Grunge and Color in Olympia, Washington, Winter 2025-2026 (Oly 29)

Olympia is fun to walk and check for new stores, signs, and graffiti. Fourth and Fifth Avenues are rich with material, if you like grunge and messy American city vibe.

 

Thurston County Food Bank (Oct. 2, 2025, Ektar 100 film, 90mm ƒ/2.5 Elmarit lens)

Some mornings, I eat breakfast at Bread Peddler on Capitol Way N. and then walk home along 4th or 5th Avenues.

Parking lot, Capitol Way at State Ave.

Parking lot, Capitol Way (Feb. 28, 2026, 50mm F/2 Summicron lens)

Thai restaurant, not open yet?

Voyeurs, 404 4th Ave. E. (35mm ƒ/2 Summicron lens)

Vintage clothing, 707 4th Ave. E (35mm ƒ/2 Summicron lens)

Espresso Station, corner of 4th Avenue and Plum Street

More random scenes around town.

The Flamingo House! 503 Central Street.

Surviving wood traditional houses, view south from Legion Way

Alley, Legion Way 314 (35mm ƒ/2 Summicron lens)

Pink restaurant at 430 Legion Way

Gas meters, Olympia Ave, (50mm ƒ/2 Jupiter-8 lens)

I took this photograph with my 1962 Soviet-era ЮПИТЕР-8 lens. It has field curvature and is therefore is more suited to scenes with depth. But I continue to be impressed with how well this Sonnar design works in mid-distance scenes. It is a thread-mount lens, but with a Leica M-LTM adapter, it mounts perfectly on my Zeiss Ikon ZM camera. 

Massage shop, Fir Street

A friend told me that this little building might be a Sears kit home. It definitely resembles some of the Sears houses with the raised attic room on one end. But I checked with SearsHouses.com national database, and one of the curators wrote that Sears did not sell houses this far west. However, there were west coast kit house manufacturers, so who can tell about the origins of this modest little house on Fir Street. 

 

 

Smoke shop, 3730 Pacific Ave., Olympia

When you are done exploring and photographing, where do you go? Why, to Ranch House BBQ on Rte 8 west of Olympia. Brisket, ribs, sauce - for the hidden carnivore inside.

 

 

Ranch House BBQ (Portra 160 film, 50mm F/2 Summicron lens)

 

This ends our winter 2025-2026 random exploring around Olympia. 

I took most of these photographs on Kodak Ektar 100 film using my Zeiss Ikon ZM camera with various lenses. The ZM has a remarkably accurate aperture priority automatic exposure function, especially when the light is soft. Point, focus, click. I will write more about the ZM in the future.

More Industrial South Seattle (Sea 11)

Short Note. Today is July 4, 2026. Happy 250th to all you readers. I remember the Bicentennial celebrations, which were for all Americans. We saw the Tall Ships in Providence, Rhode Island, and in Boston Harbor. Good times. They seem so long ago. Dear Readers, please stay optimistic and hopeful.

 

Central South

 

Seattle from South Holgate Street, Oct. 12, 2025

(Fuji Acros II film, Sears KSX Super camera, 135mm ƒ/3.5 Pentax-M lens, orange filter)

South of Seattle's downtown is an extensive industrial area of warehouses, manufacturing, railroad yards, concrete plants and Boeing Field. Fortunately, some public streets provide some good viewpoints.

 

View north from Spokane Street between 1st and 3rd Avenues (note Smith Tower in the distance)

I took this picture from under the Spokane Street viaduct, which connects to the West Seattle Bridge. There is no sidewalk on the bridge where you can take an elevated view of the scene. I suppose I could stop my car on the viaduct and and hope that I would not be smushed. 

 

S Holgate Street view east (mind the train)

(Sears KSX Super camera, 135mm ƒ/3.5 Pentax-M lens, orange filter)

Scrap metal rail cars, S Utah Street at Denver Ave.

(Leica M2, 90mm ƒ/4 Elmar-M lens, yellow filter)

Shed, Carlton Ave S, next to Connections Museum

(50mm ƒ/1.4 Pentax-M lens)

 

  

East Marginal Way South 

 

Former UPS warehouse, 11231 Tukwila International Blvd. 

(90mm ƒ/4 Elmar-M lens) 

Aero Motel, 7240 East Marginal Way S.

(Fuji Acros II film, Leica M2, 50mm ƒ/2 Summicron-DR, yellow filter)

South Garden Street from East Marginal Way South

East Marginal Way South, view north 

Fence near Aero Motel

Track parallel to East Marginal Way South (50mm ƒ/1.4 Pentax-M lens)

This ends our quick look at the industrial area south of Seattle's downtown business district. I took most of these pictures on Fuji Acros II film with Leica M2 and Sears KSX Super cameras. 

The Sears could be a decent camera, but of three that I tried, one was broken on arrival, and two others broke quickly. They just were not robust internally, which is a real shame. The winding geartrain may have included some plastic gears. No more wasting time with these Sears consumer bodies. Surprisingly, the 50mm ƒ/1.7 lens, made by Ricoh, is excellent. It is a classic 6-element double Gauss design, with multicoating at least on the front element.

 

One of the now defunct Sears KSX cameras. 

One could keep buying these inexpensive bodies on eBay in hopes of finding one that lasts, but they waste time to load film and test. It is better to just buy a Nikkormat, Nikon F, Pentax Spotmatic, or Leica M body that you know will be reliable.  

