We just lost another treasure when Saba's closed their Baker Street outlet and that time warp 1940's all birch store interior and store front sign vanished. It was one of the best preserved old retail establishments in town never having suffered through thoughtless cliché modernizations that ruin so many commercial outlets. Times changed and so did markets and retail shopping patterns so it's easy to understand their need to change their business structure but I hope that classic interior didn't end up in the landfill.

Now I see that north kern water agency building, a simple but attractive Postwar Modern design is getting a modernization remuddle. For what reason I don't know but it looks like it's getting some sort of canopy or something covering up its tilt slab stone facade. Another example of fixing what ain't broke just for the sake of some shallow notion of being more contemporary. Boring but contemporary. Yawn.

This isn't unlike that late 1950's C. Barton Alfred Modern medical office building on Truxtun who's owners in the early 1980's thought it needed "updating." Before they had a serious example of good Postwar Modern with Alfred's signature Japanese influence now they have a mediocre example of 1980's shitck. Basic exterior maintenance like paint for painted surfaces and pressure washing for unpainted material would have done wonders for it then and left them with a far more distinguished structure than that expensive but pointless facade redo that has left them with a white funny looking box of no distinction.