Alignment at Daybreak
Month: January 2019
Peek
Moronic Officials Destroy Historic Landmarks
This mural is on the south wall of the condemned building on 2nd Street and Central Avenue (Old Route 66). It’s the same building that has the Route 66 mural on its north wall that I posted on January 19th. The depiction of the torn newspaper bearing the headline: Moronic Officials Destroy Historic Landmarks refers to the Historic Alvarado Hotel that stood along the railroad tracks from 1909 to 1970 when it was demolished. The site sat vacant, used as a parking lot, until 2002 when the first phase of the Albuquerque Alvarado Transportation Center was completed in the style of the Alvarado Hotel. A second phase was completed in 2006. While many historic buildings in downtown Albuquerque where torn down during the urban renewal craze of the 1960’s, it was the Santa Fe Railroad who demolished the Alvarado Hotel in 1970.
Donuts
Ducks Fly! Fly Ducks Fly!
Battered Bollard in Blue
Lay Rubber Here
Jimmy Smith
Meet Jimmy Smith — guitar player, guitar teacher, guitar repairman, and guitar builder extraodinnaire. Not only is he great guitar enthusiast, he’s a master craftsman, studio tech and all around nice guy who loves Fender Stratocasters and their shapely features.
After playing in a band through the eighties, where he maintained all the instruments and built sets for the band, Jimmy started repairing instruments, and building his own guitars. He opened for business in Olympia, Washington in 1999 before he and his wife, Lisa, moved his business to the Durango, Colorado area a couple of years later. They finally relocated to Corrales, New Mexico in 2009 as GRS Music.
Jimmy changed the name of the business to The StratAcademy around 2016, and moved to the current location on Corrales Road a year ago. The StratAcademy is made up of a small retail space, his repair shop, a music studio for practice, lessons and recording, and a larger shop where Jimmy builds guitars and holds seminars on building guitars where students build their own solid body electric guitars from scratch under Jimmy’s tutelage.
Jimmy likes to experiment with different woods and materials for guitar bodies and necks. He is experimenting with Oriented Strand Board (OSB), commonly known as flake board, to build guitars. This is the second OSB guitar he is building with a Les Paul style body. He built a Strat style guitar out of OSB which will have its own post after Jimmy finishes a video of him playing it so we can hear how it sounds.
This body is made of a hardwood that is very lightweight. It feels like a hard balsa wood. You can see neck and body templates in the shelves behind Jimmy.
Stay tuned for more about the StratAcademy.
Water Under the Bridge
Before the Eclipse
Thin clouds and contrails made a magical for a sky while waiting for the eclipse to start.
Off Center & Not Even 