Superior Streets

The streets of this town are so different from anything I've seen in California, I just have to blog about them. Maybe if I looked real hard in some dim corner of California, I might find something to compare them with, but coming from the over grown jungles of Sonoma and Marin Counties, Superior streets are unique.

First off, there is very little business. I don't really know when the 'season' would get going down here. Maybe it happened in December. It's usually just as quiet in July and August because of the heat. Maybe it just doesn't happen down here. But the streets are quiet. Main Street is definitely The Best. It's wide and two laned. You can park diagonally on it, like some of those wide open streets in Australia and still have room for ten wheelers to pass, occasionally there is one, a ten wheeler,I mean. There are nice sidewalks to walk on. The City Council has seen fit to provide lots of wide benches to sit on and while away the time with one's neighbors. There's even some beautiful planter boxes with cactus and bougainvillea on two or three of the downtown blocks. Main Street runs for a quarter mile or more, all under the watchful gaze of the mountain where the Silver King mine was located. It's beautiful. It's like stepping back in time. And it's damned quiet!

I remarked to Bill on a walk up Main Street today that it would be odd to even meet another person. I guess that's why I get reminded of all the spirits and ghosts lurking in the many shuttered up buildings on Main Street. This town was bustling once. It was a municipal center. This town had LIFE! I refuse to think that Superior is dead. I prefer to think that it's just mulling over its possibilities for life in the Twenty-First Century and hasn't decided what it wants to be yet.

One of the best buildings in the whole town and the one that has consistently captured my imagination is the old 1908 Magma Hotel. It sits right on the corner of Magma and Main, the downright epicenter of town. It was built in two sections, brick buildings on either end of a showy adobe center and courtyard. In its day, it featured a bar (standard equipment for a Western hotel), restaurant and upstairs rooms. You can still see the rooms. Now, better than ever. For a month ago after some torrential rains, the adobe facade of the hotel sloughed off and crumbled into the street. It's a devastating loss for the town with the demise of the treasured building. The town is fussing with the owners over who is responsible for razing the building. The owners feel betrayed by the town council over having to contend with too much government bureaucracy in the first place before they could do the repairs that needed done ASAP. There's a lot of finger pointing and more controversy. (Boy, I have to admit this town does have some controversies going for it!) And before it's all said and done, more recriminations will be heard, I expect. But the greatest loss will be the town's and the townspeople for losing this treasured landmark. I hope it isn't entirely razed before some miracle intervenes and it could be rebuilt or reconstructed. The town won't be the same without the Magma Hotel.

Anyway, I'm new here. I'm just reporting on it. Watching what will happen. I think the town will pull through. The only thing it's got going for it currently is its Soap Box Derbies and the occasional movie filmed here. It's great for those two things, of course. But it could be so much more. If only.... Stay tuned. I know there will be more!