Jon Crispin's Notebook

I drove back home from Ithaca yesterday and stopped a few times to take some photographs.  / I first noticed this collection of portable toilets in Lisle, NY back when I lived in Ithaca and my friend Alex and I would drive around while he “looked for color”.  What began as a mild interest turned into a decades long obsession with these practical objects.  I even had a long mostly one-sided correspondence with the Portable Sanitation Association.  After they moved their offices from Washington, DC to Minnesota I sort of lost interest in sending them postcards.

I always assumed that the company that owned these went out of business, but when I stopped in the antique shop next door, the woman working there said that it was still a going concern.

I often notice this abandoned diner when I am on my way to shoot the suitcases.  Yesterday I finally stopped to photograph it.  It is in the village of Coeymans and while searching for information about it on the web, I came across this post.  (I spent a little time reading this fellow’s blog and it is worth checking out if you live in the Albany area.)

It is always sad for me to see once useful buildings like this be left to rot.  I find myself imagining what it would have been like to sit down for breakfast during the time that it was a busy operation.  But I suppose the point is that it eventually stopped being busy, and the owners couldn’t afford to keep it going.  The Thruway killed the diner.