The Contemporary Night Owl

For those of us living in Kentucky, the struggle to find a late-night bakery is not always an easy one. Most bakeries in the Commonwealth seem to close around 5-6 pm, while some others (mainly in the four big cities of Lexington, Louisville, Paducah, and Bowling Green) stay open through the evenings and close at 8-10 pm. Other KY bakeries close even earlier than that, while others aren't open at all on certain days, especially Saturday and/or Sunday.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that Insomnia Cookies now has two locations in Lexington and Louisville. Both locations are close to the U of L and UK campuses and as you may already be aware, stay open all night long. Not only that, but they also have a delivery service that delivers cookies, ice cream and brownies throughout the wee hours of the morning! This definitely comes in handy for anyone craving a late-night cookie or a cup of ice cream. And for all the college students cramming for a final and getting a little burnt-out with the pizza and burgers, this is a welcome change!

Of course there are some other bakeries and donut shops that stay open at least a little late into the night. Doughdaddy's Doughnuts in Lexington and Jolly Pirate Donuts in Ashland both stay (or stayed??) open well past 8 pm. But it's nice to know there is now at least one bakery chain in Kentucky that stays open all through the night!

Know of any others here in KY that stay open this late?? As always, feel free to share them with us!

After reading this article about the growing number of restaurants in NYC that are offering late-night breakfasts (and some that are experimenting with 24 hour breakfasts as well) from 11 pm-6 am, the question begins to arise: What is your favorite late-night breakfast dish? Furthermore, what other restaurants in this wide world of ours offer a good late-night breakfast experience?

It doesn't matter if it's the Denny's Grand Slam Breakfast or a plate full of pancakes from the nearby truck stop. Feel free to share with us your favorite late night breakfast experience!

While browsing around the realms of cyberspace this morning, I found this very interesting interview from Salon.com with Merrill Markoe, who was the head writer of the "Late Night with David Letterman" show (as well as the morning show he briefly did in NYC before getting his national late night show) back when it first came on the air in 1982. Markoe gives some interesting insights to the show's struggling days on NBC back in the early '80s and how she and the other writers managed to turn the show from what seemed like an uncertain venture into a phenomenal TV success!

As "Letterman" winds down, it's interesting to see how far the show has come since those early days and how he was nearly convinced back in those days that his venture into the late-night TV circuit wouldn't go far after his failure at early morning TV. He - and the writers such as Markoe who worked hard at making the show a success - must've been pleasantly surprised!

You can read that article here: http://www.salon.com/2015/05/15/letterman_head_writer_merrill_markoe_the_show_felt_constantly_unstable_to_me/

While going through some articles this afternoon, I stumbled across this article from the May 10th edition of the Rapid City Journal about one man's quest to save and find new homes for Rapid City, SD's disused neon signs of businesses past. Like many other cities around the world, Rapid City is another city that is beginning to recognize the historical value of its signage and struggling to save, repair, and find new homes for some of those disused signs from the 1940s-1960s.

This article makes a good point about these signs not only being pieces of vintage Americana, but also works of art which were often designed and handmade by master neon artists many decades ago.

Anyway, here's the link to the article:

http://rapidcityjournal.com/news/local/new-home-sought-for-vintage-rapid-city-neon-signs/article_47c354e0-0b68-5ad6-8e03-1c40863a67a1.html

As most of us who are fans of Hong Kong cinema are no doubt aware, there have not been a lot of mind-blowing movies coming out of HK over the past decade or so. Sure there are some good ones, but hardly any that match the quality or calibre of, say, John Woo's classics from the 1980s-1990s or 1987's A Chinese Ghost Story.

The flagship Eslite bookstore in Taipei, Taiwan's Xinyi district circa 2013.

After reading this post from the New York Time's Sinosphere blog about the popularity of Taiwan's Eslite bookstore chain and the large number of young people and urban professionals in Taipei who are spending the wee hours of the morning hanging out at the gigantic Eslite bookstore in that city, it's easy to conclude that there still are places in this world where bookstore culture is thriving, despite the disappearance of most independent bookstores in the US and elsewhere in the West.

