I bet you think this is the same stamp I did yesterday, since this one is also on the east side of Regent Street’s 400 block between Kalamazoo and Elizabeth. Wrong! This one is… a couple of lots over. But you know this one is different because it’s next to my nemesis, the Super Bright Streetlight.

A few years ago, someone apparently ran a car into the old one that stood here and it broke into three pieces. It was lying on the yard next door for a little while before it was cleared away, and during that time I discovered that the globe is not, as I had always assumed, glass, but instead a surprisingly light piece of plastic that looks rather cheap up close. I felt the scales fall from my eyes and I have never looked at the street lamps in the city the same way again.

When they replaced it, the new one was worse in two ways. It never got painted white to match the other streetlights in the area. Instead it is just rust colored, and in fact the color seems to be authentic rust, although my father has the minority opinion that it’s actually primer. Every time I see it, I think of someone insulting a car in Grease: “What color is that, candy apple primer?”

The other way is that instead of the dimmer, yellow sodium appearance, it has been given an LED makeover and is now a bluish-white color, brighter than the sun. Note how it appears to be going supernova in my photo.

For a while I cursed the driver who subjected my block to this new lamp, but soon the LED issue will be moot, because they are planning to comprehensively replace all the lamps with LEDs in this neighborhood by 2022.