A few quick things…
< 1 minute read
April 24, 2007, 1:02 AM
First of all, the photos of the now-demolished Skyline Parkway Motel are officially in the can, and I will be posting those on Wednesday, after I get back from apartment hunting in DC on Tuesday.
Secondly, does anyone have a good recipe for green slime? I want to do a homage to You Can’t Do That On Television for the splash page, and so I need to make some slime. In making the slime, the finished product can’t be clear. It needs to be opaque and somewhat thick, and it also can’t be completely smooth. I want something authentic poured on my head when I say “I don’t know.” And of course, to get clean again after getting slimed, you just have to mention “water”.
Meanwhile, to be truly authentic, I’d need to find an old-style metal jungle gym to do the shoot at.
Categories: Afton Mountain, Photography, Skyline Parkway Motel, Television
Photos of mine, printed ABOVE the fold…
2 minute read
August 28, 2006, 7:51 AM
How often can you say that your photos end up on the front page of the local newspaper? And above the fold, no less. If you look at the August 28, 2006 edition of The News Virginian, you will see two photos anchoring an article about the Skyline Parkway Motel, which, you may recall, had been abandoned for some time, and then was torched in 2004. Both of them are tagged with “Photo courtesy of BEN SCHUMIN”. Here are the photos that the newspaper ran:
Continue reading…Categories: Afton Mountain, Skyline Parkway Motel, Virginia local news, Wikipedia
When I did the photo set, I never thought I was going to be documenting the last days of the complex…
3 minute read
June 19, 2005, 4:27 AM
When I shot the photos that comprised the two-part photo set Afton Mountain: Victim of Progress, I never really thought that what I was documenting would disappear so quickly. The focus of the photo set was threefold, if you recall:
Howard Johnson’s Restaurant
Categories: Afton Mountain, Howard Johnson's, JMU, Virginia local news
Skyline Parkway Motel… people were charged!
< 1 minute read
August 7, 2004, 1:04 AM
An update regarding the recent fire at the Skyline Parkway Motel…
Turns out that it was arson, which we were not surprised about. And the building is a total loss. Also not a surprise. The surprise is how old the three suspects are. There are two 16-year-olds and one 17-year-old charged with the Class 4 felony of setting fire to an unoccupied dwelling. I’d have thought it would have been people who were at least legally adults, rather than kids. But go figure. Anyway, though, since they are children in the eyes of the law, or as the law calls them, “juveniles”, their names were not released.
I understand why their names were not released, but I so want to put the “Nick and Adam” theory to rest. Recall that some days before the fire, the previously-blank sign in front of the motel read “NICK AND ADAM”. Recall this from a previous journal entry:
I so want to put that theory to rest and either have it be the case or not be the case, because I really want to see if people are actually stupid enough in real life to prominently place their name on the crime scene, showing to the world how stupid they are. Just remember… never underestimate the power and speed of stupid.
Categories: Afton Mountain, Skyline Parkway Motel
Photos of the Skyline Parkway Motel fire, and some other stuff
5 minute read
July 15, 2004, 1:56 PM
First of all, before I start showing you photos, guess who I saw on Tuesday afternoon at Wal-Mart. I saw Mrs. Kucs (pronounced “kooch”), my sixth grade math teacher at Stuarts Draft Middle School. That was a lot of fun. She’s retired now, so I don’t see her around SDMS when I go visit. Still, Mrs. Kucs was a great teacher. The one phrase that has stayed with me that I learned from Mrs. Kucs was “That will be fifty whacks with a wet noodle!” All in all, great math teacher, and it was great to see Mrs. Kucs again.
Anyway, after seeing Mrs. Kucs as I was leaving work, I headed out to Afton Mountain and then beyond. Going to Afton, I went by way of downtown Waynesboro, because I had a few other photo spots I wanted to hit on the way. For one, the “scar” on the mountain in Waynesboro:
Categories: Afton Mountain, Charlottesville, Howard Johnson's, Middle school, Skyline Parkway Motel, Waynesboro
It was nice while it lasted…
3 minute read
July 11, 2004, 10:38 AM
Remember this?
For those of you who don’t know, this is the Skyline Parkway Motel, which, along with the Howard Johnson’s Restaurant, and the Skyline Parkway Motor Court, I photographed on September 10, 2003 for the Afton Mountain: Victim of Progress photo set.
Things have changed since then.
Categories: Afton Mountain, Skyline Parkway Motel, Virginia local news