I used to see one every day while driving to law school: a house right on the corner of a busy street, painted a garish shade of purple. As time went on, the house went from purple to purple with green trim, to black with purple polka dots, to purple with yellow “smiley face” polka dots.
That one actually had a reason behind it, though: it was the “purple house protest”. The college students living therein were protesting a city ordinance that prohibited more than three unrelated people from living in the same house. The color of the house drew attention to their cause, and when people drove by, they sometimes stopped to sign the petition that hung handily from the tree in the front yard.
Actually, there’s a home near me now that’s painted two different shades of purple, and they’re not protesting anything. I’m not talking muted-shades-of-purple-“Painted Lady”-type tones, but bright and garish purple. Pepper Mill loves it (She wanted her father to paint their house purple when she was a kid.)
When I lived in Rochester, N.Y. there was a Purple House like that not far from Monroe Ave.
In the town where my mom lives there are a couple of strange things to see:
-A house that has an authentic totem pole on the porch and a life size bronze statue of a wharthog standing on a cement block in the front yard.
-A home made entirely of fieldstone, complete with a fieldstone well and gazebo in the back yard
-The best is a house that’s in the town next to my mom’s that used to have all these large statues of black men killing and torturing white men (seriously). Most of them are gone now, and the home is in a pretty bad area, but when we were in high school everyone had to drive past it to see the “Craziest shit ever”.
I guess my area is fairly tame, but there is one place that leaves me scratching my head. It’s an ordinary ranch house on an acre or two, nondescript landscaping, and three painted plywood cutouts on the front lawn - Winnie the Pooh, Piglet, and Betty Boop.
I remember that one, and there was one near Harris RF that was a 3 storey vic painted pepto bismal pink.
There were a few really funky places along the shore in Webster also - one I almost rented was ‘upside down’ - the ground floor was 3 bedrooms and a bathroom, the top floor was a single large room with a microscopic kitchen and a fairly normal living room area, and you used a spiral stair to get to teh second floor, and there was a large deck, with a walkway out to a small gazebo built over the beach. It was right near the bridge they tore out and right next to a bar. It had nudie lady wallpaper in the bathroom.
I telecommute now, so I have no present tense contribution to make here.
However, when I did go into the office, I passed by these places. We’ve got:
The Place That Ain’t There No More (For Obvious Reasons)
The Wierd Rust-Dripping Silo Thing
The Building That I’ve Never Been Able To Figure Out Just What The Hell It’s There For
and
Another Herb Tarlek House
I remember there was a house on a larger property that had signs protesting the local power company, which was called something like NSP at the time. One of the signs said:
RAPE
IT’S LEGAL IF YOU’RE NSP
There was a house along the highway which had a large sign in front of it claiming that a local man who had been arrested was innocent and that the sherriff had framed him. I finally figured out that’s what it said after driving by it a dozen or more times and reading bits of it each time I passed. The text was very long and had been done in block print. (There were at least 150 words on it.)
Dang, Hal, you used to commute in West Windsor, N.J.!
We used to see that bizarre building weith the orange circle on top all the time. It got several names:
1.) The Church of the Holy Lifesaver
2.) Yoyodyne*
3.) The Thing that came in the box that was the Ford Asembly Plant**
– “Yoyodyne” appears, among other places, in the movie The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai, where the company was founded by the Evil Red Lectroids who came through the dimensional barrier on Oct. 31, 1938, during the Orson Welles “War of the Worlds” broadcast. The name is appropriate, because Grover’s Mill, where the Martians landed (and the Lectroids came in) is now part of West Windsor.
** – The Former Ford Assembly Plant near the present Assembly Square Shopping Center in Medford MA looks as if it’s perfectly fitted to hold that building.
