u/KoenigseggAgera

The industrial mills of Maynard from the 1800s now house smaller businesses. From here you can experience the old gritty industrial vibes and the old canal system. I read the clock tower is the oldest hand wound clock tower in the United States and is wound everyday.

The Hamilton Manufacturing Company was the second manufacturing company founded in Lowell in 1825 and went out of business in 1929. After that, this building was used by the Courier-Citizen Printing Company until the 1970s. Now it is the Lowell Community Health Center. The first photo is dated 1929 by Jamie Patrick Lewis on Facebook, while the second photo is undated and provided by UMASS Lowell.

Holyoke, now a forgotten city in Massachusetts, was an early planned industrial city and was once the largest paper manufacturing city in the world. Its massive canal system impressed me and looks more complex than more well known Lowell.

1. Armour & Co. was a Chicago-based meatpacking enterprise and the largest company of its kind in America. The Holyoke building was built around 1905.
2. Beebe & Holbrooke Mills was built around 1872 as a paper mill.
3. Middle right: Prentiss Wire Mill built around 1911. By 1965, the building was occupied by Holyoke Die Cut Card Co.
4. Lyman Mills was built around 1854 and was a textile mill.
5. Merrick Thread Mill No. 2 was likely built around 1865 and was a textile mill.
6. Back side of Beebe & Holbrooke Mills.
7. A door.
8. Back side of Merrick Thread Mill No. 2.
9. Crocker-McElwain Paper No. 1 was built around 1885 and was a paper mill, although it briefly started as the Holyoke Water Power Company Building.
10. Moose Father and Baby by Portuguese street artist Bordalo II.
11. Close-up of the moose showing it is made of scrap metal and trash. Very impressive!
12. Cars in pictures are just so interesting. Moose mural again.
13. Abandoned Kmart.

Holyoke is very interesting. There is a children’s museum and I think most or all of these mills are repurposed to some extent, so in some ways, the city doesn’t feel super dangerous, mostly just empty.

You’re transported to the 1970s and you have to explain to everyone how large this compact Honda is, imagine all the laughs you’ll receive.

I love Joan Jett and old rock ‘n’ roll and punk and greaser style. I’ve been putting this off for a while until now. Michael J. Fox and Joan Jett play brother and sister, single mom, in a struggling rock band.

I did not expect the film to be so touching and focus a lot on their relationship with their good Christian mother. I was blown away at how accurate it was for Joan’s character to be lost in her 20s and how great Joan Jett acted with her agony against her mother. I guess it’s not surprising for an old movie but it was surprising for a rock ‘n’ roll movie with a real rockstar. Joan Jett is a really great actor.

Everyone in their 20s comes to a point where they struggle to understand how to navigate life and they come into contention with their parents who are getting old and are set in their ways. The anger comes in and they just want nothing but to watch their old world burn in hell. Joan Jett perfectly illustrates this violent internal war. She doesn’t want to be couch ridden in her parent’s house and her son to grow up there, as she describes being angry about all the same walls she grew up in, the calendars, the posters, and the fish on the wall. Joan perfectly acts out the stress and anxiety that characters like John Rambo experience coming back from Vietnam without any support and everyone he knew died, culminating in an extremely emotional scene where they bawl their eyes out. It happens everyday to a young person who is lost and has seen too much.

Joan Jett is a great actor and her character is still lovable under the rebellious image. Joan Jett can be intimidating. I envisioned her like that from her music and her backstory but in the movie, she kills it. Joan Jett perfectly depicts a struggling individual who has suffered a lot mentally and in the real world with her struggling band. I compared her to Dominic Toretto in The Fast and the Furious. Ignoring all the later movies and some cheesy lines here and there, Vin Diesel was a good actor and he also depicts a heavily traumatized character in their 20s who has no direction in life but to cause harm. His introduction and his commanding presence can intimidate those around him. He used to live his life a quarter mile at a time, nothing else mattered to him, until Brian changed him and showed him that family is all that matters. Joan Jett has that same intimidating presence and raspy voice. When she yells at Michael J. Fox’s character, the room shudders in fear. Despite this, Joan’s character also without a doubt loves her son to bits. She expresses extreme bonding when she hugs her son despite all her failures. Most importantly she doesn’t hate her mother and she comforts her when she experiences a decline in health. Her character is morally good.

Another great thing about this movie is the way the mother is written. Even though young people may clash with their parents, they don’t stop loving them, and the parent is not the enemy either. The mother was very humble and often stepped back when she realized she overstepped a boundary especially when talking to Michael J. Fox’s character about his sister. The mother was always there for them to provide anything they needed. More importantly, the mother never truly gave up on Joan Jett’s character, and she keeps telling her still how much she loves her and how much more resilient she is compared to her brother. The mother understands her boundaries and the struggle her kids are going through. I salute her inspiring leadership.

