Today I have lots of pictures uploaded, since I used to live in Madison anyway, so this is a journey on the Memory Lane.
In case you are confused with the colors, red is my journey on foot from Sheboygan Avenue to the State House. Blue indicates my journey going back from State House and hoping to return to where I spent the night and my plan was to walk along Monroe Street. (Fortunately I did not do it, since as you see in the map, Monroe does not meet Sheboygan Avenue at all. Finally, purple is when I met my friend and we decided to take a bus instead to go back, which was a wise choice in retrospect since my feet hurt like hell. (My right big toe has been bothering me for two days already and it hurt really bad today.)
I also planned to go to the Picnic Point, one of my most favorite spots in Madison. However, with the forecast predicting thunderstorm, tornado, cats and dogs, and God knows what, it seemed not a good idea after all to visit that spot. I don't want to trek there with a bad foot and get stranded should the place is flooded due to the rain.
So, here's my first picture, walking from Sheboygan to the campus.
If you are wondering whether I was standing in the middle of the road taking picture, well, you are right.
This bagel store brings back memories. When i left Madison in early 1999, I recalled that there were protests outside this store, about unfair labor practice or something. Well, it is good that they can still survive.
I also saw in their windows, an advertisement about the "Original Wisconsin" bagel or something, with some sort of "Best sushi" thingy. So, I went inside and decided to try it. Apparently it is a toasted bagel with salmon and lots of lox.
You decide whether this thing worths $3.50, though, I think the taste is okay.
Suddenly, there was a heavy downpour while I was eating the bagel. I stopped for a while at a Starbucks (while I just passed a Starbucks several blocks before, surprisingly, today is the first time I have seen Starbucks in a while. For the past several days, I went to McDonald for my caffeine jolt while I was driving). Then, I found this old landmark.
Interesting bar, though I found out later from one of my friends that the bar was notorious for a place for ladies to find sugar daddies. Dunno if it is true.
Another item in my memory lane: I spent a night in this hotel when I first arrived at Madison as an undergraduate. It is nice that the hotel still survive. However, I don't know what's the deal with that cow. I think this is my first time seeing that statue.
University Avenue had experienced some changes. There used to be a nice inn around this place and they replaced it with modern apartment buildings (though, it was possible that I simply did not recall correctly the exact place of that inn)
My old apartment. Ahh....
Princeton House. Not that this place has anything to do with Princeton University or Princeton University wannabe. It is simply that the apartment lies on the corner of University Avenue and Princeton Avenue. To my surprise though, the place was all boarded up.
Princeton House used to be a Freshman apartment, only freshmen could stay there. One of my friends used to live there, and he was notorious for being very... unhygenic. He simply never took a bath, which, of course, had a side effect of causing hell for his roommates. I believed one of them even left without bothering to take his deposit back. Some actually said that you could smell his room from one end of the hallway to the other. Apparently, after he left, Princeton House decided to force him to pay the cost to fumigate the room.
Interestingly, one of my friends said that Princeton House was closed due to "health reason." I wonder if there's a correlation....
Moving on, I found these pictures in front of Naval Science Building to be interesting:
Ahh, Camp Randall, the home of the Badgers.
Engineering Building. I find it interesting that while the Ohio State was obsessed with the color red, most of the buildings in Madison is colored creme (or yellow?)
Check the snapshot of the main campus....
Engineering building,
and the "fountain" in front of it. Apparently, the design of the fountain was four jets of water spray right to the middle. However, there is a defect in the calculation, making the water to spray everywhere.
Another building that was not condemned yet.... I used to have a group of friends living in that building and once one of them got sick, it was simply contagious and made everyone else sick. Apparently they are going to demolish this building next year. Probably due to too many germs floating in the building. It was not a good place to live....
From left to right: South Union, DoIT (Department of Information Technology), and Wendt Library.
Union South is a nice place to meet and to congregate. Somehow, the design really makes you willing to linger for some time and many students actually meet there to study, etc. It is a shame that they are going to tear this down next year.
I used to work at DoIT helpdesk, helping irate customers or clueless undergraduates trying to connect to the Internet using their 33.2K modems. The pay was good, but they had a stupid rule stating that you were only able to talk to people for ten minutes max. So if you have problems that needs to be solved in more than ten minutes, then you are out of luck, as we were told to say that we were going to bump this problem to the "higher people," which usually, simply reshuffling your call to my neighbor. One time, I got this very irate customer that I decided to spend 30mins+ dealing with it. The customer ended up happy, as I managed to solve his problem. However, I ended up getting berated for taking too long to deal with problems.
