I got asked last weekend to do a fill-in shift at a different property from where I usually do Security work. So I ended up working Saturday afternoon and evening at Cityscape, a fancy new office & shopping development smack in the heart of downtown Phoenix.
(I usually try to avoid extra shifts, but the Security Director at Cityscape had been an easy-to-get-along-with Acting Director at my workplace for a while, and someone walking out on him at Cityscape without warning put him in a bind to fill the shift. So, hey.) (The extra pay will also make up for the day's work I lost to my concussion-based ER visit a few weeks ago.)
Cityscape is very spiffy and upscale, part of the ongoing effort to refurbish and reinvigorate downtown Phoenix, which used to have the reputation for having no life beyond office workers at all, and for being dead, dead, deader-than-dead at night and on weekends. At some of the early Phoenix SF conventions that were held at downtown hotels in the 1980's, the convention attendees pretty much had the downtown sidewalks to themselves for the weekend. Definitely more lively now than then, though a large part of this is from the sports venues built downtown (basketball arena and baseball stadium), which definitely aren't my cup of tea.
But what actually piqued my interest the most working downtown was finding that Cityscape was built directly across the street from the Luhrs Tower.
The Luhrs Tower is a fabulous Art Deco building, one of the first skyscrapers built in Phoenix, back in 1929. Here's an article on its history, and here's a photo:
Every time I've seen the Luhrs Tower, I've said to myself, "Cool. Very, very cool." At Cityscape, I saw the upper stories of the Luhrs showing themselves behind a section of the Cityscape structures. I would have liked to have taken a photo from that viewpoint, because it would have contrasted the ornate richness of the Luhrs Tower with the relative blandness of Cityscape's buildings. (They may be new, they may be spiffy and clean, but Cityscape, when you come down to it, is just another set of buildings from the "steel-&-glass" school of architecture. Meh.)
(A photo of Cityscape is included in the set of High Dynamic Range photos of downtown Phoenix buildings where I found the Luhrs photo above. Full article here.)
Unfortunately, even though I have a semi-adequate camera built into my cell phone, Cityscape is yet another place with one of those bothersome "no photography" policies. And I didn't think it would be ethical to violate that policy while I was in uniform and supposed to be enforcing it.
(I like the part of Security work where I'm doing good deeds, helping people out, solving problems. But part of the job sometimes feels like being a High School Hall Monitor, enforcing policies and rules that mostly just annoy people. But the "no photography" rule is the one that has me scratching my head in puzzlement the most. The developers spend millions and millions of dollars trying to make their properties photogenic, and then they say "no photos"? Since I usually work graveyard shifts, I don't have to do it too often, but when I have to ask someone to not take or to stop taking photos, I feel embarassed and stupid.)
(I usually try to avoid extra shifts, but the Security Director at Cityscape had been an easy-to-get-along-with Acting Director at my workplace for a while, and someone walking out on him at Cityscape without warning put him in a bind to fill the shift. So, hey.) (The extra pay will also make up for the day's work I lost to my concussion-based ER visit a few weeks ago.)
Cityscape is very spiffy and upscale, part of the ongoing effort to refurbish and reinvigorate downtown Phoenix, which used to have the reputation for having no life beyond office workers at all, and for being dead, dead, deader-than-dead at night and on weekends. At some of the early Phoenix SF conventions that were held at downtown hotels in the 1980's, the convention attendees pretty much had the downtown sidewalks to themselves for the weekend. Definitely more lively now than then, though a large part of this is from the sports venues built downtown (basketball arena and baseball stadium), which definitely aren't my cup of tea.
But what actually piqued my interest the most working downtown was finding that Cityscape was built directly across the street from the Luhrs Tower.
The Luhrs Tower is a fabulous Art Deco building, one of the first skyscrapers built in Phoenix, back in 1929. Here's an article on its history, and here's a photo:
Every time I've seen the Luhrs Tower, I've said to myself, "Cool. Very, very cool." At Cityscape, I saw the upper stories of the Luhrs showing themselves behind a section of the Cityscape structures. I would have liked to have taken a photo from that viewpoint, because it would have contrasted the ornate richness of the Luhrs Tower with the relative blandness of Cityscape's buildings. (They may be new, they may be spiffy and clean, but Cityscape, when you come down to it, is just another set of buildings from the "steel-&-glass" school of architecture. Meh.)
(A photo of Cityscape is included in the set of High Dynamic Range photos of downtown Phoenix buildings where I found the Luhrs photo above. Full article here.)
Unfortunately, even though I have a semi-adequate camera built into my cell phone, Cityscape is yet another place with one of those bothersome "no photography" policies. And I didn't think it would be ethical to violate that policy while I was in uniform and supposed to be enforcing it.
(I like the part of Security work where I'm doing good deeds, helping people out, solving problems. But part of the job sometimes feels like being a High School Hall Monitor, enforcing policies and rules that mostly just annoy people. But the "no photography" rule is the one that has me scratching my head in puzzlement the most. The developers spend millions and millions of dollars trying to make their properties photogenic, and then they say "no photos"? Since I usually work graveyard shifts, I don't have to do it too often, but when I have to ask someone to not take or to stop taking photos, I feel embarassed and stupid.)
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