Patricia McHugh

Patricia McHugh, who wrote one of the seminal books on Toronto's architecture, died in September in New York. Her death went largely unreported here, which is a shame since her book — Toronto Architecture: A City Guide — is one of the key references, along with Toronto, No Mean City by Eric Arthur, for anyone who's interested in this city's built heritage. There were two editions of the book, both published in the 1980s. It's sad to see how many buildings were demolished between publication of the the first and second editions, and then to see how many of the buildings in the second book are no longer standing.

When I began research for Faces on Places, I wanted my own copy of McHugh's book, but it was out of print and seemed to be unavailable. I kicked myself, remembering that I'd seen it in the World's Biggest Bookstore when it was new, but my funds were low at the time and I didn't think I had a spare $15. I subsequently found the book on eBay and bought it, from a seller in San Antonio, for $5 U.S.

I read about McHugh's death in Catherine Nasmith's Built Heritage News. The only other obit I found was at the Website of the Municipal Art Society of New York, which also has two quite nice pictures of her. (The MAS didn't respond to my request to use one of the pictures here; hence, the rather uninspired photo of my copy of the book.)

Yma Sumac, 1922-2008

Yma Sumac, a Peruvian singer with a four-octave range, died last weekend. You can read her obit in the New York Times, and see more about her on her Website.

The way I heard of her was through Thomas Meehan's New Yorker story "Yma Dream," which is performed in the YouTube clip above by Christine Baranski. The visuals are just pictures of everyone mentioned in the story.

During David Letterman's rather disastrous hosting of the Academy Awards a few years ago, I don't think anyone got it that his bit of introducing Oprah Winfrey to Uma Thurman, and then to Keanu Reeves ("Oprah, Uma; Uma, Oprah; Oprah, Keanu...") was in fact modelled on this story.

This story begs to be heard. I don't think simply reading it off the page, silently to yourself, could have the same effect.

OBAMA!

Gargoyle from Design Toscano

The U.S. Election in Gargoyles

Gargoyles from Design Toscano

When it's all over, one of them will be president, and one will still be a gargoyle.

Bunch of bloggers

Last weekend (starting on Thursday the 23rd) a bunch of bloggers descended on Washington, D.C. The bunch was not, alas, as numerous as initially planned but we carried on. I was there, principally to cover a major infectious disease conference for the Day Job, and consequently did not get to hobnob with the other bloggers (largely sketch-bloggers) as much as I would have liked. Still, it was a treat to meet Sparky Donatello himself (he goes by a variety of other names including Wally Torta and Walt Taylor, but he'll always be Sparky to me), as well as Amanda of Craftmonkeys, her 16-month-old daughter Oonagh (who doesn't have a blog yet; slow learner, I guess), her sister Lydia who used to blog at Cootie Garage, and Sam of problemchildbride. In fact, you can see sketches, photos and tales of the weekend on their blogs.

I took my reportorial responsibilities so seriously I didn't even get out to hunt any new Washington gargoyles - although on the shuttle bus to and from the convention centre, I spotted this lion. At first, I thought he had buck teeth but that's a downspout. He graces the front of a former fire station on U Street.

Rumour has it that the bloggers (known, for reasons too detailed to go into here, as "Hosses") will meet again next year in New York, which has a gargoyle or two.

Studs Terkel, 1912-2008

Ah, sad news out of Chicago: Studs Terkel died today at the age of 96.

Studs was many things: an actor (most recently in "Eight Men Out," the 1988 movie about the Chicago "Black Sox" scandal of 1919), a disc jockey, an activist and more. But he'll be remembered best for his interviews - radio interviews with just about anybody who was anybody, as well as books of interviews with everyday people: people who lived on a single street in Chicago (Division Street: America), people who worked in all kinds of jobs (Working), people who came through the Great Depression (Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression) and the Second World War (The Good War), race relations in the U.S. (Race: What Blacks and Whites Think and Feel About the American Obsession), and many others.

I've been listening to WFMT radio, the Chicago station where Studs had a daily show for 45 years (and was billed in the staff directory as "free spirit"), which is running old interviews by him and reminiscences about him. One of the reminiscers said that Studs had been saying for the last year or so that he was ready to go - he'd apparently been telling everyone, "I ain't buying any green bananas!" But then last week, he said he had to live to see the outcome of the U.S. election. He was living in his own home, and his absentee ballot apparently arrived in today's mail.

