Astute readers will remember our post on Shinya Kimura, an artist who works with metal and motorcycles to create motorcycle art. I was both pleased and surprised to see one of his creations at the Harley Museum during our recent Milwaukee content safari.
“Spike,” Mr. Kimura’s custom Knucklehead, was in a Harley museum hall that focused on custom motorcycles, and even before I saw his name, I knew whose work it was.
I believe “Spike” is the very same motorcycle featured in this video:
The Shinya Kimura shop, located in Azusa, California (not far from CSC Motorcycles) is one of the more interesting places I’ve ever visited. I think you would enjoy it, too, although it is not open to the public. I was there on business reasons, and I captured some great photos. If you have a chance, check out our earlier blog.
Very few (if any) final scenes have sparked as much discussion and controversy as the final Sopranos scene. Tony Soprano and his family are meeting for dinner at Holsten’s in Bloomfield, New Jersey, the fictional mob wars between the New York and New Jersey families have ended, and we think all is well. Their favorite local restaurant is Holsten’s, which Tony mentions in the series. Is it a real place?
Absolutely. And it’s good. We found Holsten’s and had lunch there (it’s at 1063 Broad Street in Bloomfield, New Jersey), and I was surprised. The place has to be the most famous small local restaurant in the world, and you’d think with the kind of publicity they’ve had, they wouldn’t be very good. People from literally all over the world (more on that in a minute) find their way to Holsten’s. But it is good. Very good, in fact. More on that in a minute, too.
I was able to park directly in front of Holsten’s, and as I was getting out, I noticed a young couple scrambling to cross the street and get into the restaurant. I had an idea why, so I slowed down a bit.
Okay, to make what I’m going to show you make sense, I need to tell you a bit about that last scene up front. In the photo below, there are three Holsten’s locations you need to know about. The photo below shows them as you enter the restaurant.
As you enter Holsten’s, there’s a long lunch counter and booths at the back of the restaurant. Arrow B points to where the likely hitman initially sat. Arrow A points to the small hallway that leads to the restrooms, where the shot that took out Tony was fired from. Arrow C points to the booth where Tony sat, enjoying his onion rings, when he got whacked.
That young couple racing to get into the restaurant? I was right. They were hustling to grab the booth all the way in the back, where Tony, Carmela, and AJ sat. In the Sopranos scene, Tony was flipping through the mini-jukebox on the table. Today it’s the only table in the restaurant that has that little jukebox. They used to be at every table in any New Jersey diner. Notice the sign denoting the booth, too.
We sat one booth up from the Sopranos’ booth and we started talking to the young couple I mentioned above. They were doing the same thing we were: hitting locations that appear in different Sopranos episodes. Sue told them we were from California. They told us they were from (get this) Poland! Yep, they flew all the way from Poland to do what we were doing. These folks were serious Sopranos fans. Check out his tattoos:
This is beyond being a mere fan, I think.Impressive. Christopher, Tony, Silvio, and Pauly. And before you ask: Yes, I know these are fictional characters.
You no doubt realize by now that I am a serious Sopranos fan. But I don’t have any tattoos denoting any of the characters in The Sopranos, and I have no plans to get any.
We had a lunch, and (as mentioned above), it was surprisingly good. I had a tuna melt. We ordered a plate of onion rings. Just minutes before he got whacked, Tony Soprano said they were the best onion rings in the state. I’ve sampled a lot of onion rings in New Jersey, and I think he was right.
The menu was simple. Our lunch selections were excellent. The people from Poland thought so, too.
We left feeling pretty good. I grabbed one more shot with my cell phone.
A parting shot: The Holsten’s storefront.
About that last scene: The audience never does find out exactly what happened. Tony looks up as Meadow (his daughter) is entering the restaurant, and the screen and the sound suddenly go to a silent black. Most people thought their TVs had gone out. I did. Then the credits start rolling by, and we realized that one of the best series ever, all six seasons of it, were over. It was brilliant.
Take a look, remembering the locations I pointed out in that photo above.
The Sopranos ExNotes Wrap Up (for now)
Well, sort of. I’m not entirely done with The Sopranos. This is the fourth (or maybe fifth) one of our blogs on The Sopranos, and I don’t have any more planned until the next trip back to the Garden State. About that “maybe fifth” business: One of The Sopranos episodes takes place in the New Jersey Pine Barrens. I rode the Pine Barrens when I did the piece on Jerry Dowgin’s Honda 305 Scrambler (rest in peace, Jerry). The Sopranos episode didn’t actually take place in the Pine Barrens, as anybody knows who’s ever been there (it was filmed in a forest somewhere in New York, and they didn’t even have pine trees). Parts of that episode were funny as hell, though, as you can see in this clip:
The other three Sopranos blogs we’ve done recently are:
I’ve been a motorcycle guy nearly all my life and I’ve owned several motorcycles. Only two of them were Harleys; the first was beautiful but terrible in many ways (a ’79 Electra Glide Classic). The second was beautiful and it was a great machine (a ’92 Heritage Softail). I think Harley’s styling on past models has been awesome. Bottom line? I’m not a Harley fanatic and I’m not a hater. It’s not likely I’d ever buy another Harley, unless I came across a cheap XR-1000 (and that’s probably not in the cards). All that said, I can tell you that the Harley-Davidson Museum is the best motorcycle museum (and maybe the best anything museum) I’ve ever visited (and I’ve visited a lot of them).
