mission records part I

adam white and buzz


buzz will probably be mad at me for this one


melissa with the beers from across the street. these count as one beer each.




band room during quiet time


You remember Mission Records. It was the last all-ages show space in San Francisco and it closed in October of 2003. I lived there for almost two years, which was pretty much the end of Mission Records as it once was, or at least it was during the time when Mission Records was no longer Mission Records anymore, as owner Adam White would have said. We had shows there pretty much every weekend, and sold a few records during the week. Mostly Mission Records was a beacon in the neighborhood. At all and any hour you could walk in and see a friend hanging out listening to records and drinking 40oz. Miller High Lifes we'd buy from across the street. The record store basically kept that place in business.

The record store was located in the middle of the Mission, between 18th and 19th streets. This was the only area where the southside kids hung out, meaning La Emé, which makes sense seeing as how Mission Records used to be a Mexican Mafia bar in the 90s called El Siete de Oros. When Adam and others first moved into the space they found the bar dusty and cobwebbed, fully stocked with drinks still on the bar as the owners had just up and closed one day, leaving everything behind. They found bullets in the walls when they pulled out the drywall to put in soundproofing in the band room. They found handscales and baggies in the ceiling, and in the back corner of one upstairs room they found a square window with a rope and bucket hanging out of it to the alley below. They told me the place was haunted.

I wrote a piece on Mission Records and all of the rest of the hauntings and significance of the space for Maximum RocknRoll #258, November 2004. I don't think there's an online version of it anywhere, but I suppose if you really wanted to read it you could backorder an issue from them. I shot these photos mostly while living at the record store and they were all taken with my Nikon F4. I got a little crazy with the 15mm fisheye lens I had, which is kind of annoying to me years later, but you'll see as I add more photos later this week. For now these photos are set up shots to give a sense of place to something pretty much everyone I knew in SF had a connection.

blow out!

This is the big issue with the little Pen-EE camera: although it's incredibly easy to use, its fixed shutter speed will turn against you in really bright or low light situations, especially when you have film loaded that just won't work with a 1/60 exposure in a given situation. Take the first three photos, which I shot at mid-day on a beach. Even at f22, the 1/60 exposure with TMax400 gave me a negative back about as translucent as a piece of cardboard. I did some pretty extensive Photoshop work on those shots to salvage them from the land of massive overexposure, and what you see is what i got. Maybe I could have done a little better in the darkroom, seeing as how I'm still getting the grasp of burning and dodging digitally, but I think it's alright for what it is. 400 speed film is just too fast for a situation such as this, but when I have the camera in hand, i'd have to take what i could get and hope for the best. I usually try to keep 100 or 200ISO loaded in it now.

the last photo was taken under similar circumstances, probably TMax 400 as well, but I somehow managed to burn this one in better, so the image looks somewhat respectable. some of the open shade probably helped. this one was taken in 2001 at Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica. When i went to LA for the first time in 1999 I stayed at the Youth Hostel there. I met this Navy guy who turned out to be a complete racist asshole who fetishised silly Japanese girls. I tried to crash his car a couple times by running a bunch of red lights. I also met some cool dudes at the hostel from Brazil and Japan. That was a long time ago. This shot is just an old couple and some drunk on a bench.

The first three photos are from 2003 i think and are of some good old friends of mine who I never get to see anymore. Sometimes i wonder if i'll ever see them again. One lives in LA still (I think) while the other lives in Beijing. We drove up north past Malibu on the 1 to this beach with tide pools. I remember it was very beautiful, but we didn't get in the water. We just hung out on the beach and smoked cigarettes and laid around in the sun slowly soaking in life before we went back to Silverlake or wherever it was i was staying. I wish i had taken better pictures.

angel island 2004

we went to angel island for buzz's birthday. me, melissa, buzz, janelle, and richie, the guy who drew the cover for Green Day's "Dookie" record. we ran around the island at night, climbed its highest points, watched the city run silently across the water beyond us, saw the lights of Tiburon sparkle in the black night, watched oil tankers and other massive ships pass across our panoramic view so slow and huge it felt fake. melissa and i were the only ones who didn't bring a tent, so we got drunk and slept under the stars on top of this abandoned Army bunker. I had weird dreams on top of that thing that i still remember (partially).