Studs was one of my own heroes when I decided to study journalism. The great thing about his interviewing style was that he was fully engaged and certainly brought his own personality to his interviews, but he didn't dominate them. He didn't compete with his interview subjects, and he knew when to listen and let them take flight. As I write this, WFMT is replaying his interview with the U.S. contralto Marian Anderson, and she just spoke, uninterrupted, for at least four minutes.

Someone - it's attributed only to Newsweek magazine - said, back in the 1960s or 70s, that "No journalist alive wields a tape recorder as effectively as Studs Terkel." And it's also been said by several observers that Studs didn't invent oral history - but he might as well have.

I never met him. The closest I came was on a visit to Chicago in 1992, when he was participating in mock soapbox speeches in Bughouse Square, the informal name was given to Washington Square Park where cranks and religionists and labour unionists used to hold forth. The park is across the street from the Newberry Library, which has organized recreations of free-speech gatherings each summer in conjunction with its annual book sale. I took some pictures there, and when I find them, I'll post them, but in the meantime, I'm using the cover of his memoir that was published about a year ago. Another new Studs book - P.S.: Further Thoughts from a Lifetime of Listening - is scheduled to be released on 15 November.

You can read his obit in the Chicago Tribune here, and I found the following mp3 of his reflections on 40 years of interviews:

	Studs Terkel (c) HighBridge - Voices of Our Time
	Found at bee mp3 search engine

As Studs used to sign off his WFMT show: "Take it easy, but take it."

Ankle biters?

Most gargoyles and other architectural sculptures appear *above* doors and windows, or at rooflines. But when I was in Montreal recently, I saw these two female heads at the bottom of the door frame.

Here's a closer view of the lady on the left:


And the one on the right:


In fact, the figure on the right has a companion who overlooks the steps up to the restaurant next door:

Merry Madmen of Montreal

What can I possibly add to these pictures? Except to say that they all appear on one building, under windowsills, so they're quite low and easy to shoot... which I did, on my way back to the hotel on the last day of the CWAHI meeting.

Dora de Pédery-Hunt, 1913-2008

I spent last Thursday, Friday and Saturday in Montreal at the inaugural meeting of the Canadian Women Artists History Initiative (CWAHI), where something startling, puzzling and disappointing happened.

CWAHI, based in the Art History Department at Concordia University, is a project aimed at bringing scholars together to promote research about Canadian women artists — those born before 1925 and who did most of their work before 1967 and who were overlooked in survey texts and courses on Canadian art history, and who have been neglected by galleries and other institutions and consequently rarely known to the general public.

On the last day of the meeting, I read the Globe and Mail during the lunch break, and saw an obit for Dora de Pédery-Hunt. She died on 30 September at the age of 94. She had been a major Canadian sculptor who produced medals primarily (although not exclusively). You may not have heard her name, but you've seen her work — she sculpted the image of the Queen that appears on Canadian coins minted between 1990 and 2003.

I returned to the final conference session early to mention Dora's death to one of the organizers. Her response threw me: "I'm not going to announce her death," she told me. "It's all I can do to get through this conference." She was clearly stressed, and anxious for the conference to go off without a hitch, which, as far as I could tell, it had done.

But how distracting or disruptive is a simple mention of the death of a leading Canadian artist — and at a conference devoted to the study of Canada's women artists? The mind reels. As I walked away, the organizer allowed as how "that's the kind of information we (CWAHI) need to keep track of."

That's Dora in the picture above in March 2003 when she was presented with the J. Sanford Saltus Award for Signal Achievement in the Art of the Medal by the American Numismatic Society (ANS). (She is flanked by Stephen Scher on the left, who endowed a lecture that is presented every year in conjunction with the Saltus Award presentation, and Robert Wilson Hoge on the right, the ANS's Curator of North American Coins and Currency.)

The Saltus Award citation called Dora "one of the foremost, and most prolific, medallic sculptors of the 20th and now of the 21st centuries," "a premier artist of Canada" and "Canada's grande dame of medallic sculpture."

I met Dora only once, about 18 months ago. I included some of her work on Ryerson University's Kerr Hall in Faces on Places, my book on architectural sculpture in Toronto. (See picture below.)