So what about some of the other bookstores that stay open through the late-night hours? Where can some of those be found these days? In no particular order, here are ten bookstores and bookstore that stay open late at night:

1.) The Sanlian Taofen Bookstore. While Eslite caters to night owls in Taiwan and Hong Kong (and soon, in a couple of cities in mainland China as well), one of the major Sanlian Taofen bookstores in Beijing began catering to night owls in that city in April of 2014 when it started staying open for 24 hours a day.

Like Eslite, the Taofen Bookstore has a library-like atmosphere where readers who aren't sleeping can immerse themselves in a novel all night and enjoy a little peace and quiet from all the pressures of daily life.

According to this article from CCTV, Sanlian's year-long experiment in late-night bookstores has been such a success that a second 24-hour Taofen bookstore near Beijing's Tsinghua University campus has opened as well!

2.) Shibuya Publishing Booksellers. One of Tokyo's coolest bookstores is one that stays open until midnight!

Shibuya Booksellers is located in Tokyo's Shibuya shopping district. One of the many things that make this bookstore different from others is that it organizes its books by theme rather than genre or author. For instance, you might find Haruki Murakami's After the Quake grouped together with books on earthquakes or geology. Apparently books here were organized by the decade in which they were published a few years back, but that doesn't seem to be the case anymore.

Also, unlike other bookstore chains, they don't limit their selection of books to books only published by Shibuya Publishing. They sell many other books from a wide variety of other publishers as well as magazines from around the globe. Of course being in Japan a big chunk of their selection is in Japanese, but they do have some English language books for sale.

The bookstore also features a coffee bar and art installations, making it the perfect place for a hipster to hang out at night!

For more info about Shibuya Booksellers, please see their homepage or be sure to check out TimeOut Tokyo's special review on them at http://www.timeout.jp/en/tokyo/venue/2113/Shibuya-Publishing-Booksellers.

3.) Dussmann das KulturKaufhaus. Another bookstore that stays open until midnight is the Dussmann das KultureKaufhaus bookstore in Berlin. This gigantic bookstore, which is located in eastern Berlin's Friedrichstraße shopping district, is five stories tall and sells media of all kinds ranging from books to DVDs to CDs to calendars and much more!

Also featured in this bookstore is a restaurant, Catherine's, and an English section (featuring a massive selection of over 6,000 English titles) that is now a "shop within a shop".

This bookstore is perfect for spending a whole day (or a whole night for that matter!) just shopping around and taking in what the store has to offer!

4.) St. Mark's Bookshop. Having been in business since 1977, St. Mark's Bookshop in New York City has stood the test of time as far as bookstores go these days!

Located in NYC's East Village, St. Mark's stays open from 11 am to 11 pm everyday except Sunday and is the place for book lovers to go once all the other book stores close for the evenings! They have an amazing selection of books to choose from and host upcoming events such as author readings and magazine launches.

This is definitely the place to go if you love to spend an evening surrounded by books and literary events!

5.) City Lights Booksellers and Publishers. One of the USA's most historic bookstores just happens to be one that stays open until midnight!

City Lights Books was founded in San Fransisco, CA in 1953 by the Beat Generation poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Peter D. Martin. It was a place where Beatniks could congregate and read poetry during the 1950s and early 1960s and where hippies could turn on, tune in, and drop out a generation later. It is also the first all-paperback bookstore in the US.

To this day, City Lights has remained true to its independent roots and carries a nice stock of the latest titles ranging from best-sellers to thought-provoking, controversial classics of the past century. The atmosphere in City Lights is very alternative...as it has been since the day it first opened its doors. The ailes are maze-like and the store is decorated with signs containing hand-written messages!

6.) Kramerbooks & Afterwords Cafe & Grill. For night owls and book lovers living in Washington, DC, the one place to go is Kramerbooks & Afterwords Cafe and Grill. As you may have guessed, this is a book store, bar, cafe, and restaurant all rolled into one. Founded in 1971, Kramer's prides itself on being both an indie bookstore and a restaurant/bar where a night owl who loves eating out at midnight or later can do so!

Kramer's is open from 7:30 am-1 am everyday except Friday and Saturday, when they stay open until 4 am.

This place is a dream come true for night owls!

