Author: Timothy Price

I specialize in daily art, documentary and promotional photography. If you have a special event such as a musical production, play, concert, etc. or have a product or fashion that you need photographed, or you are a performer, musician and artist in need of promotional photos please email me or call.

Coke Head Challenge

Timothy Price24 Comments

We have very hard well water, and calcium carbonate builds up on wet surfaces like the inside of the toilet bowl (see photos at the end of the narrative). For years I used a product called “The Works” toilet bowl cleaner that removed tough calcium deposits, rust and other hard water stains from the toilet bowl really well. Then all of a sudden the stores stopped carrying it. For some months “The Works” was not on the shelves. The company’s website showed they still made the kind that worked on calcium deposits, but all the calcium fighting bottles of “The Works” I found on-line were very expensive. Then “The Works” appeared in the stores again, but only as a regular toilet bowl cleaner with no claim to removing calcium deposits, or other hard water stains. I tried a few other products than claimed to work on calcium deposits, but they did nothing, not even removing the ring around the waterline that almost all cleaners removed. The calcium in our water sticks really well and is almost impossible to scrape off, so chemicals are needed to dissolve it or at least soften it enough to scrub off.

While doing research on products that would actually remove calcium deposits, I came across a forum where someone said that Coca-Cola Classic did a good job on calcium deposits. Laurie was skeptical about the claim, but I figured it was worth a try. Neither of us drink Coke or other sodas, so we didn’t have any Coke around the house to try out in the toilet, so I dropped by the store Friday on my way home from work and picked up a 2 liter bottle of Coke Classic — paid a whole $1.50 for it. It took two rounds of pouring Coke in the toilet, letting it set for about 45 minutes, then scrubbing the calcium deposits with a stiff scrub brush, but the Coke actually worked to soften the calcium deposits enough that I could scrub them off the inside of the toilet bowl.

Why it worked, I can’t tell you for sure, but it’s probably the citric acid and bubbly. If you drink coke, I wouldn’t be too concerned, because stomach acid is very strong. If I was bulimic,  barfing in the toilet and letting it sit for 45 minutes would probably be more effective than Coke, but since I hate throwing up, the next time the calcium starts building up, I’ll try lemon juice with fizzy water and see how that works.

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A third of a bottle of Coke for round 2 of the Coke Head Challenge

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Calcium deposits that were still hanging on after the first round of Coke. I forgot to do a photo of the calcium deposits before the first round.

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Rosencrantz checking out the Coke before the 2nd round.

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The start of round 2 of the Coke Head Challenge.

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The empty coke bottle reminder that round 2 was underway.

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After a 45 minute soak in Coke, and a bit of really hard scrubbing most of the calcium is gone.

Letters from Madrid – Fiesta de San Ysidro y Loquillo

Timothy Price9 Comments

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While I was baking a heart shaped chocolate cake for Laurie for Valentine’s Day, and she was making vanilla bean gelato, we listened to Loquillo y Trogloditas on the stereo. Curiously enough, today’s letter from Madrid moves to May 27, 1996 and I was writing about the activities and concerts during the San Ysidro Festival that was in the middle of May. We happened upon a concert by Loquillo y Trogloditas in Plaza Mayor during the festivities. We had never heard of Loquillo before then, and we became fans after the concert , bought all their CDs, and saw him in concert a couple more times after that. Loquillo y Trogloditas were very popular at that time, they had been around for at least 10 years or longer and had many albums out by 1996. Loquillo is still going strong 20 years later, as you will see if you click on the photo or follow the link to the YouTube video at the end of the letter.

 

27 May 1996

San Ysidro Festival
San Ysidro is the patron saint of Madrid (and Corrales, NM, USA, also). May 15th was the holiday, but the fiesta goes on all week. As part of the San Ysidro Festival, we attended a very nice concert in Parque de Retiro by the Municipal Orchestra, checked out the festivities at Parque San Ysidro on the south side of town, went to Casa de Campos, and discovered the pool there was free on the 15th for San Ysidro Fiesta (Tristan got to swim, she was beside herself). The concert in Retiro was very good. The orchestra played paso dobles and other traditional Spanish music. Parque San Ysidro was like the midway at the state fair with vendors, rides and a lot of noise. A lot of people were dressed in traditional Madrid feria costumes, that look similar to Laurie’s Sevillanas dress, if you have seen it. The men wore houndstooth (small check pattern) driving caps and a matching vest, sometimes. There were Gypsies playing music with an amplified keyboard and trumpet. The keyboard was on a large speaker set on a push cart. They were playing paso dobles, sevillanis and traditional Spanish music. A small group of people were dancing local folk dances to the music. Tristan and Laurie danced paso doble and sevillanas. I was much to interested in watching the locals to get up and dance.

We decided to go to Plaza Mayor one night to check out the San Ysidro Fiesta activities there. There was a large group of young people gathered around the band stand dressed in leather jackets, black jeans, and T-shirts, with their hair done up in 1950’s James Dean or Elvis styles, sporting manicured side burns. The young women were generally dressed in more punk fashion. They were waiting for a band to play. We made our way through the crowd to a point about 50 feet from the stage, centered between the two walls of speakers. The band came out before 9:00 PM and started paying. This was a major Spanish rock band with great sound, light show and lots of energy. After the band started playing I noticed the whole plaza was wall to wall people (Plaza Mayor is the old 16th century plaza of Madrid that is surrounded on all sides by four story buildings. The plaza is about the size of two football fields). We could hardly move we were so packed in. The crowd knew all the words to every song the band played and yelled them along with the band, so we basically had surround sound on the vocals. The band was “Loquillo y Trogloditas” as we learned later. They had a logo of Woody Woodpecker smoking a cigar, with a snarl on his face over cross bones with stars like a Confederate flag, imitating the pirates. The singer had a Confederate flag hanging on his mic stand. He was dressed in leathers and sported the same hairstyle as the young people. Various members of the audience had Confederate flags and Che Gueverra banners. One fan was wearing a Confederate infantry cap. We have not figured out what the biker-James Dean/Elvis-1950’s greaser look, Woody Woodpecker, Confederate flag, Che Gueverra and troglodytes have to do with each other; maybe Loquillo knows. The band played over three hours straight without a break. Most of the songs were less than 5 minutes, so they played a lot of songs, with a good variety of rock to slightly hyper punk. They even played material they had recorded in 1983, as announced by the singer. We told Tristan that we would have to pay a small fortune to see a major rock band, with a fantastic light show, play a concert like that in the States.
To be continued…

Video
Loquillo Feo, Furte y Formal 2014 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVmzA48ojWk