Montreal in Black and White

So back when I was 19 (a while ago) I thought I was going to get a degree in photography, and started taking classes to get the degree. Unfortunately I didn't stick with that goal and only ended taking a lot of history, theory, and mid-level black and white classes. This was also Before the advent of digital slr's that were affordable. I used to spend 8 or 9 hours a day on weekends in the darkroom. This was about how long it would take to get a handful of prints done, If I was lucky. I wasn't slow or anything, shit just takes a long time. Anyhow now I've got memory cards instead of film, and photoshop instead of fotoflo, and its so easy to make black and whites, so here!:



































Check the site for all the pictures from the day and night. Also this blog tends to clip off the edges of pictures sometimes. If you want to look at the whole thing, click on the picture it'll take you to flickr. And have a nice day!

NYC night/day 4?

Day/Night 3


I'm pretty much going to skip most of day 3 due to its uneventful nature. Everyone was really tired from the night before, so we all sat around Juan's apartment in the air conditioning for most of the day. That night Clayton took off for Brooklyn. There was a bbq and a party at Studio B. I opted to stay in Manhattan with Heathcliff and check out Misshapes later.

This is Heathcliff


He's pretty hilarious. We walked around downtown forever looking for a phone charger at 11pm when all the stores were closed. I finally convinced him it was a lost cause after a while. Then we went back and watched 2 episodes of the Sopranos. Finally we ended up leaving Juan's apartment at around 1am.


door that looks like a ship's door

Misshapes is one of the "coolest" parties in New York right now. Heathcliff got us in for free and the doorman told me in so many words that there was no way I could take pictures in the place without prior consent...bummer. Especially since the people inside there are literally photo-gold. There were so many straightup outrageous outfits in that place. It was pretty awesome. We watched a 3-piece girl band for a while. I forget their name. They had no stage presence whatsoever and were really boring. After they finished playing I tried to convince the doorguy to let me take pictures again...no dice. Normally I'd pretend like I didn't even hear him tell me not to take pictures, but there were these huge security guards walking around and I didn't think it was worth having my memory card wrestled away from me. It was just so depressing. There was even a girl with a bunch of strange adornments rollerblade-dancing on stage. Oh well. We met up with Heathcliff's two friends and went to a bar called black and white.

Day4

I walked around Brooklyn. Mostly Williamsburg. Clayton saw some people playing kickball in the park and wanted to join in. I wasn't feeling like getting muddy at the time so I just walked around. Here are some pictures:



Uniqlo ad






Doors


"Public park" by the water


creepy mannequin kids






This was a bar down by the water. It had a coffin outside.






This is outside some artist commune thingy. I saw "beer" and went in and had one. It was hot out.




people down by the water.


There were bands playing at this little festival by the water. They were trying to get people to petition to rezone the area for residential.








I heard a Ruckus in a cafe on Bedford and walked in to see this guy performing his last song.








Rumor has it a guy lives in this purple van


nudy table in a bar I was at earlier in the day


America's Next Top Model









More on the way....

NYC Day 2/ Night Out 2

I woke up the next day with a hangover of immaculate proportions. I seriously hadn’t felt this bad in years, and the kicker is I wasn’t even drunk the night before… I think it was just the mixture of shitty beers we’d been drinking all night. Clayton felt pretty much the same way. I shuddered and rolled around in a ball for about 30 minutes before willing myself out of bed and into the shower, which actually helped a little.

I started walking to Central park, which was my sightseeing goal for the day. On the way there I stopped and checked out a photography exhibit at the public library.

It was mostly street photography from the late 70’s to early 80’s. Really cool stuff. By the time I got to Central Park, the hangover started to overpower me, and I was relegated to seated rest for a while. I found a nice patch of grass and chilled out.

Today wasn’t much for photos but I got some shots of a squirrel and a bird while I was sitting there in the park:

About 20 minutes later, it started raining. Not profusely, but enough to make me hide my expensive camera. I think I’m psychic I was at a coffee shop writing and I fell almost asleep for a second. I started to feel that I should lift up my head because the cops were going to tap me and make me get up and leave or something like that. I lifted my head up and there were 4 cops questioning someone.

