Attentive readers will recall that last November, while in the Bay Area burg of Port Costa (pop: 200), I encountered this dachshund from the long-defunct Doggie Diner chain.
Today as I was cruising CA Route 49 through Amador County, I passed another Doggie Diner head. This one is at the Vino Noceto winery in the town of Plymouth (pop: 1,100).
The giant heads adorned the 30 or so Doggie Diner restaurants around the Bay Area (concentrated mainly in San Francisco). It seems that when the chain closed in the 1980s, many of the doggie heads were purchased by private parties. The owners of Vino Noceto got theirs in 1985 at a fundraising auction for their kid’s nursery school. On a lark they had offered $300, expecting that surely someone else would outbid them. But theirs was the only bid. Let that be a lesson to you all.
These orphan heads remind me of the Golden Bear signs. I encourage all faithful readers of this blog to report any Doggie Diner Heads you might be aware of. And of course, also let me know of any Golden Bear sightings.
Speaking of crowd-sourced photo collections, loyal reader Brian W shared this photo he took of an obelisk in front of the South Carolina statehouse.
Brian has been commissioned to photograph all the state capitols, which is itself an impressive project. The obelisk is part of the state’s African American History Monument, and was installed in 2001. The artist who designed the monument asserts that obelisk is a form that originated in Africa. Wikipedia tells us that the earliest obelisks come from Egypt, so I guess it depends on whether you consider Egypt to be an African or an Asian country. Either way, the monument is an impressive one and is part of a historic compromise that also removed the Confederate flag from the statehouse building.
That’s it for this brief update. Next week I’ll have the story of California’s oldest operating railroad depot.
Chasing Phantoms 