Pocket Journals.

In my systematic quest for the perfect pocket journal, I bought the smallest size notebooks available from every brand I could find. Two years of hard testing later, here are my conclusions.

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Moleskine Plain Reporter Notebook.

3-1/2 x 5-1/2, black only, $12.00.

I bought three different Moleskines, but this is the only one that saw significant use. The Moleskine dimensions are pretty good for a back pocket, and the slick, fake leather binding slides in and out easily. For writing while standing up, the Reporter sits nicely in your hand.

I'm not crazy about the Moleskine paper, which is thinner and yellower than the other brands, but I cope. Moleskine does a sketchbook with different paper for drawing and painting, and elsewhere on the internet you can find artists hotly debating the technical performance of paper under various media. All I really have an opinion about is how well it works as journal in my pocket.

I liked this one a lot initially, but after a while the cover started wearing badly, at which point I retired it. I assume the other Moleskines would wear in the same way. See photos below.

Other features: elastic closure band, expandable pocket.

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Moleskine Japanese Album.

3-1/2 x 5-1/2, black only. $9.60.

One continuous, zigzag-folded page. I really love this and am saving it for use as a future travel journal. One reason I think the Moleskine Reporter Notebook wore out is that I took too long filling it up. But when travelling, I journal feverishly, filling pages like I'm on meth--I could fill this up in a few weeks before it had the chance to fall apart. Also, I feel like the continuous page would be conducive to obsessive, stream-of-consciousness documentation, a la Kerouac (or something).

And the paper is thicker and more durable, almost card stock.

Other features: elastic closure band, expandable pocket.

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Moleskine Plain Notebook.

3-1/2 x 5-1/2, black or red,$12.00.

Not much left to say about Moleskines, but this one does come in red.

Other features: bookmark string, elastic closure band, expandable pocket.

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Sparco Brand Reporter's Notebook.

4-1/2 x 8, $21.30 for a pack of twelve.

The newspaper where I interned in 2008 had an unlimited supply of these. They do make you feel like a journalist, but what a hassle to use! Thin cardboard; ugly lined paper; floppy oversized dimensions that won't fit in any pocket. At least the cover folds back out of the way, which none of these others can do.

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Hand-Book Travelogue Journal, Pocket Landscape.

3-1/2 x 5-1/2, many colors, $7.99.

Many artists swear by these sketchbooks. Even if you're just journaling, it's a tactile delight pulling an inky pen across the thick, toothy, bright, buff-colored paper. The construction feels robust and high quality.

But it's just a little thick to carry in your pocket every day. My wife eventually appropriated this one for Markie, our two-year-old daughter, who gets to put a sticker in it as a reward for using the potty.

Other features: bookmark string, elastic closure band, expandable pocket, reasonable price, many colors and configurations, including square!

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Derwent Faux Suede Journal.

3-1/2 x 5-1/2, black or tan, $7.95.

This measures exactly the same dimensions as the HandBook brand sketchbook above--that is to say, a little thick for my pocket. I also doubt the durability of the faux suede cover.

And yet I really, really like this one. The tan suede with black details looks and feels great, construction is high quality, and the paper is extremely white (pickier artists may find it a little smooth). It's a smart, classy package. No surprise that my wife took it as her own. This would make a great gift.

It has the same bookmark string, elastic band, and expandable pocket as all the rest, as well as a second pocket inside the front cover. Reasonably priced.

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Homemade Journal.

I used to always carry a folded sheet of paper in my pocket to jot down ideas and questions throughout the day. During my foreign study in college, I used this technique for journalling, and came home four months later with a crammed folder of embarrassingly disheveled paper scraps.

Later, after I got married, perhaps thinking my journalling habits could benefit from a little formality, I started fashioning staple-bound books out of card stock. I liked the DIY project, but these never fared well under prolonged pocket use.

Not particularly durable or pretty, but inexpensive and fun to figure out. I've made these in all sorts of sizes and arrangements. I didn't measure this one, but you can see that it's about as long as the pen. These were the inspiration for the pocket journal search.

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Pentalic a la Modeskin Book.

3x4, many colors, $2.95.

The Pentalic has emerged as my journal of choice. 3x4 is approximately the size of my wallet--absolutely perfect.

It's crazy that Moleskine, HandBook, and Derwent aren't already doing their own 3x4's. The Pentalic construction and materials are unimpressive, compared with these other brands (though the paper is still thicker than than Moleskine paper). You can see in the photos below that the book is actually in separate pieces now. That's not normal wear--Markie did it--though I don't think she could tear apart a Moleskine, Handbook, or Derwent with the same ease. It bugged me at the time, but I've forgotten to care, since it just doesn't seem to matter. The elastic band holds everything together and I never think about it.

