No longer with us

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Motorheads

This is street art put up on some boarded-up windows in Curtis Block, which stood on Macleod Tr. across from the Stampede grounds in Calgary. It’s something you will never see again: The building was demolished in July 2008.

Double vision

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Double vision

Another oldie … this one from May 2010 while on my way to Vancouver by car.
Here, I was fooling around with my pocket camera while stopped on the highway at Golden, B.C. I was waiting my turn along a stretch of alternating one-way traffic because of road construction.

Calgary at night

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The core at night

The observation deck of the Calgary Tower affords a lovely view of town in good weather, as much at night as during the day. Here, we’re looking north, up Centre St.
On the right is the Bow building, still under construction but now the tallest office tower in Canada outside of Toronto.
On the left is the West Tower of the Suncor Energy Centre (formerly the Petro-Canada Centre) which holds No. 2 status for skyscraper height in Calgary.

Endless flowers

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Endless flowers

Ontario Place, Toronto. Taken on a family trip in September 2008.

Another one bites the dust

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Another one bites the dust

With all the building activity around 10 St. N.W. in Kensington, you’d be forgiven if you didn’t notice something was actually being torn down. That’s just what happened through the month of February in Sunnyside, where the old City of Calgary garage was being taken apart.
As some of you might have noticed, I have a soft spot for older buildings, even if they aren’t (or weren’t) esthetically pleasing in any way. The Sunnyside garage was a utilitarian industrial-style building that fit the character of the neighbourhood around it. That said, I can certainly understand its owners wanting to re-purpose the prime real-estate it sat on for something more mid- to high-density residential, as seems to be going on nearby.
Still, I couldn’t help but feel a little sad, taking in that musty demolition smell as I snapped this photo and a few others.
And within a week, there was nothing left but a heap of rubble. One more historical Calgary building to live on only in our memories.

The sky never ends

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The sky never ends

The Time-Warner Center towers over Columbus Circle in New York as it blends into a pleasant, summer sky in August 2011.

Caribbean sunset

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The winter blahs and blues have you down? Then come travelling with me through time and space … back to 2006, when I spent a few days in beautiful Puerto Rico.

Caribbean sunset

I have a few more photos from that trip over on Flickr.

Alma Mater

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One of the newer buildings at Concordia University’s downtown (Sir George Williams) campus in Montreal.

Visually complex

Very cool foyer, lots of art exhibited inside. Wish it was around when I studied there!
Taken in January.

Taking a little leap

If you come by this blog from time to time, you’ll notice some slight tweaking over the last few hours.
Master of my domain. Welcome to rickyleong.com. The old “wordpress.com” address will have redirected you and will continue to work.
Farewell to the “yellow journalist.” I was never certain if the joking nature of the old blog name ever came across properly. And besides, this site is meant to encompass more than the journalist in me anyway … so the “yellow journalist” moniker is retiring.
Hello to “Random Musings.” The secondary name for this blog gets promoted.
Left and right. There are now sidebars down both sides of the main part of the blog, so you won’t have to scroll as much.
Trim and proper. I went through my links to other sites and pruned a few that had gone inactive or exceedingly stale. There are now also only two categories of links, to streamline things a little.
I hope you appreciate the changes. Feel free to reply with any suggestions or feedback.
Will do my best to keep things fresh here and share many more of my thoughts and images. Between posts, please check out my Twitter feed, in the right sidebar.
Cheers all!

Domestic tourism

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Sorry for the long gap between posts — but yes, I’m still here.
For the Family Day long weekend, I thought it would be great to go up the Calgary Tower to take in the view.
I’d never been there before and the weather was absolutely gorgeous on the Monday afternoon.
I wasn’t the only one admiring the awesome city vistas from up there:

Observing together

Whoever you are, thank you for helping me make a cool photo.