I also cut through an average looking shopping mall and saw a Japanese guy umm..kissing this statue:


Then I just kind of hung out and watched people take pictures with it:







Here's his girl:


This guy was cool


gun shirt


streets

Nightout 2-Click Here For Pictures

Clayton was downtown at a free Animal Collective show. I went home to Juan’s and changed clothes and took a shower. The plan was to meet up at the Annex for the 10-11 open bar. The night at Annex is called “Ruff Club” and features a really good dj named Spencer Product that I’ve seen in Chicago. Me and Juan took the bus down to the lower eastside where the club was at. It was 10:10 but the doorman told us they weren’t open yet so we went and ate more pizza. We went back to the club and met up with Clayton and his interesting looking friends from Brooklyn. Clayton had to shoot Lauren Flax’s party called “White Lightning” at a place called Home Sweet Home later. The Annex seemed like it had potential but was pretty dead for a while. Juan and Clayton left for spot number two and I decided to stick around and see what happened. I’d heard a lot about this party and figured it would get moving eventually.

It took a while, but 2 hours later a two-piece performed on the stage, I can’t remember their name. An hour later the place was packed and I was having fun again.

I met up with Clayton at Home Sweet Home and talked music stuff with a British person. We met up with Juan a bit after that and went to an after hours spot. The gimmick of being in a bar at 5 in the morning wore off shortly though. The women’s bathroom was flooding toilet water into the room we were chilling in, so we got going after a while.

NYC: 1st Night Out

I Got home after a long day of walking around and took the best shower I’ve ever had. I called Tone, who is another photographer that lives out here. You can see his stuff HERE. Tone has a car, and was nice enough to offer us a ride to the meat-packing district where some of the clubs were. We went with him to a place called A.P.T. It was a cool place. The basement was really dark and had subwoofers on the floor under the tables. There was a guy dj’ing who was also rhyming into an old vocoder at the same time. Tone was hired to shoot the night at this place but it was pretty dead, so he just came with us to Hiro.

At Hiro Clayton told the doorman that we were friends with Nicky Digital (another photographer) and we were able to get in past a huge line. Hiro is a pretty cool place. It’s all Japanese themed and that carries over into the beer selection: kirin, Sapporo, etc. Unfortunately they charge Japanese prices for beer too. At $7 a bottle I was ready to drink my own saliva and be happy, but the bartender took pity on me and gave me a free beer. The Ruff Kids were dj’ing and apparently we’d just missed a performance by “young love”. Bronques from lastnightsparty was there along with Nicky Digital. With the addition of me, Tone, and Clayton that made 5 photo-blog website photographers in one building. Jeez. Tone left shortly after because he was having camera problems, which is too bad because he’s a super-nice guy and I would have enjoyed hanging out with him a little bit more.

I ran into Danny Masterson who actually remembered me from Chicago and gave me a surprisingly warm reception. Danny’s a real cool guy. We talked for a while and He told me to hit up a party he was going to be at the next night, but I never made it there. We met up with Juan (our temporary roommate) and hopped in a cab to go to a place called Lit.

Lit was pretty cool. Its kind of like a less rowdy version of the Exit, where the patrons are more hipsterish and less metal/industrial/punk. There were a lot of interesting people in there. I wouldn’t have minded taking some pictures, but Clayton was already snapping away and Nicky was there too, so I just watched people dance and drank a couple beers.

We bounced from there at about 4ish and walked down the street to get a slice of pizza. This is another reason New York is cool: you can get a fresh slice of pizza at 4 in the morning. The place we went to was actually busy. I took my first nyc subway ride to grand central station, and we walked home and crashed….

New York Sweaty

Today I walked around: Chinatown, Soho, Little Italy, the Lower East Side, and who knows where else. I liberally estimated that if human beings typically walk at a pace of 1mph (and I walk kinda fast) I probably walked about 7 miles or so today.

We're (me and Clayton) are staying in Manhattan. Its called "Murray Hill" but I misheard our host Juan last night and thought he said "Murder Hill" which gave me reason to contemplate my outdoor nightlife activities for a second. Speaking of Juan, he's an awesome guy for letting us stay here. His place is super clean, he's got a huge tv with nintendo wii, and he's generally just being a really nice guy. That's pretty much the best you can hope for while on the road imo.

