Hats 'n heels

On a wet, chill, snowy, drizzly day, my thoughts naturally turn to warm things. Like last summer when I had some great shoots with the Niece from Memphis and her daughter. We had a special time at the thrift shops, reafirming the old adage that clothes make the man -- or teen-ager, in this case.
It all started with those racks and racks of yesterday's fancier shoes.

But it was the platform sandals that captured the imagination of teen-ager.

Each pair a trifle higher, culminating in a real retro Tall Gal fashionista.

Teen-ager isn't the only one to play with shoes. Even little ones are fascinated with heels...

...and hats.

Once teen-ager had explored the potential of platform shoes, she also tried on one hat persona...

...and another. Don't they fit well?

Amazing what a hat will do and how it can change the person sitting underneath it -- I stole this pic from dotter's blog because it is one with the others. As I look at it, I think of Marlene Dietrich in The Blue Angel, though she wore a top hat.

Prescott Arts Beat: I wondered why nothing new was showing up at my link to these periodic interviews with local A&E folk. Turns out that Andrew has moved to a new URL, where there are all sorts of new goodies. BTW, he's also up and running with his low-power radio station. He reports:

"This evening we did a test broadcast of music and radio theatre on our frequency, AM 1670. The signal was strong and clean from Goldwater Lake to Godwin Street. Once the signal hit the power lines of downtown Prescott, there was interference - as we had experienced before. Driving around, there were little pockets of clean reception sprinkled around town - appearing like magic on my truck's radio as I drove through rainy neighborhood streets. I laughed outloud - when driving past local blogger Granny J's house, her voice broke though a patch of static - clear as a bell.

"With a little more tweaking, and a new antenna design Mark is cooking up for us, I anticipate getting signals from our first antenna pushed out past Prescott College in the next 30 days."

One More Halloween!

I didn't know if Mom would be up to wearing a costume
today -- after all, she is almost 104 and tires easily. However, when the subject of Halloween came up a couple of weeks ago, she asked about how she was going to dress. As I've mentioned in a past post, Mom was always one to dress up if there was an occasion.

Anyhow, this year she costumed light -- in a splendid cow-bedecked sweat I found over at the Noah thrift for all of one buck! Complete with a working cowbell in front and a braided tail at the rear. As a finishing touch, big homemade spotted ears to take the place of her usual earrings.

The occasion: another Trick or Treat event at Las Fuentes for kids from the nearby Y after school program. Mom and her fellow residents really enjoy seeing the youngsters in their wildly varied costumes.

Later: there was a string of Halloween pumpkin lights, among other decorations at Casa Sanchez, where I had dinner this evening...

...a dazzle of lights at That House on Park which goes all out to decorate for as many holidays as possible...

...and big blow-up characters on the balcony of one of the nearby faux Victorians. And, yes, that looks like Itt up in the tower, more than a little deflated.

Of course, there are, these days, a handful of folk who take the night of Oct. 31 more seriously, as Samhain, the pagan harvest festival and official beginning of winter. I saw these decals on a recent walk around town (all on one car, BTW.) Ironically, a couple of local churches that view the Halloween celebration as a pagan holiday scheduled harvest festivals in its place.

However, for the rest of us, the night is a time to thumb one's nose at all manner of scary critters and creatures. It's only fitting that in Prescott, a Halloween witch wears blue jeans under her black cape. Perhaps she's thinking rodeo...

All Hallows' Link: A New England neighborhood explorer and photographer has discovered an interesting trick of the light that she calls Alien Eyes. I'd be curious whether anyone has seen these x-marks-the-spot reflections in our town.

Superstores for Halloween?

Color me innocent. Color me naive. Color me a country bumpkin, not up to snuff on what's been happening in Mall World all these years. A chain of Halloween Superstores??? Been around 25 years??? That's what the Spirit website declares. 16 of 'em in Arizona alone this Sept.-Oct., with our very own in that emptied out furniture store over on Gurley Street.

Here's their human signpost, right at the point where Grove runs into Gurley. The costume changes every so often. Today, it was a pirate.

Ooops! No entrance at the main door.

Going in the side door, one is greeted by the scary stuff. Rats, yet!

But, oh m'gawd. Superman costumes for toddlers; Toto costumes for the dog...

...and even Playboy is into the Halloween scene. At this point, my camera was spotted & I got the old "no pictures" admonition. Too bad. They'd have gotten more publicity, as I was fascinated with the wings department, the deluxe department ($129, velvet), princesses in pink, blue, red and gold and a complete wall of masks. Wow!

What they didn't have -- the perishables, such as pumpkins & trick or treat goodies.

