…and signage, so you know I’m gonna love a site entirely devoted to Pittsburgh signs. Look for the old Clark Bar sign toward the end of the tour.

WE’LL HAVE ONE MORE set of Tacoma pix following today’s installment, which focuses on quaint signs and on the city’s seaport.

As far as I know, no late-night Showtime comedy series have ever been filmed on this street.

Unlike the unified port districts of New York/New Jersey and Los Angeles/Long Beach, Puget Sound’s seaports operate separately and competitively. This cuts costs for shippers, but raises costs for taxpayers. The Port of Tacoma’s public history kiosk, at the base of the viewing platform where the above shot was made, still boasts of having snagged Totem Ocean Trailer Express (an Alaska container-cargo operation) away from the Port of Seattle back in the mid-’80s.

…I’m not independently wealthy. Like many of you, I’m increasingly desperate to find a way out of a personal-fiscal pit. So I give a hoot about the economy. So do those nutty Canadians at Adbusters magazine. They’ve just started a movement to dump current economic models (especially the gross national product) and instead develop something called “True Cost Economics.” (The name derives, at least in part, from their desire to see the environmental and human costs of business/ventures added into their balance sheets.)

IT’S DAY TWO of our photo-jaunt up and down the length of that famed street of independent retail, South Tacoma Way.

Oldsmobile may be gone, but an Olds used-car sign remains at Russ Dunmire. One of the last 100 or so Olds-only dealers that remained, it now sells Mazdas.

Incidentally, the great rock combo Ruston Mire is partly named for this dealership, and for the dealership’s once-ubiquitous TV jingle. The band name’s other, more direct source: The Superfund cleanup site at the Tacoma suburb of Ruston, where an ASARCO copper smelter once manufactured arsenic.

Jack Roberts may be dead, but he’ll still take a pie in the face to give you a deal on a new fridge. And he’s given up a big white wall for one of those murals by at-risk youth.

Ponder the potential meanings of a used-car lot called “Bag Lady:”

1. She sells cars so cheaply, she can’t afford one herself. Let alone a domicile.2. At a bank Dumpster somewhere, there’s a pile of loan contracts she can collect into a grocery cart, which are still legally valid.

3. From her appearance, she’s potentially willing to do more to make a deal than Jack Roberts ever would.

This no-name restaurant sign now points down to a Subway franchise.

This neon, I’m told, still works at night, sort of.

After a long afternoon of exploring, there’s only one place to go—the taco wagon!

Over the next several days, I’ll show off some pix I took on a recent jaunt to our neighbors to the south.

First off, the signs and other sights of that great street immortalized by Neko Case, South Tacoma Way.

The Starlite Drive-In is, like most un-razed drive-ins, now an all-week swap meet.

Come in to the PI Bank for today’s special interest rate, 3.14159 percent.

The magnificent Java Jive survives, while many other nightspots and merchants have not.

Also surviving, sort of: The B&I Shopping Center. Once a thriving indie discount store, amusement arcade, and private zoo, it’s now a mini-mall at which various scrappy mom-n’-pop merchants hawk telephone cards, T-shirts, religious trinkets, Yu-Gi-Oh cards, and Mexican soda pop. Ivan the gorilla, who lived at the store for years until economics and politics sent him off to a regular zoo, still oversees the place in caricature form.

In the ’70s and ’80s the Tacoma Mall, and its adjacent strip-mall spaces, absorbed most of the City of Destiny’s retail trade. City-planner types moped about the decimation of Tacoma’s downtown, which has only recently begun to rebound. Few such official concerns were raised over the fate of South Tacoma Way (the in-city stretch of U.S. 99).

America’s great retail chains either moved out of South Tacoma Way or never moved in. Today, the only corporate names you’ll see on that street are those on franchised car dealers and gas stations. South Tacoma Way is a haven for independent retailers of all types—at least for those who can stay in business in today’s Bush-decimated economy.

More of these to come.

…(on an M&M’s M-Azing chocolate bar): “Enjoyment Tip: Do not use if inner foil is broken or torn.” Of course, if you eat it with the foil still on, it tastes far different but doubles the nutritional value….

Hasbro, on behalf of its Trivial Pursuit game brand, just held a media event proclaiming Seattle “the City of the ’90s.”

They should know. Hasbro (which now controls just about every famous US toy/game brand except Mattel) spent a small mint in the ’90s buying the locally-based Wizards of the Coast, which made the then-popular Magic: The Gathering and Pokemon card games, only to see those products’ popularity peak and ebb.

Anyhoo, just ’cause we were municipally “hot” five to fifteen years ago, it doesn’t necessarily mean we’re “over” now. There’s a lotta life in the ol’ lady yet, I say.

“Ask about our Mary Kay Letourneau drink special, made with 12-year-old Scotch.”

IT’S BEEN AWHILE since we ran a Random Photo Phriday. We’ve some nice shots saved up; here are a few.

Specifically, un-themed floats, clowns, and pirates.

I’ve no idea what this critter is, except that it belongs to the Group Health Credit Union.

…with some pictures you can read. Enjoy yourself this weekend and stay cool.

…”found” concrete poetry based on junk e-mail headlines? A similar premise drives “Spamusement!: Poorly-drawn cartoons inspired by actual spam subject lines!”

Seattle attorney Greg Narver, brother of Empty Space Theater co-boss Allison Narver, got to be one of Ken Jennings’s 62-and-counting Jeopardy! slaughter victims on the episode shown Wednesday. (By the way, you might have noticed a lot of John Kerry commercials airing in local ad slots on J!, while Bush ads seem ubiquitous on sports and “reality” shows.)

…of Presidential-campaign TV commercials can be seen at “The Living Room Candidate.” As you might expect, the earlier, more primitively-filmed spots are the most revealing. (Was Adlai Stevenson really such a clumsy public speaker, even with retakes?) You also learn that what we now call “attack ads” have been with us from the beginning.

(on a package of Overload peanut butter cups, one of them topped with “rainbow candy” coated chocolate pieces): “Mars, Incorporated has no affiliation with the producer or distributor of this product and has no participation in the production of this product.”

THE FINE PRINT #2 (from the introductory disclaimer to the e-book The Top 100 Lovemaking Techniques of All Time): “Some of the techniques described in this book call for you or your partner to have cough drops, mints, ice cubes and other objects in your mouth. Be very careful not to swallow these objects while performing these techniques. If you think there is even the slightest possibility that you could accidentally swallow one these of these objects, STOP PERFORMING THE TECHNIQUE IMMEDIATELY. There are plenty of other ones that you can do instead.”