Painting the town: Wynwood, Miami, Florida

Back in 2003, some forward-thinking folks created an arts district in a run down part of the Wynwood neighborhood of Miami that would eventually turn it into one of the largest open-air art installations in the world. Tony Goldman, a real estate developer and arts visionary, came up with the idea of capitalizing on the graffiti in the area due to its dilapidated state and spearheaded the painting of exterior murals by some of the world's premier street artists in an effort to increase pedestrian traffic. The area now houses art galleries, museums, restaurants, shops and art fairs and draws in locals and tourists from around the world. The art evolves, too, with new murals being created all the time. The neighborhood is still quite gritty, which adds to the credibility of the artworks' subject matter but the juxtaposition of a double-decker tourist bus with socks-and-sandals-wearing out-of-towners trundling through this ultra-urban art scene is amusing.

So if graffiti is welcomed by a community, does that diminish its credibility and rebellious nature? Will whitewashing a building become the new form of renegade art? Do pretentious
questions about what is and isn't art give you a headache? I think we've hit the wall here.

Sven ball in the side pocket: The Viking-themed billiard mural of Riverhead, New York

If you look at a map, the eastern end of Long Island, New York looks like a fish tail, with beautiful Orient Point on the northeastern tip and tony Montauk on the southeastern tip. In between the two by land lies the working class town of Riverhead, with its cool, revitalized old downtown and hardscrabble outer regions. We recently delighted upon an eccentric sight next door to our humble motor lodgings: a mural combining the unlikely duo of Vikings and billiards, painted on the back exterior wall of Billiard World, a pool table sales and service company. It is executed with wit and craft, depicting Norsemen with pool cues and darts, and a mermaid or two also thrown in for good measure. Why this unlikely combination? Could the owners be of Scandinavian heritage? Vem vet? (That's "who knows?" to you non-Swedish speakers). We just know that, as with ABBA, Ingmar Bergman movies and Volvos, it's Scandanavian, we like it and we don't know why.

Greetings from Atlanta (Illinois, that is): A peach of a town on Route 66

There is a great stretch of Route 66 that runs through Illinois and we were fortunate enough to drive down a good chunk of it recently. The tiny town of Atlanta sits at the halfway point on 66 between Chicago and St. Louis and it is wonderful. Not only does it host a terrific Muffler Man holding a hot dog, but there are some beautifully painted murals on building sides. The Muffler Man started as a likeness of Paul Bunyan and was purchased by a Mr. H.A. Stevens and placed in front of his restaurant, Bunyon's, in Cicero, Illinois, in 1965. Mr. Stevens replaced the statue's original axe with a hot dog because he sold wieners, not sharp tree-cutting implements. The statue stood proudly in that spot until 2003 when the property was sold and the owners were persuaded to donated the statue to its spot in Atlanta so it could remain a Route 66 icon. The murals were painted in the last 10 years or so and are the work of The Letterheads, a group of generous and free-spirited sign-painters from the U.S. and Canada interested in preserving the art of outdoor signs and murals. Their work is magnificent and they really brighten up this little once-bustling, now all-too-quiet Route 66 town. Atlanta sports another great eccentric roadside attraction, a smiley-faced water tower, but it was too foggy when we were there for me to get a good picture. That's okay, though, because even though I would like to go back to Atlanta again some day, now it's mandatory. Here's their website: http://www.atlantaillinois.org/