She had heard about the book and asked to see it. I brought her a copy, and was then treated to a tour of her very cramped apartment in downtown Toronto. It was so full of photographs, sculptures in progress and completed work, that it was necessary to walk sideways. Her niece told me that Dora seemed to have projects planned for the next 20 years when she died.

I won't repeat the story of Dora's life here, which was extraordinary and well told in the obit by Sandra Martin in the Globe and Mail. If anyone from CWAHI swings by this blog, you might want to send an e-mail or letter to be read at her memorial service next month. It would make up for the puzzling refusal to seize the moment during the conference in Montreal.

Have you missed me?

Ah, my poor, sadly neglected blog. September has been a busy month, hence the absence of updates. But that doesn't mean I haven't been out hunting for faces.

If I were to do Faces on Places over again, or a second volume, I would include a chapter on lions. Man, but there are a lot of lions in Toronto! Here is one of my favourites. If it were a human face tangled up in this foliage, it would be called a "green man." I don't know if there is a category of architectural sculpture known as the "green lion," but there ought to be, based on this example alone.

Lions may be so ubiquitous in architectural sculpture because of their frequent use in heraldry, and because they stand for virtually everything. About which, more later... but sooner, if you know what I mean.

Surprises in Scarborough

This Reading girl and her Riting and Rithmetic friends were a pleasant surprise I discovered on a Scarborough public school. I'll be including all three Rs along with other Scarborough finds, in addition to a sampling of pictures and update on some of the buildings from Faces on Places when I speak to the Scarborough Historical Society in two weeks. (See the link to the left, under "Mark Your Calendar.")

Even more ruins!

Guildwood Park in the east end of metropolitan Toronto (excuse me, that's the Greater Toronto Area, aka GTA) contains more than 70 architectural fragments and sculptures collected by Rosa and Spencer Clark. They rescued fragments from demolished buildings in and around Toronto and used them to create a sculpture garden.

To the right is the one of the columns from the Greek Theatre, which includes the lintel block, Corinthian capital, and two column fragments from the Bank of Toronto.

Below are fragments from the Temple Building and North American Life Assurance Company.


And below is an amalgam of the decorative elements from several demolished banks, and the limestone and marble entranceway of the Bank of Nova Scotia. At least, I think that's what it is. I left my map at home that day...

Where to relocate Our Lady of York?

Despite the heat and humidity, about 90 people came out on Saturday afternoon for the Heritage Toronto "Faces on Places" walking tour downtown.
I discussed (and showed pictures of) the former York County Registry Office at 60 Richmond Street East, with its sculptures by Jacobine Jones of a woman and the County of York coat of arms, which I've written about here before. It was demolished last year and the sculptures are in storage, awaiting relocation, possibly to the new building that is going up on the site.
I referred the walkers to a really informative comment I thought had been left on one of those earlier posts - but discovered when I arrived home that the comment had been sent to me in an e-mail. I had intended to post it at the time (in April), but failed to.
So here it is now, hoping it's better late than never - but apologies for the delay to Stanley Dantowitz who was a former employee of the Registry Office of the East and West Ridings of the County of York, who provided the information.
"I had wondered what had happened to (the sculptures) in the recent demolition," he wrote. " I agree that they should be on display to the public outside a building, not inside. If they are not suitable to affix to the outside of the new building at 60 Richmond St East, I suggest that they be located in a nearby public park."
The County Registry Office was at Berti and Richmond from 1946 until the mid 1960's when it moved to the current Toronto City Hall, which also housed the City of Toronto Registry Office.
"Prior to the 1960's the City of Toronto and Land Titles Offices occupied a building just about where the south-west corner of the current Toronto City Hall is now. Between the south-west corner of the current Toronto City Hall and Osgoode Hall is a strip of lawn. In the centre of the lawn is a children's playground," Stanley said.
"Perhaps the sculptures could be located on the lawn south of the children's playground?" he suggested. "They would be almost on top of the site of the former City of Toronto and Land Titles Offices. A suitable plaque could describe the three former offices."
Stanley included Toronto Community Housing's Leslie Gash on the e-mail, and she replied after talking to Sherry Pedersen in the Heritage Section of the City Planning Department.
"We spoke last summer about the fate of the sculptures," Leslie said. " I have sent her your email Stanley as well as the link to your website Terry and the renderings of the new building. They are willing to look at other alternatives for the sculptures. We still have lots of time on this but it was good to get the discussion started."