Inside Union South: Ice Cream store. Babcock Hall's ice cream is the best. Make sure you order Orange Custard (with chocolate chips). It is their best flavor.
Too bad there was no ice cream in this place today, though I finally got one at Memorial Union later. Three scoops for $2.80.... Not bad.
University of Wisconsin-Madison seems to have a budget problem for the past several years. With economy going downhill, they started to cut the subsidies for education and surprisingly, they also decided to put a freeze on road construction, which explains so many road left unfinished in Madison. However, it seems that the Biochemical Engineering department experiences no cut, so they keep getting good buildings, compared to Psychology Department, and later Political Science....
Psychology
Grainger, another interesting building. I recalled an incident in my last year in Madison, in which somebody decided to hire a stripper to strip in a class to celebrate his friend's birthday. Surprisingly, the professor did nothing to stop the stripper from doing what she ought to do, though someone did call the cops. Later, the professor was censured after it ended up in the front page of the Daily Cardinal and Badgers Herald. I don't know what happened after that.
Another building that the university wants to condemn: the Humanities Building. This "Brutalism" style building is always a polarizing figure: on one hand, it is an excellent example of brutalism style, on the other hand, the building is very cold in the winter and you will always get lost when you are trying to find an office. Some actually believed that the building was designed that way, to thwart the hippies from taking over building in the 1960s. Since the hippies were always high anyway, by putting them in this kind of maze, there was no way in hell they could do anything or to take over the building.
Journalism building, which, I believe another example of Brutalism, though the layout is not as confusing as the Humanities building. They are connected through the pedestrian walkway.
From the Humanities Building, I am climbing the hill to the Bascom Hall. From the hill, you can see the State Capitol in the distance.
Bascom Hall, the seat of the University's administration. University of Wisconsin-Madison is notorious for having very few snow days. There are jokes that the only way the University will declare a snow emergency is if the snow is as high as Lincoln's statue, measured from the bottom of the hill.
Of course, I can't miss the opportunity to check the Department of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
There are always complains from people inside Department of Political Science at the OSU about the condition of Derby Hall. However, compare the Derby Hall to the condition at the North Hall:
This is the graduate students' offices:
Second, third, and fourth floor: faculty offices:
Computer lab:
Mail Room:
Main Office:
I am now kicking myself for not taking detailed picture of the Derby Hall. Oh well....
Back to the tour. Close up of Bascom Hall:
Geology building
Memorial Union
Dining room at the Memorial Union. Really nice design....
Terrace
Overlooking the lake, which is the main charm of Madison. Maybe we should ask Gordon Gee to expand the Mirror Lake.... OSU's lake is too small....
Now, I am walking to the State Capitol, along the State Street. I may need to write a blog about Columbus later after I finish this travel to compare some of the buildings that we have seen. Still, it may be a while though.
In the restroom in the Capitol. Insert Larry Craig jokes here (oops, wrong state).
Back to the capitol.
State Assembly
State Senate
State Supreme Court
State Hearing Room
Close to the capitol, I found this store full of craps from Democratic Party. This reminds me of conversation I had with my students from Political Science 597.01, where, they jokingly threatened that they would put bumper stickers from all candidates in Democratic Party on my car. Unfortunately, none of them followed through that threat. It will be pretty amusing if they did.
Walking back along the University Avenue....
The purple-painted building used to be a McDonald. Back then, they had an offer of 20 nuggets for $2 either on Monday or Tuesday (I forgot). Since I was a poor starving undergraduate student back then, I always bought 40 of them to eat for several days. Note: it did not taste as bad as it sounds today.
Turning left, I passed by Camp Randall and the Football Stadium.
Finally, we end today's tour with a doughnut shop. Greenbush bakery has one of the best doughnuts in Madison. Everybody visiting Madison should buy some doughnuts here.
Today's journey started at around 10-11 AM and ended at 7 PM. 8 hours walking makes my feet tired. So, time to hit the sack. Tomorrow, I am going to Minneapolis, another 4-5 hour drive. Long day ahead, so, night.
No comments:
Post a Comment