Outliers Tour of River City

Malcolm Gladwell, an interesting New Yorker writer, had an article in the latest magazine based on his book in which he advances some theories. One is that the self-made man is a complete fabrication-all successes had immense help whether schooling, supportive parents, a mentor or some other factor, and two, that a factor of the person that makes them what he calls an "outlier" ( sounds like "out-liar") which he uses to denote that peculiarity of being on the edge or fringe which allows a perspective or perception to be capitalized on. Being somewhat of an outlier myself though not of the wildly successful type, I have been ruminating on these ideas.
Today was Cold and Wet-40 degrees. A drive to pacify the antsy dogs and antsy human seemed like a good idea. I decided to tour the perimeters of the town-the geographic outliers and using my knowledge of the town pursue the outlier idea. Observation one: I have missed a lot by not doing this more often-lots of growth-a complete new elementary school, new housing-mostly low income and some industrialization.

Carnies are ultimate outliers on one end of the Bell Curve. The weather shut this nice clean carnival from Montana, down and it gave me the opportunity to take pictures. The rides are really engineering masterpieces.

This masterpiece is revealed in the next picture as a mural on the lumber storage shed at A.D. Martin Lumber. Pretty co0l and kind of an outlier concept.

The Depot in the old railroad depot is a great Mexican restaurant. The decorative giraffes are definitely outlier concepts.

I have stolen a word from Gladwell-my interest in outliers is probably not economic except tangentially. I have always had a fascination with the outliers-mostly psychologically, sociologically and artistically. Outliers are where the "action" is-originality. Not often found in neatly manicured bungalows.