kite

Golden Gate

I got my computer back this week. It had some major problems and had to get the hard drvie and video card replaced. So far so good. I sent my scanner back to the warranty place, and while it can be a pain in the ass, the extended warranty B&H sells you is usually almost always worth it to replace broken gear, especially in these days when stuff is obsolete the day you bring it home. So I haven't been able to scan anything new in yet, but I have pics from the Pen-FT from the summer and some Yashica t5 stuff from the recent Poconos trip. No idea what will come from those. I'm going to process some stuff this weekend, but i gotta wait for the scanner or the check to come back before i can get anything new up. Sorry.

I took this photo of Emily on the Golden Gate Bridge with the Yashica t5. This must have been 2004. It was near the end of a really long trip to get from downtown SF to the bridge. We ended up taking a bunch of buses, got lost a bunch of times, ended up stranded in shopping centers in Marin, stranded in a little sea town (maybe it was Tiburon?) waiting for a bus that seemed would never come, ended up begging that bus driver to let us off basically on the highway because we were on the wrong bus again and were headed over the bridge. We got off on some onramp/offramp on the north side of the bridge and started walking over. It was one of those early summer days when the fog is just starting to roll in during the evening, but before those August days when the fog just covers everything. The light was quite nice though you can't really see that in this shot as I used the flash so the red of her sweatshirt popped a little more. I guess there's a balance in there somewhere, but i didn't get it. Gorgeous up there around that time of day, especially on the west side. Windy up there, though.

Have you ever seen the documentary The Bridge?

scanner down!

i haven't been able to post much lately due to the Brooklyn Fishing Derby, which you can check out here. For the record, I think Wordpress sucks. Also, my scanner has a problem and I have to send it back to get it fixed, so i haven't been able to scan in anything new yet, but i'll dig through the crates to see if i have anything interesting already scanned that i haven't posted yet. on that note, the computer i bought off Shelly is taking major shits all over my life: repeated kernal panics, software repair issues i don't understand, and a major heat sensor hardware problem i have to get fixed. technology is wreaking havoc right now.

summers in san francisco

these are a couple of old photos from SF when i was living there, probably around 2002 or 2003. the top one i took with the Olympus Pen-EE. the film got heat damaged at some point, which you can see pretty well in the left photo. i'm not sure why i didn't put this one in with the other Mission Records posts i did a few months ago. i've been digging through a bunch of film and scattered prints in an attempt to get organ-izized and i've found a lot of stuff that i missed because i'm so dis-organ-izized. but i'm getting there...

the second photo is a cross-process pic of sara sandberg at a cafe near the Bay Bridge, right by the bay in fact. i can't remember what it is called. we went on a walk around SF after i moved there. i remember we went back to this apartment she was subletting in the Tenderloin, bought a bunch of 40s, met up with Cinque who cooked this amazing and incredibly spicy thai curry, then we all got super drunk and passed out for a couple hours, and woke up and it was just light out in the evening. i remember summers in San Francisco as cold and foggy; every late afternoon i could see the fog rolling in thick over Twin Peaks from my window, whenever i happened to look out that window. i've been feeling pretty nostalgic for SF lately, maybe because the weather's been so ugly here in New York, but i'm beginning to wonder if i could ever live there again.

SF graffiti

Z

This is a picture I shot of Zarathustra, who goes by several iterations of his ridiculously long name. He's an awesome artist, activist, writer, and all around creator of positive things... mostly. He's also from Delaware and some of the older people from Newark might remember him. I don't remember much about him from Delaware, but I re-met him in San Francisco where he lives now.

I was thinking about Z the last couple days as I've been reading "On the Lower Frequencies: A Secret History of the City" by Erick Lyle (who I knew as Iggy Scam) of Scam Zine, one of the great punk zines about getting over on the man, punk and politics, and in a much bigger sense, trying to create a life you want to live, though that last point probably wasn't as apparent as it is now, when one can read all his zines and see him trying to figure it out, the prevailing direction he was always, still is, and back then probably then a little unbeknownst to him, heading toward. He interviews Z a couple times in the book, about graffiti and activism, and helping create the incredible 949 Market Street community space that the cops eventually shut down. There might be more, but I'm only halfway through the book, though I can wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone, especially anyone who has spent time in SF. Another thing I remember about Zara and Erick is that they were probably two of the top four shoplifters I've ever met.

It was really cool to read Erick's book and see interviews with people I knew back then, the things they were doing before I met them, and how they were living in the city those years ago: living on welfare, donating time at food banks and needle exchange groups, hanging out and meeting the neighborhood and being known by them, really on-the-level kind of stuff. I found his history of Hunt's Doughnuts, a SF fixture on 20th and Mission that became synonymous with all-that-was-wrong with the City, really intriguing and well done. It made me want to re-read that history of Mission Records article I wrote for MRR back in 2005 or something. Two notoriously infamous places only blocks apart with a long, storied, and somewhat lost history. Aside from reading about old friends, Hunt's Doughnuts was probably my favorite part.