7.) Eslite Bookstore (Hong Kong). At the time of this writing, Eslite's Hong Kong store also happens to be the only late-night bookstore in the territory. Spanning three stories high, this giant bookstore has quite a few English and Chinese book titles to choose from!

During the week, Eslite HK stays open from 10 am-11 pm and from 10 am-2 am on Fri-Sun nights.

8.) Book City. Since 1976, Book City has been one of Toronto, ON's most popular indie book store chains. Initially opening its doors in the Annex district, Book City has branched out across the city and has been one of Toronto's premier book store chains for nearly four decades now. Furthermore, their Danforth location keeps their doors open until 10 pm on Mon-Wed and 11 pm on Thurs-Sat.

9.) Powell's City of Books. No list of late-night bookstores would be complete without this store! Located in Portland, OR, Powell's City of Books is a colossal bookstore spanning a full city block with well over a million books in their inventory, which strongly justifies their claim to be the world's largest independent bookstore!

Powell's offers over 3,500 sections of books, an art gallery that features a monthly art exhibit and author events (often featuring famous authors, artists, poets, and more), do-it-yourself book publishing, and of course, coffee and espressos!

Powell's stays open from 9 am to 11 pm 7 days a week, making it a prime nighttime hotspot for Portland.

10.) Liberarte. Buenos Aires's Avenida Corriente (Corriente Avenue) is a long avenue of intellectual and nightlife hotspots that stay open during the night hours long after the rest of the city has gone to sleep.

One of the top late-night bookstores along this thoroughfare is the Liberate bookstore. This is a place where Argentine booklovers and intellectuals who aren't sleeping can come and discuss some of the latest literature. However, it is much more than that. It's an eclectic mix of a bookstore, CD/DVD store (with its own movie club), and theatre!

In addition to books, Liberarte has a theatrical hall that hosts theatrical, dance, and comedy performances from renowned performers at night (from both Argentina and elsewhere in the world), as well as book readings and discussions from some of Argentina's most famous writers, and a publishing house that publishes a number of new book titles.

For any night owls visiting Buenos Aires, this is a place you won't want to miss! For more information about Liberarte, see the following website from the Buenos Aires city government: http://www.buenosaires.gob.ar/areas/cultura/cpphc/sitios/detalle.php?id=34 (Spanish language only)

Know of any other bookstores in this wide world of ours that stay open during the late night hours? Do you have any experiences with any of the above bookstores? Feel free to share your experiences in the Comments below!


Credits and Notes:
*Eslite bookstore picture credit: Kwongning210. Used via Wikimedia Commons per Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. 
    The Eslite Bookstore chain is owned by and a copyright of the Eslite Corporation based in Taipei, Taiwan. This blog is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Eslite Corporation in any way, shape or form. Furthermore, the blog is not affiliated with or endorsed by any of the other bookstores listed above. All listings in this post are a result of the author's own independent research and initiative.

A Boeing 307 Stratoliner from the World War II era. The Stratoliner was the first airliner to be pressurized, enabling it to fly at high altitudes.

In case you missed my first blog post about the history of night flying, you can read that here. Now on to part two: Night flying during the World War II years.

Regular "red-eye flight" services as we know them now were still not possible during the 1940s due to the lack of availability of night-flying equipment, the inability of most airliners to fly long distances, and so on. Obviously the war and the very high possibility of being shot down by either side while flying over occupied Europe or the Asia-Pacific region would make flying at night very risky. However, it was during this period of time that the technology that made routine night flying possible was born......

US paratroopers of the 101st Airborne Division heading toward British Hotspur gliders during training exercises.

During the war, fighters and bombers on both sides launched attacks on ground targets, military installations, cities. and enemy aircraft at night. When the war broke out in 1939, the methods used for night flying - especially on the British side - were very crude compared with the technology available to them by the war's end. Some of the main methods used by the RAF at the onset of the war had been used by navigators for many centuries.

Military Night Flights and Celestial Navigation
At the outbreak of war, American, British, and Japanese military pilots navigated at night mostly by using the time-tested, old-fashioned way: Celestial navigation. With a sextant and star charts and by the light of the moon, the pilots made their way to their targets across occupied Europe and the Pacific. On a cloudy or foggy night, it was sometimes impossible to tell friend from foe. Japanese pilots would continue to fly this way at night throughout most of the war.

