Wapsi Square Forum

Am I first?

http://wapsisquare.com/comic/no-record/

Bilbo

I'd say Castela is broken . . .

I can't decide if manga eyes is good or bad.

--FreeFlier

And the trophy for best mugging to the camera goes to...

Do they have an Eisner for that?

I use the local appraisal district database to research property. Sometimes, I find a parcel that does not resolve to its physical address. In one case, I found the record, but it was listed under the street's old name after a clerk missed it in updating the addresses.

Why do I have a feeling that this building is either a Library entrance, or Castela's home?

(I know, there are several reasons these wouldn't make sense - mostly we'd expect the kids to know about those locations. Cas definitely would know about the latter, once Daylla gives her some specifics - Daylla may or may not realize that she's been there.)

Castela looks like she's about to rip off and throw her own head in excitement like so:

I see no way this can go badly...

The question is, which side is going to be more terrified, the girls or whatever's in the haunted mystery building?

FreeFlier wrote:I'd say Castela is broken . . .

I can't decide if manga eyes is good or bad.

--FreeFlier

I'd say it's comparable to when a mad scientist/engineer smiles a bit too wide. It's both, and neither, at the same time. The waveform hasn't collapsed yet.

Now that sounds like a place i would love to check out.

AmriloJim wrote:I use the local appraisal district database to research property. Sometimes, I find a parcel that does not resolve to its physical address. In one case, I found the record, but it was listed under the street's old name after a clerk missed it in updating the addresses.

That sort of scenario send quite plausible. Similarly, if the building in question is very old, it might have been built long enough ago that the formal records of its construction were lost or destroyed over the years... and if it somehow dated back to the very beginning of the city, there might not have been any building code enforcement to speak of and hence few records even then.

One might expect ownership to be researchable via the property parcel records, as someone suggested in the strip comments. However, if it's a very old property, there might be some sort of deeply-grandfathered tax exemption on it (maybe an old church property?) that would have resulted in a lack of tax tracing.

As to Google Street Map... their cars don't drive down all streets, even in the cities... long driveways, private roads, alleys, roads closed for repair, etc. aren't surveyed It's not unsurprising to find properties that simply aren't visible.

A more fantastical possibility might be something like what Lafferty wrote of in his wonderfully droll short story "Narrow Valley". Thanks to a Native American's powerful prayer-spell, the valley was nice and wide for its owner, but very very narrow when outsiders came looking for it. He and his son lived there for many decades without having to pay taxes... the tax collectors could never find them! (Fun reading - it's anthologized in the multi-author "Earth is the Strangest Planet" and probably elsewhere - worth chasing down and buying a copy!)

Dave wrote:. . . A more fantastical possibility might be something like what Lafferty wrote of in his wonderfully droll short story "Narrow Valley". Thanks to a Native American's powerful prayer-spell, the valley was nice and wide for its owner, but very very narrow when outsiders came looking for it. He and his son lived there for many decades without having to pay taxes... the tax collectors could never find them! (Fun reading - it's anthologized in the multi-author "Earth is the Strangest Planet" and probably elsewhere - worth chasing down and buying a copy!)

Quite amusing.

--FreeFlier

FreeFlier wrote:

Dave wrote:. . . A more fantastical possibility might be something like what Lafferty wrote of in his wonderfully droll short story "Narrow Valley". Thanks to a Native American's powerful prayer-spell, the valley was nice and wide for its owner, but very very narrow when outsiders came looking for it. He and his son lived there for many decades without having to pay taxes... the tax collectors could never find them! (Fun reading - it's anthologized in the multi-author "Earth is the Strangest Planet" and probably elsewhere - worth chasing down and buying a copy!)

Quite amusing.

--FreeFlier

Makes me think of 12 Grimmauld Place.

Oh, and out here, no record of a structure's construction would not preclude records of its existence and ownership . . . while not common, buildings - especially minor ones - with no record of their construction are hardly unheard of. You can spot them in the records because the date of construction is "ca. 19XX", "circa 19XX" or sometimes "before 19XX".

In one case, it finally turned out (once they asked the right person) that the house's date was known . . . but it had been moved from another location, and remodeled during the move!

In the logging towns, it's quite common to find that someone bought a used bunkhouse when one of the railroad logging camps sold out, moved it onto their property, and set it up as a house. In some cases, the house wasn't registered as a structure for decades, because it was technically still portable. (Mobile homes were the same at first . . . and sometimes still are, especially if they're not configured as residences.)


However, I get the impression Daylla is talking about something more substantial.

--FreeFlier

Consider that Minneapolis was founded in the 1850's, there's probably still a lot of older homes that date back to the early 20th (if not the 19th) Century.