Category: ultraphotographic

Magazine Whore

Finally, an explanation for the cryptic, snarky e-mails I’ve been getting from random people I know the last couple of days. I discovered that a personal ad of mine that’s been floating around Nerve for a while was inexplicably picked to be a featured ad in this week’s Time Out New York. Guess who forgot all about the little proviso warning that this might happen without warning? I’m no stranger to trolling the Internet personals in hopes of getting lucky, but somehow having this show up in print feels slightly more humiliating. Besides, I can only assume it’s not likely to produce any better results than anything else ever has.

Piss Off, Snobby London!

All week in London, I had to defend the North. Londoners act like the entire northern part of the country is one giant inbred cousin, inexplicable and dull, and slightly embarrassing. You know what, though? I loved my trip up there, and not just for the spectacular company. I’m an urban snob, but I’m not immune to the charms of small, quiet towns. In fact, the older I get the more I think they’ve got it going on. (Assuming, of course, that one has the natural ability to create fun wherever one goes.) Lancashire overall was really quite beautiful, even in the rain, and Lancaster itself was a great little town, pedestrian-friendly medieval-style little burg with just enough modern touches to keep it from feeling too remote. Blackpool is sweet and trashy, just like I wanted it to be. Morecambe is a faded flower, still keeping itself moving along, even though the crowds have moved on. I had no trouble seeing why Paul stays up that way, despite the occasional drawbacks.

Sure, small towns can have plenty of small minds, but cities don’t automatically shield you from those. Small towns can offer the luxury of being able to catch your breath and determine your own pace. If your satisfaction only comes from novelty or consumption (of stuff, of stimuli), then big cities are te way to go. If you can make that move toward producing a life instead of consuming one — a goal I like to think I keep closing in on as I get older — then why not do it with a little elbow room and a little bit less strain on your bank account?

Alpha Male

If you know me, than you probably know that I’m a big fan of science fiction. Why hide my spots, right? I make an effort, though, not to impose my enthusiasm on those who don’t share it. It just invites snickering and rolling of the eyes.

Jonathan knows what I mean. He knows to avoid the indifference of some friends, and share the enthusiasm for others.

When we first met at this past Summer’s Blogmeet it came up in conversation that I’d been totally taken with my rediscovery of Space: 1999, a show whose charms he also understood. He told me about his best friend Kit, a sci-fi enthusiast who’d built made replicas of the show’s sets and costumes, which were — and you should see them for yourself — outstanding, at least before the show’s American backers called for some unfortunate budget cuts. Since I was clearly a fan and not just a curiosity-seeker, he promised me that I’d get to see Kit’s handiwork if I ever came to London.

Sunday, when I met Kit (who’s just a sweet, handsome gem of a fellow), I was blown away. I was also encouraged to indulge my fandom. May I now present then, my adventures in the Alpha Room:

Quick Notes

A few quick items before I forget:

  • I’ve had my fill of squeezing into single beds for the time being. For the rest of the trip, I’m going to remind myself that I’m on vacation and my comfort and convenience are important, too.
  • This is the fightin’est town I’ve seen in a while. I’ve never seen so many black eyes on random people in my life. I suspect it may have a lot to do with the power-drinking that goes on before the pubs close so barbarically early.
  • Blackpool is pretty magnificent, even when mostly closed for the season. It has all the creepy, trashy, sweet charms of Coney Island or the run-down parts of the Jersey Shore. I say this without irony: I’m a total fan of midways and carnivals and skee-ball and low-brow amusement fun.
  • The American Midwest may be pretty flat, vast, and featureless, but for sheer lack of visual stimulus, it ain’t got nothing on England’s Midlands.
  • Are we at war or something? There was some big protest going on in London, and all these earnest-looking trendy kids were wearing “Stop the War’ stickers in the Tube. Shouldn’t they have been out doing their patriotic duty and shopping?
  • There are more cute boys here than you can shake a stick at, but there’s a sad lack of the hispter-nerd aesthetic I enjoy so much at home.
  • It’s the little difference that matter, like going to buy a sandwich at the train station and having to choose between ham/pickle/onion and bacon/mayo/prawn.
  • There will be lots of photographic evidence when I get back.

Days Gone By in NYC

Back in the summer of 1989, my dad gave me his old Pentax K-1000 and a few pointers, and I set out to try and capture a bit of my New York City. I took hundreds of pictures, and there would be no way to capture so many views around the city without getting a lot of the Twin Towers in there. So here are a bunch of views that no one will ever experience again:

Looking down at the World Financial Center from the rooftop observation deck of Tower 2. The waterfront park below was still being built at this point.

Looking down at Battery Park and the mouth of the Battery Tunnel from the rooftop observation deck. This is the southern tip of Manhattan.

Looking up from underneath a light pole in the plaza beneath the WTC. From that angle, it’s almost impossible to really appreciate the scale of the two towers.

Looking northwest at the transmitter tower (the main transmitter array is out of the frame), west midtown, the Hudson River, and New Jersey.

View of one of my favorite old office buildings from inside the marble-lined lobby of Tower 2.

