Reposted by Benjamin FranklinsteinAliki Chapple @commonmugwort.bsky.social · 2hjust look at the sightlines on that … 372
Benjamin Franklinstein @mitchellg657.bsky.social · 1hSidebar: have you read Born in Flames, by Bench Ansfield? It looks at the way a well intentioned but poorly thought out insurance law lead to the epidemic of arson that destroyed a massive number of apartment blocks in NYC in the 1970s? 120
Benjamin Franklinstein @mitchellg657.bsky.social · 1hI'm a "Next Sunday A.D." guy. Joel and the boys got me through so many hungover Sunday mornings back in my dissolute youth. 000
Benjamin Franklinstein @mitchellg657.bsky.social · 1hIt happened to an old theater at Beverly and Fairfax. The owners let the roof deteriorate and collapse so they could remove everything but the street facade, which is going to be incorporated into the shitty condo building they're putting up. And don't get me started on what they did to LACMA. 120
Benjamin Franklinstein @mitchellg657.bsky.social · 1hAbsolutely. You do the same if you're ever in SoCal. 010
Benjamin Franklinstein @mitchellg657.bsky.social · 1hWe see that kind of thing in LA a lot, where buildings with historical preservation status are neglected until they're too dangerous to use so the owners can gut them or tear them down. It almost happened to my beloved Cinerama Dome until Alamo Drafthouse bought it and is rehabbing it. 120
Benjamin Franklinstein @mitchellg657.bsky.social · 1hI want to get over so badly. I was in Athens very briefly when running away from Cairo during the first Gulf War, and went to the village to see the family house an uncle had fixed up in 2019, but we never made it off Mt Helmos that whole trip. 120
Benjamin Franklinstein @mitchellg657.bsky.social · 1hThe cherry on top came during WW2. Look up the Kalavryta Massacre. The family lived on the outskirts of the last village the Nazis attacked (was called Mazeika then, now it's called Kleitoria). You can bet she was happy to get back to a place with an amusement park, two movie houses, and no Nazis. 120
Benjamin Franklinstein @mitchellg657.bsky.social · 2hProblem was her parents told my grandmother it was a visit, to take care of her grandmother, not a permanent relocation. She wanted to go to Mt Holyoke College (across the river in South Hadley) then become a doctor. She HATED the village and carried a lot of resentment for the rest of her life. 320
Benjamin Franklinstein @mitchellg657.bsky.social · 2hgetting a job building helicopters for Kaman in Connecticut. I was born in Boston where my mom had moved after high school, but we moved back in 1973 and I grew up there. It was a hell of a place. Check out the city hall, a terrifying Gothic pile built of black granite. 010
Benjamin Franklinstein @mitchellg657.bsky.social · 2hDepression, then the Metaxas regime, then WW2, then the Civil War. Because she had birthright citizenship, my grandmother was able to bring her husband and their kids, including my mom, over, and they went to Holyoke because it was what my grandmother knew. He worked in a paper mill before 230
Benjamin Franklinstein @mitchellg657.bsky.social · 2hMy maternal great grandparents came over from Greece to work the textile mills in the 1890s (my great grandfather was a wizard with silk embroidery and made a good wage doing piecework by hand). They went back to Greece with my grandmother when she was 10 in 1927, just in time for the 130
Benjamin Franklinstein @mitchellg657.bsky.social · 2hYou could tell it was something grand, even as a kid. The whole downtown was full of amazing architecture, from the Neoclassical public library (which is still going strong) to the WPA Moderne Gas and Electric Building. The factories closed in the 70s and 80s and a mall opened and that was that. 120
Benjamin Franklinstein @mitchellg657.bsky.social · 2hThis is in my home town. I saw The Land That Time Forgot in this theater. Over the years, a lot of people have talked about rehabbing it, but the city's been in rough shape since the factories closed in the 70s and 80s. It's rebounding a bit, so maybe someday someone will get it fixed up. I hope so 020
Benjamin Franklinstein @mitchellg657.bsky.social · 2hTHAT'S MY HOME TOWN! I saw The Land That Time Forgot in that theater! Around the corner was another 20s movie house, the Strand, where I saw my very first movie, Space Amoeba. They tore it down in the late 89s or early 90s, though. 120
Benjamin Franklinstein @mitchellg657.bsky.social · 5hHe really wanted to do it and he's just a little guy and it's his birthday 020