I was involved with these people back then. They were variously my friends and associates, partners in crime, though I think back then I was much more into the destructive, illegal side of things than positive activism. It was really Mission Records that brought me into their lives, living with Buzz and in the space. I missed the heyday of the place and only had the ghosts really to experience. But all those friends really showed me that things could be poor and dark, a struggle and great all at the same time.

I took this one outside of, I think, Rachel's house, which was on Capp Street at the time. We may have been doing something for the Anarchist Fashion Show. Actually I wasn't doing anything; I was just wearing clothes Z made.

after the fall

i haven't been updating recently because i've been watching the philadelphia flyers unlikely and improbable run to the Stanley Cup. well, they finally lost it last night to a weird goal that should have been saved, but it wasn't. very depressing for me, since it's been a good 23 years since i first watched them in the finals. not that this photo has anything to do with any of that. this one is from the yashica t4, in 2004, on a short road trip to big sur from san francisco on the 1. very weird time for me back then.

you're gonna miss me

montauk











Photos that I didn't mess up from my last trip to San Francisco. Other than the first photograph, the rest are from Stinson Beach north of San Francisco. I took all of these with the Seagull 205A. Great camera that always continues to impress. It's a shame these are all I have to show for my last trip out there, but the Olympus Pen-FT still had some kinks to work out apparently. I think I finally figured what was wrong with that camera, though I still have some testing to do. The lens (I think it's the lens) seems to be shooting a half-stop fast, so I'm testing stopping it down a half-stop and see what happens. It's still very trial and error.

I miss it all so much. You never should have left me.

wednesday morning

This is literally the first photograph I ever took with the Seagull 205A. A San Francisco February morning circa 2004.

the price I pay

More photos from that one trip I took back in 2003. These are a continuation of the film I shot with the Pen-EE. I'm starting to get the hang of color correcting in Photoshop, but nonetheless most of the photos I've taken with the tiny Pen-EE are better than the ones I've shot with the more elaborate Pen FT, which is a bit of a shame since the latter cost about 10 times as much. I'm still working on getting to know that one (the FT) as well, and one of the things I'm learning is that even when the handheld light meter and the camera's internal meter match up, the pictures will still be overexposed. I figure I'm going to scrap the attempts to use E6 with the FT for now since it seems to be too precise for the camera and I'll stick to shooting color negative with it, which seems pretty much fine. It doesn't make sense, but it's going to take some time for me to figure out what's the problem. On a slightly side-note, at least all the photos I took when I was in SF last weren't all f'd up by my own hand or by airplane x-rays, though the true cause is still a mystery to me and doesn't really ease the disappointment in losing all those scenes.

Anyhow, these move in somewhat chronological order: Topanga Canyon road just outside Santa Monica on the way to Malibu, to a ways up north. Check out those crazy green sneakers I had on and the motor-ing fuel (Mountain Dew—every road trip in those days was all about junk food. The first drive back from LA to Delaware consisted of 4 packs of peanut butter crackers and about 8 liters of Mountain Dew.) For a while I also added chain smoking to the mix of candy, soda, and punching the roof in time with the music, but in later years the smoking habit had gotten pretty foul. I still like to do it occasionally. There's also a photo of the Road Warrior Integra (the car I bought for $300 while living in Sacramento—even though it looked totally beat up, I totally loved that car) and the good luck charm I hung off the rear view mirror to keep me safe.

motor away pt. 1

The first photos are from an unknown (meaning I can't remember which) beach while driving up the 1 back whenever I first did it. It must have been 2003. I posted some other photos from this same trip here and there and I'm starting to archive the rest of the photos but it's taking forever to scan and work on the images since my computer takes about 30 seconds to 2 minutes to complete any action these days, especially when I'm working with big files such as these. The later ones were the middle hours of driving up the 1, when I was beginning to realize I couldn't stop every time I saw something I thought was completely life changing, but was still trying not to crash my car. I was torn between hauling ass on those lonely stretches of pavement and stopping every third of a mile. I guess I tried to compromise with both until it got too dark to shoot any more. It's kind of strange, looking at these photos because it causes a sort of reverse nostalgia for the photos I lost (or more accurately, fucked up) of Susan and I driving along the 1 last month. It's not quite "reverse nostalgia"; it's more that the order of my emotions toward these photos and the ones I screwed up are reversed—the older ones are making me miss and regret the would-be newer ones more. I guess it's probably for the best anyhow.

par avion

A couple photos I probably took either flying to or from LA. I always wondered why I didn't shoot more slides with the Yashica, but then again, I mostly cross-processed them, probably for the worse. I dig the ghostly atmosphere these shots have, though it was mostly by luck than by virtue of skill.