It is rare anymore to depict movie characters with extreme trauma, which is a shame because trauma dictates strong motivations in those characters, which leads to good interesting conflicts. Without struggle, nothing the character does is justified. They’re simply a person on a screen. It is especially rare for a female actor to depict extreme trauma and struggle.

This movie could’ve been longer. After the mother’s incident and Joan experiencing a quitting phase like Maverick in Top Gun, the movie could’ve easily been another hour, or there could’ve been a Light of Day 2, where Joan’s character has to overcome the incident and rejoins the band as Michael J. Fox’s character encourages her. I imagine a Light of Day 2 could’ve been about this struggle to keep on pushing the band and progresses into like a Forrest Gump type of movie where the kid grows up and it focuses on Joan’s changing relationship with him and her having more responsibilities.

I always thought Point Break was a movie that perfectly illustrates being lost in your 20s. Everyone in their movie is completely lost and have no direction. Bodhi wants to enlighten people like Johnny Utah and help them find their ways because he could never find his own. Bodhi is a genuinely good person. The bank robberies can be seen as a symbol of the violent internal struggle of your 20s where you clash with your parents’ ways and you struggle to understand who you are. When I watched Light of Day, this movie is right up there in my mind with Point Break. The same goes for The Fast and the Furious, which is essentially the same kind of story as Point Break.

I think a good two-main-character story shows that both characters express very extreme behaviors on opposing sides and that you discover that you can still relate to both of them at the same time, like they could be two parts of a single person’s mind constantly struggling to connect and make life choices. Collateral with Vincent and Max is another great example of this.

I also didn’t know Joan was a hardcore gamer. Wonder if that was true lol.

This was a 1:64 diecast of a Nissan 350Z with R.J. de Vera's signature that I recreated, although some of the decal proportions are slightly off because I didn't want to deal with the hassle. Share code: 174 348 334

This model stunned me, but it certainly has its minor quality issues. Mint Models sold it on sale and it shipped super fast. Greenlight makes cheap stuff for Walmart and Target, so the first time I looked at this online a while ago, it impressed me that Greenlight could make something that looked a bit more upscale. Besides a few tiny quality issues, it is basically on par with AutoWorld for American classics. It has real hood pins that you can take on or off to open the hood. While the doors are on the lighter side, it doesn’t seem like they will sag over time. It’s hard to notice but it actually does have suspension too, there just isn’t much travel. All four wheels have metal coils, and the solid rear axle has plastic leaf springs that will bend as you push the axle or wheel down to simulate the suspension (which is hopefully fine as the coil takes the brunt of the weight). The small quality issues are that one rear wheel doesn’t spin very well, the side panel upholstery by the rear seat on one side isn’t flush with the body panel, and one front reflector light was mounted a bit crooked. But I expected that from a brand like Greenlight. It still punches well above its weight.

I got a chance to visit NYC and NJ and wanted to get these comparison photos.

1. In front of CBGB, 1977 by Bob Gruen. Empire State Building in background now surrounded by glass towers. Darn scaffolding in the way.

2. 30th St and 8th Ave, 1978 by Roberta Bayley.

3. Union City Blue music video, 1979 (I posted this before). Video was shot more to the right and up at a dock that no longer exists (my bad, comparison location could've been better). Washed out, but shows how prominent the 6th Ave skyscrapers were, but now are mostly blocked.

1. MIB HQ is the ventilation building for Brooklyn Battery Tunnel.

2. Queens-Midtown Tunnel on the Manhattan side.

3. Unisphere at World’s Fair in Queens.

4. New York State Pavilion at World’s Fair in Queens.

5. Coney Island.

6. Coney Island Wonder Wheel.

Learning about New York history and the World’s Fair was interesting because I realize Men In Black is kind of a comedy about New York itself with the Pavilion looking like UFOs, and the little metal ball causing the 1977 blackout…

The Runaways in 1976, an all girl band and teenagers whose rapid thrust into the rock industry left an interesting mark and a unique style that blended proto-metal, punk/proto-punk, and glam. It is unclear who took the photo, but it is very likely to have been during their first performance on the East Coast in August 1976. CBGB was frequented by many bands including Blondie, Ramones, Talking Heads, and more. Now it is an expensive rock clothing store…

I wore my biker jacket, tucked Ramones shirt, and loosened black necktie. In the summer heat. I also visited Rockaway Beach, but not much there.

Looks like a Dodge Hornet competitor.