bryan talbot dot net ~ archive: June 06

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June 2006

Tuesday, June 20
Some studio progress, no wow factor. We're in a holding pattern, waiting for a City Codes inspection (the second of five).

I've picked out most of the wall and ceiling fabrics. I have decided on the wood for the live room floor, a number-two grade red oak. It has more mineral streaks and flaws than number-one grade, which makes it more "natural" than something "perfect" (read: corporate/businesslike/boring). One live room wall will have two three-foot wide sections of dry-stacked stone, with light sconces, and a cherry-wood diffusor between them, from the floor to the eleven-foot ceiling. Mike thinks it will look like a ski lodge.

Free-hanging baffles, cut to spec, above the control room ceiling.

We've started the "floated" floor, framing, and ceiling work in the live room, but can't go further until blessed by Codes.

To be where the action is.

Friday, June 16
My good friend Tim Wilson recently visited my home, on a visit from out-of-state. Following his visit, he posted this link to a review of two longtime, venerable Southern eateries, after re-visiting the Loveless Motel and Cafe, the better known of the two.

My reading of the review of the Loveless and it's lesser-known counterpart, The Beacon Light Tea Room, stirred some memories, and made me think that the reviewer's visit must have taken place before TomKats Catering assumed ownership of the Loveless and cleaned the place up, overhauled the menu somewhat, and (I'm told) yuppified it by a...um...country mile.

My last memory of the Loveless is the more-sensed-than-seen layer of grime and gunk, accumulated through many long years of smoky, greasy food prep. As a native child, that element used to mean that you were in for some seriously tasty Southern country food. Now, it's just kind of gross.

I've not been to the Tomkats-owned, revamped Loveless.

I went to the Beacon Light with my family, when I was ten or eleven years old. Back then, the nighttime trek out Highway 100 seemed like an awfully long time, into the next county...which it actually was. It felt much more remote, a small and warm haven deep in the cold, dark woods. My father said that he thought the place was named from a long-gone country airstrip, with its beacon light for whatever small plane traffic they had. I remember thinking the ham and biscuits, unlike the Loveless even then, were a lot more like something I would eat at my great-aunt Ezzie's, a tough but kind old farm woman who died in nineteen seventy-one at the age of ninety-three.

I also remember having my parent's permission to play something on the jukebox. I selected "Gimmie Gimmie Good Lovin" by Crazy Elephant.

Yes, Tim, I hijacked your blog entry...sorry.