No more shopping: the dead A&P Supermarket of Vicksburg

Former A&P supermarket, 1016 Mission 66, Vicksburg (Panasonic G3 digital camera)

When my wife and I first moved to Vicksburg, the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company, better known as A&P, still operated two supermarkets in town. One was at 1016 Mission 66. The other was at the location now occupied by Fred's Super Dollar at 3427 Halls Ferry Road. By the mid-1980s, A&P was already a tired old company with unattractive stores, uninteresting food merchandise, and, to be blunt, questionable maintenance and cleanliness.

The company started as a coffee and tea company in 1859. It grew rapidly in the late-1800s, and by the early 20th century, the A&P was one of the world's largest retailers. According to Wikipedia,

"In 1930, A&P, now the world's largest retailer, reached $2.9 billion in sales ($44.4 billion today) with 16,000 stores. In 1936, it adopted the self-serve supermarket concept and opened 4,000 larger stores (while phasing out many of its smaller units) by 1950. 

A&P's decline began in the early 1950s, when it failed to keep pace with competitors that opened larger supermarkets with more modern features demanded by customers. By the 1970s, A&P stores were outdated, and its efforts to combat high operating costs resulted in poor customer service."

A new CEO tried to save the company in 2010 by developing "Values,""Goals," "Strategies," and "Burning imperatives."

"The burning imperative is a sharply defined, intensely shared, and purposefully urgent understanding from each of the team members of what they are “supposed to do, now.” Get this created and bought into early on—even if it’s only 90 percent right. You, and the team, will adjust and improve along the way." (from Forbes, 2011)

OK, well, you know where that went. Whenever some CEO starts to blather about goals or values, run.

I recall shopping (rarely) at the A&P in Warwick, Rhode Island, in the late 1970s, and being unimpressed with the ambience or experience. I recall a very smelly bag of potatoes because one deep inside was rotted.

Oddly enough, A&P's Bokar coffee was pretty good, and in the 1980s, A&P may have been the only source for coffee beans in Vicksburg. Yes, Vicksburg was a coffee desert back then. I usually mail-ordered coffee beans from Houston, Texas, but occasionally I was caught beanless and hopped into the A&P. The Eight O'Clock variety was pretty weak, not worth grinding and brewing. A&P sold off the Eight O'Clock coffee manufacturing unit in 2003, and I am amazed that someone still owns the trademark and sells it at various merchants, such as Amazon and larger Kroger stores.

The Mission 66 A&P building is still sitting unused, decade after decade. The building is reasonably intact and I am surprised that it has not been vandalized.

Linoleum or vinyl floor, drop ceiling - so 1970s.

 Some little person left their toys on a window sill?

The rear of the cinderblock building is a disgusting mess. I wonder if the flooded loading ramp is a mosquito-breeding swamp? Any interesting snakes? Originally, a drain connected to the storm drains, but clearly the bottom of the ramp has become clogged with debris. A 2004 Vicksburg Post article addressed the standing water with respect to West Nile Virus.

These images are from 2014, but from the road, I see no change. These are digital files from a Panasonic G3 digital camera. This was an excellent little camera which served me well around town and even on Mt. Kilimanjaro. The wide-angle views were from the Olympus M ED 9-18mm ƒ/4.0-5.6 micro Four Thirds Lens.

Baobab Trees and Elephants, Tanzania

Tarangire National Park, Tanzania (Panasonic G3 digital file, reprocessed with DXO Filmpack 5)

My wife and I recently watched the Netflix nature program, Our Planet. It features some spectacular photography from harsh environments, including animals seldom photographed (such as the Siberian Tiger).  Episode 5, "From Deserts to Grasslands," described how baobab trees have incredibly deep roots that can tap water while the surface is in severe drought. I remembered being amazed by the huge baobabs in Tanzania and decided to revisit some 2015 files.

Tarangire National Park, Tanzania

Baobab trees are found in arid parts of Madagascar, Africa, Arabia, and Australia. The trunks can be meters in diameter and contain a large amount of water. In drought, elephants chew on the trunks to extract moisture. Sometimes, the trunk has hollowed out and provides habitat for bats, birds, termites, and other critters. The trees can be 2000 years old.

Tarangire National Park, Tanzania (polarizing filter)

Tarangire National Park, Tanzania (polarizing filter)

My friend Ed and I took a 4-day safari after our Kilimanjaro climb. Tarangire National Park is about 4 bumpy hours west of Arusha. It was quite arid when we visited in October. From the viewpoint over the river, we could see lions, elephants, and antelope. The air temperature was comfortable, and there were no mosquitoes.

Tarangire National Park, Tanzania

The pond was especially interesting because baboons, antelope, and other animals came to drink. We had to stay in the Toyota Land Cruiser, but as long as we were inside, the animals seemed to not notice us (or at least not be concerned). I think the tree in the foreground was a variety of Acacia (genus Acacia).

