As I have said before the title of this website is ripped from a song by the band Thrice entitled The Melting Point of Wax. The lyrics of which tell the tale of Icarus, the son of a mad scientist who took to the skies [...]

In Mexico when a construction job finishes or stalls the equipment sometimes just gets left to sit. Sometimes for years. Instead of renting or paying a crane company for its services they buy the machines and hire their own operators. If nobody is buying cranes [...]

It sat right in the middle of the small tourist town by the Sea of Cortez in which we found ourselves. Tetakawi. The Goat’s Tit, supposedly. It was a huge mound of rock, earth, cacti, and sagebrush. It’s size and terrain issued us a challenge, [...]

The sun had just set on a long day of running down new drains and the girl and I parked the car around the corner from a refurb job that promised to have a decent view. When built over a hundred years ago it had [...]

…with the exception of an incredibly low to the ground tower crane on the magnificent mile this was the only tall crane in the city that we could see. A testament to the boom-gone-bust nature of the construction industry here and in many other parts [...]

We had given up on the Gold Coast. Hours of walking and nothing to be had for fear of cameras and doormen. We got back in the car and cruised southward, back to the loop where the pedestrians were scarce and the fire escapes plentiful. [...]

For three days we returned to that wonderful city by the lake which we had dominated a year earlier. Sitting firmly in our sites the first night was a juicy pile of Gothic Revival architecture stacked 45 stories high known as Randolph Tower. The terra [...]

With loads of anticipation I had watched the sand-blasting crew set up shop on this water tower for the last few weeks. Periodically these big steel drinking water reservoirs in the sky have to be stripped of their old paint before being given a new [...]