First, a bit of logistics about the Museum and our upcoming blogs. We were in Milwaukee specifically to visit the Museum along with a few other Milwaukee highlights. The Harley Museum is too much to take in with just a single visit, and it is definitely too much to cover in a single blog. Our Milwaukee schedule allowed only one Harley Museum visit, but I’ll cover it in three or four blogs. This is the first.
Sticking to the logistics for a moment, the Museum is easy to get to. Plug it into Waze and you’ll drive right up to their front door. There’s plenty of parking, and we snagged a handicap parking spot right at their front door (my handicap tag is the silver lining to a 2009 motorcycle accident). We visited the Museum on a weekday, so it was not too crowded. I’m guessing that’s not the case on the weekends.
Admission is reasonable at $24 per person; for us it was a little less because we qualify for the geezer discount (that knocks it down to $20 per person). Knowing Harley’s customer base, I think a lot of folks get in for $20.
The interior lighting was subdued. Flash photography is allowed, but it’s hard to get decent photos with flash. Nearly everything you see here is with ambient lighting. I had to crank up the Nikon’s ISO, so you may see some graininess in my photos. Mea culpa.
The Museum has three floors, and the building is huge. There are several permanent exhibits and a few special exhibits (ones that change from time to time). The exhibits (both permanent and special) include:
Motorcycle Galleries.
Mama Tried.
Mi Papi.
The Engine Room.
The Archives.
Military Motorcycles.
Clubs and Competition.
The Tank Wall.
Art and Engineering.
Motorcycle Galleries
The Motorcycle Galleries are on the first and second floors, and they dominate the Museum. The Motorcycle Galleries is an appropriate name. The first part is a 180-foot, three-motorcycle-wide display of motorcycles from Harley’s first 50 years, starting with their very first model. The second part features later Harleys.
It was a well assembled exhibit and the motorcycles are beautiful. As I walked the line and took in the motorcycles, I realized I had seen more than a few of these bikes in books. Seeing them in person was special.
Mama Tried
Mama Tried was a custom bike exhibit, containing all sorts of custom Harleys (not the wigged-out choppers you see at the motorcycle shows). I’m not sure what the name (Mama Tried) is supposed to mean, but I thought the exhibit was good. I was liked seeing the Knucklehead customized by Shinya Kimura, whom we’ve written about before.
Mi Papi Has A Motorcycle
You may remember that Joe Gresh wrote an ExNotes review a few years ago about the Spanish language kid’s book, Mi Papi Has A Motorcycle. The book impressed Gresh; apparently, it had the same effect on the Museum staff. There’s an entire hall with large storyboards taken from the book.
The Engine Room
The Engine Room was enlightening. I always found the history and names of Harley engines confusing. VL, UL, flatheads, you know…what do all those designations actually mean? I’m a mechanical engineer and I never could follow it all. The Engine Room made it all clear. We’ll have a future blog on it. This was one of the best parts of the Harley Museum.
The Archives
The Archives were something I’d read about before. An elevator takes you to the third floor. The archives are not open to the public, but you can peer in through a double wire fence. One of Elvis Presley’s motorcycles was near the fence.
Military Motorcycles
The Military Motorcycles exhibit features the Harleys used in World War II and it was the best exhibit of its type I’ve ever seen. This is a topic I’ve been interested in for a l0ng time, going back to before I wrote The Complete Book of Police and Military Motorcycles. There will be a separate blog on this exhibit. It was awesome.
Clubs and Competition
The Clubs and Competition exhibit features a board track with vintage race bikes and projected images of motorcycle racers (and accompanying engine sounds), vintage Harley hill climbers, and Joe Petrali’s land speed record Knucklehead. The Petrali streamliner was awesome.
The Tank Wall
The Tank Wall and the tank exhibits were intriguing. I’ve seen photos of it many times, but to see it in person had more of an impact. To me, the tanks and the engine are what make a Harley. It’s well done. I felt like a kid in a candy store more in this part of the Museum than anywhere else.
Art and Engineering
The Museum has a relatively new Art and Engineering exhibit, which is intended to show how art combines with engineering at Harley-Davidson. I was disappointed, especially because it was one of the main reasons I visited. I felt it was superficial and that it was basically a Harley-Davidson commercial, with almost nothing beyond a very light explanation of how Harley engineering is influenced by art. I get it; they go from sketches to clay mockups to metal, and they select colors along the way. Got it. They use CAD. Got it. Willie G is a wonderful human being, and so was an earlier designer/stylist named Brooks Stevens. Got it. I kind of knew all of that before I got on the airplane to go to Milwaukee (except for the part about Brooks Stevens; that was new to me).
When the motorcycling world discovered Willie G 50 years ago (in the days of the Super Glide, the XLCR Cafe Racer, the Electra Glide Classic, the Low Rider, etc.) there were lots of stories about how Harley went to motorcycle events and studied how riders customized their motorcycles. That was good stuff and those were good creativity inputs, but there was none of that in this exhibit. I was hoping to understand how Harley selected the style and the performance parameters for the new Sportster (a nice-looking motorcycle) and the Pan America (an ugly motorcycle, but all ADV bikes are), and maybe gain some insights into where Harley might go in the future. There was none of that.
