I’m not sure what sort of impression we’re trying to leave you guys with about Nevada City, but in my mind it was a lot of fun, even if a bit out of the way. Though there were some real tourist leeches in town, it’s a city hit hard by the exploding (combusting?) gas prices over the summer, and it really is a town well worth your visit… that is, if you can handle the haunted piano hall.
The lead picture is a pretty frightening one, if you take it out of context. Since it’s been a while since it was taken, and I haven’t seen it since then, “out of context” is the only way I know how to take it, and it’s freaking me out. If I didn’t know better, and I don’t, I’d swear my brother is getting his soul sucked out.
Forget the dangers of MTV, this slowly flipping, non-talky technology has a leg-up on any Viacom station they haven’t even started working towards… this is a stereoscopic pictureapparatus, and it makes no apologies for the hard-G images it flagrantly exposes to many tourists.
I say “many tourists” rather than “all tourists” because not just anybody can view this machine. It’s an elitist photofile box. If you don’t have a nickel (yes, literally, a nickel) you can’t enjoy the pictures that flip and flit by your little eyes.
But the picture boxes are only the middle island of the massive hall of mostly music. The hall is full of far more devices than that, and most of them are loud as heck, if not a bit musical in their dischordal antiharmony.
There’s some quiet ones, some cool ones, and then there’s the couple of mega-grand-daddies of the collection, and you simply have to hear the ruckus to believe it.
Nevada City has dozens of original, antique buildings, but in its music hall, it has as many vintage auto-play music machines, and some of them are really quite grand. I don’t mean “great” but you could argue that too, I mean “huge” and there’s no two ways about it.
Some are periodically out of order, though they do have a guy who comes in from counties away to keep them in running order (if not tuned), but on any day of the week you’re sure to find more odd, haunted, screamingly loud and impressive music machines.
You can find the music hall right on the main drag, about two doors down from the main entrance to Nevada City towards the Virginia City direction. Even if you don’t feel like sparing your allowance, you can sure as heck stand by while you watch someone else put theirs in. Music sounds the same either way it turns out, but I still prefer putting in my own nickle. I think it’s louder when I do that.
