Starling Travel

Club 33 is the exclusive private club in Disneyland. It is the only location in Disneyland that serves alcohol. It was named Club 33 after the original 33 sponsors of Disneyland. Now, membership seems to be steeped in rumor with waiting lists that are said to be over three years long and membership fees ranging from $2000 to $10,000 a year.

When Groucho Marx said that he would never want to join a club that would have him as a member, I wonder if he ever knew about Club 33. The rumors about this club make me think of the intelligentsia of Walt Disney’s intimates. I used to imagine that Club 33 was filled with Imagineers and the elite of Walt Disney’s friends. Imagine how excited I was to know that there were pictures of the club on the Internet. They hadn’t been pulled by Disney and they showed things like the menu and the bill.

• Photoblog – Club 33 – 10-13-04

• Photoblog – Club 33 – 12-12-04

There is no narrative to this photoblog, unfortunately. He leaves us no clues about how he got into the club or why he was able to go twice. He doesn’t say if he is a member or a guest of one. He leaves hardly a trace of himself on his website: a few “rants” and a rambling introduction. All we have are these pictures, really.

Somehow, seeing these Club 33 pictures makes me think less of Disney intelligentsia and more of Disney obsessed fans. It’s actually a little disappointing.

The folks at Houseplant Picture Studios found a few books of family photos at a swap meet in Huntington Beach, California. They feature pictures from a family that probably owned a liquor store.

• Houseplant Picture Studio presents…PHOTOS OF AN UNKNOWN FAMILY WHO PROBABLY OWNED A LIQUOR STORE

The people at Houseplant described their find:

“We purchased two hefty photo albums filled-to-the-brim with family photos of a hitherto unknown family. We haven’t yet taken the time to look at the back of every photo to try to figure out the family’s name. We have noticed that a lot of the photos feature family members standing in or in front of a nice-looking, fully-stocked liquor store. It’s quite obvious that the family pictured in the photo albums owned the liquor store.”

The best thing that I like about the Liquor Store Family are the photos that they took traveling.

I love looking through these photos, imagining stories about these people. They traveled with their children. They traveled with another couple. I imagine that the men are brothers and they took many trips together. His lovely, red-headed wife always had her little handbag with her and her hair is always perfectly coifed. It seems like he loved her very much because he took so many pictures of her. She’s always there smiling.

Next time you’re taking photographs on your vacation, look at them through the eyes of a stranger and imagine someone years from now seeing you in front of the Eiffel Tower posing for an eternity.

Mike and I went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium when we visited San Francisco for the first time back in 1997. We took our friends south of the city to Monterey Bay in our VW Golf. It was a drive of about two hours, but it was worth it to see the Kelp Forest and Sea Otters.

Back then, we didn’t have a digital camera, so there are no pictures of our trip, but the visit stays so clear in my memory. I loved watching the sea otters being fed and squirmed around the crowds to watch them eat. Now, they have a live sea otter cam where you can watch them all day long.

• Monterey Bay Aquarium: Live Sea Otter Cam

The aquarium has a wide array of online exhibits if you are unable to travel to California to see them. Take an hour or so and view their website. You’ll come back feeling like you’ve taken a quick vacation from your life.

• Monterey Bay Aquarium: Aquarium Exhibits, Live Web Cams and Information About Life in the Oceans

Enjoy your virtual trip to the Monterey Bay Aquarium and plan a real one soon

Via: Monterey Bay Aquarium works to conserve oceans

Where: 886 Cannery Row Monterey, California 93940 Google Map Phone: (831) 648-4888