With it's beacon-yellow turret and its faded TAVERN sign, Mickey's is one of Willy Street's landmark buildings. It looks a bit like a dive on the outside but if you venture inside you can order some of the best locally-brewed beer and eat some of the most delicious food to be had in the neighborhood.

Another lovely old building along Williamson Street that's managed to not only hang on over the years, but grow more handsome with age.

I don't know if the King Midas Flour sign is authentic, but it does add a nice touch.

Madison Candy Co.

The building on Williamson Street that is now home to Ground Zero Cafe and the El Dorado Grill was once a candy company, unless the sign's there just to give the building character.

Mini Cooper, the Original

Seen in the parking lot behind St Vincent de Paul's over the weekend, dwarfed by a mid-size Ford Focus.

Cat On The Fence

Behind the parking lot at the Willy Street Co-Op.

This Remington Standard has been loitering for three weeks at the St Vincent de Paul thrift store. The first person with fifteen bucks and a penchant for old typewriters takes it home.

I am particularly fond of old typewriters, but it cost twenty-five bucks when it still had the "T" key cap, a price that was just over my threshold for buying stuff in a thrift store. I would have snapped it up for fifteen, or even twenty, if it had all the key caps, but a missing "T" is a little hard to work around.

If it's still there next week, though, I may have to take it home anyway. Maybe by then they'll take a sawbuck to get it off their shelves.

Mother Fool's Coffee House
Willy Street, Madison WI

In times when few people knew how to read, business owners would hang a sign over their doors painted with a picture that depicted their trade, or a totem such as a horseshoe or barber pole, or both.

I don't know whether the good people at Mother Fool's hung this enameled coffee pot outside their door as a nod to that tradition, or because they left a pot on the hob and boiled it dry but were loathe to throw it in the trash. But I like it.

For as long as I've lived here -- only three years, not like I'm a life-long resident -- Mother Fool's has lent this exterior wall to people armed with cans of paint and an itch to express themselves. Regardless of whether you might characterize people who paint on the sides of buildings as graffiti artist or vandals, for the first year and a half I passed this building every morning on the way to work, I looked forward to seeing a smart social commentary rendered in an eye-catching style.

About six months ago, though, the style changed abruptly, and the graffiti wall at Mother Fool's has acquired all the visual charm of a bridge abutment in a railroad yard. I beg the management of Mother Fool's: Please find a new artist. Please. Pretty please.

Ironically, the opposite side of the building is chalked with graffiti from passers-by and is much more interesting.

A sample of the decor at Mickey's bar at the top of Willy Street.

Cool artsy-fartsy lamp in the dining room of Lazy Jane's cafe.

Would this look good on my mantle piece?

This might be a hallucination brought on by four cups of strong coffee drunk too early in the morning, although I've never had any luck photographing my hallucinations before this ...

... or it might be a collection of Curious George stuffed dolls on display at Lazy Jane's cafe. It is.

Uncle Wiggly, Emperor of Williamson Street, addresses the massed throngs from his balcony.

Seen on Willy Street: These antique items outside a store across the street from St Vincent de Paul's.

A close-up of the Louis Armstrong statue.

I want this Buddha so bad.

He's perched atop a display case inside Lazy Jane's cafe. If I could come up with a way of distracting every one of the dozen or so staff on duty behind the counter, I'd slip him under my coat and walk nonchalantly out the door with him, but I'm not that clever. Nor that amoral.

I've never seen a carved Buddha that captures the happiness on this guy's face. I'd put him on a pedestal in our front room just to make sure I could see the expression on his face every day.

The Book in the Window

at the corner of Baldwin and Willy Street.

I know there's a legitimate use for this, but it still gives me the giggles to know you can find packaged bat guano on the shelves of our local grocery, the Willy Street Co-Op.

Ice glazing a porch rail, spotted behind Star Liquors on Willy Street when we made our semiweekly stop to resupply our beer locker (the gap between our back door and the storm door).