I’m probably not a fair judge in this area. I taught engineering for 27 years at Cal Poly Pomona, I’ve had motorcycle engineering assignments related to Harley and other companies, and I wrote a book about engineering creativity. To be fair to Harley, they weren’t targeting retired engineering professors when they created the Art and Engineering exhibit. The exhibit had nice visuals, but for me it was devoid of any meaningful content. That said, we took in nine exhibits at the Harley Museum and only this one didn’t measure up to what I expected. The rest were all outstanding, and 8 out of 9 wins is a pretty good score in anybody’s book.
So there you have it: My Harley-Davidson Museum impressions. Sue and I had a good time. We were there for about three hours, but it would have been easy to spend the entire day. My disappointment in the Art and Engineering exhibit notwithstanding, I strongly recommend that anyone who rides or has even a passing interest in the American icon that is Harley-Davidson visit the Museum. It’s a bucket list destination. I’m glad I went.
At the tail end of our path through the Harley Museum, there’s an area with current model Harleys where you can sit on the bikes and take pictures. A nice guy from the Czech Republic offered to take a picture of Susie and me with my cell phone. It looks good. Our smiles are real.
This is the first of several book reviews to follow in the next few weeks. The 600 m.o.l. Black Helicopter Pilots in Vietnam is the true story of the second wave of Tuskegee Airmen. The first wave included the Black aviators who flew combat missions in World War II. There have been movies made about those men and their accomplishments are well known. The second wave refers to Tuskegee airmen trained to be helicopter pilots by the famed Alfred Anderson, who trained the first wave for World War II. Their exploits and the paths they blazed are not nearly as well known.
The story is fascinating on many levels, not the least of which is the story of the author, Dr. Joe Ponds. He was one of the more or less (that’s where the “m.o.l.” comes from) 600 Black helicopter pilots in Vietnam who flew Huey and Cobra gunships during that war. The book begins with the author’s end in sight: A cancer diagnosis with only a few months left to live.
What do you do with what is essentially a death sentence diagnosis? Dr. Joe Ponds decided to tell the story of the Black helicopter pilots who flew in Vietnam. Theirs was not an easy path. They faced institutionalized racism and discrimination in both civilian and Army life. These men managed to overcome limits imposed by others and they became U.S. Army aviators.
A brief history of discrimination in America and efforts to overcome it.
Dr. Pond’s experiences in gaining a officer’s commission in the US Army, and then becoming a helicopter pilot.
A discussion of the different types of helicopters flown in Vietnam.
A review of the kinds of helicopter missions in Vietnam.
Stories from several Black aviators featured in the book. All were interesting, especially the ones who flew medevac helicopters. Those helicopters flew with no armament whatsoever, and they were literally sitting (or hovering) ducks when they flew in to retrieve wounded soldiers.
A list of the approximately 600 Black aviators who served in Vietnam.
A chapter describing how Dr. Ponds’ cancer went into remission and his subsequent activities on several fronts, including mentoring young people, counseling, helping first responders cope with post-traumatic stress syndrome, motivational speaking, and more.
Asbury Park, New Jersey, is another Sopranos location. In the series, several episodes depict Tony Soprano’s dreams. It’s a well-worn cinematic technique, but David Chase (The Sopranos writer) did it well. In the Asbury Park scene, Tony has been diagnosed with cancer and he pours gasoline over himself and self immolates in front of his minions. Tony’s a good guy, you see, and he wants to short circuit his suffering and spare his friends the hospital visits associated with his impending lengthy illness.
In the video above, the building that spans the boardwalk is the Asbury Park Convention Center. You can see it and the boardwalk, along with the beach (what we in New Jersey call “the shaw,” as in “Let’s go down the shaw…”) in the photo above this blog.
On the Asbury Park boardwalk, approaching the Convention Center.
In a later scene during Tony’s dream, Tony shoots Pauly Walnuts inside the Convention Center during a card game. Throughout the series, Tony’s relationship with Pauly is complicated. Pauly is probably Tony’s most loyal minion (along with Silvio Dante), but Pauly is constantly getting on Tony’s nerves. The character development The Sopranos is very well done; it is one of many areas in which the show shines. You probably can tell I am a Sopranos fanboy. I am what I am.
Inside the Asbury Park Convention Center. The red arrow denotes where Tony (in his dream) shot Pauly.
The coin-operated binoculars you see in the video are no longer on the boardwalk, but they were there when I was a kid and I remember wishing I had the coins and the height to be able to see through them. The benches you see in the video (on the boardwalk, facing the Atlantic) are still there.
Inside the Convention Center. It was built in 1929. I don’t think it is still used for conventions. It would be cool if it did.On the south side of the Convention Center, looking east at the Atlantic Ocean. In The Many Saints of Newark (a recently released prequel to the Sopranos), Dickie Moltisante (Tony’s childhood hero), murdered his girlfriend (and former stepmother) in the Atlantic at this spot. It’s a complicated plot.Looking north along the Asbury Park boardwalk (on the northern side of the Convention Center, which was just behind me when I took this photo).
