Two more things

[undyingking]

Not sure now who pointed me to this, but thanks, it's intermittently very good: thecitydesk , a whimsical local history column from the newspaper of an imaginary American city. Aspires to Borgesian heights, and occasionally gets close.

In the early part of the twentieth century, the city made an effort to connect downtown to the growing outer neighborhoods by engineering a new subway system to accompany the north-south line already in existence. The tracks began at the Central Depot (which before its demolition in 1968 sat across Ludlow Plaza from Old City Hall) and were planned to stretch out to the suburbs east and west of town. After several years of fits and starts and partial completion, the project was finally halted due to budget constraints in 1919. Some of the completed but never used stations continued to exist, most famously at Elsinger and 10th street, which was by turns used as a prison and later to house zoo animals. Legends of the uncompleted system continued to grow, perhaps because the public was denied access and largely because of a story spread by local barber Alex McKenzie.

ION, there's going to be a Helen Love covers album, and the label are soliciting fan versions of Yeah Yeah We're Helen Love (mp3) to be part of it. "All we need you to do is to record your vocals and send them to us. We will then get a top pop producer behind the mixing desk and create the ultimate tribute song fan sing-along."