Morning Walk Downtown Boise

There are few pictures of people on this vacation, but man did I take a lot of pictures of buildings.  Settle in, because this is a long post.  Or, I guess, get ready to skim and scroll.  Here we go!

This was the Crazy Horse back in my day. The linked article mentions a whole bunch of really cool bands who played there.  I never saw any of them.  But I did see shows that my friends played in.  And I did spend a lot of time at those shows in the mosh pit.  And that was amazing.
 

I love that this motel looks exactly the same as it did the entire time I was growing.  Same sign, same mural, same everything.
 

This is the empty lot where we used to look out for the weird, old guy.  He would jog in circles around this and the next block, decked out in short runner shorts and a tank top (both odd for the time) and his long gray hair would bounce behind him.  He would do this endlessly in the heat of summer. Later, he robbed a bank.  In retrospect, I suspect he had some mental problems.
 

One of my favorite places to go as a child.  Here, I got the riding boots I wore to the one sleep-away camp I went to growing up.  But I loved to just wander through the store.  It was huge, and full of treasures.
 

Where I bought my first "cool" bike.  It was a green Trek mountain bike and replaced the blue road bike my parents gave me when I was 10. The summers I was home after college, I rode it all over the city.
 

My dad always loved Hannifin's Cigar Shop because they carried out-of-town newspapers.  I went there as a teenager, because it was the one place I could find Dirt, the quarterly for teenage males that my favorite magazine, Sassy, published.
 

 

One of these two storefronts (I think maybe the one on the left) had a 24-hour coffee shop where boyfriend #4 and assorted friends would hang out into the wee hours of the morning.  I can't remember what it was called, but I do recall that boyfriend #4 met the next girlfriend there, and spent a lot of time there hanging out with her, so I have mixed feelings about the place.
 

The Idanha!  I always wanted to stay there and never did. One of my friends did, though, and had one of those life-changing moments there.  Now it has become apartments.
 

Parking garages!  We used to wander around downtown, wander to the top of the garages and take in the view.  It was before a lot of the taller buildings had been built.
 

This shop on the Grove had coffee and magazines and I always felt very smart spending time here.
 

The Grove!  In my time that big hotel hadn't been built yet, so it spent a lot more time in sun.  This was always a great place for gathering and the fountain was fun too.
 

This is where the stage was when I saw the Mosquitones play.  They were a huge ska band and among their many members were several friends and two ex-boyfriends. I still have a t-shirt.
 

I absolutely adored this statue when it was first dedicated.
 

Now?  Eh.  It's okay.
 

StoryCorps is in Portland!  Parked right outside City Hall, which has a sign advertising the Sesquicentennial. As I was taking this picture, a random lady said something anti-government about the presence of City Hall.  So Boise!
 

The Egyptian Theater where I first saw A Christmas Story as well as many other movies.  The last time I went there with my mother I convinced her to sit all the way in the very back row in the balcony because "how often do you get to sit this far away from a movie screen these days?"
 

If I still lived in Boise, I could see Gone with the Wind there.  The Egyptian is the perfect theater to see movies of that type.
 

Goldy's, which was once upon a time a Chinese restaurant and which a group of friends descended upon one night because our friend was working.  The owners were not at all thrilled to have our business.
 

Where I bought my first pair of running shoes, once I decided that maybe running was okay after all.
 

This was a fancy Italian restaurant called the Renaissance.  I only went there once, with my family, for my 16th birthday, but it was very memorable.
 

C.W. Moore Park!  I can remember visiting when it was "the new park" (another mom-planned summer outing) and I loved that it was a place to preserve some parts of the architectural heritage of Boise.  Even then I was a sucker for old buildings.
 

We loved the water wheel.  I don't think the fence was originally there.
 

 

Site of the dinner part of my 10-year reunion.  I loved growing up around the Basques.  All those vowels in their name!  And their cultural festival, Jaialdi, was a great place to watch boys and eat delicious bread.
 

These three things were not part of my existence in Boise.  I've never set foot in Hannah's (a.k.a. Humpin' Hannah's) because I was too young to drink when I lived in Boise. I don't think the other buildings had been built.  Maybe the Key Bank building.
 

Oh Bogies.   Why must you still exist when the Zoo was so short lived?  The Zoo was this great club with a punk rock vibe.  It had black and white zebra-striped walls and an upstairs where you could look out at the club through bars like you were a cage at the zoo.  Get it?  Tannar's band played here and I think it was still the Zoo, but by the time we saw Primus, it was Bogies.  I have the ticket pasted in my journal as evidence.
 

This sign on the door of Bogies made me laugh aloud.
 

This dude was trucking up the street.  I loved how fast he was walking in the heat and I loved his very unsporting outfit.
 

Hey!  What are Oregon berries doing at the Boise Farmers Market?
 

This is entirely new.  I think it was just a parking lot before? No?
 

And there's a huge thing going up across the street from it.
 

I like that there are seats so the old guys can watch the construction.  There were no old guys today, though.
 

According to this sign, the building looks like it will be chock full of artsy fun.
 

All of these boxes were painted downtown.  It was pretty awesome.
 

I asked my mom a while ago if the 8th Street Marketplace still existed.  She wasn't sure.  But here it is.  Although the two-screen movie theater where I saw Back to the Future, Far and Away, and Jerry Maguire (and many more) has gone.
 

But Cafe Ole is still there! Cafe Ole is where you can get good Mexican food, but also where my Aunt once left a glove and we lounged about, sighing while we waited for her to go get it.
 

Isn't this a great location?  There's also one by the mall where I went on a date with a guy who never became my boyfriend.  This location was the site of the last sighting of boyfriend #2.  I was in town for a wedding in 2000 and we arranged to meet up at the restaurant after it closed.  We were chattering away when his girlfriend called and shrieked at him to come home now and I haven't heard a word from him since.
 

There was an awesome coffee shop in this building.  It was the first place I ever ate potato dill soup.
 

Dunkley Music is where my parents bought me my alto saxophone.
 

TableRock Brewery opened during my adolescence and my dad, who liked beer, took us all out to eat there.  It was my first brewpub experience, though I just had a sandwich, not any beer.  I was probably 14. Oh wait, the website says 1991 so I was 16 or so.
 

Once upon a time this was a Haagen Dazs and then it morphed into something like a coffee shop.  But they had a Volkswagen Bug sitting in the corner of the place.  It was so cool!
 

O! Bon Marche.  You were such a sophisticated store.  You can tell from the still-awesome gold grating on the front. It had escalators and seemed huge.  I think it even had a cafe where you could get a cinnamon roll.
 

I love this art box.
 

Earlier in the day I saw someone with a leaf blower.  This guy was watering all the planters.  It takes a lot of maintenance to keep this downtown pretty.
 

This was Lerners, which I discovered as a teenager who was just starting to develop her own sense of style. I got some good pieces here.

And thus ends our tour nostalgic tour of buildings in downtown Boise.