On the day I visited Asbury Park, contractors were erecting a stage right on the beach for a Bruce Springsteen concert the next day. General admission tickets were $350; select seating tickets went as high as $4,000. These were not scalper prices; these are the prices that were published for the event. I learned this talking to a young lady inside the Convention Center. I still have my New Jersey accent, and just for grins, I told her I went to high school with Bruce. I didn’t, but I was having fun.
On the north side of the Convention Center, looking south. That stage to the left is where the Springsteen concert was going to be.
“Really?” she said. I am Bruce Springsteen’s age, and young people are easily fooled. I think she believed me.
“What was he like?” she asked, wide eyed.
“Truth be told, he was a first-class pain in the ass,” I answered. “Even in those days, he wanted everyone to call him ‘The Boss.’ It was weird, but we humored the guy.” Her mouth opened in amazement. She was buying my line, but it wasn’t true. There’s only one boss, and his name is Tony Soprano.
Some time ago, we wrote a blog comparing the Casio Marlin and Rolex Sea Dweller dive watches. This one is similar; it compares my nearly 40-year-old two-tone Rolex GMT II to a recently-released Seiko two-tone GMT.
Two GMT watches: The Rolex GMT Master II (left) and the Seiko two-tone GMT (right). in the photos here, the Rolex has a much richer appearance; in real life, the Seiko looks just as good.A close up of my Rolex GMT Master II, purchased new in 1986 when I was still a yuppie. Note the cyclops lens over the date. It really works. The older I get, the better it works.The Seiko two-tone GMT, purchased a few days ago. The Seiko also has a cyclops lens over the date. It’s a cool and useful touch. This is a very nice watch.
I’m a sucker for a good-looking watch. Many of my retired friends take pride in not wearing a watch, and many young people don’t wear watches (they’re glued to their cell phones all day; they can get the time there). I always wear a watch.
The first watch I ever owned was a gift from my parents. It was an inexpensive Timex that was completely unexpected, I loved it, and I wore it for years. I first recognized watches as a status symbol and a cool thing to own when I was in the Army, and like all the other lieutenants overseas, I bought a Seiko chronograph at the Base Exchange. After the Army came the aerospace industry where a Rolex was the status symbol, and when I was back in D.C. lobbying Congress to buy Aerojet cluster bombs instead of Brand X (Honeywell was Brand X for us), a jewelry store had the Rolex GMT Master II you see here. I wore it full time for years after I first bought it, and then only intermittently after that. I felt the Rolex was pretentious around clients, and I was afraid it would reinforce a feeling that they were paying me too much (which they were). Now that I’m retired, the fear of being pretentious has been replaced by the fear of getting mugged, so I don’t wear it very often.
The hands of fate. The top arrow points to the bezel, which can be rotated in relation to the GMT hand (lower left arrow) to tell time on a 24-hour scale in a different time zone. The second-from-the-top red arrow points to the minute hand. The arrow on the right points to the conventional hour hand. If you look closely at the inverted diamond at 12:00, you can see the bezel is slightly off.
So what is a GMT watch? Basically, it is a watch that allows you to tell time in three time zones. If you wanted to, one of the time zones could be Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), which is the time at the Greenwich Observatory in England. Most of the time, I could care less what the time is in England, but that’s where the GMT descriptor originates.
Today, there are multiple approaches for time telling in different time zones, but the classic approach (and one followed by the Rolex and Seiko watches in this blog) is through the use of a third hand and a bezel with 24-hour numbering. The way it works is this:
The standard hour and minute hands tell the local time.
The third hand can be shifted to tell the time in a different time zone.
The bezel can be rotated to tell the time in a third time zone.
There are variations on the above (like switching local time with destination time, etc.). All of this may sound like a solution looking for a problem, but trust on this, when you travel to different time zones, it’s a very useful feature.
The Rolex GMT allows you to “step” the hour in one-hour increments by use of the winding knob when the knob is partially pulled out (some folks say this makes the Rolex a “true” GMT). On the Seiko, it doesn’t have the “step” function; use of the winding knob advances either the third hand or the conventional hour hand without the one-hour clicks (depending on which click you bring the stem out to). To me, either approach is acceptable.
The Rolex GMT Master II retails today for $14,050; the Seiko goes for $475. There’s a lot more to the pricing story, though. Prices on a Rolex are all over the map, and Rolexes sell for well above their suggested retail price. Some, even used, sell for three or four times their suggested retail price. I don’t know what my Rolex would sell for today as a used watch, and I’m not really interested because it’s not for sale. The Rolex will eventually go to one of my grandsons. I paid $3287 for it new in that Washington, D.C. jewelry store in 1986. I could easily get my money out of it if I wanted to, but like I said, that’s not going to happen.
Staying on pricing for a minute, the two-tone Seiko GMT is a relatively new model, so I couldn’t find it discounted on Amazon. If the two-tone coloring is not important to you, you can get the all-stainless version on Amazon for $317, which is a smoking deal (it’s $158 less expensive than the two-tone version).