That is very encouraging, especially because all too often, sculptures from demolished buildings are either lost, or place inside the new buildings, where they aren't seen by the public.



Stanley also provided some information on the "Deeds Speak" motto that appears on the County of York coat of arms. He cited an article by Carl Benn (PhD) in last summer in The Fife and Drum, the newsletter of the Friends of Fort York and Garrison Common.
Benn, who is chief curator of the City of Toronto Museums and Heritage Services, attributed it to the Rev. John Strachan while he was rector of the Town of York, who used the phrase in praise of the York Militia in the capture of Detroit during the War of 1812.

I'll stay on top of this, and will post news of further developments in a more timely manner.

More ruins

Taking his cue from Mackenzie King's Kingsmere, Stephen Braithwaite used pieces of demolished Ottawa buildings (along with some new bronze sculptures) to create "Strathcona's Folly," a sculpture/play structure in Ottawa's Strathcona Park.

The somewhat unsettling looking faces are from a Bank of Montreal branch.

Ruins

I am spending some time in and around Ottawa, and that included a visit to Kingsmere in Gatineau, Que., yesterday. That's the former estate of our WWII-vintage prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King. The grounds have several of these "faux ruins" that King brought in during the 1930s, largely from buildings being demolished in Ottawa. Not much in the way of faces, but neat ruins.
More about this later since I'm using a temperamental dial-up connection.

I will only add, for now, that this has got to be the most photographed scene at Kingsmere - portraits taken through this now-empty window. In fact, this woman was telling her children as she tried to arrange them (there's a third child you can't see - I think he fell off the back and down into a field of choke cherries)that when they got home, she would show them the picture her parents took of her in the same spot.

Making book on the Booker

Congratulations to Joseph O’Neill whose new novel, Netherland, has been long-listed for the Man Booker prize. It was published in May to exuberant reviews (“rave” doesn’t begin to cover it) in the daily New York Times (by Michiko Kakutani) as well as snagging the front-page of the New York Times Book Review and elsewhere.
In the Review, senior editor Dwight Garner called it “the wittiest, angriest, most exacting and most desolate work of fiction we’ve yet had about life in New York and London after the World Trade Center fell.”
He went on to say: “On a micro level, it’s about a couple and their young son living in Lower Manhattan when the planes hit, and about the event’s rippling emotional aftermath in their lives. On a macro level, it’s about nearly everything: family, politics, identity. I devoured it in three thirsty gulps, gulps that satisfied a craving I didn’t know I had.”
Just after the long-list of 13 titles (known as the Booker Dozen) was announced yesterday (29 July), bookmakers William Hill opened the betting with Netherland their 3/1 favourite. Salman Rushdie’s The Enchantress of Florence was second with odds of 4/1.

In a news release listing the opening odds on the list, William Hill spokesman Graham Sharpe said, "Although Salman Rushdie is the man in form having won the Booker of Bookers, that book is now over 20 years old and his recent work has not been winning literary awards. However, Joseph O'Neill's novel, Netherland has been creating a real buzz and is also being suggested as the first novel to become a serious contender for the Bookie Prize - the William Hill Sports Book of the Year and for that reason we believe it is a worthy favourite.”
(Cricket among Commonwealth expats living in New York is one of the principal settings for the novel.)
I first encountered Joe O’Neill when I read a laudatory review of his second novel, The Breezes, in the Guardian Weekly. In those pre-Amazon days, I called a bookshop in central London and ordered a copy over the phone.

That novel—about a fortnight in the life of a family (the Breezes) who endure “misfortune of absurd but tragic proportions” (Amazon.co.uk)—was funny and poignant, and I felt compelled to write a fan letter.
At the time (the late 1990s), Joe—an Irishman, largely raised in the Netherlands, working as a barrister in London, but latterly living in New York City—was completing Blood-Dark Track, his investigation into secrets in the lives of his grandfathers—one Turkish, the other Irish. I read the book, and interviewed him about it by phone for an article I wrote for Spotlight, an English-language magazine published in Munich.
I met him for dinner when I was in New York on business in early 2002, at which time he said he was working on something to do with cricket. But since then, he has also been a regular contributor to The Atlantic and New York magazines.
Even if it weren’t for the personal connection, I’d be rooting for Joe to win the prize—for the £50,000, sure, but also because he’s a good writer, and Netherland (said she, having just started reading it) is terrific.
The short-list will be announced on 9 September, and the winner on 14 October.

