This picture has always intrigued me. Raw, old, gone.

What we have now is better:

But it's less interesting. A block that's built all at once is a big blanket cut from the same bolt; a block that arises and falls and rises again is a quilt that tatters and unravels. One picture on one day captures a few details that bear interrogation:

The Bijou Opera House.

As many times as I looked at this picture, I never looked at the white building in the shadows.

While researching (i.e., googling) the history of Minneapolis White Castle #7, I went to the White Castle archives at the Ohio History Project. And lo, behold.

White Castle left when the rent went up. But it soldiered on a a lunchroom. On any day there was the cook, the waitress, the lunchtime customers, each with a story that stretched back and ahead in directions we'll never know. What they read in the paper; what rolled pulp mag they pulled out of their pocket; what tune played on the radio; which streetcar they took home, and what the ads on the side of the car told people to try - the number of stories is unknowable. You're one of those stories today, some place.

Unless you work at home, I suppose.