Speaking of which, I got back the slides I shot with the Pen-FT while I was in San Francisco in February, and almost all of them to a one are completely washed out to the point where the transparencies are pretty much totally transparent. I shot a couple test rolls of color negative up in Maine with the FT and found the camera's internal light meter (the whole reason I bought the FT instead of the Pen-F) was pretty close to accurate for being 30 or 40 years old. I know slide film needs to be close to spot on or better, but the degree to which this roll was washed out was something I've never seen before. Kind of a shame because it was basically mine and Susan's whole vacation, including a pretty amazing drive up the 1 to Point Reyes, and none of the photos survived. A big bummer, actually.

I've since been trying to figure out what happened. Below are a couple shots that squeaked by, but are still overexposed. At first I wondered if the airport x-rays had damaged the film or washed it out somehow, but I haven't read anything about this particular damage happening to anyone else. I went out this weekend to test the FT's internal meter versus my handheld Minolta Auto V (which I use for the Hasselblad) and still found the camera's accuracy to be pretty close, sometimes differing by a stop to a half-stop. I don't know if that's enough to give me the results I got. Then I was thinking something ridiculous because I was wearing sunglasses at the time I was shooting maybe I was setting the camera wrong because the scene looked darker with the glasses on? Yeah, it didn't make sense to me a minute later either. Guess I have to keep testing it, or maybe just scrap the idea of using slides with this camera since the meter is pretty accurate and previous rolls of color-negative film came out mostly fine. Also, the photos I took with the Seagull (also using the Minolta meter) came out very nice. Weird.

retrospect

Older, drunken times in "Bernal Flats," just across Cesar Chavez from my old apartment. Photo taken by my friend Ravi. It was his birthday.

SF bound

A couple old friends hanging out in front of Mission Records. Must be the summer of 2003. The girl is Sarah Sparks. I used to know her real name but all I remember now are her nicknames, like Sarita Sparks and Little Sarah. The guy is this dude Ryan, and I just recently learned his full name after he hit me up on Facebook. I remember having a lot of really fun, drunk times with this guy. Lots of memories that only pop in my head when the right Carrie Nations or Bitchin' song comes on unexpectedly for some reason. He won the 21-Bathroom contest [EDIT: shit man, Melissa reminded me it was the "21-Toilet Ride." I knew it didn't sound right...], where a bunch of people rode around the city and had a beer at every public bathroom in the city. I remember we rode in this Critical Mass together and all the PC people were getting mad at us because we were drinking beer along the way and getting drunk and smashing the cans on the street behind us. We all lived in Mission Records at one point, but I think they both might live in Georgia now.

I'm heading to San Francisco for a few days for a wedding. I haven't been back since visiting Susan in December 2006, before we started dating. I'm bringing along my Pen-FT and the Seagull and will hopefully have something to show for it (also bringing my Canon s90, but I'll only post digital stuff on here if it's really good, or really funny). I need to buy some film cleaner—part of the reason I've been so slow in posting more photos is because I hate cleaning the images of all the goddamn dust and shit over every frame. It's a pain, but I'll try to work through it.

get lost

Getting lost on the 1 from Los Angeles to San Francisco. I'd never driven it before, but decided kind of on a whim to do the drive after visiting a friend in LA and being beguiled by the sights on a short drive past Malibu. I've walked along the 1 before; I forget what it's called once it's past Sunset, but once I had this crappy bike and I was foolishly riding it in the pitch blackness of Sunset Drive from Gayley and Veteran toward the ocean, determined to make this fatalistic and ill-advised journey. I got a flat tire about halfway to the beach, and ended up half-walking, half-dragging the bike behind me. I don't know why I didn't just abandon the thing, but I eventually got to the 1 and saw the lights at Santa Monica Pier. I didn't know where else to go, so I started walking to the Pier, figuring at least there I would know where I was. All in all, I ended up walking about 12 miles along Sunset, the 1 and Santa Monica Boulevard back home.

I took these photos on my first trip up the 1. I'm pretty sure if I had the opportunity again I'd probably take just as long (9 hours) to do the drive as I did this time, since I was constantly stopping, taking pics, having a smoke, standing over the edges of cliffs overlooking the ocean, staring out into the sea, trying somehow to take all of this vastness in. There's a couple specific places I want to go back and shoot, but I don't know if that will ever happen. I took these photos with my Pen-EE and used a Minolta Autometer V to get the exposures. I had about three cameras on this trip and have a lot of photos to dig through. These were some that came first to mind. I wish I could go back...

Also, if anyone actually reads this, I've been a little absent lately in updating the pages. I've been increasingly overwhelmed by work, surrounded by books, magazines, articles and other stuff I need to read and not getting anywhere, watching hockey, working on Fanzine, working on a new fishing/cooking site with Ben, etc. Trying to pull it all together and hope to update a little more frequently than just once a week...