An S.H. Kress store in Charleston, South Carolina has been repurposed as a Williams-Sonoma store.  S.H. Kress was a five-and-dime chain that went out of business decades ago, but left hundreds of beautiful buildings around the country as its legacy.

The light of a full moon teams up with skyscrapers to illuminate the night sky in Chicago.

The ultra-modern Talmadge Memorial Bridge carries people across the Savannah River, while historic sternwheeler paddleboats carry people up and down the river.

London’s famous Underground signs now have an electric treatment, helping them stand out in the night.

Astronomers Monument - Los Angeles, California

Long before people who make their living pretending to be other people were called “stars” there were people in the Hollywood hills who made their living looking at real stars.

They are the scientists at the Griffith Observatory, built in 1933 high above the city in an area that was thought to be safe from the coastal basin’s famous smog.  We think of smog as a modern phenomenon, but it actually pre-dates European settlement of the area.  Early explorers reported smog and haze hanging over the area from the fires of local indians.

Back to the point — outside of Griffith Observatory is a monument to some of the world’s great astronomers: Hipparchus, Copernicus, Galileo, Johannes Kepler, Isaac Newton, and William Herschel.  It was commissioned by the United States government and designed by Archibald Garner.

Frankfurt skyline

While other German cities push their architectural envelope into unusual small shapes, Frankfurt is the nation’s recognized leader in skyscrapers, with dozens over 30 stories residing in harmony with the city’s historic spires.

Frankfurt skyline

Suddenly, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth across the internet that ZOMG!!! U R Iphone iz Traxxing U!!!11!! as people with below average intelligences put one and one together and got eleven.  Somehow it never occurred to them that a device that connects to cell towers and wifi hotspots might want to remember where those connections are so it can make better, faster connections in the future.  If the feature was left out, it would have been ridiculed as “LOLz Apple FAIL!”  But since it was included, it became “OMG! Security hazard!!!”

Out of curiosity, I tried to make a map from my data, but couldn’t because I have my computer set to encrypt my iPhone backups.  I disabled the encryption and waited a couple of weeks, then made some maps, and the results turned out to be… pretty.

Cell phone tracks across downtown Chicago

Above is a map showing my travels around Chicago.  As you can see, I kept pretty much to the downtown area during the time period in question.  But the grid patten generated from my travels makes for a great piece of art.

Cell phone tracks around the Pacific Northwest

Looking at my travels around the Seattle/Vancouver/Victoria area from afar is much messier.  Lots of overlapping blobs, but you can clearly see certain routes that I traveled repeatedly.  More interesting, is all the cell towers that light up on the islands.  I only visited a couple of those islands.  The dots are from when I went past those islands on ferries.

Cell phone tracks in the Seattle area

A close-up view of the Seattle/Bellevue/Redmond/Issaquah area reveals the same grid that showed up on the Chicago map.

Cell phone tracks in Victoria, British Columbia

The same thing can be seen when zooming in on Victoria, British Columbia.

Phantom cell phone tracks in Las Vegas

And then there’s this.  This is a record of my phone in northwest Las Vegas.  I’m not sure how this happened.  I’ve never been to Las Vegas, or anywhere else in Nevada, but apparently my iPhone thinks I have.  Nevada is one of the four remaining states I haven’t been to yet (Alaska, Hawaii, and Utah are the others).  So, I think it’s safe to conclude that this so-called “tracking” that all the dumb people got their knickers in a twist about isn’t exactly 100 percent accurate.  But it is at least very pretty.

Just because a building is an industrial warehouse doesn’t mean it has to be ugly.  For example, these gates on a food distribution warehouse in the Smithfields section of London.  Not only are they beautifully ornate, they’re painted in a festival of colors.

You can see more great London architecture on our sister web site, London Architecture.

Pretty much everyone eats potatoes now and again.  And those tubers have to come from somewhere.  People who live in the Southwark area of London can thank this potato-monger for their spuds.  The olde-tymie shoppe is located underneath London Bridge in Borough Market.

You can see other London bridges on our sister web site: London Architecture.

Traditionally, the city of Charleston, South Carolina is associated with historic architecture, stately plantations, and generally old things.  But the biggest thing in Charleston Harbor (aside from the cargo ships loading up on freshly minted BMW cars), is a new piece of architecture: The Arthur Ravenel, Junior Bridge.

The bridge’s span is held over the Cooper River by a set of concrete diamonds and fans of cables.  According to Wikipedia, this is the second-longest cable-stayed bridge in the Western Hemisphere, after the Audubon Bridge in Pointe Coupee, Louisiana.