So yeah, today:
I started out walking with Clayton and after a while I realized that there's not enough room on one street for two photographers. We literally kept pointing out the same shots. Haha. I just let him do his thing because I knew we'd be splitting up later anyways. He went to a meeting and I went the opposite direction to see what else was going on. It was really hot today. I actually got a sunburn on the back of my neck. I basically walked around and if I saw an interesting looking street I'd head down it. Pretty un-scientific.

Also, I went to a real cool park after a while to sit and rest for a couple minutes. I wanna say it was called Tompkins Square Park. There's all kinds of stuff going on that I found amusing. It was like a real-life depiction of scenes from NYC movies. There were people playing chess on a couple tables, people arguing over stacks of books at another and so on.... I heard a lot of screaming matches while I was there. Half the park seemed like some kind of outdoor mental-institution. The other half was nice and shady with a dogpark, grass areas for chillin, even a little skatepark.

Anyways check out some pictures:

This is the UN building. Its a couple blocks from where we're staying




Guys Playing some dominos






This is a cool bandana I bought for $2 on St. Marks st. today






Lots of dogs lady


Ok this is Billy's antiques and props. It was pretty rad inside there. I think they had that zoltar machine from the movie Big w/ Tom Hanks that turned him into a little kid. Here's some pics from the inside:
















There's no alleys here. These little basement entrances are everywhere and most of them seem to be open all the time.




The Real Ice Cream Man




Goin to Hiro and Apt tonight for some drinks and meetups and stuff. Talk to you later!

N.Y.C. and Canada

Right now I'm across the street from my house waiting on a cheeseburger, drinking a Newcastle and half-eavesdropping on tales of lesbian romance gone awry. I should be saving money for the trip out East I'm about to embark upon tomorrow morning, but my laptop is tied up in huge file-transfers and I'm starting to get queasy from not eating all day and slugging coffee, so across the street seemed like a good option regardless of price. I also have to go to Buddha lounge in a little while to see Heather and Major Taylor dj. They're both great dj's but I've always enjoyed Major Taylor's style. I jokingly told Heather a few times this past week to "pay attention" when he's doing his ting, cause I think any dj could learn a thing or two from him.

I just came from Borders. Originally I went there to check if URB magazine used any of my pictures this month. The new issue wasn't out yet. I thought about buying some other magazine to keep me busy during the roadtrip doldrums. I flipped through a Fader and some photo magazines, and came to the realization that I seldom read magazine, but usually to flip through them merely for the purpose of examining the pictures. I don't plan on being bored very often anyways. A copy of Hell's Angels by Hunter S. Thompson caught me ete in the literature section. I always meant to pick it up. Rum Diaries was real good. I'm currently 200 pages into Thunderstruck by Erik Larson, but its taken me two months to get that far, so needless to say it moves pretty slow at times. I looked through a few travel guides to Canada and realized you didn't need a passport for entry until January of 2008. Had I been aware of this little factoid, I would have saved the 40 minutes I spent looking for my passport today. I bought Hell's angels and some cheap headphones and left the store.

I'm really excited about the trip. I've somehow managed to avoid NYC all this time, and now Ill finally be there as of tomorrow night. I'm already starting to feel like I'm in travel mode. It feels like when I first touched down in Tokyo, Japan for my 9 month stint. The moment I realized I was on the other side of the world, my mind just opened up wide, ready to let in new things and people. At the back of my mind is the fear that I'll really like New York...maybe even better than Chicago... Its a blasphemous thought. I love this city and out of anywhere I've ever travelled, no other place can even begin to compare to it. I just feel like I'm leaving a small town en route to a place so big its almost intimidating. But I'm excited nonetheless. I also hate to leave behind my girlfriend right now. To say I'm picky is a real understatement. I haven't tried to be in a serious relationship for almost 2 years now. But I found somebody that rocks more than I could have imagined, and now I gotta abandon her at a tough time for at least a week or two. I'm sorry, but that's just timing. Your always in my thoughts, and I'm already looking forward to telling you about everything when I get back.

I'm going to try and update this new blog as much as I can throughout the trip. Just depends on whether I have computer access. Stay tuned!!