Race Street Firehouse R.I.P.

To update an earlier post: it appears that the Race Street Firehouse in Philadelphia has been demolished. I've checked periodically for news, and just found on the Philly Chit Chat blog, pictures of the demolition which started a week ago (21 July).
No word about the firemen gargoyles, but they were to have been saved.

That was the week that was

Well, it looks like the interest in Terry (the L.A. Kings one) Murray has died down, judging by the Sitemeter stats for this here blog. So it's back to gargoyles, looking out my back window and monitoring the progress of the construction at the end of the street.
Thanks to everybody who swang by thinking this was the blog of Terry-the-Kings-Coach. I hope you weren't disappointed to find what you found.
I had to take my digital camera in for repairs on the weekend - good thing I bought the extended warranty and the shutter mechanism decided to die just weeks before it expired - and now I've got a streaming summer cold... just in time for my vacation.
But I will be posting nonetheless. Stay tuned.

Rear window, part 3: Men in trees

The first of five weeks' vacation - which I am spending at home, working on the Merle Foster book (about which, more later) - has just ended. As I puttered around this morning, I heard the sounds of shouting and some kind of machinery.
I wasn't surprised seeing as there is construction going on at the corner (although I thought the heavy lifting was pretty much over) and for all I know, there is some going on at the other end of the street.
But when I moved to work in my study at the back of the house, it became clear what was going on. A truck drove slowly through the back lane, then stopped and a cherry picker rose up.

And lo, there was a man with a chain saw, lopping wayward branches from trees and tossing them to the truck below (occasionally getting them caught on hydro wires) where they were being fed to a wood chipper.
It made for intermittent entertainment over the course of about two hours, and a few good pictures.





Oh, and I guess that should be " 'man' in trees."

Coach Terry (the Other One) Murray

Mon Dieu! Quel surprise! Terry Murray (one of the other Terry Murrays) has been (finally) named coach of the NHL's L.A. Kings!

If you think he and general manager Dean Lombardi look less than thrilled here, take a look at the picture on - and have a read of - the post on Greg Wyshynski's blog. And you can see more clearly in the picture there that the jersey seems to have pulled from a remainder bin, with its zero and eight numerals of different sizes.

More about that other Terry Murray

Well, well - good luck to you, Terry, on your imminent appointment as coach of the L.A. Kings. The news, and the apparently protracted nature of the announcement, has driven literally hundreds of visitors to this site. (Yesterday there were more than 200!)
I can mostly thank Greg Wyshynski whose Puck Daddy blog on yahoo.com has linked to this one. He says, after a review of Murray's career, "So that's Terry Murray. And so is this [link here], and boy is he [crossed out after corrected by a reader] she happy about the extra Web traffic. Bottom line is that either of them is going to be an improvement over Marc Crawford."
So when I wash up in medical journalism and gargoyle hunting, I'll try for coaching an NHL team.

I'm not THAT Terry Murray

I noticed that yesterday my blog had 65 hits! Sixty-five! Virtually all were from California and few visitors spent more than a few seconds.
I suspect it's because Terry Murray was in the news. Not me, but the Terry Murray who is the the former hockey player, who spent parts of eight seasons in the NHL, mainly with the Philadelphia Flyers but also with the Washington Capitals and the Detroit Red Wings.
He's probably better known as a coach than as a player - and now it appears that he's about to be named coach of the L.A. Kings. And all those fans thought this might be his blog, but they found out pretty quickly that it's not.
For today, at least, it will be even easier to tell.

I know there are a lot of Terry Murrays out there - a surprising number (well, it surprised me) - including the retired CEO of Boston's Fleet Bank and an Australian musician. There used to be a Terry Murray selling real estate here in Toronto, and a Terry Murray who worked in the Ontario Fire Marshal's office. And others.
And then there's me.
I guess when I run out of ideas for posts, I can run pictures and bios of all the other Terry Murrays.

Gargoyles of Washington, D.C.

No, no, not Bush and Cheney and Co. And actually, this guy isn't strictly a gargoyle, but wotthell.

A friend and soon-to-be-former colleague is moving to Washington, D.C., shortly, and in her honour (and since I have no specimens from Victoria), I am posting this fellow who I shot on Connecticut Avenue in 2002.

