Tuesday, June 10, 2014

The Soreno Hotel

In downtown St. Petersburg, there's another one of those infuriating historical signs that, like the Vilano Beach Casino, tells us basically that "a really cool building used to be here, but they tore it down."

It makes it all the more a sore point to learn that the Soreno was demolished by a developer who couldn't develop: the super-important whatever-it-was project that the Soreno was blown up to make room for never came to fruition.

The producers of Lethal Weapon 3 (starring Mel Gibson and Danny Glover) got wind of the building's impending destruction and got in on the action, working the explosion into the film and shooting numerous scenes on the hotel grounds prior to - and even during - the demolition blast.

It's fascinating to watch it go down on this recorded live footage from TV channel 13; note how evenly the building collapses neatly into its own footprint... which of course, as you know, only happens with deliberate controlled demolitions such as these. *cough*

No comments:

Post a Comment