Of course, I could have bought a pumpkin out at the Paulden do last Saturday. Even a pretty hand-painted plate for the occasion.

But you'll forgive me if I'm beginning to think that Oct. 31 is getting just a bit over the top. I think this is the last time I'll mention it for this year, at least. Of course, if I get a ride over to Mt. Vernon Street for the annual trick or treat extravaganza, I might change my mind....

Tsunami I -- You Can't Tell the Players without a Scorecard

So what is a Tsunami on the Square? Well, if it lasted 30 days in assorted venues, I'd call it a Fringe festival. If it occurred under a big top, it might be confused with a circus. Whatever. The day of the Tsunami is crazy. This was my first.

For instance, the crowd included people in all sorts of get-ups. Like this lady. Goodness knows what her fantasy might be. Hard to tell members of the audience from the entertainers sometimes.

This fellow is probably part of the show -- I didn't see any civilians with juggling equipment.

Nothing unusual about this chap -- except the orange lily. Maybe that was how his blind date was to ID him.

Surely part of the show? Nope, this medieval quartet was present to promote a forthcoming Renaissance Faire.

Oh, yes, I saw more than one person sporting a tail.

Spotted this pirate (or gypsy) couple crossing the street mid-afternoon.

And this rifleman appears to be patrolling the Square to protect it from good-fer-nothing varmits.

No idea who or what we have here.

Even Mr. Coyote Radio, who announced the first acts, was topped off by a faux leopard skin fez.

And look at the interesting character who gave GrannyJ a free ride in his foot-pedalled machine. Like I said, the day was crazy. More madness later.

Note: My computer is located so that I am forced to look at great tho reasonably tidy stacks of magazines. Imagine my delight -- and amazement -- when I discovered that, like museums, the New Yorker has established its own on-line store. One remarkable product: an 80 gig hard drive with the complete NYer from February 1927 thru April 2006; beats stacks all hollow! The other: a DVD containing the complete NYer cartoons on sale at $14.95! And, over at eBay, you can bid on several 32-CD-rom sets of all the National Geographics up to 2000 -- 112 years of the magazine.

Merchants of Caspian Gate Folding Retail Tent

If you walked from Montezuma down Gurley to, say, the Grill, you may have noticed this exotic gent in the window of the Peace of My Heart Shop. Sadly, he may soon be history. He's part of the promo for The Caspian Gate, which has occupied the rear room of the Fair Trade shop of late.

So what type of merchandise would you find in a place called The Caspian Gate? Basically, costumes. But not your everyday clown or top hat or cowboy dress-up outfit. Not even a Victorian tea party frock.

No, these costumes are from far and from fanciful places. Bangles for the likes of the belly dancers of Troupe Salamant, for example. Elaborate medieval finery for Renaissance Fairs. Beaded caftans, kimonos and robes from the Far East. That sort of thing. Wonderful, luxurious stuff to look at and wist for. Hand crafted.

Not exactly what you would call walk-in merchandise. Especially for a smallish city in the mountains of Arizona that brags about its rodeo. So the retail tents of The Caspian Gate are folding at the end of the month; just incidentally, there is a discount being offered. But if you don't get a chance to look in at the store before it closes, don't fret -- the Merchants have a presence on the internet.

Yes, I wondered about the background of the name and did consult The Google to find out more. Livius had this to say:

The Caspian Gate is mentioned in several ancient sources as a mountain pass on the road between Rhagae (more or less identical to modern Tehran) and Hecatompylos, the capital of Parthia, south of modern Damghan. The Caspian Gate is almost certainly identical with the pass between modern Eyvanakey and Aradan. The road is very ancient indeed: this is the course of the Silk road. Today, there is a highway that connects Tehran with Mashad. The Caspian Gate was once the border between Media and Parthia. During the war against the Macedonian invader Alexander the Great, the last Achaemenid king Darius III Codomannus selected this place as his final stand (summer 330).

Dressing up in costume can be great fun, tho the more splendid the get-up, usually the heavier it is -- a big consideration at my age! Imagine one's clothing wearing one out. And costumes can be quite pricey, too. My granddaughter's outfit for her ballet debut cost $85, for a one-time use! On the other hand, her mom bought her several secondhand ballet confections for dress-up play on eBay for $10-15.

So... enjoy the costumes; imagine a caravan passing through the actual Caspian Gate as it travels the Silk Road to bring remarkable goods from exotic lands...

...to an on-line merchant with headquarters in Prescott, Arizona, of all places.

Notes: On the subject of faraway places, I found an interesting blog by an American woman in Saudi Arabia, Sand Gets in My Eyes. And I discovered that there's such a thing as an aloe tree, if you can imagine; My Aloe Garden has pictures.