The cheap rubber cover is extremely durable and is showing the nicest patina of any of these books.

Other features: bookmark string, elastic closure band, expandable pocket, impossibly low price, many colors.

I'm ordering a bunch more of these Pentalics soon, in a variety of colors. With a new one that isn't falling apart, I have a plan to let it replace my actual wallet, with just my few cards and I.D. tucked into the pouch.

The pocket journal catches most of my stray thoughts and questions, as an aid to my unreliable memory, but I've fallen out of the habit of journaling seriously for the sake of posterity or nostalgia. When that inclination comes back around, as I know it will, the other journals will find use at my bedside or in my backpack.

They won't go to waste.

Mobile Full Pipe w/Skylight.

I don't mean to clutter up the blog with a bunch of You'll-Never-Ride-Its, which I always feel are a little too easy, but hey, click to go frickin huge:

Via BLB.

You'll Never Ride It V: The Elusive Bank-to-Steam-Engine.

via Just a Car Guy

Railway snow plows. I had no idea. But of course.

Here are a couple dozen photos from various corners of the internet. Riding-wise, the outdoor museum pieces could probably be located and sessioned with minimal detective work and a cheater-board (Ten bucks paypalled to anyone with photo or video documentation), though that's not really so important.

Just some amazing images to contemplate.

Happy New Year. Click to go big.

via Scenes and Things

via The Railway Snowplow

via Sciencepunk

via rogerdodger's panoramio

via Pirate Johnny's Flickr

via My New England Life

via lewiston-ut.org

via tnrdfilm.com

via bohemianj16's Flickr

via Laramie Historic Railroad Depot

via MichelleDormer's Photobucket

via Atchison Rail Museum

via PaulSid's Flickr

via Marsh49's Panoramio

double-edged!

via Northeast Railfan

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Post-script: some worthy Youtube:


Get Jason Levy on it.

Sounds vs Soundtrack, Revisited.

"A video with no music whatsoever"? Hat tip to InTheGnar for Brandon Westgate's music-less part from the Zoo York video State of Mind:



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Except it's not his video part at all, just the leftover clips. Hence the title "Extras." But thanks to my ignorance, that's how I watched it, foolishly thinking that the editor consciously, intentionally crafted this strangely epic thing, and I hope I kind of tricked you into watching it the same way, and I hope you enjoyed it as thoroughly as I did.

I mean, isn't it absolutely riveting?

For comparison, here's the actual video in its entirety. Westgate's part starts at 1:30. It's quite good, I guess, but seriously: I find the hushed patter of urethane wheels on brick infinitely more foreboding than the squonky cliched guitar riffs of Magic Man.

New Piff Blogs Worth a Click.

Blogball: Ben is slowly documenting all the vintage Toyotas he has owned over the past few years. I believe he is now driving Corolla number seven.

And on a related topic: Old Parked Cars, my new photoblog, with contributions from Ben and Dad.

On Antelope Street.

The wide, winding industrial corridor that runs along the St Louis riverfront is pocked with dozens of odd little isolated residential spaces. A typical micro-hood might consist of just a single block of run-down domestic structures, flanked on all horizons by cyclone fencing, smokestacks, and grandfather zoning clauses.

During last summer's visit, Dad and I were on just such an urban sightseeing outing, when we happened upon what appeared to be a freight train cutting past a row of homes, directly through their tiny front yards.

We found it a baffling, inconceivable sight, and the rest of our day was infused with a sober feeling of wonder. Back at Mom and Dad's, I googled away furiously but could find absolutely no reference to front yard train tracks, in St Louis or anywhere.

So, a few days later I returned to photograph the scene and talk to residents, and I wrote up a little article, which I submitted to the RFT. But I didn't have an existing freelancer's agreement with them, or the seasonal time peg was getting tight... For whatever reason, suffice it to say, I didn't hear back, and the piece never ran.

But it's a unique story, and a piece of St Louis history that I'm proud to have documented. Here it is.

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On Antelope Street

It could probably be said that the shotgun homes on Antelope Street were never intended to last a hundred years. The Baden neighborhood houses were built for railroad and factory workers in an era when plumbing and insulated walls were regarded as luxuries, but over the past century, residents have maintained and improved the structures, adding on bathrooms, installing ductwork for heating and central air, and covering peeling lead paint with vinyl siding. The trees have grown up tall and sturdy. Perhaps the only things that have not changed are the railroad tracks cutting squarely across their front lawns, and the freight trains that rumble through their yards every day.

