Life Is A Road Trip

The Amazing Adventures of a Zoobroker and a Sentiographer

south dakota

Nightshots: Rapid City Blues

photography, south dakota, SpamZalotMatt HillComment

Rapid City, SD was a sleepy, almost lonely little town. Zoo and I met an interesting cross-section of people.

First off, we ate at the Firehouse Brewing Company and Michelle served up delicious Chicked Fried Steak for Zoo and a beef chimichanga for me. Spicy, good. I had the Beaver Brown Ale, which was soooooo good after a day on the road.

So, after some serious processing of the GPS data and time-lapse movie stuff, we split up.

Zoo went to the bar for “just one drink” and I headed out for some night photography around Rapid City.

Right off the bat, I met a friendly group of guys who wondered aloud why I was taking a photograph of an alley. Nice guys, except for the one who constantly was trying to get me to take pictures of his ass. Anyhoo, I got this awesome shot with Cowboy Jesus Christ in Art Alley.

So, I took a stroll around the block. Really, this was only one loop around the block. I totally enjoyed myself shooting at night in Rapid City. Interesting people, and a great variety of business, art and small-town emptiness. It was Sunday night, after all.

I believe there were three bridal shops in one block. Hmmm. That matches that we met two engaged gals in less than 24 hours, and were not in large crowds. But 3 bridal shops in one square block? Wow. The mannequins were awesome, though. Thanks for not moving.

There was an alley running behind the hotel, cutting the block in half that had a sign at each end labeled, “Art Alley”. There were so many tags and street art on the walls and dumpsters. Some amazing work, too. You can see the sign atop this image that was on top of our hotel.

And then there was the Brass Rail – open 2nd latest on a Sunday night. A gal came out as I was shooting, curious as to what I was doing. “Just on a road trip, taking pictures.” “OK – was just curious.” Maybe she thought I was a tweaker. In fact, there was one sleeping in the alcove just to the right (or I assume so – it seems like meth would be easy to find in Rapid City).

So, around the corner and back to the hotel for this HDR-combined shot of our hotel. That’s another story... A couple go tout of their car and asked if I was taking pictures of ghosts. LOLz.

Apparently, this hotel is famous for many things, including having presidents stay over. In fact, John McCain just rented out the whole place during Sturgis and pissed off a lot of people. I think we stayed in his room (and it smelled like dead bodies).

There is also the matter of apparently, this hotel is haunted. Alfred HItchcock stayed in one of the haunted rooms, and the Betsy, Sara and Darwin at the hotel were so helpful and fun. Sara let me into the AJ Ballroom on the second floor:

And here is what the main reception area looks like:

Day 2 Musings: Advertising Across America

on the road, south dakotaMatt HillComment

Today's drive across South Dakota was flat, then not flat, then amazingly gorgeous (Badlands!). One thing that stuck out like a sore thumb was the constant (and sometimes hilarious) billboards for "Wall Drug". Wall is a small town at the end of the Badlands small loop that apparently sells EVERYTHING under the sun. And Wall, the town, is the home of Wall Drug.

We did not stop, but we were exposed to a Wall Drug billboard from the east side of South Dakota all the way to the west side. And even after leaving Wall, there one more billboard reminding you you had one more chance to visit Wall Drug!

Anyhoo, it got me to thinking. Thinking about how they had small, carefully crafted billboards with one topic on them. Kinda like Google AdWords. No joke. They were the visual equivalent of spam. Constant interruption from the flowing flatlands of South Dakota. But, like much interruptive advertising, there was one or two billboards that spoke to me. Not enough to make me want to stop after ALL THAT WAITING to see what Wall Drug was about. DInner and beer won. No tchotchkes could stop the mouth-watering I wanna beer feeling. Too bad.

But it did raise the question. Actually, Zoo asked me how many people stop because of it. I said that was the wrong question. The right question is how many more people stop than if there was no advertising? Zoo said that's what he meant. I said that's not what you said, though... He acquiesced, so I win. The point being that we guess that they get 10x more visitors simply by awareness of their business. But 1-5 impressions is not enough. I am guessing, but there are probably over 80 billboards in the state for Wall Drug. Wuh... Hurts me, left me laughing and thinking. They win. Except I did not buy anything - I am just telling other people about it ;)

Gotta go make the time-lapse movie of our trip today. See you in a bar, or the comments section here on the site posts.

-- SpamZalot

Jesus, if you're out there ...

nebraska, south dakotazoobroker1 Comment

... you need to fire your marketing team. -- END COMMUNICATION WITH JESUS --

Folks, the last two days, we traveled through parts of the country where signs like “Jesus Died For Your Sins” or “The Wages of Sin Is Death” [sic] are commonplace, and the most subversive grafitti we found was “Jesus Lives”.

After reading both God Is Not Great and, more recently, The God Delusion, it’s tempting to go on a rant -- it would probably follow these lines:   Your lives suck, and instead of doing something about YOURSELF, you pray to God?  At least you don't live in a blue state.

… I’m just too tired to get self-righteous right now.

Note to spammer: Opportunity to help the Church out with Viral Marketing?

Hopefully God Doesn't Mark Off For Grammer