Ngorongoro Conservation Area, Tanzania

Yellow-billed storks (Mycteria ibis), Ngorongoro Conservation Area

The Ngorongoro Crater is an astonishing geological terrain, a volcanic caldera that is 600m deep and 20km across. It is unbroken, meaning no rivers flow out of the caldera. It is considered an active volcano. I did not see any baobab trees, but the caldera does include grassland, swamp, forest, and  a soda lake. Once again, another place to visit with more time on the ground to observe and photograph - with real film.

Note: the Yellow-billed Stork is sometimes called a Wood Ibis, but it is confusingly named because it is a stork, not an ibis.

Lake Manyara National Park, Tanzania

This big lady came up to the Land Cruiser. We stayed very still, but she and her family were pretty mellow, snuffled around, and headed back into the forest.

Time for diesel and a broken key, Mto Wa Mbu village, Tanzania

All good things must end. We had to drive back to Arusha. It is a 3-hour drive over bumpy roads, rough going. Some tourists fly in on small planes to an airstrip somewhere in the area. That would be the smart way to maximize your time in the nature area and avoid endless potholes. But Arusha is reasonably interesting; older articles are at this link and this link.

I took these images with a Panasonic G3 digital camera with the Panasonic Lumix 12-32mm lens and a polarizing filter for scenes with sky. To convert to black and white, I opened the RAW files in Adobe Photoshop Elements (using ACR 7.3), then opened DxO FilmPack 5 to use the Tri-X black and white film emulation. It is OK but not the real thing. I need to return to Tanzania with real cameras with film.

Arusha with Film Emulations

Long-time readers know I often convert my digital RAW files to black and white. Recently I tried the DxO FilmPack 5 film emulation software. I thought it would be interesting to see how some scenes in Arusha, Tanzania, would look if I had been using film (click any of the pictures to see them at 1,600 pixels wide).

This is the central bus station in Arusha. This is the RAW file from my Panasonic G3 camera opened with Adobe Camera Raw 7.4 with minimal manipulation other than  increasing exposure in the shadows. The colors are good and there is a long range of exposure from dark to white. Digital capture is amazing.

This is the simulation of Kodak Ektar 100 film. It was an excellent emulsion and looked a lot like the pure digital capture. Note that this was a negative film, meaning it was intended for printing on color print paper. Depending on the type of paper used and the filtration during printing, the final print might look quite different.

Here is my favorite slide film from the past, Kodachrome 25. Note the "clean" high contrast appearance.

Here is my favorite black and white film, Kodak Tri-X, with yellow filter added to enhance contrast a little. You can still buy Tri-X in various sizes.

Finally, here is the Kodak BW400CN black and white film with red filter. The BW400CN was discontinued in 2014 but can still be found in bulk on ePrey. This was a convenient  film because it was developed in C-41 chemicals at any color print lab (in other words, color print film but with monochrome dyes only). It scanned well - buy some while you can.

This is the abandoned railroad station. This is the standard digital output with good exposure range and reasonably realistic colors.

Here is the same scene but processed with DxO FilmPack 5 with the Kodak Tri-X film emulation. I added the yellow filter, which darkened the sky when using real Ti-X. Depending on filtration (green, yellow, orange, red, etc.) there are almost endless ways you can modify the tonality.

Her is another scene from the rail yard, the standard digital RAW file opened in Adobe camera Raw 7.4.

Here is a film that DxO labeled as Generic Kodachrome. Note the bright blue of the warehouse in the distance. The Kodachrome of the 1950s and 1960s was highly saturated, resulting in the "Kodachrome look." Kodachrome is gone forever, but many other films are still available. Borrow a film camera and try some traditional (real) photography as an aesthetic challenge.

TB Sanatorium, Parnitha, Athens, Greece

Mount Parnitha (in Greek, Πάρνηθα) is a mountain about 30 km north of downtown Athens. When I was a child, it was a common Sunday outing to drive up the winding mountain road to the upper reaches of Parnitha to play in the snow of just enjoy the dense forests. We always passed a hulking old hospital that my parents said was a former sanatorium. In the 1950s, the memory of tuberculosis (or TB) was still fresh in many people's minds. Before the era of antibiotics, a long rest in an environment with clean air was the only hope for TB sufferers (and even then, the recovery rate was low).

A hospital on Parnitha was first was built in 1912 to treat patients suffering from tuberculosis. The facility treated many prominent citizens of Athens over the years. Unfortunately, despite the best efforts of doctors and the purported benefits of the fresh air in sanatoria, in the early 20th century, over 50 percent of patients died within five years. The first successful immunization against tuberculosis was based on attenuated bovine-strain tuberculosis, known as the bacille Calmette–Guérin (BCG). The BCG vaccine only received wide acceptance in USA and Europe after World War II. Thanks to public health initiatives, tuberculosis was largely eradicated from most of Greece and the Parnitha hospital closed in the 1950s or early 1960s. The building at the site is newer than 1912, I guess a reconstruction from the 1950s.