Homeowner Amber McClain, 25, stands barefoot in the leafy shade, hands on hips. She says, nodding toward the tracks, “People come over, they ask, 'Are those active?' Yeah, they're active!”

Husband Dan, 26, crouches to assist their one-year-old, Vance, toddling in the grass. “Sometimes,” he says, “a train comes through at thirty miles an hour, and I'm like Slow the eff down!” The tracks bend smoothly into view from the North, thread through the front yards for two blocks, and then abruptly whip South again. Dan continues, “They gotta slam on their brakes right there, 'cause it's such a sharp turn.”

The only space for cars is beyond the tracks and across the street. Amber recalls a recent time that she was unloading groceries with her mother-in-law, when they heard the train approaching. The conductor saw them frantically hurrying, and he politely brought the train to a stop. Says Amber, “He was like, 'Go ahead, finish what you're doin'.'”

Says Dan, “Usually if it's a regular one, he'll toot the horn, we'll wave.”

“Loud Mouth honks his horn all the way down, Ding Dong just rings his bell,” jokes Dolly Osborne, 75, recalling some of the regulars.

Osborne's daughter Phyllis adds with a chuckle, “Sneaky Snake doesn't blow his horn or ring his bell.”

A train rolling through at proper speed might take twenty minutes to pass; other times, trains will freeze on the tracks for hours at a time. “You gotta crawl over or under them,” says Erin Thurber, 42, shrugging her shoulders. For what it's worth, she says she tries to be careful. Thurber has never been late fork work.

“They sit there and park for hours,” chimes in Erin's boyfriend John Skilker, 45, gesturing with his blue-kozied Busch Light. “What if there was an emergency? We can't make the railroad do a damn thing.”

Dan McClain points out the fire hydrants, all located beyond the tracks and across the street. “There's nothing emergency vehicles could do,” he says.


According to Dolly Osborne, who has lived here since the 1970's (and who at one time owned as many as three of the homes on Antelope), there remains an unfulfilled commitment from the railroad to relocate the tracks. “They're supposed to be fifty feet,” she says. “That ain't no fifty feet.” From front door to tracks looks about half that distance.

John Spilker dismisses the notion. “I doubt the railroad's gonna do a damn thing,” he says.

In the late nineties, Antelope residents had the privilege of witnessing a full derailment in their front yards. Ron Fry, 43, a longtime Antelope resident now living in Sparta, Tennessee, was with his son in the living room when it began. “We heard this real bad noise, a grinding and banging. Then I saw [through the windows] that the train was off the track, and it was moving fast. I told my little boy 'Run, run to the back of the house!'” The cars piled up on both sides of the track in a scene of utter chaos. Ron describes freight cars driven into the ground, “embedded” and “buried” in the dirt.

The Railroad acted quickly, sending out an expert crew with specialized heavy equipment. “They took up all the track, all the ties, replaced the whole thing,” says Fry. “Worked all night long. Next day they had the train up and running.”

A lamppost was knocked down, and the street had to be repaved, but no one was injured in the accident. Fry claims to remember a local boy losing both legs to a train sometime in the 1950's, and another man who was killed, (“My grandfather had to shovel him off the tracks,” he says) but recalls no human injury in recent decades.

A deep groove cut into the ties by a broken axle is visible today, running the entire length of the block--a reminder of the statistical inevitability of mechanical failure.


Residents do criticize the railroad companies constantly, but at times it's clear they regard living with the tracks as a sort of privilege.

“I actually kind of like it a little bit,” Spilker says thoughtfully, smiling as he puffs a menthol cigarette. He quips, “Had that earthquake a while back, just figured it was a train!”

“I enjoy it,” says Amber McClain. “We don't care till the whistle blows at 1 am... Only thing that concerns me is when the boxcars come by--I worry that some hobo is gonna' jump off the train and steal my baby.” She laughs and then mentions the time two train-hopping stowaways happened to disembark on Antelope. Dolly Osborne invited them in and hosted the young travelers for two weeks.

“They didn't have anywhere to go, and Dolly will take anything in. She's the type to take in strays,” says Erin Thurber.

Osborne explains, “They was running away from home, but they was alright. Everybody got along good... They had a little puppy... I think they just needed to get away.” Osborne and her daughter managed to get in touch with the girl's parents. “We took 'em back to Chicago,” she says, “and their parents came down from Michigan and got 'em.”

Erin Thurber tells of a time another unusual train came through. “We heard a funny horn and came out.” Passing by was the Barnum & Bailey Circus. “It was a special yellow train, and it had all their equipment. We were waving and one guy flipped us off. You could smell the animals.”