My Seiko GMT was an impulse buy. Sue and I went out for lunch and there was a small watch shop a couple of doors down. They had the two-tone model, which I had not seen before other than in online watch forums and Seiko’s website (I was in Tokyo last year, and I didn’t even see it there). I asked the shop about a veteran’s discount, the guy said “you bet,” and mine set me back $402. I like supporting local businesses, I like doing business with shops that offer a veteran’s discount, and I liked being able to see the watch in person before I pulled the trigger.
My Rolex runs fast, gaining about a minute a week. That’s adjustable and would no doubt be corrected if I took the watch in for service, but I’m probably not going to do that. I’ve had the Rolex serviced twice. The last time was 25 years ago at the Rolex service center in Beverly Hills (where else could it possibly be?). Rolex clipped me $1000 for the service. I wasn’t happy at all. After the servicing, the numbers on the click-detented bezel were offset from where they should have been, and when I bitched about that, they remounted the bezel. It was better, but it is still offset a bit. Within six months of that service (which included replacing the crystal), I noticed a gouge on the crystal. I had worn the Rolex for 10 years before that and never had a scratch on the original crystal, so I have to wonder if I really received the sapphire crystal I paid for. A servicing today will probably be about $1500 if I get the crystal replaced and the bezel numbers remounted. It’s not likely I’ll spring for that. Maybe I will. I don’t know. It’s something I think about now and then, but then I think about getting out on the range with a milsurp rifle or riding my motorcycle and I forget about it. So far, the Seiko is keeping perfect time. I’ll let you know if that changes.
The Seiko is a new watch, so I haven’t had it serviced yet. Poking around a bit revealed that a typical mechanical watch servicing costs from $200 to $250. I think my local guy would probably be less than that. It’s quite a bit lower than what a Rolex service costs.
Both the Seiko and the Rolex are automatics. That means they are mechanical, selfwinding timepieces. The good news is there are no batteries, and it doesn’t matter if I stay out in the sun long enough to charge the solar power source. The bad news is that if I don’t wear an automatic watch for a few days, it stops. When that happens, prior to the next time I wear it I need to wind it and set the time. The Seiko, fully wound, has a 41-hour power reserve. The Rolex has a 70-hour power reserve. Rolex gets the nod here.
Regarding cosmetics, the “gold” bezel on the Seiko isn’t really gold; it’s plated. The accents on the Seiko hands and the watchface are similarly gold colored (i.e., they are not real gold). The Seiko’s jubilee bracelet links center areas are left a natural stainless steel finish. On the Rolex, they are gold. Another thing to note: On any Rolex, wherever you see something gold, it’s real gold. Nothing is plated on a Rolex. The bezel, the watchface accents, the hands, the winder, and the jubilee bracelet are all solid gold. Both watches look great, in my opinion. The real gold obviously drives the cost of Rolex higher than a Seiko, but not enough to explain the $14,000 (or more) difference. Most of the price difference is prestige pricing (Rolex gets away with it because some folks think they need such a thing). I used to be one of them. I’m not anymore.
About that jubilee bracelet: What they refers to are the smaller links in the watchband’s center section. Non-jubilee watches have bigger, single links instead of the jubilee bracelet’s three smaller links. To me, the jubilee bracelet makes a real comfort difference. The non-jubilee bracelet just doesn’t feel as good.
The Seiko is a much thicker case, and it sits higher on the wrist. It’s enough to be noticeable. The Rolex is thinner and I like the feel of it better for that reason.
Note the increased case thickness of the Seiko (on the right) compared to the downright thin Rolex. Rolex gets the nod here.
The Seiko’s stem winder is a push in/pull out affair. The Rolex stem winder unscrews, which theoretically makes it more waterproof. I don’t wear my watch in the shower any more (ever since I ruined a G-Shock by doing so), so the difference is meaningless to me.
One last area I’ll touch on is the clasp design. Hands down (pardon the pun) the win here goes to Seiko. The Seiko’s clasp has three retaining features compared to the Rolex clasp. The fear, of course, is that the watch clasp comes undone and the watch slips off the wrist. It could be damaged by a fall onto, say, concrete, or worse, go unnoticed. The other fear is pickpockets. I don’t know how difficult it would be for a pickpocket to lift your watch. I once had a guy (a magician) remove a watch I was wearing without me noticing it. That watch had a leather band and I later learned there’s a trick to it. I don’t know if there’s a comparable trick for a metal bracelet, but if there is, I would think the Rolex would be more susceptible to such a thing.
The Seiko (on the left) clasp has three retaining features; the Rolex (on the right) has only one (which is a small dimensional difference between the outer clasp and the mating pin on the inner clasp). The Seiko design is better.
The bottom line to me is that the Seiko is a hell of a deal for under $500, and if you are looking for a watch that offers all the advantages of a GMT and is dressy, the Seiko is a good buy. I own both, and I think Seiko hit a home run here.
There are other approaches to a GMT watch. Citizen has a different dual time approach with their Nighthawk and Blue Angels models. Many digital watches (some identified as GMT watches and some not) can display the time in different time zones at the touch of a button. Casio has several cool models that do this. The Citizen and the Casio watches are reviewed on our Product Reviews page.
Another one of the stops on my New Jersey Sopranos tour was Paterson Falls. Although only about 40 miles or so from where I grew up, I’d never been there.