From the street, I noticed what looked like several Atlases on the roof of a 1920s apartment building in the Dupont Circle area. They seemed to be holding the earth over their heads. But when I looked through my 300mm lens, I saw that they had horns!

The building manager let me go to the roof to get a closer look (which surprised me, given that it was so soon after 9/11, but I guess I didn't look like a terrorist and there were no major U.S. government installations in the immediate vicinity), where I shot two rolls of film (back in the film days). She also showed me the building's entry in "Best Addresses: A Century of Washington's Distinguished Apartment Houses," which described the figures as demons getting ready to drop boulders on intruders. Very welcoming...

There goes the neighbourhood (part 7)

Too whacked tonight to do much more than post this picture, taken two days ago of the current state of construction of the two houses on the Woburn side. Not my best photographic effort, but the better camera is still ailing. More later, but ... must...sleep.

Trafalgar Square, Canada Day 2006

Yesterday I was listening to "Q," yet another in a series of oddly-named CBC Radio 1 programmes. The largely pop culture show was being broadcast from Canada House in Trafalgar Square in London. Normally I actually can't stand listening to Q (and find its host a little too much in love with the sound of his own voice), but it gave me an idea. Two ideas, actually. The first idea... more of a thought actually... was Hey! I was in London on the 1st of July two years ago, and Trafalgar Square was all kitted out in Canadian flags and maple leaves and whatnot. I guess that wasn't a one-off event. The second thought was, after not being able to bag me (photographically) any gargoyles in Victoria, I could resurrect my now two-year-old pictures from London. Which actually are not all that spectacular because I was trying out my first digital camera - a point-and-shoot - at the time.

Then I had a nap. Which is why the pictures are appearing here a day late.

More Victoria

I have posted so little this month that I decided to make up for it in the last days of June. My camera decided to function today (of course - not when I needed it for the pediatrics conference), so I took some pictures in my hotel room. Here, for instance, is my travelling buddy* studying a map of Victoria.

*This does not mean I am taking up hunting garden gnomes and giving up gargoyles.

Victoria, B.C.

My camera decided to quit when I arrived in Victoria to cover the annual meeting of the Canadian Pediatric Society. So I have no Victoria gargoyles to show you. But I do have this great commerical for Lotto 6/49 from the B.C. Lottery Corporation. The music is great and I'm not sure who/what I'm more entranced by - the leaping cats or the woman's bowl of Froot Loops:

There goes the neighbourhood (part 6)

Good Lord, but I haven't posted anything about the corner house(s) since March! I took this picture 10 days ago, and it's way, way out of date already. You can see here that they've added "bricks" to the house on the Jedburgh side, but that has progressed well beyond this point, and the house on the very corner on the Woburn side is looking quite "bricked" these days too.


And to think that grand old corner house was demolished only six months ago. Time is money! Gotta get these babies sold. Millions are at stake!

Gargoyles of Paris via Chicago

At the time of his death from a brain tumour in 2002, University of Chicago art historian Michael Camille was completing a book on the gargoyles of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. It's said to be the first comprehensive history of these world-famous gargoyles - which most people think were part of the original building, construction of which began in the 12th century. In fact, they weren't added until the building's restoration in the 19th century.

I've been waiting and watching for its publication, so imagine my delight when I saw on Amazon.ca that Monsters of Modernity: The Gargoyles of Notre Dame was scheduled for release this month. I checked the University of Chicago Press Website which also said its release was scheduled for fall of 2007, and then when I checked Amazon.ca again, it showed a re-revised release date of January 2009.

The University of Chicago Press confirmed that there was "a significant delay in the production of Gargoyles of Notre Dame," and that the current date they expect to receive stock is next January.

So I've pre-ordered my copy and you can expect to see a review here, whenever the book finally makes an appearance.

More Chicago

But not the University of Chicago, which actually has way more gargoyles than I posted here.

This architectural doodling (above) is on the former Richmont Hotel, now a Red Roof Inn. (How could they stick a class joint like this with the name "Red Roof Inn"? Even if it is a Red Roof Inn?)
The fellow melting into the awning down at the bottom can be viewed better here:


I didn't actually stay at the Red Roof Inn. Not on this trip anyway. (I stayed there when it was the Richmont back in aught-84 or so.) Nope, this time I stayed around the block. But it struck me that the Richmont/Red Roof guy looked a bit like he might be related to these guys up in Lincoln Park:



Maybe. Then again...