Things destroyed by greedy developers

If there's one thing I hate more than anything else in the whole world, it's greedy building developers.
A lot of our American heritage has been destroyed by morons who want nothing more than to build cookie-cutter apartments and condos and other bullshit like that.

Examples:

1. ALCO (Schenectady, NY): The American Locomotive Company, or "ALCO" for short, occupied a spot on the Mohawk River for 112 years. During this time, the plant built thousands upon thousands of locomotives, and it also helped us win World War II. The plant ceased production in 1969, and was leased by several local companies for the next 40 years. In 2010, it was announced that the sprawling complex would be demolished for, what else? Apartments. Railroad preservationists tried to save it, but were sadly unsuccessful. Demolition started in June 2011, and any hope that the buildings could be saved eventually disappeared when Hurricane Irene flooded the site a couple months later.

2. Chesterfield Inn (Myrtle Beach, SC): This was a beautiful old hotel on Ocean Avenue in Downtown Myrtle Beach. It was built in 1946 and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1996. Despite this protection, the hotel's dumbass of an owner announced in 2009 that she planned to tear it down to make way for, get this, a fucking mini-golf course. The recession halted those plans for a while, but in the summer of 2012, the demolition went on as scheduled. I was on vacation in Myrtle Beach at the time, and I witnessed this tragedy for myself. It sickens me that they were allowed to tear down a building that was protected from such a thing. But here's the really sad part; the new tables for the mini-golf course were built out of the hotel's floors. I don't care who you are, but that's just plain evil.

3. Ambassador Hotel (Los Angeles, CA): The world-famous hotel on Wilshire Boulevard, along with its renowned nightclub, The Cocoanut Grove, was a gathering place for many of Hollywood's biggest stars. These days, the hotel is unfortunately better known for being the site of Robert F. Kennedy's assassination. The hotel itself closed in 1989, but remained open for private events. In the early 2000's, it was involved in a bitter legal battle between the Los Angeles Unified School District, who wanted to tear it down to build a school on the site, and the Los Angeles Conservancy, who wanted the hotel to be incorporated into the new school. Sadly, the School District got their way, and most of the hotel was demolished. Some of The Cocoanut Grove was preserved as the school's auditorium, and the hotel's coffee shop was preserved as the teacher's lounge.

The Beatles Cartoon animation studio breakdown

One of my favorite cartoons is The Beatles cartoon from the 60's. It is an early example of outsourcing animation to different countries. What follows is a list of each studio and ways to identify them:

1. TVC London: (26 segments, 39 sing-a-longs, third season intro) This studio was the main studio involved in production of the cartoon. Their segments can be identified by constantly reused shots of the boys performing, and trippy visuals. Some of TVC's work was sent to Group Two Animation. Group Two's episodes have very uncannily detailed designs for the Beatles (Ringo and Paul in particular). Also assisting TVC were Bob Godfrey Films on three segments (“I’m Happy Just To Dance With You”, “Mr. Moonlight”, and “I Saw Her Standing There”) in the first season. Godfrey's segments were among the first to be produced, so they have a choppy unfinished look to them. Starting with season 2, all episodes were animated by TVC.

2. Artransa Park Studios, Sydney, Australia: (20 segments, 20 sing-a-longs) These episodes are very Hanna-Barbera influenced (in fact, some of the animators for Artransa later went on to work for HB's Australian studio). At the time this show was made, the Australian animation industry was just starting up, so there were fewer professional animators available. This is evident in Artransa's segments, which are very inconsistent, but with admittedly nice character designs and backgrounds. Some traits that characterize Artransa's segments are a limited selection of sound effects, horror movie monsters showing up, and Asian stereotypes. A few of Artransa's segments were sent to a smaller studio called Graphik, which looked even worse.

3. Canawest, Vancouver, BC, Canada: (6 segments, 6 sing-a-longs): Probably the most professional looking of the studios. This studio's crew was a mix of Canadian and Hollywood animators, under the supervision of veteran scriptwriter John W. Dunn. These segments are characterized by UPA-influenced designs, unique title cards, and for some reason, small creatures helping the Beatles (i.e. the leprechaun from “Do You Want to Know a Secret”, the fox from “I’ll Follow the Sun”, and the seagull from “Hold Me Tight”).

4. Cine-Centrum, Holland: (5 segments) TVC had a satellite studio in The Netherlands which worked on a few episodes, under the supervision of Jim Hiltz (credited as "Snav Sniekus"). The Beatles in these episodes have unusually large hands, and really thick eyebrows. Other than that, there's not much else that stands out about this studio.

5. Los Dibujos Animados, Mexico City, Mexico: (Season 1 & 2 intros, sing-a-long intros, credit sequence, bumpers) All I can say about this one is that it has the weirdest name for an animation studio. (For the record, it translates to "The Animated Drawings".)

There’s also the sing-along songs, which were animated by the studios assigned to their corresponding episodes (except Cine-Centrum, whose sing-alongs were done by the main TVC studio instead). Like the episodes, each studio has a distinguishing feature to tell them apart,

TVC’s sing-alongs usually consist of still drawings of the characters sliding across the top half of the screen. Two of the sing-alongs they animated for Season 1 (“Help”, and “Ticket To Ride”) were not adapted into episodes until Season 2 and 3, respectively. As the show went on, their sing-alongs got trippier, oftentimes not even featuring the boys at all. Season 3, in particular, has a bizarre and frightening sequence for “Eleanor Rigby”, anticipating the beautiful scene that was to come in the Yellow Submarine film. 

Artransa’s sing-alongs are mostly just drawings crossfading into one another, and the drawings they use are frequently recycled over and over again. But the actual artwork itself is pretty nice, especially early on. One of Artransa’s sing-alongs, “All My Loving”, did not become an episode until Season 2, but that was animated by TVC.

And last, but not least, Canawest’s sing-alongs are the best looking of the bunch. They often have full animation in them, some of it recycled from their episodes. The font they use for the lyrics is also different from the other studios. And the actual content of them is pretty strange. “Do You Want To Know A Secret” features a talking guitar confessing his love to a pink silhouette of a girl’s head. “Misery” features Ringo on stage performing Hamlet. “Long Tall Sally” is mostly recycled animation of The Beatles’ dance from the “Do You Want To Know A Secret” episode, intercut with new shots of Uncle John and Long Tall Sally staring at the camera like a couple of inbred hicks. The one for “I’ll Follow The Sun” has a beautifully stylized storybook feel, and tells the story of a bird couple being separated from each other. “I Don’t Want To Spoil The Party” combines recycled and recolored clips from the episode with new footage of George, Paul, and Ringo dancing. My favorite one is their last, “Hold Me Tight”. It has a special intro with unique animation of the group performing before going into the song. The song itself cuts between this footage and scenes of a stylized teenage girl preparing herself for a date.

Hi, my name's Jared. I like to draw, listen to the Beatles and Pink Floyd, watch Hanna-Barbera cartoons, and more.