Wednesday, October 10, 2012
La Arcada Palms

Just off State Street, at La Arcada Plaza. This is one of those beautiful little spots that you might go right past if you're not paying attention. La Arcada is a nice shpping center on a little walking path back from state street that has some cute little shops and great restaurants. Definitely a great place to spend the afternoon on a beautiful Santa Barbara day.

Wednesday, November 5, 2008
La Arcada 360° VR

This is a nice little shopping center called La Arcada where I've spent a bit of time in the past with my camera. It was a fun night of shooting. I got so many shots it is going to take days to sort and process them all. I hope you like it, 'cause you'll probably see more! The response to the evening Santa Barbara shots has been very good lately so I'm betting that won't be a problem.

Tuesday, September 9, 2008
La Arcada Palms

I guess I've been on a vine covered building kick lately. But Carmel by the Sea is not the only place that is vine covered, this one is much closer to home. It's a beautiful little pathway lined with little shops in downtown Santa Barbara. There is even a gallery there that has had a few of my images from time to time.

Sunday, October 16, 2005
La Arcada

This is a little shopping center on State Street. We ate lunch there today, as much for the atmosphere as for the food. Down this path on the right is Gallery 113, the gallery of the Santa Barbara Art Association. A fitting place for a gallery.

Sunday, April 24, 2005
La Arcada Phone

Still experimenting with the evening shots. I particularly like the phone booth in this shot.

Monday, January 31, 2005
Arcada Ficus

Another night picture in La Arcada Court. That is not the sun at the top of the picture, it's a light on the bottom of a foot bridge between the buildings.

Saturday, January 22, 2005
DCXVIIII

There is a great little area at State Street and Figueroa in Santa Barbara called La Arcada. It is a little walkway lined with shops and restaurants and a number of Galleries. One of which, incidentally, has a display of my photography right now.

After the rain subsided a bit last week I spent some time at La Arcada trying to get some shots of the Christmas decorations before they take them down.

When I was getting this image ready for the site, I noticed the roman numerals on the face of the clock, particularly the four. The interesting thing is that it is made up of four roman numeral ones IIII, rather than IV. This stood out to me because I remember learning roman numerals from my Mom and Dad. They had a rug inside of our front door when I was a kid that had a clock face on it with the number four made up of four 'I's. I vividly remember my dad pointing it out to me and saying that it was not the proper way to write four in roman numerals. Unfortunately, at the time, we did not have access to something quite as cool as the Internet to learn why some clocks were made that way.

Ahh, but even the Internet doesn't have all the answers. It has some good theories though. The best explanations I could find are listed here. If you have a better theory, I'd love to hear it...

• A popular notion is that the visual balance of the clocks were thrown off by the fact that the VIII on the left was so much larger than the IV on the right. So it was a visual decision to use the IIII. Sounds reasonable but there are good references to extremely old clocks that were not symmetrical in other ways but still used this style of markings.
• One theory was attributed to a number of different monarchs. It goes something along the lines of a clock maker made a clock for (pick your favorite monarch). When presenting the clock the monarch stated that the numeral IV should actually be IIII. And, who wants to argue with the guy who has all the guillotines. Unfortunately, this one sounds more like a legend started by someone who did not know the real answer. Further discrediting this theory is the fact that the earlier clocks and sun dials are even less likely to have the numeral IV.
  Monarch theory and quite a few others.
• A much more plausible reason stated hinges on the fact that in the Roman language, Jupiter (as in "king of the gods" Jupiter) was spelled IVPITER since there was no J or U. Not sure the deity of deities would take kindly to having his name abbreviated on the face of all of their clocks, the clock makers erred on the side of not offending him.
• Another interesting thought is the fact that using IIII made it easier for metal smiths to cast the numbers because you then had a balanced number of 'I's 'V's and 'X's (twenty, four and four respectively). So you could cast four identical sets of XVIIIII and have one set of numerals for a clock face.
  Clock numeral casting theory.
• In the end though, it seems that the contractions for fours and nines may not have been used in a consistent way at all. It may have just been common practice for the Romans to use IIII in place of IV. IV could have been a Latin practice much later. The oldest known surviving clock-face along with documents from the same age seem to use IIII regularly. As do the numbers on the surviving doors of the Roman Colosseum.
  Other good examples of IIII
  And, still more.