whiskey shot

this is one-half of a half frame shot from the same roll as the previous post with the Pen-FT. we were at this place called Fatty Crab that had this whiskey shot and this incredible pickle juice back deal. It's a trendy thing now, but the first I'd heard of it was at this place a couple years ago and I still think it's the best pickle back. I've seen some places serve straight green water from a pickle jar, but this place made its own every day. It got to the point where Gary and I were ordering whiskey shots just so we could have the pickle juice with it. We both got pretty drunk.

the highline

These are among the first photos I ever took with the Pen-FT. They're wildly inconsistent and still are at this point. Some basic problems with the film not advancing correctly to the still present metering problem—I'm beginning to think the lens itself is shooting a half-stop too slow because the meter looks fine compared with my handheld Minolta Auto V. You can almost see the schizophrenic nature of the camera at this point, although admittedly I was, and still am, still learning how to use it (see all those damn photos from my last SF trip I lost, or rather, don't see them). These photos are of Susan and my friend Kevin while we were waiting in line to get up to the Highline, and then finally up top. Around this time there were rumors the hotel directors were paying people to have sex in the windows where everyone could see, so the walkway was often crowded with paparazzi photographers with $10,000 setups. Some of these are actually quite good. Others I almost have to ask what decade they were taken in: the 70s?

august montauk

for my last birthday i had to get out of town on a kind of retreat. matt came along after he called my bluff when i told him he could come, fully believing he'd never wake up in time. well, he did and we caught the train from jamaica station to montauk. we took an $8 cab from the train station to the montauket, a weird kind of place with a nice dining area, an attached dive bar, and 4-H club like accommodations upstairs. this is where we were staying. having no idea how far we were from town, we decided to walk to town which was a few miles. we rented these shitty mountain-hybrid bikes to ride around town. we hit up a bar and had a few shots, a couple beers, a burger and fries, and fish and chips. then i stupidly decided it was time to head to Montauk Point. aside from being a pretty off-time to fish out there in the Mecca of striped bass land (our original plan was to roll up there on a tandem bike), my aforementioned lack of distance-awareness made me think it would be like a 15-minute ride out there, judging from my memory of the trip Susan and i made out there last year for my birthday, by car. i also didn't realize that matt hadn't ridden a bike in something like 15 years and that the bikes we had sucked really bad. it turned out to be 6.5 miles each way on a winding, hilly two-lane road. the ride back to town was in pitch blackness, no moon, no street lights, cars flying past us at 70mph. only a headlamp, which actually saved our asses. before we left the lower lot i told matt, "before we die tonight i want you to know one thing: i never liked you." just some black humor for the way home.

this is the second year i've made it out to montauk for my birthday. the fishing isn't so good around this time, but it's good to see the ocean and wash away the year's sins and sorrows. part of the reason i came back is because the burden of memory of thinking "the last time" was getting to be too much for me and i needed a new memory, a new last time. i once had an idea of remembering and cataloging all the last times so i could replace each one in turn, but of course that's impossible.


montauk bug


13.5 miles round trip on this piece of shit, with 25 pounds of gear on my back.


finally made it.


dude, matt. it's just over this hill i swear.


matt taking in the bluffs sunset.


this was in the drawer at the montauket.

fish bum

among other things i've been doing instead of updating the blog is making a fishing zine. this is the first zine i've produced in probably five years, since the one Casey and i did for the art show "The Dogs" in LA. i guess with all this digital/internet stuff i wanted to make a physical object again. this one focuses on urban fishing, with the idea that i'd go around the city and find the hidden spots still left along the city's riverbanks, and talk to the people who've been fishing them for years and years. there's a lot of history in these waters; and it's not just the foul history of dumping raw sewage and oil. this first issue is about part of the East River, with a focus on the Brooklyn Fishing Derby, which i helped organize this year. Hit me up if you want a copy. i may ask for a buck or two for postage. Letterpress cover via Vandercook Universal 3 (sticking to the technical aspect of this blog). the guts are ghetto photocopy. photos by me, and friends maria haddad, liz amoroso, and geralyn shukwit. maria also designed and laid out the pages, some of which i screwed up in the cutter.

more photos and possible things of interest coming up soon.

you don't got a hold of me

mark kozelek takes an AC/DC song about a handjob and just makes it that much more beautiful.