There’s a really big park in my Shanghai neighborhood that used to be a hideous tire factory straight out of the worst communist style imagineable. Actually, it pre-dated the 1949 revolution. Now it’s really a nice big park with a pond, flowing water, trees and an elevated walkway that goes diagnolly across it that is perfect for my walk to work. All that’s left of the factory is the main brick chimmney that has been turned into a monument.
There is also a beautiful 3 story Western brick villa built by the original owner. Now it is a exquisite Japanese managed French restaurant. It’s pricey but the food is superb in the way that only the Japanese can do great French. The villa is beautiful inside.
I see it every day as I walk through the park.
Not sure if it’s “wierd” as in the other houses that are “wierd” in this thread. But it is surreal.
There are so many houses in San Francisco painted bright purple, it no longer even registers as “wierd” with me.
When I used to go down to Palo Alto with my dad to visit my great-aunt, we’d pass a building that was made up of rounded, white oblong shapes, a couple of them for the ground floor and second story, and one that stuck up like a tower. Whoever built it was trying so hard to be different that I really wanted to like it, but the over-all effect just made it look like a giant, dessicated dog turd.
I, too, had an Mystery Car Lot like Cal’s. Also in New Jersey. It was this really tiny little place wedged between some houses and a ritzy restaurant. The cars would change, but I don’t know if there was even a proper office there. New Jersey being what it is, everyone pretty much assumes it’s a front for some ahem less than legal activities, which may or may not have some international ties to certain European nations known for their pasta and Catholicism.
The Flag House. Typical suburban neighborhood, typical corner house. With a 30-foot tall flagpole and equally-ridiculous flag. And…an outdoor projector set up, projecting a house-sized American flag onto the outside wall.
A tiny, tiny yard in front of a Philadelphia townhouse. Containing no less than one miniature light house, one extremely large Easter Bunny, one extremely large…Tigger, one picnic table, and several children’s playthings. Photo (taken while driving, sorry it sucks). THe picture doesn’t really show it well, but their yard was so full of…things, you couldn’t walk in it.
I no longer commute, but, on the way to the grocery, is a “store.” There is clothing in the display window, but no sign of any sort telling what they sell. “Open” is painted in 18 inch letters vertically on the door. The lights seem to be on 24/7. For a while, there was graffiti style spray paint on the window saying “HipHop”, but that got washed off.
There’s a wooden kitchen chair balanced on top of a 30 foot stump. in a yard down the street.
Not on my commute, but down a side street I used to have to go down to visit a friend, in suburban North Olmsted, Ohio, is a plain old brick ranch style house…with every window covered in steel security shutters. My friend said no one in the neighborhood seemed to know what these people were afraid of, but they were ready for an armed assault, apparently.
I’ve posted pictures before about the house around the corner from me that is a rental property. It is painted bright pink, with carnival-like decorations in purple, yellow and blue diamonds and triangles. They made the paper because of their paint scheme…they are visible from I-90 in Westlake…which was apparently designed by a major artist in Romania. The landlord let them paint the house in these extreme colors, and the family has since moved on, and the colors are starting to fade. Who knows what will be next.
Another house on the way to my brother’s house fills their entire yard with those inflatable yard decorations at every holiday…and I mean fills. At Christmas there are at least twenty-five to thirty of those things lit up and running…reindeer, toy soldiers, every version of Santa ever made, snow globes, snowmen, the Grinch, Homer-santa, bluebirds, sleighs, polar bears, elves…you name it, they own one or two. And they do this for every holiday…at Thanksgiving there are a flock of inflatable turkeys. Halloween is as full as Christmas. I have no idea how they can store the hundreds of inflatables they have in their tiny home.
Welll… I wasn’t going to post this, because I thought it was unfair for two reasons. 1.) They’re not houses, and 2.) It’s in New Jersey. Man, that whole state is bizzare!
But, it is worth posting because it’s in the town where I used to live, I actually saw some of them (more got put up after I left, I think), and it includes blurbs from an interview with Captain Bott - who was my assistant scoutmaster and is a really terrific guy.
