Saturday spottings (accelerated)

Old habits die hard. My previous motor vehicle (rust-preventative be upon her) had a superior chassis and not much of a motor; the proper way to deal with this sort of thing, of course, was to drive the living whee out of the car and enjoy flinging it about. I can't do that with Gwendolyn. Well, actually, I can do that, but she's so much faster — I've routinely shaved two to three minutes off what used to be a twenty-minute commute through moderate congestion — that it's an invitation to the gentlemen in blue with the rotating lights. More than once I caught myself doing somewhere in the low 60s in a 40 zone. Better that I should catch myself, though, than that they should catch me.

Speaking of catching, I was northbound on the Lake Hefner Parkway, a smidgen north of 63rd, when I caught sight of one of the weirder manifestations of Oklahoma's placement at the conjunction of every wind pattern on earth: an airborne plastic bag, wafting across the lanes at a height of, oh, three, maybe four feet.

And I caught it. Literally. On the passenger-side mirror. It wrapped itself around the structure and held on doggedly for two miles, shaking loose only after I'd turned eastbound (on Britton) and slowed to a comparative crawl.

Also: off to Midwest City today, partly to gauge the condition of Heritage Park Mall, which is no worse than it was last time, in the sense that I didn't notice anything else had closed. There's still the nagging question of how long you can sustain a mall built for 3.5 anchor tenants with one, and that one a Sears store, but I suppose that will be answered soon enough. Meanwhile, the newest dead corner is Reno and Midwest Boulevard, where both Target and Wal-Mart have abandoned smaller stores in favor of bigger ones elsewhere. The Target, I am told, will be converted to medical offices, which makes sense given its proximity to Midwest Regional Hospital, but no word on the fate of Wally World. Still remaining: Albertson's, a gas station with a McDonald's, a Carl's Jr., and a Walgreen's.

Just south of there is 250 S. Midwest Blvd., which has been about a dozen different eateries, none of which lasted very long. The Oklahoman noted this morning that it's been leased again, and this time it will be a chicken place. I think the only time I ever ate there was when it was a Dairy Queen.

On the other side of town, I got an answer to one of the dumber questions that had been tormenting me of late. The northern boundary of Mustang is SW 59th Street; Mustang, while it fits into the Oklahoma City street grid, doesn't use the city's numbers, instead using Oklahoma 152 (SW 74th) and Mustang Road as its axes. And as I headed west on 59th, I noted with some weird glee that the section of 59th east of Mustang Road was indeed posted "E. SW 59th St." And to think we have problems finding things on Grand Boulevard.

Also on Mustang Road, I discovered that the Force is strong:

(Taken around the 2100 block South.)

Posted at 7:18 PM to City Scene