h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Still treat lawn mowing seriously on Avenue B, each to his own special hole on the planet!

A high school friend (who lived in a better neighborhood) had one neighbor with a very unkempt yard. In that yard, you could see a push lawnmower with grass growing up around it. My friend told me that it was bought new that spring, but that it was broken on the first day when it ran over the remains of the owner's previous lawnmower that was rusting away by the tall weeds.

I go past some places like that on my way to work each day, but next door there'll be a well-kept and looked after house, just like in your links. I just had a look at a few of them on Streetview but it doesn't bring out the full ghastliness, and there's one in particular which actually looks quite romantic, the way that an old ruined abbey does, but only if you're there and can get the right angle, and only at this time of the year with bare trees. It looks like the Streetview car went down there in the summer. There's another one though that looks like the hillbillies from Deliverance might live there, but again, because the car went down that road in the summer you can't see anything because the trees are in full leaf.

Sho, the part of Liverpool my family (mostly) lived in was Toxteth, and you know what a reputation that part of town has had in recent years (ie, pretty bad but not as bad as Skelmersdale, which I went to once *shudder*). I went back to Toxteth once or twice after the riots and it was so sad to see how the area has been affected, both by the loss of the buildings that had to be demolished afterwards, and those that have gone because of the planners. Whole streets of two-up two-down back-to-backs aren't there any more (mind you, Hitler had a hand in that too because I remember playing on the bombdies when I was I was kid). True, those were often thought of as slums, and they were very, very pokey inside with a postage-stamp sized back yard... the distinction between a yard and a garden always intrigued me. I decided that a yard was small, had high walls around it and was concreted over, perhaps with a few borders where some plants could be grown.

Any road up... I've completely forgotten where I was going with that now Maybe I was making a point about Liverpool then and Liverpool now.

When I was a kid, there was one house on our main street, Grand Avenue, that we considered a "mansion". It was a simple colonial two-story with classic columns and a hanging light fixture over the front door. Then about 10 years ago, it was bought by a local builder and redecorated. Now it looks like this (behind the trees).

http://www.google.com/maps/@29.509019,-94.980129,3a,75y,125.19h,88.81t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sTdJM-Hf-f_wsjEEor5HK-g!2e0

I'm really not sure what to think of it.


There are some very fine homes not far away on Bayshore Drive, along the bay. This one in particular is locally famous for being built by Dusty Hill of ZZ-TOP. It's seen better days.

http://www.google.com/maps/@29.499301,-94.935911,3a,27.2y,5.75h,87.29t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sgLJNkMMPxlCoqY0KgU_UsA!2e0

It can be yours for under $1,000,000, CHEAP!

http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2293-E-Bayshore-Dr-San-Leon-TX-77539/2143358157_zpid/

Why is it, do you suppose, that Google thinks we'll all be so interested in other peoples' photos whenever we go to Google Maps now, so that you have to get rid of the imagery panel that slides up every time you go Streetview, and sometimes when you don't? It's one of the reasons I've stuck with the old Google Maps, and am hoping they won't retire it any time soon. I don't see how the new GMaps can be thought of as an improvement or an upgrade. It's horrible to navigate, nowhere near as easy or useful as the old one.

At times unusable.