Devices such as the Mark 1B astrograph (used by both American and British air forces), the A-10A sextant used by the US Army Air Force made flying by the stars, and the Fairchild-Maxon Mark I Line of Position Computer used by USAAF and US Navy aircraft made night flying much easier. However, the Mark 1B and Fairchild-Maxon computers were far too heavy for most navigators and pilots to deal with and the Fairchild-Maxon computers were also very expensive.

The navigator of a bomber would often sit in the glass "bubble" (often sharing it with the bombardier or tail gunner) and make his calculations where he'd have a good view of the night sky and the ground below.

The German Luftwaffe, on the other hand, had its own special innovative night-flying technology which will be discussed in detail below.

Clandestine Operations at Night
Throughout the war, both sides used the darkness of night as a natural cover to launch clandestine operations into each others' territory. On the Allied side, C-47s and paratroop gliders dropped paratroopers, commandos, and secret agents behind enemy lines during the nighttime hours. Soviet airline Aeroflot carried out over 83,000 special nighttime missions by the time the war officially ended in September, 1945.

A German Be 09 "Bernhard" navigation antenna from WWII.

Wartime Technological Advancements and Night Flying
It has often been said that World War II was a "technological war." New technological developments were put to the test during the war and these developments changed the world. Some of these developments are still changing the world at this very moment. Needless to say, all the new technological developments of the WWII era made flying at night much, much easier.

Blind Flying Navigation Systems
Prior to the outbreak of war, new technologies were being developed that made flying at night a whole lot easier. Blind flying beams such as the Lorenz beam in Germany and the Diamond-Dunmore equi-signal radio guidance system in the US guided planes to the ground during the night and in bad weather conditions when visibility was down to a bare minimum. The Lorenz beam consisted of two different signals: A signal that transmitted Morse code dots, and another signal that transmitted Morse code dashes. All three were broadcast from a single radio transmitter via three antennae at the end of an airport runway. As a pilot came in for a landing, the main signal got stronger. If s/he veered off course to the left, s/he would hear the Morse code dots. If off course to the right, s/he would hear the dashes. If they were making a smooth landing, the signals would both align to form a single equisignal.

Before the war, the Lorenz beam was used by airports in several countries including Germany and Switzerland. It was used by Lufthansa as early as 1934 and would be used some 6-7 years later after the outbreak of World War II by the Luftwaffe as their main pilot guidance system to targets across the UK during the Blitz. Lorenz beams were picked up by special radio receivers installed in Luftwaffe aircraft known as Knickebein ("Crooked leg" in German) devices due to the crooked shape of the antenna which protruded from underneath the airplane.

The Battle of the Beams, or the British effort to jam the Lorenz transmissions and send out misleading transmissions, was a large-scale battle fought behind the scenes during the Battle for Britain!

After the war, the Lorenz technology was confiscated by the Allies and was put to good use by US, British and Soviet airlines until instrument landing systems came along during the 1950s and rendered the Lorenz beam obsolete.

The two main systems developed by the Allies were the Gee system and LORAN. The Gee system was developed by scientists in Britain, while the LORAN system was developed by American scientists. Both were very similar to each other. So much so that the two devices could be interchanged! These radio navigation systems made it possible for planes to find their way through pitch black darkness to their targets by correlating data on a map with radio transmitters installed at various locations throughout the UK, US, and Canada. Toward the end of the war, Gee and LORAN technology had developed to the point where pilots could fly straight to a target and bomb it without ever seeing it. The Gee devices installed in RAF fighter planes played a decisive role in Britain's victory in the air war against the Nazis during World War II.

After the war, both systems were used for many decades to come. The Gee system stayed in use in British and other Commonwealth aircraft until 1970, when the last Gee transmitter was shut down. Updated versions of the LORAN were used worldwide for both aircraft and ships until the 1980s-1990s, when GPS technology began to replace it. The last American LORAN transmitters were turned off in 2010.

Another groundbreaking development from German scientists was the Sonne, or "Consol" (as it was known in the UK) system. The Sonne transmitters transmitted radio beams that shot across the night sky in any direction. The Sonne system was widely used by German planes and ships navigating through the darkness of occupied Europe at night....as well as by British forces hunting down those same Germans! After the war, the Sonne network was widely used around the world for maritime navigation until 1991, when the very first Sonne transmitter set up by the Nazis in Norway was retired.