A Brief Respite

Let’s take a quick break from all this stress and appreciate a few things. First, you absolutely must see this beautiful record of WTC views taken by a friend from her bedroom window. Second, and this is really a matter of making believe that nothing is wrong at all, is something pretty:

To keep things in perspective, though:

I’m speechless

This is one of the scariest views of the collapse I’ve seen yet

I’m pretty sure I know who the guy in the bandana is

Views from Brooklyn Heights

I had to get out of the house today, get away from the TV and see something with my own eyes again. I took my bike down to Brooklyn Heights so I could see the view from the Promenade that faces lower Manhattan, just south of the Brooklyn Bridge. I also wanted to stop in on my friends Jason and Holly, since Holly, a teacher at a high school right by the World Trade Center, was settling down from an all-day ordeal of getting 20 students and herself home from ground zero.

All the views from across the East River were odd, but not horrific, since all the damage was west, along the Hudson River. You could see smoke but no wreckage. And the skyline was wrong. The dominant feature that was always taken for granted, sometimes appreciated, was just plain gone. People were out checking the scene, and it was odd mix: some people were enjoying a sunny day, some were taking tourist photos just as if the buildings were still there, and here and there people just sat crying or sitting silently.

The view from the water by the landing of the Brooklyn Bridge

Jason, Holly, and I watched the news for a while, but we had to get away for a while. We immersed ourselves at the movies for a spell, then returned to the Promenade for sunset.

It’s CRAZY to see those large black spots in the skyline view. Everything ought to be lit up like Christmas, with the Towers topping it all off. The darkness is VERY eerie.

Life is returning to normal in some ways. I go back to work tomorrow, and the restaurants and streets of Brooklyn were full of people, even if they were a little subdued. I’m very curious to see how the next few days go. People here have an incredible ability to adapt and reassert their daily lives. I wonder how long it will take for daily life to conform to this new set of circumstances.

More Summertime Thrills

This weekend was a roller-coaster ride. Basically lots of fun and good music and beautiful downtown hipsters and entertaining guests and thought-provoking art and stuff. More of a good thing at P.S. 1, an unbelievable final show of Kiki & Herb, glam-rock brilliance at the Hedwig movie, bumping into friends everywhere I went, and more cute guys than you could shake your stick at. Great, right? A hot time in the old town, right? So what’s had me in such a funk during all the down time, what’s had me furrowing my brow the moment I’m left on my own to catch my breath? Well, it’s been the nature of a lot of the good stuff, frankly. Namely, being reminded of what I lack — someone local to make me feel and warm and fuzzy inside, someone to play my better half when I go out and do all this kinda stuff, someone to bust a groove with in a richer way than “just friends” can offer.

At P.S. 1, for instance, there were dozens and dozens of what I would consider my target demographic: the exact type of tiny, scruffy, clever-looking hipster types that I prefer. Thing is, I didn’t seem to turn any heads, especially not in the midst of such a comely crowd. There was also a wonderful visit from someone pretty swell who reminded me of something I took for granted back when I had my golden opportunity.

So I want a boyfriend. Big deal. Could I have anything more cliché to whine about? I tell ya, though, I’m actually pretty grateful I can narrow down my demons to just this for the time being. It’s refreshing to feel like the issues troubling me most these days are the ones that they write pop songs about, because it’s more fun to wallow that way.

Bleah. Anyway, here are some scenes from the good moments…

We’ll Call Him Shawn

Freshly shornIt’s amazing what a haircut can do to help morale. I think it’s because I cut my own hair (and have ever since I was fifteen — I’m solely responsible for all those asymmetric skater styles I wore in high school and college), and I usually end up doing on the spur of the moment when I feel the need for some kind of change that I can control. Or maybe it’s the feeling of letting go of excess weight. Or just the novelty of looking different after feeling a bit of a rut come on. Any way you look at it, I’m all easy-to-groom again and ready for the wash-and-go pace of my trip abroad.

Oh yeah, someone I chat with a lot pointed out to me that I haven’t even mentioned here that I’m leaving Thursday for a free week-long trip to Sorrento, Italy. [Insert warning of a week without updates here.] I’m helping a friend look after a group of her customers (among many other things, her company sells tour packages) in exchange for a week of free travel, food, and lodging in southern Italy. This is the same way I got to go to China and through the Panama Canal. It’s a sweet deal, and playing shepherd to a busload of tourists is a small price to pay for the change of pace.

But anyway, I shouldn’t suggest that I needed a haircut because I’ve been feeling rotten or anything. stressed yes, with sporadic mopiness, but not rotten. Amidst the frantic crush to get work and errands done before I leave for Italy, I had a fantastic weekend entertaining P.J. and Chris, who stopped by for a quick trip filled with record shopping, eating in bamboo-filled restaurants, and general carousing.

Me, my old hair, and P.J.

There were some moments of weird social dynamics to the whole situation. I mean, we all got along swimmingly, but P.J. and Chris are old friends who haven’t seen each other in a while, and who came to visit me after they had already spent a couple of days together in Philadelphia. Chris looks bad-ass on the subwayTo some extent, that left me a bit of an outsider to chunks of conversation they were having. Besides, they were in tune to the goings-on in all the record stores we visited in a way that I haven’t been in a few years, since moving from Boston back to New York threw off my connection to any flavor of musical scene. On top of that, I know them independently, through correspondence and phone calls and whatnot, so I also had to adjust to meeting each of them face-to-face for the first time. It’s an adjustment I’ve had to make many times when meeting on-line pals for the first time, but the extra layer of catching up they had to do threw me for a little while. I got over it, they got over it, we got used to knowing each other as meatspace pals instead of flirty online abstractions.

Them boys is fun, though, and we laughed a lot, looked at a lot of cute boys, bought a lot of records (well, all I got were a few zines and a Chicks on Speed EP of B-52’s covers), and goofed around.