Like many cities which underwent beautification projects in the heyday of property values, Santa Clara has some handsome signs which welcome you to our city along El Camino Real. Good thing too, because along its route one can hardly tell one city from the next. It all blends together in a suburban sprawl.
The Official Welcome Sign on Saratoga From San Jose
This is quite unlike Mehlbach, a small village I lived in back in what was then West Germany. There a slender schnellstrasse ("fast street") linked our village to the one before and after it, each about three kilometers away across a green belt of forest and fields.
(Sadly, or rather luckily for its 1,200 or so residents, Google maps has no photographs of Mehlbach to offer, gar nichts. I can see my old street, but the closest photos are from neighboring villages, and they spoke a different dialect of Pfaelzisch, or Palatinate German, viz., complete foriegners).
If you should miss the well lit and stately signs welcoming you to Santa Clara, the ones with the formal plantings bordering them, there are a few clues that you have in fact entered Santa Clara. Here are a few of them I captured this morning on my cheap camera phone.
The McCafe Sign in Korean Near El Camino and San Thomas
Note, besides being the only McDonald's sign outside of Seoul or possibly Los Angeles in Hangul, this one is perched above another familiar sight along El Camino Real in Santa Clara, an adult bookstore. They mix in with the tattoo parlors, auto repair shops, ethnic restaurants and markets, along with the conventional assortment of national franchises. As you go further along El Camino, there comes a point where the signage is as much in Hangul as English, until you cross over into Sunnyvale, where it suddenly drops off.
One of the lesser known roadside attractions, though, which lets you know that you are indeed in the heart of Santa Clara, is this business near the intersection of Winchester and Newhall, equidistant from the Catholic and the non-denominational cemeteries.
Street Sign for The Casket Outlet
Storefront of The Casket Outlet
Out To Lunch at The Casket Outlet
So, what, you walk into the beauty parlor to tell them you need a perm, manicure, and a mahogany with brass handles for this afternoon?
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