february girls

Michelle Chambers, my date for the punk rock prom i think in 2002 or so. I remember I had to find something to match her dress and I ended up with some peach-colored dress shirt from the '70s and I wanted to wear a skinny black tie, but left all mine back in California. I'm pretty sure I took a regular width tie, tied it backwards, cut the wide part off and spray painted the remainder black. Haha, so ghetto.

This pic was taken in Jude's Diner before we went to the party, which was on top of Newark Chinese Laundry on Main Street—which was doubly weird for me because I used to live there when I was very young, and then my grandparents lived there for a long time before, during, and after I lived there. We used to have Christmas, Chinese New Year, and weekly dinners there. Eventually they moved out and a succession of college kids I knew moved in. At the time of this photo, we went there and got very drunk. At the end of this particular night I ended up in the back of a police car with an open bottle of beer in my jacket pocket. Eventually I lied my way out of it.

Michelle is married now and has a son named Joey. She's going to have another kid soon too, which is crazy to me, but she's a real good mom and holds it down like I knew she could, even though I was apprehensive at first when I heard she was having a baby. Joey is a real good kid. I haven't seen him since he was just a baby, but from his choice of Halloween costumes I know he's got a good personality. Shamoe's birthday was this past week. Happy birthday Shamoe!


A photo of Samantha Culp, taken at her house off Sunset Junction (I think). Her parents moved so often and I visited so many of their houses it's hard for me to keep track. I'm pretty sure this was off Sunset Junction and was probably 2001. She was home for Thanksgiving break, around the same time my brother and friends Gary and Andrew Freeborn came to visit. Also the first roll of cross-processed film I ever shot, which is remarkable only in that nearly every photo in that roll was a keeper and each had a story to go along with it. I haven't had nearly the same kind of luck since, but have gotten some good x-process stuff here and there, some of which I've already posted.

Sam lives in Beijing now, and travels around Asia quite often. I get to see her about every year and a half or so. Very talented writer. It was her birthday this week too, so happy birthday Sam.

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Christine in Sam's bed. Even though it's not her birthday this month (and I know "February Girls" doesn't have quite the same ring to it as "September Girls" but oh well...) I tossed in this photo to go along with the above technical description. I haven't seen Christine in a really long time, but she was always very sweet and hospitable and gracious to me whenever I was in LA. She's sucking the juice out of one of those wax soda bottles. Hot.

I took all these pics with the great Yashica T5, which in case you're wondering is exactly the same thing as the Yashica T4; they just ran out of T4s to sell in America so they had to bring in their other market models, which they sold internationally as the T5. I've started archiving the film roll from which I took the last two photos, and there's a lot of them and they're all in LA, so I'll probably be posting more of those in the upcoming week. I can't remember how I shot the one of Michelle... it might be part of a different xprocess roll, but for some reason I don't think so.

Also getting film processed of my latest trip to SF. They should be done this week and I'll pick them up the next time I can run into the city.

One last thing, it's my cousin Jen's birthday today, February 28, so happy birthday Jen. I don't have any photos of her when she was living in LA unfortunately, but we always trade stories of great tacos at Tito's and ceviche down near Culver City.