Around 1965, the Greek National Tourist Organization bought the hospital and renovated it as part of the now-defunct Xenia hotel chain. What a disgusting concept: a TB hospital as a hotel? 

The Xenia hotels were a major infrastructure program in the 1950s and 1960s, when Greece wanted to enhance its tourist potential. After the devastating civil war that ended in 1949, Greece lay in ruins and only major cities had hotels. The Xenias were often built in beautiful locations near archaeological sites. Many were of post-war modernist architecture. But they were government-run, and by the 1970s (even the 1960s) were hopelessly outclassed by commercial hotels. I recall drafty, echoey entry halls, erratic hot water, and grim breakfasts that featured stale bread, Nescafe, and a disgusting Tang-like orange drink. According to Wikipedia, the Xenia program was terminated in 1983. Many of the concrete buildings have not aged well, and they often looked out of place in towns among classical stone buildings.

The intrepid visitor ascends the crumbling steps into what was once the main entry hall. Some of the carpet is still there. I processed these photographs in color to show the red and blue carpeting, probably not very elegant even in the 1960s.

I suppose in the past, the public rooms might have been reasonably cheerful on sunny days.

The hallways are long and gloomy, and the concrete and plaster is spalling and crumbling into powder.

Some of the graffiti is pretty imaginative and worth showing in color.

I did not see much furniture. Some bloggers have shown kitchen equipment, but I was hesitant to explore too deeply by myself. My nephew said drug activity happens there, but on the weekday that I visited, all I saw was some other photographers. Still, I decided to not venture alone into the dark cellar.

In 2007, a devastating fire burned a wide area around Parnitha. The fire destroyed rare Greek Fir and Aleppo Pine. Since then, the fallen timber has been removed, leaving a wasteland of bare rock and thin soil. The forest will take decades or centuries to recover. The odd sculpture garden used fire-damaged tree trunks. 

The lower photograph shows the Regency Casino Mont Parnes, minus the once-beautiful forest. The casino and hotel have a cable car, but the site is so remote from Athens, I am surprised it can remain in business.

Click the links below for other articles on the TB sanatorium:

The Greek Reporter

Deserted Places blog (from 2012)

PBS (Public Broadcast System) aired an excellent documentary in February, 2015, on tuberculosis in America, titled The Forgotten Plague. I recommend it highly.

I took these photographs taken with a Panasonic G3 digital camera, with RAW files processed in PhotoNinja software. I drew the map with ESRI ArcMap software.

UPDATE:  For some 2016 photographs on Kodak Tri-X film:  https://worldofdecay.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-tb-hospital-on-parnitha-greece.html

Burmese Days 12: Sensory Overload at Thiri Mingalar Market

If you like wholesale produce markets, they do not get much bigger than the Thiri Mingalar market in west Rangon, near the Hlaing River and west of Inya Lake and Yangon University. This is another place off the normal tourist route, but more and more foreigners are gradually showing up, and the local merchants seem delighted to have curious visitors. The market is huge and consists of three rows of parallel steel sheds (the aerial photograph is from ESRI® maps and data).

I never quite figured out the geography, but the first area my friends and I explored was the fruit area. Wow, nice produce, fresh from the farms.

Watermelons go flying. Strong guys to do this all day.

Bananas and plantains - more than I have ever seen in one place before.

Now for the good smelly stuff: the dried fish and shrimp. The shrimp are used as a flavoring agent in Burmese cuisine.

These tubs contain fermenting fish mash in the process of becoming fish sauce. Yum. Think of this when you buy a bottle of fish sauce in one of our sterile US supermarkets.

These carrots might be pretty good, as well.

If you are hungry, there is a big cafeteria on site. We were a bit dubious about the dish-washing facilities.

Betel nut chewing is a big business in Burma. The young ladies wrap betel leaf, areca nut, and slaked lime (calcium hydroxide) into a little package, which may also contain tobacco, cardamon, or other spice. Rural people and workers in certain industries, especially truck and bus drivers, chew the betel as a stimulant. It stains their teeth and lips red. When we lived in Rangoon in the 1950s, walls were stained red with spit-out betel juice up to a height of about 6 ft. Chewing betel has serious health effects, especially malignant tumors in the mouth area.

These are the delivery boys, who pedal amazingly heavy loads in bicycle sidecars. Selfie photos are the big thing now.

Some families tend small stores.

I cannot recall what these shredded white roots are, but they sell tons of it every day. And the guys check their phones whenever possible. 

The Thiri Mingalar market is an amazing tableau of colors, shapes, smells, and people for a photographer. It seems safe, and there are other foreign visitors present. Highly recommended! Next time, I will take a film camera and try black and white. Wear boots or high shoes because there is a lot of squishy stuff underfoot.

These are digital images from a Panasonic G3 camera with Olympus 9-18mm lens or a Fujifilm X-E1 camera, with most RAW files processed with PhotoNinja software.