I shot these with the Seagull 205A, and just got the film developed today. pretty impressive for a little Chinese-made rangefinder, but I'm still having issues with some light leaks and the film not advancing correctly. i'm having the same thing with the first roll i shot with the Pen-FT. maybe i'm not loading the film in the right way or something... I still have to figure that out. The Pen-FT works very well; i'll be posting pics of that soon from Portland and Peaks Island, Maine. I think the light sensors are a little off, but the images may be a little blown out due to the whole half-frame thing and I'll have to correct the exposures in Photoshop. I also recently developed some other film from 2004-2005 of this band in Dolores Park, and another roll from the Tampa Am contest back in 2000, but didn't find much of use. Oh well. As a better man than me once said, sometimes you get the fish, sometimes the fish get you.

Also, my cousin started his own photo blog. He's just getting rolling, but i expect to see some really cool stuff from him i've never seen before on it. he works a lot with natural light, long exposures, and unconventional perspectives. it's a good start so far. check it out at Purple Shade of Snow.

[edit: I realized I did this in 2004 not 2005 as I previously wrote.]

the road home and mission records

on the way back from LA










mission records




the last two photos I took with the great olympus pen-EE half-frame camera. it has a fixed shutter speed (1/60) and a fixed focal length. The fixed shutter speed is pretty cool and makes it easy to use, but is obviously problematic in low light/bright light areas. it also has this light cell thing around the lens that set the aperture automatically for ISOs 200 and below. since the camera is about 40 years old (or maybe more) the light cells aren't that accurate anymore, but still not too far off. there was only one naked light in my shithole room in Mission Records, so that's all I had to use for these shots. I've never seen or printed these before I scanned them in. The last one is the only photo I have of Simon, Casey, and me together, and maybe the only photo ever.

I'm not really sure what camera I used for the other photos. I'm guessing it was the Yashica T5 since they're just some snapshots I took while driving home and gasing up on the I-5 back from LA.

"You don't eat the fish out of there, do you?"

polaroid shot by susan


bluefish

Finally posted the article on the Brooklyn Fishing Derby on FANZINE. It's a long piece, but a good read. Ever wonder what you can catch out of the East River, aside from arsenic poisoning? Dark days and hobo fishing at its most amateur, as well as the controversial new saltwater fishing license issue. Read it here.

the buff

anti-hero


arturo


porkchop


ed


paint mixes


keeping it safe and clean


atari and tens


ed buffing it out


HEART101


15th and mission


valencia and 16th


BS @ valencia street


boozer @ valencia street

When I was living in SF I did this project for the now defunct Web magazine WORK, which was a graphic design site done by Tony aka KEM from Philadelphia. I rode around the city with a few Public Works guys who just drive around and buff graffiti all day. It was part of an ongoing project I was doing for journalism school at the time, my thesis actually on the city's war on graffiti. These guys Arturo, Ed, and Porkchop were all kind of mellow, though Arturo was ostensibly the "boss" so he was kind of a dick to everyone. Ed and the guy who called himself Porkchop were both pretty cool though. There was another story these photos were supposed to go with, but the piece ran in the Bay Guardian without any images. I really can't recall how the piece in WORK Magazine looked, the site is no longer up and I didn't archive it myself. There were some quotes and stuff that went along with the pics, of which most are from my old neighborhood in the Mission. It makes me a little nostalgic to see those static, empty photos from Van Ness and Valencia and Mission Street. I'm going back in February for a wedding and to see how it all has changed. Oh yeah, I shot these on my prized Nikon F4, all with the 35-70 2.8. Great classic camera. (EDIT: I just realized I actually shot the last two photos with a Seagull 205A, a new-old stock find from China that Sam bought for me from the Lomography site years ago. Another great camera.)

Unfortunately for me I essentially pawned it to my dad when I was really broke, and still owe him a little money to get it back. It was the workhorse of the Nikon F camera series, all metal body, shutter rated to over 500,000 exposures or something; just a solid, reliable piece of equipment. They don't make shit like that anymore, as the old timers like to say. Mine was from 1989 I think. I bought it from Al at Newark Camera for $800 in mint condition back in 1999 and I still think it was a great deal. What was weird about that was the same day I bought my F4 from Newark Camera, somebody stole one from their store and stole another one from Cameras Etc. up the street. How the hell did that happen?

Anyhow, buy your stuff from Al if you're still in Delaware. He'll help you out. He sold my grandfather the Hasselblad 500c (1968) that I use now. Every time I go back there Al asks me how the camera is doing.

Also, my apologies for the delay in updates. I've been working on this ridiculously long piece for FANZINE on the Brooklyn Fishing Derby. Right now it's clocking in at 13,000 words and I feel like I rushed the last couple scenes in an effort to keep it from getting too long. I may need to make some adjustments in there. I'll post a link when the piece goes up this week/weekend.

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.