Tucked into the armpit - sorry, the west side of New Kensington - our subject for the previous three weeks - is a little town called . . . Arnold. Named after the first settler, Mr. Arnold.

As you'll see, some things carry over from the New Ken mood.

There's something very East-Coast about this block, especially the dullard on the corner.

Old, worn, dense. A bar on the left, perhaps.The front of the building on the right got chopped up, a storefront made into a patio? No canny developer would waste space like that.

The block now. You can see why I got that New Ken vibe.

I don't know what the hell this thing is.

Apartments, maybe. It just looks like a remnany of an utterly collpsed society.

Ah, a nice bit of Americana. The store, proudly paintedl  the flag, the old signage.

Today:

Even the flag seems deflated.

The wsign on the bjuilding that sold Tappan Ranges:

Let's get a closer look . . . oh, right, I forgot, trees. They always revive downtowns, Any day now.

Most recent picture: the tree's gone, and we can see the sign.

Did they put ovens and ranges in the show windows?

Arnold. Kensington. Hence:

Post-modern classica revival, Arnold style:

Or, as some approvingly called it: classy!

First you get the bad news.

Scroll back in time via the Google cars . . .

No bygone picture of a gutted downtown would be complete without painted over and formerly neon perpendicular signage.

I wonder if people were indifferent to its passage, or sad: another loss.

Remember the sign with the floating plus? I'm wondering what that means here, and the only thing I can think of -

Hey, there's someone upstars

I guess he's always been up there. A ghost who airs out the place.

Anyway, if I had to guess, I'd say Nursing Shoes.

Try as they might, it's hard to ruin the lines of streamline moderne.

Once they're set, you can'r ruin them. You can only destroy them.

I wonder if Sam died, had died a long time ago, or was just tired and ready to take it easy for a while.

One last shot, which will end up in the Google Street View Accidental Art section:

There: one month in one place. Wherever we go next, it can't be this depressing.