Bad postcard of the week:

 Kalamazoo, off somewhere in the distance
From:  The Grand Rapids Press

The Upjohn Company boasts of 23 acres under one roof --
and goodness knows how many acres of lawn out front.

 This week’s bad postcard attempts to answer an important question: Do you actually have to be in Kalamazoo to take a photo of something in Kalamazoo?

Unlike last week’s entry, I've actually been to Kalamazoo, which appeared to be free of Paul Bunyan statues.

This wonderful slice of boredom embraces two of our favored genres, popular in the golden “chrome” era of postcards.

We get the “ghost town” effect, where we see nary a soul but a lot of buildings.

Then we get a second dose of dullness, the “long distance-full building” approach where the photographer for some reason feels the need to stand across the street to get an entire building in the frame, rather than focusing on an interesting detail of a structure.

This offering is just “LD-FB” on steroids, which might be appropriate considering the subject.

We get The Upjohn Co.'s main manufacturing building in Kalamazoo, which the postcard back boasts has more than 23 acres under one roof. Talk about big pharma!

Now, if you look closely, you might be able to see this massive building somewhere between the world’s biggest lawn and lots and lots of cloud-filled sky.

Like many of our bad postcards, this Upjohn example presents a mystery. We just don’t know why the photographer stood so far away. But we are free to speculate.

Here are my top five reasons, and please suggest some of your own.

1) Photographer wanted to see if he could shoot a photo of something in Kalamazoo while standing in Battle Creek.

2) That’s not a lawn, that’s a minefield!

3) Do you really want to get too close to 23 acres of chemicals?

4) Shooter couldn't find a parking space – or even the parking lot. Seriously, how far away from the building must 23 acres worth of people have to park?

5) Cameraman didn't want to test whether the invisible fence would keep vicious security pit bulls from attacking.

Imagine what the Union Pacific Depot
looks like on a sunny day.

Colleague contribution

MLive reporter Garret Ellison was traveling in Wyoming – the state, not the suburb – and stumbled upon this wonderfully awful postcard.

Unlike, say, our friends in Kalamazoo, this photographer actually got within a mile of the building, though the card is firmly in the ghost town genre.

The historic Union Pacific Depot sure sounds like a nice place, especially for those of us who survived our kids watching Thomas the Tank Engine videos. I think we'd search for little Ringo Starrs and George Carlins running around.

But as Garret points out, it’s probably a nicer place on a sunny day! I can imagine the photographer saying, “I better get this shot in; it looks like rain.”

A little research reveals that the depot is the home of the “Big Boy,” the world’s largest steam locomotive, which packed the power needed to get up the mountains.

You can even get a train ride there, which Upjohn employees probably wish they had to get close to their building.