Benjamin Franklinstein @mitchellg657.bsky.social · 6hI'm imagining that the Flagstaff fusion plant took over the old Purina factory site. 010
Benjamin Franklinstein @mitchellg657.bsky.social · 6hWe didn't have a microwave until I was in high school, and so it was pop on the stove or get that Jiffy Pop pie tin with a handle thing, and lemme tell ya, that stuff is for scrubs. 010
Benjamin Franklinstein @mitchellg657.bsky.social · 6hI've been popping my own since I was a kid. My mom gave me the pot we used when I moved to California. 110
Benjamin Franklinstein @mitchellg657.bsky.social · 7hCAMP FUCKING PENDLETON IS IN SAN DIEGO COUNTY 030
Benjamin Franklinstein @mitchellg657.bsky.social · 7hAll that naval infrastructure in San Diego is woke. 0140
Benjamin Franklinstein @mitchellg657.bsky.social · 9hThe Republican who casts the killing ballot would be seen as a liberator (from the tarnished Trump brand; they could keep doing the same stuff but without the weirdo frontmen and get away with it, I think). 010
Benjamin Franklinstein @mitchellg657.bsky.social · 10hWait til I tell you about how Stephen King's IT is about class consciousness! 010
Benjamin Franklinstein @mitchellg657.bsky.social · 11hI don't see how the world needs a Sam Altman, but here we are. 000
Benjamin Franklinstein @mitchellg657.bsky.social · 14hEfficient dictatorial government, the idea so shitty it got invented twice. 010
Benjamin Franklinstein @mitchellg657.bsky.social · 05/10/2026If you read Dracula as an allegory of the rise of the petit bourgeoisie (a doctor, an estate agent, an American with money, a modern woman) versus Marx's "dead generations" which weigh like a nightmare on the minds of the living, the cowboy is more vital to the story than Van Helsing. 0181
Benjamin Franklinstein @mitchellg657.bsky.social · 05/10/2026Anyway, there's a seance scene where a wax cast if the child's hand appears when the lights are turned on and that scared the living bejesus out of me and has informed my entire career as a horror fan and author. 000
Benjamin Franklinstein @mitchellg657.bsky.social · 05/10/2026There was a TV movie from 1968 that must have been rerun on a local station in maybe 1974 called Daughter of the Mind. A US rocket scientist sees the ghost of his dead daughter telling him to stop making weapons. Is it real or a Soviet Psyop?!?! 1/2 110
Benjamin Franklinstein @mitchellg657.bsky.social · 04/10/2026Talk to any Greek grandma who outlived her terrible husband by a few decades about the misery of family. It's a prison. 1220
Benjamin Franklinstein @mitchellg657.bsky.social · 04/10/2026Why do scarecrows get so many awards? They're always outstanding in their fields. 0135
Benjamin Franklinstein @mitchellg657.bsky.social · 04/10/2026Couple weeks ago I was explaining something to someone who felt I was taking too long because I was explaining something slowly and thoroughly because HE'D ALREADY FUCKED IT UP AND MADE IT MY PROBLEM. These fucking people. 030
Benjamin Franklinstein @mitchellg657.bsky.social · 04/10/2026This Near Dark requel is gonna be awesome 010
Benjamin Franklinstein @mitchellg657.bsky.social · 04/10/2026I grew up between a SAC base that flew those and then got C-5s and an ANG base with F-4s that got A-10s just before Desert Storm. Fun stuff for a kid who liked airplanes. 030
Benjamin Franklinstein @mitchellg657.bsky.social · 04/10/2026Kind of surprised there was a spare one to do this with considering how successful Iran has been at wrecking our shit with drones that cost less than a box at one of those stadiums. 030
Benjamin Franklinstein @mitchellg657.bsky.social · 04/10/2026Absolutely. Couple it with Songs in the Key of Springfield and you've got a stew going! 020
Benjamin Franklinstein @mitchellg657.bsky.social · 04/10/2026The Great Ex eventually married someone in venture capital who has had about the same success I have in venture capital, and I work for the DMV. 050
Benjamin Franklinstein @mitchellg657.bsky.social · 04/10/2026Along a similar strand, the old-time Boston accent didn't occur further west in Massachusetts than where the radio transmitters could reach. Starting around Worcester and going out to the Berkshires the grammar and vocabulary are the same but the sound is different. 120
Benjamin Franklinstein @mitchellg657.bsky.social · 04/10/2026I wish this lesson would sink in for me. There's an author I keep reading despite having actually liked precisely one of their works. 110