I knew of the town, though. It’s an old industrial village with waterfalls, which meant that in the early days of our country it was perfect for industrial development. The falls provided hydraulic power, and that could be used to drive machinery. Indeed, it’s where Samuel Colt built his first run of revolvers, which are known (not surprisingly) as Paterson Colts. Paterson was established as the nation’s first planned industrial city in 1792, with its readily-available hydraulic power and close proximity to New York City and the Atlantic Ocean. Paterson manufactured silk cloth, steam locomotives, textiles, paper, firearms, and aircraft engines. It is centered on the Passaic River, which flows into Newark Bay and from there to the Atlantic Ocean.
The Passaic Falls are contained within the Paterson Great Falls National Historic Park, which is (as the name implies) part of the U.S. National Park system. All this was news to me, which is kind of amazing when you consider that I grew up a short 40 miles to the south. I’d never known any of this, and to learn about it at my age was surprising. I’ll give the credit for that to David Chase (the guy who created The Sopranos). Had that show not sparked my interest, I’d still be ignorant.
So, let’s move on to the scene in The Sopranos that caught my attention. It’s the episode in which Mikey Palmici (Uncle Junior’s driver and bodyguard) throws a drug dealer off the bridge over the Passaic Falls:
That episode you see above occurred later in The Sopranos. There was another scene in the very first Sopranos episode on the same bridge shown above in which Hesh Rabkin and Big Pussy Bompensiero (two of The Sopranos characters) threaten to throw a health insurance company executive (a guy named Alex Mahaffey, played by Michael Gaston) off the same bridge if he didn’t cooperate with a Sopranos scam to defraud the insurance company.
When threatened with a swan dive off the bridge, Mahaffey gave in to the Soprano family’s demands, but alas, his Sopranos career was over; Michael Gaston never appeared in another episode. But that didn’t mean Sue and I wouldn’t see him again. In one of our trips to New Jersey, we rode the Air Trans shuttle between the airport and the rental car facility. Just before we boarded the shuttle, Michael Gaston was leaving the car we entered. We didn’t bug him, but we made eye contact and he knew we knew who he was.
Michael Gaston, an actor we bumped into on the Newark Airport Air Trans.
There’s a lot more to Paterson, though, then simply having been a location for a couple of The Sopranos scenes. Here’s another video that describes Paterson’s history:
Today, Paterson is undergoing a renaissance, as the old factory buildings are being converted to loft apartments. Yup, Paterson is being yuppified. It looks like an interesting place to spend more time, but my schedule didn’t permit doing so on this visit. For us it was roll into town, grab a few photos, and bail.
A view of Passaic Falls. This is a beautiful area.The wood-surfaced foot bridge featured in two different Sopranos episodes.Another view of the bridge. It’s closed to the public. On the Internet, it says it’s for safety reasons. One of my police buddies told me it’s because there were too many suicides from this bridge.Another view of the Passaic River and its Falls in Paterson.While we were visiting the Paterson Great Falls National Historic Park, this rather plump groundhog was doing the same. My Dad used to hunt these in New Jersey with his .243 Model 70 Winchester and the farmers loved having him do so. These woodchucks may look cute, but they destroy a lot of crops.
One thing I know for sure: I’ll return to Paterson. I’d like to explore the city, its museums, and more in greater detail.
Want to see our other visits to The Sopranos locations? Here they are:
We’ve got a bunch of good stuff coming your way, my friends. I just finished a whirlwind week in New Jersey, we hit some of the Sopranos film locations, I grabbed a bunch of very cool Norton P11 photos, we saw where Bruce Springsteen was setting up for a concert in Asbury Park, I have a review on the new Garmin chronograph about to go live, Mike Huber (aka Mike Nelson) is down there in Indonesia and Thailand becoming one with the sea turtles, I’ve got a review on Ruger Customer Service and my revamped .357 Bisley, Joe Gresh has his Z1 Kawi all dressed up with lots of new places to go, and lots, lots more.
Andrew Capone, Isle of Man impresario and British Motocycle Gear CEO, with an unknown paparazzi reflected in a Norton Scrambler fender at an undisclosed location in New Jersey.All dressed up with lots of places to go…Joe Gresh and the Z1…the gift that keeps on giving!How fast is fast? Stay tuned, and we’ll tell you!Scuba Southeast Asia with Mike Huber!Bisley mania! Plinking at 100 yards with a handgun? You bet!Andrew, Harry (aka “the Norton Whisperer”), and what is unquestionably one of the most beautiful motorcycles ever made!There’s ink, and then there’s Sopranos ink. Oh, do we have a story for you!
You know, we blew right by 1500 blogs some time ago, and I started to wonder if we were going to run out of things to write about. Nope. Not gonna happen. It’s like when one of my geezer buddies told me he didn’t know what to say at a lunch gathering, and another of my geezer friends told him, “Don’t worry…you’ll keep talking until you think of something.”
Well….we’ve been having a little heat wave here in SoCal and I have been hanging around the house too much, so it was time to take the Harley Low Rider out for a little run.
My Low Rider when it was at the dealership in Minneapolis. I bought it about 4 years ago with 4,000 miles on the odometer.
