At least half of my childhood memories of looking out a car window are slightly clouded by a film of salt on the window. It is a weird phenomenon to me now since I live in San Francisco. I guess the only equivalent is riding on the bus and trying to see out the window through the film of hair gel and graffiti on the inside and pigeon droppings on the outside, but the bus seems to be like that anywhere so that’s not really a San Francisco observation.

I miss snow since moving to California and leaving Buffalo winters behind. Winter should not be something you have to drive to, as in “oh it snows here, you just have to drive to Tahoe.” Winter is not about it getting a little bit cold in the morning, or having to scrape frost off your car once a year. It also isn’t about having to deal with rain. Winter is about 80″ of snow in the span of four days, to the point where you have to bring a shovel to the front door to get out of your house.

Note the National Guard removing the snow with construction equipment in the background

Before I write about the two Wright houses I visited, I have to share this news article. Thanks to some groundbreaking research, it has been determined (scientifically) that Damp, Moldy Houses Cause Depression! Okay, to be accurate, they “MAY” cause depression. I don’t think I needed the American Journal of Public Health to tell me that. This article is not supposed to be related to the Wright houses, but I have a feeling the Martin House may have been damp for a while before the restoration started.

Darwin Martin House, Buffalo NY- work in progress. Click here to visit my flickr page and to see more images.

While traveling last week, I had the chance to go to two different Frank Lloyd Wrght designed facilities. The first was the Darwin Martin House on Jewett Parkway in Buffalo. It was one of FLW’s most elaborate commissions, it consisted of a main house, a conservatory, a carriage house, a house for the client’s sister and another house for the gardener. It is said that the budget was almost unlimited when I was built around the turn of the last century.

I went on a deluxe tour that covered all parts of the site, and it was definitely worth the time. I had been to this house a few years ago, but it looks completely different now. The Martin House Restoration Corporation (the non-profit that is restoring the house and raising money) has rebuilt portions of the complex that were torn down in the 1960s. In the last few years, the pergola and carriage house have been rebuilt and the gardener’s cottage was purchased and opened to the public this summer.

This was one of Wright’s finest buildings, done at the peak of his career. I highly advise you to visit if you are in the area. I’ve heard that Wright kept the drawings for this house pinned up in his office for the rest of his life after it was completed.

The Graycliff House from the driveway

The other Wright complex I visited was the Graycliff estate, in Derby NY (only about half an hour from downtown Buffalo). I mentioned this house before in an earlier post, but I didn’t give any of the background. This house was also designed for the Martins, but Mrs. Martin was the main client here as opposed to the city house where her husband was in control. She wanted a light-filled and airy summer escape on the shore of Lake Erie. Wright obliged by giving her a fantastic house on a 70 foot cliff. The first floor is glass on both sides and very thin so that from the front, a visitor can see the water and the horizon through the living room.

This house was much better preserved because it has never been vacant. A religious group (the Parist fathers, a group of priests from Hungry) owned it and lived there until a few years ago when it was purchased and restoration began. The priests never tore down any of the original buildings, so the work necessary here is not as extensive as at the Buffalo house.

Plastic Dinosaur Flower Planter, Derby NY

I’m going to be out of town for the next few days, so I won’t be posting much. I am visiting my family in Buffalo. I’ve been to two different Frank Lloyd Wright houses in the last two days which I’ll post about when I get back.

Here are some photos of the Graycliff Estate in Derby, NY which Wright designed in 1928. I’ll post photos of the Martin House in Buffalo soon.

Front of the Graycliff House

Waterfront side of the Graycliff house

Mouth of the 18 Mile Creek at Lake Erie, near Graycliff

It seems like it is common knowledge that if you are trying to sell a house, you probably would want to make it look as appealing as possible. It seems that would especially be true if you happened to live in a place that gets a ridiculous amount of snow in the winter, you would probably want to take a photo on a nice spring day. Perhaps someone should tell that to these people:

This house happens to be very close to where I grew up. While I like winter weather, it’s a hard to tell if it is actually a house or just an elaborate snow fort.

Moving on to a house in Cleveland:

It looks to me like they used a camera phone to take this photo of a fixer-upper in Cleveland. Granted, a nice digital camera sells for more than this house will since they are asking $3,000 and will probably be lucky if they get that.

On to the last item of the day. Following my recent theme of highlighting unsafe products, today’s unsafe toy is the Easy-Bake Oven. While an oven for kids does seem like an accident waiting to happen, the Easy Bake has been around so long you would think they’d worked out all of the potential problems. Not so: the new model not only has resulted in 2nd and 3rd degree burns, but a partial finger amputation!

Ah, the 4th of July. Nothing like the hot sun (a rarity in San Francisco) and the cold taste of shitty American beer served in a can. Budweiser made the day even more special this year by cross-branding their beer with NASCAR, covering each tasty beer with the image of car #8 (Dale Earnhardt Jr.). Luckily, Andy and I started off the day with some huge cans of Labatt Blue. While many people in California are not familiar with this beer, I’m from Buffalo and people there drink it like water, which explains why it comes in such a large can. As you can see, I really enjoyed myself:

I mentioned drinking Labatt’s to my friend Chris, who directed me to a website for people who want to buy Canadian food.  Unfortunately, they can’t ship beer but they will ship Tim Horton’s Coffee.

Oh, and if you are interested in Dale Earnhardt Jr. products, I recommend the “Future Star Girls Pink Watch” shown here.