Small Cities in Washington: Kelso

 

The weather forecast called for some dry days in late December (2025)! This was too good to miss, so I took a road trip south to the Columbia River. My first stop was the city of Kelso, which is on the east side of the Cowlitz River across from Longview. Here are some views around town. 

 

Central Kelso 

 

Downtown Kelso from Cowlitz Way (WA-4) bridge

(Kodak Ektar 100, Zeiss Ikon ZM camera, 50mm ƒ/2 Summicron lens at ƒ/2.8) 

BNSF tracks under Cowlitz Way bridge (50mm ƒ/2 Jupiter-8 lens)

The Cowlitz River flows between Kelso and Longview. After Mount St. Helens erupted on May 18, 1980, an immense amount of mud and ash flushed down the Toutle Rivers and into the Cowlitz. Ultimately, about 65 million cubic yards of sediment dropped into the lower Cowlitz and Columbia Rivers (from Robert I., Topinka, L, Swanson, D. (1990). "Eruptions of Mount St. Helens: Past, Present, and Future". U.S. Geological Survey Special Interest Publication).

 

Bingo at the FOE club, S. Pacific Avenue

Clock shop, 514 S. Pacific Avenue

300 1st Avenue (50mm ƒ/2 Jupiter-8 lens)

407 N. Pacific Ave

103 Crawford Street (50mm Jupiter-8 lens)

406 1st Avenue (50mm Jupiter-8 lens)

North Kelso

 

Family Daily Store (50mm ƒ/2 Summicron lens)

Taqueria, 1009 N. Pacific Avenue (50mm Summicron lens)

Skeleton man on patrol duty, 305 N. Kelso Avenue 

620 M 3rd. Avenue

 S. River Road and S. Pacific Avenue

1400 S. Pacific Avenue

Mobile home off S. River Road

514 S. Pacific Avenue

Near the south end town, Douglas Street (50mm ƒ/2 Summicron lens)

 

This ends a quick tour of the City of Kelso. I was pleased to see many mid-20th century houses, many with Arts and Crafts architectural details. Some of the city look pretty good, but some of it is rough. 

I took these pictures on Kodak Ektar 100 film with a Zeiss Ikon ZM rangefinder camera and various lenses. Some frames were with my 1962 Soviet 50mm ƒ/2 Jupiter-8 lens. Stopped down to ƒ/4 or ƒ/5.6, it does remarkably well. On internet scale, of course, it is difficult to see if one lens is "better" or "sharper" than another. But the output is very appealing. The Zeiss Ikon camera has a large, clear viewfinder and an amazingly accurate auto exposure function. 

Northeast Photographic in Bath, Maine, developed the film and scanned it with a Noritsu system. The Noritsu extracts impressive resolution from the negatives, and the files are clean. I assume there must be an infrared dust/scratch function that cleans blemishes. The Noritsu files have an odd warm tone, but I corrected them with the auto color function in Photoshop Elements 2024. (Note: Elements will let you crop, rotate, change color, and do some other adjustments on 16-bit TIFF files. But many functions require you to convert to 8-bit color, so Elements is limited if you want to retain your original 16-bit files.) 

This is a continuation of my irregular series on Washington towns and cities. 

From the Archives: Good Stuff in Pass Manchac, Louisiana, 1997

Ai Statement 2026:

None of the photographs you will ever see here on Urban Decay are generated by or modified by Artificial Intelligence (Ai). They are the genuine image recorded somewhere on earth at some time. I clean lint and scratches manually on some film pictures using the heal tool in Photoshop CS5 and CS6, and on a few frames, I adjust converging vertical lines on buildings. But the rest of the photographs are as recorded on film. Occasional digital photos are from cameras old enough to not have any embedded Ai software.

Dear Readers, you can trust that what you see is real (or was if the site has been demolished).

---

Pass Manchac

Pass Manchac is the waterway (pass) between Lakes Ponchartrain and Mauripas in southern Louisiana. Many drivers zip over the pass on Interstate 55 without paying much attention. But locals in the know pull off into the little community of Manchac to eat at the famous Middendorf's restaurant. It has been in business since 1934, surviving hurricanes, floods, the Great Depression, and the interstate highway system. 

The rest of the unincorporated community consists of some interesting little stores and swamp tour companies.

Middendorf's serves the best fried flounder (whole fish with head) I have eaten anywhere. It oozes over the boundaries of a dinner plate. The catfish is also remarkably good.

Reno's Seafood: fresh shrimp, crabs, crawfish, and beer. I wish I had tried the boudin.

Local sign-making at its best. I miss south Louisiana. It is culturally and gastronomically so interesting.

I took most of these photographs in 1997 on Kodachrome 25 film with my Leica M3 camera and the 35mm ƒ/2.0 Summicron-RF lens. This was the spectacular 8-element model, which is now a coveted collectors item. The RF means this version was equipped with goggles to adjust the view in the viewfinder of the Leica M3 camera. (Why did I ever sell this lens?) Leica also sold a version without the goggles for their M2 and M4 cameras, which had a different viewfinder. 

I scanned the slides with a Nikon Coolscan 5000 ED film scanner.

Leica M3 camera with the superb 8-element 35mm ƒ/2.0 Summicron-RF lens