i love you but it drags me down

happy birthday.

Wish I Could Have Frozen Time

I finally got a new scanner (Canon 9000F, basically the same thing as my last scanner, but a little faster) and i've been working on getting some old and new photos archived. These were taken with the Seagull 205A on Long Beach Island, i guess about a year and a half ago—Fall 2009. I wish I hadn't cross processed them. More stuff coming, hopefully more regularly 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

kids of the black hole

santa monica beach 2001

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.

******

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.

cars

a couple of weird cars i saw in LA and happened to have my camera on me. i'm pretty sure i planned at one point to have this as a series of photos, but it still hasn't happened. i could resurrect it, but is it really worth it? i took these with the yashica t5, which, around the time they were still made, was one of the best and most affordable point-and-shoot cameras around. i can't remember where i got mine from, but it was in LA and i bought it for around $125. zeiss lens! waist-level view finder!

mission records part III

sarah sparks


haircut time. sarah and joey alone


double sarahs. sarah sparks and sarah sandberg


sarah sandberg's room


little sarah giving homemade tattoos to tom


ken williamson from philly stopped through


david dondero. i couldn't fit craig d in the frame. sorry craig.


the pine hill haints, this hillbilly/moonshine band from Alabama. They call it "Alabama Ghost Music." i have their record still and it's pretty good.




an adoring fan. i think i know who it is, but i need some confirmation.


TK: i've been digging through the negatives and found a few more band photos. i noticed there's a lot of bands i didn't shoot though, probably because i was too drunk or too lazy or too busy getting down to grab the camera from upstairs. i have a few more band shots for this series of posts, and then some clarion alley photos from 2002. i have a bunch of other photos from hanging out in the record store; i'll try to get most of them in.

xprocess

sam in LA


broken lock in Berkeley


wires in LA


cash money LA


venice beach


chasing birds in LA

No real backstory here; just a few cross-processed shots from LA and Berkeley. I shot these between 2001 (the LA shots) and 2003 (the Berkeley one) on a Yashica T4, the best point and shoot camera ever made. even though cross processing can be a little too easy of a cheap trick, some of these are among my favorite photos i've ever shot.