Last Best News (https://montana-mint.com/lastbestnews/2015/01/photo-gallery-a-stroll-through-a-downtown-neighborhood/)
I'm not sure whether this truck has been winterized or put out to pasture.
Still life: Loading dock with wine bottle. Good times were had by all, no doubt.
Urban wildlife.
Dry dock. You've got to park it somewhere, right?
An unusually high percentage of houses in the area are adorned with "No Trespassing" signs.
Or not.
The old sign says "Data Cash Register." The log building has been vacant for many years.
A window air conditioner and a snow shovel: ready for anything in Montana.
Talk about ready for anything...
Scenes like this remind me why we decided to give up home ownership and move into an apartment a couple of years ago.
The same goes for this scene.
High-density housing.
It was so warm Sunday that this looked pretty inviting,
It was T-shirt weather for these neighborhood kids.
A rail spur runs through the middle of the area. That's the Phillips 66 refinery in the background.
I guess the holidays are over.
This was a remnant of a tree fort, apparently.
A little east of downtown Billings, there is an odd little neighborhood that is not really quite a neighborhood.
The area I’m thinking of is bounded on the east and west by 15th and 22nd streets north, and on the north and south by Fourth and First avenues north. It is a hodgepodge of houses, industrial businesses and vacant lots.
There are plenty of thriving businesses, but also many empty storefronts, weedy parcels and a few huge parking lots no longer used by anybody. The residences are scattered throughout the area in twos and threes and fives, and there are a few old-fashioned high-density apartments that have seen better days.
In the East Billings Urban Renewal District Master Plan, a blueprint for redeveloping the entire area between Montana Avenue and the Rims, from the downtown to MetraPark, each section of the area is given a descriptive name, apparently meant to suggest its potential.
The neighborhood in question takes in parts of three such sections, described as Rail Spur Village, Green Workforce Center and Downtown East. For now, I’d say Forlornville about covers it.
Having walked through the area with my dogs so many times, I decided to walk it again Sunday, with a camera, to capture some of the oddities and little scenes that always catch my eye.
And though it is customary to say exactly where a photograph is taken, I thought I was being intrusive enough taking photographs at all, so I won’t be any more specific than saying they were all taken in Forlornville.