One thing is for certain: After the dust from war had begun to settle, these radio navigation systems changed air and sea navigation as we knew it.

Radar

An H2X radar set installed in a plane, most likely an American B-17, during WWII.

One of the most important devices to debut during World War II was the radar. Portable radar sets such as the H2X set on the right gave Allied aircraft a huge advantage over German forces during the war. They also made flying at night much easier and made enemy targets in the air and on the ground much easier to detect when the night sky gave enemy planes natural cover. Ground radar was used to pinpoint night fighters in the sky and to help coordinate anti-aircraft guns.

Over seven decades on, radar is still a very important part of our world today and is used for detecting storms, aircraft, and much, much more 24 hours a day. A few of the giant Würzburg radar units used by German forces during the war was used by several European nations including the Netherlands, the USSR, and France for much more important purpose afterwards: For detecting quasars, black holes, and pulsars in the night sky. These radars opened the door for the modern day science of radio astronomy.

Pressurized Cabins
The World War II era was also the period when modern-day jet airliners were born. While the war raged around the globe, aircraft designers kept working on creating aircraft with pressurized cabins that could fly at higher altitudes than the aircraft of the time and eliminate the need for oxygen masks for bomber crews, etc. Experiments on pressurization began as far back as 1920 by countries such as the US, France, Germany, and the USSR. Prior to the outbreak of war in Europe, the Americans unveiled the first pressurized airliner to the world: the Boeing 307. Only 10 of these airliners saw service and from late 1941 onwards, all of the American aircraft industry's attention was solely devoted to the war effort. Five of the 307s ended up being acquisitioned by the US Army and put to use as C-75 transport aircraft.

Thanks to its pressurized cabin, the Boeing 307 had the capability of soaring up to 20,000 feet. It had the capability of carrying 35 passengers and 5 crew members and it featured a 12-foot (3.6 meter) wide cabin specially designed to give night fliers a comfortable berth!


While all the developments in night flying during the World War II years happened on the military's side, all this new technology would start to be put to full use by civilian airliners after the Allied victory in 1945. From 1945 onwards, the stage was set for the era of flying that would come next: the Jet Age. And it was during the early years of the Jet Age that red-eye flights as we know them were born.

For part three of this series (Night flying in the early years of the Jet Age), please click here.

Links:
-http://timeandnavigation.si.edu/navigating-air/challenges/overcoming-challenges (Website from the Smithsonian Institution about overcoming the challenges of navigation at night and in stormy weather throughout the history of aviation. Features an online gallery of equipment used in aircraft from the early days of flight up to the 1990s.)
-http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/topics/radar (A history of radar from the BBC.)
-http://www.loran-history.info/ (An excellent website dedicated to the history of LORAN and the USCG crews who manned the LORAN stations.)
-https://www.astron.nl/~leeuwen/video/dloo/JAHH9p3.pdf (The Beginnings of Radio Astronomy in the Netherlands)
-http://www.narit.or.th/en/files/2007JAHHvol10/2007JAHH...10..221O.pdf  (Highlighting the History of French Radio Astronomy. 3: The Würzburg Antennas at Marcoussis, Meudon, and Nançay)
-http://www.boeing.com/history/products/model-307-stratoliner.page

Bibliography:
-Johnson, Brian. The Secret War. London: BBC/Methuen Publishers, 1978. Chapters 1-2.
-Braude, S.Y., ‎Dubinskii, B.A., Kaidanovskii, N.L. A Brief History of Radio Astronomy in the USSR: A Collection of Scientific Essays. New York: Springer Publishing, 2012, pg. 11.
-Okumiya, Masatake, Horikoshi, Jiro, Caidin, Martin. Zero! New York: Ballatine Books, 1956, pg. 211.


Credits:
Boeing 307 picture: San Diego Air & Space Museum Archives. Used courtesy of Flickr's The Commons.
"Bernhard" picture: Australian armed forces.
H2X radar: USAF/486 Bomber Group Association
*All pics used courtesy of Wikimedia Commons unless otherwise noted.