
I haven't been back to Monterey in decades, but I grew up there and I can't imagine that Cannery Row had room to become more touristy and cheesy. The aquarium brought a much-needed touch of class to the area. Man, that place was a real craphole back in the late 70s and early 80s.
no. quarters are too hard.
no. quarters are too hard. The penny is still copper and soft enough to squish.
reality beat you
they have quarter smashing machines at Disneyland. My kids have a few that we squashed there. but no you can't do it by hand.
pennies aren't (primarily) copper
Pennies are copper-plated zinc. Quarters, on the other hand, are mostly (~92%) copper, the remainder being nickel.
Nickels
make for good squashed coins. The new pennies don't work so well. As pointed out, they're zinc.
Chickens
In that general cannery row is where I played tic-tac-toe with a live chicken inside an enclosure and lost!! Actually I was playing against a computer board which the chicken would then peck and get a treat. But I still lost to a chicken.
A couple of foul-smelling
A couple of foul-smelling vagrants begged for my change a few years back in Cannery Row; I told them they lived in California and probably could become millionaires with all the government-sponsored programs that liberals have enacted to help them.
I received a MD 20/20- addled response. I should have accepted as much from a down-on-his-luck hippie.
beach beauty
tagged as:- solution
I think the whole country is getting too gentrified. There needs to be legai areas for younger adults to enjoy beer outdoors. Down here in San Diego, there's no beaches left for a beer. I'm for banning glass, drunkenness, but not fun.
We're not all families.
Heck, I'm 60, and I think we're getting too wholesome.
PS : I'm also BIG TIME behind more science; more facts, more inter-relationship knowledge, more fun knowledge.
Maybe with a beer.
Back in the day
on the middle border(upper Mississippi), there would be small, medium, and large(100-200 ppl) beer parties on many island sand bars all summer. If you were 16, or looked 16, nobody cared, not even the cops. If you didn't have a boat, you just went to Bareass beach and hitched a ride on one of the many boats going back and forth. Nobody drowned, fights consisted of at most a half dozen punches, and the girls were treated with lusty respect. Now you can't even camp with your family on most of those sandbars. Of course, people are more aggressive, inconsiderate, and reckless now and too many have ridiculously overpowered boats.
New York used to be this way
Walk all over town then flop on a bench with a beer in a bag. Or the long subway ride home late at night.
Zero tolerance ended all that. I know one guy who left the city when he could no longer drink outside.
I can vouch for Cannery Row
I can vouch for Cannery Row having gotten much more schlocky, and much less interesting, in the last few years, and I've been going there since there were still canneries in operation. It isn't even a place where you'd walk around with your teenagers to have a relaxed time.
On a sadder note, when I was there earlier this year I noticed that the last of the classy old time places, Neil deVaughan's, was no longer in business. I think it was billed as a steakhouse but it was really the kind of place my parents would have gone to when they were looking to be upscale when they young just after the war. I went there years ago with my wife, and even then it was a pleasant sort of time machine. I seem to recall it as the only place where I ever saw shad roe on the menu.
And Carmel, which really use to be an artists' and craftspersons' colony, and which is where I first got a sense that there were these charming and creative people who weren't yet called gays, continues to decline, although with effort and luck (and thanks to Doris Day) you can still get a sense of what it used to be like.
Pennies
The great thing about squashed pennies is that they've survived inflation (even if the surcharge to squash them has not). There's a whole squashed-penny subculture, and it appears to be thriving. Check out http://pennycollector.com/
Disneyland of course ...
The Magic Kingdom features quarter-smashing machines, each of which renders the likeness of a "Disney Princess" on the former two bits -- and charges four bits for the service! Smashed pennies are only a quarter (plus the smashed penny).
The Aquarium and Cannery Row are a lovely place to spend a day.
Cannery Row EVEN schlockier than '99?
I visited Cannery Row about a decade ago (and looked forward to it greatly, having loved Steinbeck's book for years). It's even more touristy and schlocky than it was in 1999? Wow.
Monterey Bay Aquarium
My wife and I visited that part of California 11 years ago on our honeymoom. We went to the aquarium one day and then went back again the next day. What a great place!
Machines? Who needs a
Machines? Who needs a specialized machine? Let your children play on the railroad tracks like they did during the great depression. Locomotives will crush all sorts of coinage and stuff.
Nah...
You get the penny back (albeit no longer legal tender)--they don't get a piece of that so making it a quarter wouldn't help.
Now, if they get around to axing the penny, then maybe we'd be talking. But I'd support switching to nickels, which are completely pointless. Way heavy and nearly worthless--might as well have a good use for 'em.