Award and Red Location Museum

Ok, this just wouldn't be a city daily blog if I didn't show you this morning's newspaper headline.....

I mean that is quite an achievement for a town whose nickname was, until recently, the ghost on the coast!
In the 50s and 60s PE developed as the hub of the SA motor industry (very punny),
but in the late 70s many of the motor manufacturers and parts manufactures relocated, and the city went through a terrible economic depression. When we came here to live, in 1978, there were empty places to rent all over, and we could really take our pick and name our terms, owners were just too glad to find a tennant.
A real atmosphere of gloom pervaded the place, and the negativity became a well known feature of the city. Any business venture which was suggested would be knocked on the head with a comment like...oh it will never work in PE. .. It is still a feature of the PE psyche that, while the upwardly mobile in other cities brag about how MUCH something cost them, PE people will brag about what a BARGAIN they got!! Things like art, and services like design consulting sell for much less here than they do in the rest of the country.... because people here will just not pay what they consider to be inflated prices for luxury goods.
Even property prices have only recently soared to catch up with those in the rest of the country.
So against this background, the Municipality has done an amazing job of turning things around, bringing new initiatives, creating jobs, and instilling a new sense of pride in the city... the award is well deserved.

Anyway this is meant to be a photo blog, and a newspaper article hardly qualifies, so here is a shot of the wonderful award winning Red Location Musuem, mentioned in the article. It is a really amazing place, and we will show more of it in the future, but if you want to know more about it, I did a post with lots of photos on my blog here. (the photos are small to save on my uploading allowance, which is rapidly running out on that blog, but you can click on them to enlarge).

This photo shows the main lobby of the museum. The red cloth contains signatures of all involved in the project and community members. To the right, the row of pillars has biographies and pictures of the 'heroes of the struggle' for freedom from apartheid. To the left of the cloth, not seen here, is the Nelson Mandela Room, containing his biography in photos and documents, including some of his letters to his family, written while he was in prison on Robben Island.

Corner Pub

This is a friendly little pub round the corner from us in Richmond Hill, where the locals hang out, watch sport and generally talk rubbish.... in other words like many pubs the world over! It serves good meals at really affordable prices, and for those of us who don't enjoy hanging out in other people's recycled cigarette smoke, the bonus is that everything on the menu is also available as take aways.

Places of Worship #3 .. South End Mosque

Last week I briefly mentioned South End in Port Elizabeth, when I showed the ruin of the old St Peters Church. It used to be a thriving racially mixed community, with blacks, whites, coloureds, Indians and Chinese all living harmoniously together. Muslims, Christians and Hindus all had their places of worship near each other, and there was a great sense of community about the place.

That is, until the Apartheid travesty of the Group Areas Act was passed, and in the '60s and '70s, the area was cleared out and bulldozed to the ground, and the people forcibly removed to racially segregated areas way across town. Because mosques are considered Holy Ground, the authorities agreed not to demolish them, and so this is the Pier street mosque, now standing lonely and isolated on the foreshore in the harbour area, separated from the former South End by the freeway that now runs along the shore to Humewood. It is seen here at sunrise, and we were up on the hill at South End overlooking the Harbour.

If you want to read more, I did a post on this and also some background to yesterday's beach shot, when I went looking for dolpins HERE.
There is also a post on the fascinating South End Museum, which we are sure to feature here soon. (They were very chatty posts with all sorts of other stuff going on, but just look out for the South End bits if you are in a hurry!)

Kings Beach

This is the main swimming beach on the P.E. beachfront. As you can see it was very low tide, and I was lucky enough to be there out of season, and just about had the place to myself! Here we are looking towards the harbour.

Misty Morning Sunrise

Shark Rock Pier, early morning last winter, chilly but worth it! Standing on the pier looking out across the sea, the sun struggling to break through the mist.

Turning to look the other way, and we see part of the beachfront, with the remains of the mist hovering over it. The red roofs are from the Courtyard Hotel.

Water droplets from the moist air have gathered on the wooden railings of the Pier.

A magical morning, followed by a hearty breakfast in a nearby restaurant overlooking the sea.

gone fishin'

Well, we thought, after the recent spate of buildings we've shown, it would be an idea to get some fresh air away from the city centre, anyone care for a beach outing? (It is SO hard to stick to one photo a day....sometimes it just seems right to add a few and show a place in its context! Today is one of those days.)

This is the Maitlands River Mouth, one of our favourite scenic and fishing spots on the outskirts of town.

It features an enormous sand dune, which is cool for sand-boarding. The main water supply pipeline from the Churchill Dam crosses the river at this point. The river mouth is often closed by sand bars, which creates a lagoon until the next storm opens the mouth and the river again drains out in the sea.

As we stand here looking at this view, we are facing West towards Capetown, with mile upon mile of pristine white beaches stretching out ahead. Behind us, to the east is a rocky coastline leading to the little coastal village of Schoenmakerskop. A hiking track leads there, known as the Sacramento trail.

On the day these were taken, there was a storm, and the gale force winds were whipping the sand off the dunes in streams of stinging grit......

But on a calm warm day, there must be few nicer places on the planet!

Art Nouveau

Yesterday it was Art Deco, today Art Nouveau.... this is one of the old original buildings in Main Street, where the city first developed. It is now called Govan Mbeki Avenue, after our current President's father. There are still a few of these gems, surrounded by some rather nasty high rises built after the middle of last Century. (It still feels weird to think of the years I was born and growing up as 'the middle of LAST Century', makes one feel positively geriatric!

another era....

Ok, you are getting a bonus post today because I have been experimenting with altering the picture size, and YAY YIPPEE YAY, thanks to much help from Fenix of Bostonscapes, (who apparently also never sleeps!) it works! So treat this as a sort of TV test pattern......... THANKS FENIX!!!!

This lovely old Art Deco building in Central is one of the few old and interesting ones which has not been allowed to fall into disrepair by uncaring landlords, who own many of the wonderful historic buildings in the area. The ones on either side of this are in a shocking state. In fact the one down the hill had a fire started by the vagrants who inhabit many of these buildings, and use the floorboards for firewood. It is now a burnt out out shell.

it was a dark and stormy night.........

Last Sunday, a storm blew over. I was trying to capture the lightning, which is unusual in PE, where our rain tends to be of the drizzly cold variety rather than heavy and tropical, but kept missing it.

However, the gale force winds can be seen by the way the trees blurred during the time exposure, while the rest remained steady. Because this picture is wide, it has reduced a lot on blogger, and I am still trying to figure out how to get it to show bigger, so it is worth clicking to see it better. (((Edit: 11.20am Fixed, YAY, but still should open bigger if clicked)))

Then, yesterday, a truck driver misjudged the height of his container while rounding a corner under an overhanging branch in the same park, and ripped half of the tree off. The afternoon was filled with the whirr of chain saws trying to extricate him. (more pix on Sue's blog)

So much for quietly sitting on a park bench contemplating the peace and quiet......let's hope for a normal peaceful summer's day today!

Rainy Day in the Bay

Taken from Central, looking towards Richmond Hill, with the old historic settlers graveyard to the right, and below the church whose steeple you see here. Many of these are the original buildings from the late 1800s. This was one of the earlier parts developed when the city was established.

The road running downhill, left to right is known as Russell Road, after the then Governor of the Cape Colony, Lord Russell. It was formerly a steep river valley with cliffs along part of it, called Hyman's Kloof after one of the settlers who landed here in 1820. The pools along the river were a favourite place for truant schoolboys to hide out in the mid 1800s. The land that some of these buildings stand on was sold off to raise funds for the construction of the road.