I couldn’t do my usual run around the Palos Verdes peninsula due to the highway being closed to two-wheeled traffic. So I instead went the short way across the peninsula and then through the beach cities where it was nice and cool compared to the rest of Los Angeles.
I got through them all and was coming out of El Segundo and towards the airport and Westchester. On Sepulveda there’s a tunnel that goes under a runway at LAX and we call it, of course, the airport tunnel.
Some guys on bikes think of it as a tunnel and some think of it as a concert hall. Well, I kinda go both ways on that. But every time I get near it, I harken back to a memory of New Year’s Eve in 1972. I was a teenager at the time and my best bud Dave Reimer called me at home and told me he was at a great party in El Segundo. He offered to come by and pick me up (I had no wheels at that time). Dave showed up at my pad on a BSA 650 motorcycle he had borrowed from a friend. I jumped on and we headed out.
As we approached the tunnel from the Westchester side going to El Segundo Dave yelled back to me to hang on. He kicked it down a gear into 3rd and hit the throttle hard. We entered the tunnel going about 60mph and he banged 4th and hit the throttle hard and we were flying. The support columns just turned into a blur. There was a lot of great engine noise too. We came out the other end doing about 110mph!
What a kick! The things you do and get away with when you are young can be amazing. It was a great party and it is a favorite memory.
Today, in honor of my buddy Dave who left us about 15 years ago, I entered the tunnel in 3rd and laid down a little sweet Harley music with lots of throttle. It was about as much as I could get away with considering traffic.
So, Dave, wherever you are just wanted to let you know I was thinking about you.
Thanks, Bob. That’s a great story and we enjoyed reading it. Remind me never to lend my motorcycle to any of your friends!
I grew up up in the Evel Knievel era. It was a glorious time, the 1960s, and if you were a motorcycle freak (as I was and still am), there was no way you could not have heard of Evel Knievel, a man who jumped cars and buses (and ultimately, the Snake River Canyon) on a motorcycle. He was one hell of a showman.
In the summer of 1966 I was a skinny little 15-year-old kid, my Dad owned a new Triumph Bonneville, and I was in hog heaven for that reason. Then and now, there was and is nothing cooler than a Triumph Bonneville. We were going to the motorcycle races. A big night out in those days was the East Windsor Speedway, a half-mile dirt track oval where they raced everything. Stock cars, two-strokes, and the big bikes. Not just locals, either. Harley’s Bart Markel (National No. 1), Triumph’s Gary Nixon (National No. 9), and more. It was the 4th of July weekend and it was 58 years ago. I remember it like it was last week.
East Windsor Speedway is no more. It’s now tract homes. My loss; New Jersey’s property tax gain.
East Windsor Speedway put on quite a show. Dad and I rode there on the Bonneville. I fancied myself a motorcycle guy and it just didn’t get any better than the half-mile dirt oval at East Windsor. The fun started right in the parking lot with hundreds of fans’ motorcycles. Fins and twins (everything was an air-cooled twin in those days), carbs, chrome, custom paint, custom seats, and more. It was all England and America and a little bit of Japan: Triumph, BSA, Honda, Harley, Suzuki, Yamaha…you get the idea. Italy and Ducati were yet to be discovered, only weirdos rode BMWs (remember those strange sideways kick starters?), and weirdos definitely didn’t go to the races. A new Bonneville was $1320 and a Honda Super Hawk (electric start, no less) was only about $600. It all seemed so attainable.
The East Windsor Speedway is long gone now, shut down by noise complaints from the encroaching ‘burbs and then plowed over for more cookie cutter homes. It’s a pity, really.
East Windsor always put on quite a show, but that 4th of July evening was a six sigma outlier on the right side of the bell curve. Stock car racing was first, then the 250cc class (love that smell!), then the big boys (including Nixon and Markel), then the main event (Evel Knievel!)…and it was all washed down with a 4th of July fireworks display that was as good as I had ever seen. That warm New Jersey night out started before the sun went down and finished around midnight. I think the cost to get in was something like $2.50.
Evel Knievel was the highlight for me and I think for everyone else, too. Evel was just starting to get famous, and here he was in person. White leathers and a cape trimmed in red and blue on the 4th of July. (Gresh and I always wanted capes, but we had to wait 50 years and go to China to get ours.) A Harley V-twin, with monstrous ramps set up on the infield (one for liftoff and one for landing), with a couple of Greyhounds in between (buses, that is…not the dogs).
Airborne Evel back in the day.
The crowd fell silent as Evel revved the 750 Harley and then accelerated. But it wasn’t up the ramp. Nope, Evel (ever the showman) accelerated alongside the ramps and the buses when we all expected him to jump. Faked us out, he did. Then he looped around to start again. Ah, I get it, we all thought. That was just to gage his acceleration before hitting the ramps for real. The anticipation built. Thousands held their breath as Evel accelerated again, but he faked us out with another run alongside the ramps. Okay, all part of the show. A third time….maybe this would be it…but no, it was yet another tease. Back to the start point, more revving, and by now we were wise to the ways of Evel. We all thought it would be another feint. But nope, this was the real deal…up the ramp rapidly and suddenly there he was: Airborne Evel, sailing up and over the buses, suspended high in the evening air, and then back down on the landing ramp. He hit the brakes hard, struggling to stop before running out of room, the Harley’s rear end sashaying around like an exotic dancer in a room full of big tippers. The crowd went nuts. A seismic cheer drowned out the mighty Milwaukee sound machine. We had seen Evel, the man and the motorcycle, airborne and in person, flying over the buses that would have you leave the driving to them. It was awesome.
