The Gad About Town

Retailizations, Part Deux: Be Nice

Posted on November 7, 2016 by Mark Aldrich

A coffeehouse in France (okay, that right there may be one of the greatest four-word phrases I have ever typed; one almost does not need to continue. Please return from your daydream when you feel up to it) …

A coffeehouse in Nice, France (oh, come on, does this anecdote just keep getting sweeter? The setting may as well be, “A coffeehouse located in Sweet Kisses in Everyone Is Always Smiling Land”) … and, yes, I certainly know that the city’s name is pronounced “neese,’ and not the easy way to a punny joke, but a pun is a pun.

Three years ago, a coffeehouse in Nice, France, posted a new price board, seen above and explained in “This Coffeehouse Will Charge You Less if You’re Nice.”
Read More

Today in History: Nov. 7

Posted on November 7, 2016 by Mark Aldrich

The first Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapsed on this date in 1940. The bridge was opened to traffic in July of that year, and it was the third-longest suspension bridge in the world up until the day it collapsed, but it moved vertically in the wind, sometimes violently so, sometimes like a piece of clothing hung out to dry. (The bridge is seen bending, twisting in the photo at top.)

The bridge was built too narrow and constructed with shallow girders, which is why it waved in the breeze. Thus, even while it was under construction, the workers who were building it nicknamed it “Galloping Gertie” for its lack of stability. Engineers at the University of Washington were hired to find a solution to the oscillations, and they completed their first studies on November 2, 1940.
Read More