It all happened 58 years ago. Evel, my Dad, and the East Windsor Speedway have gone on to their reward and I’m officially a geezer drawing Social Security. But that evening will live in my memory forever, which sort of brings us to the present. Sue and I were on a content safari in Idaho (you’ve seen several blogs from that trip, and I still have a few to go). When we visited Twin Falls, we were on the edge of the Snake River Canyon. That name stuck in my mind because it was where Evel went when the US Government said “no dice” when he asked for permission to jump the Grand Canyon.
Good buddies Velma and Orlando on the south Rim of the Grand Canyon. Evel asked, and the Feds said no.
The entire concept was preposterous on so many levels I can’t list them. But that was Evel Knievel. Before he did it, the idea of jumping over a car was preposterous, as was the idea of jumping over several cars, as was the idea of jumping over a bus, as was the idea of jumping over several buses, and…well, you get the idea. Evel had bumped up against the limits of preposterousness, and that’s when he floated the Grand Canyon idea. The Feds nixed that, but Evel wasn’t a man stopped by obstacles. He went for the next best thing, and that was the Snake River Canyon. It’s over a mile wide, and it’s a big drop to the bottom.
To get back to Idaho connection and this story, I looked on the map to see if it denoted where Evel did his thing and to my surprise, it did. And it wasn’t very far from Shoshone Falls. Sue and I did our thing at Shoshone Falls and as soon as we were back in the car, I plugged in “Evel Knievel Snake River Canyon Jump.” Waze didn’t know from Evel Knievel, but the regular iPhone mapping app did. We were only a few miles away, we were off to the races (so to speak).
On the way in, as we approached the road’s end (it ended at the Snake River Canyon), we saw no signs initially marking the spot where Evel made history. We did see a lot of tract homes, and a sign selling more.
Not bad for an entire acre by California standards, but that’s Idaho. Someday every square inch of America will be covered by tract homes or high-density housing, and our politicians will wonder why there’s so little water and so much traffic.
As we reached the end of the road, the Canyon came into view, as did the ramp you see in the photo at the top of this blog. Whoa! Can it be?
The Snake River Canyon, where Evel attempted his jump. It’s wider and deeper than it looks.
It was. On the other side of that dirt ramp, we saw our first indication that we were where we wanted to be. It was a good summary of Evel and the attempted jump that occurred decades ago.
Evel: The Man, the myth, and the motorcycle.
The deal on the Evel Knievel Snake River Canyon jump is this: Evel didn’t attempt it on a regular or even a modified motorcycle. He instead used a steam rocket-propelled aircraft of sorts that was mounted on a launch ramp. The dirt ramp you see in the photo at the top of this blog was not one that you would attempt to roll up and hit at high speed with a motorcycle to become airborne. The idea instead was that the rocket ship would launch off a launch rail, carry Evel across the Snake River canyon, and then Evel would deploy a parachute and he (and the rocket ship) would float back to Earth on the other side. That was the theory.
An excerpt from the above sign. Evel Knievel, motorcycle astronaut.
It didn’t work out that way, though. Evel and his rocket ship made it about halfway across the Snake River, the parachute deployed inadvertently and prematurely, and man and machine descended into the canyon and onto the Snake River’s banks. Miraculously, Evel walked away, never to attempt a canyon (any canyon) jump again.
Another excerpt from the photo above. There was no V-Twin hidden in the bowels of Evel’s rocket ship.
We climbed to the top of the ramp and gazed across the Snake River Canyon. I wondered: Will we ever see another man like Evel Knievel? I think it’s less likely, given our predilection with biological males competing in women’s sports, our insistence on listing our pronouns (you can just refer to me as “hey, you”), and everything else our society has degenerated into. But that borders on being political, and as you know, we don’t do that. That said, though, I think it’s a safe bet that Evel never worried about anyone using his preferred pronouns.
After our climb down, we wandered around the area a bit. Other than that sign above (which isn’t visible until you walked to the other side of the ramp) and a marker on the trail fence, you’d never know this was an historic spot.
Peering at the Evel Knievel sign on the canyon side of the historic launch site.A tiny fencepost marker on the trail that runs along the Snake River Canyon.A macro shot of the Evel fencepost marker. History happened here.
We had a marvelous trip through Idaho, and like I said above, I still have another two or three blogs to wrap up our Idaho expedition. I’ll tell you before I get there, though, that visiting this obscure (and rapidly fading into further obscurity) spot was the highlight of the trip for me.
We sat one booth up from the Sopranos’ booth and we started talking to the young couple I mentioned above. They were doing the same thing we were: hitting locations that appear in different Sopranos episodes. Sue told them we were from California. They told us they were from (get this) Poland! Yep, they flew all the way from Poland to do what we were doing. These folks were serious Sopranos fans. Check out his tattoos:
