The Right Column

My latest novel in production is called The Antique Snow Globe

other newer titles Blizzard Baby

Headful of Snakes

If you've never seen the Bay to Breakers Race and bachanallia parade, it really is quite a sight. I'm not inclined to all day drinking and public nudity when people have babies in strollers (and act like it's all normal, I suppose it is in San Francisco). And then, upon examining the copius photos I notice a fellow sporting it fully in gear. The guys got a big smile on his face. He's got the number on his entrance card wrapped around his hat so you can easily find out who he is (assuming he didn't just swap cards with someone). In any case oh well. That's him. Do I judge him? I didn't know I was taking his picture and I wouldn't have snapped the shot if I knew he was sporting it. I was photoing a guy on roller blades who sasheyed through the revelers walking.

Mostly it was kids (under 25) who were drinking and dancing and proceeding to have fun. That was the cause. A social event. Bring the out there guys with wearing their horns out on the street with gals who they'd like to meet. And most pepole were fully clothed where it matters to be clothed in the traditional sense. The guy fully in gear was an anomally. Mostly if anyone was sans cloth (down there) they weren't anyone who could make a living at a strip club.

I heard from other people the next morning (at the touristy area by the wharf) that the parade this year was far tamer than in years past. OK. I didn't know about this parade before two weeks ago and didn't look up descriptions of it on the Internet to find out. I figured that it was part of the mix when I planed by pilmgrimage to the High Sierra to be this week. There is only so much time that anyone can spend alone out doors in the mountains. And so a trip like this must end with a day or two to be in the city. One of my favorite SF places is the beach out at the Cliff House. Seems the most genuine kind of crowd, the same kind of kids that would go down to my favorite New England beach would go there. A fitting place for a rock-star to die of an overdose (as fitting as it could be). SF has a lot of fitting places. It is def not a lot like Boston though I suppose some would see similarities. There is never a time in Boston when it is OK to walk around in public naked. No one is going to go sans-down-there fully in gear at the Patty's Day parade. No one is going to show up in Hopkinton on Marathon day dressed as a unicorn with a 1/4 keg strapped to his back. If you take your clothes off on a public street in Massachusetts you get a trip to the police statition and then the observation ward.

And they will treat you kindly. You'll be under observation. A curiosity?

In SF there was public drinking on the street everywhere I looked. I'm not a moralist to say that people in the young throws of life shouldn't have fun sometimes. But you see it as a constant happening on the Barbary Coast. Never ending revelry. bottle of wine on the street on a saturday night. A 'cafe' doesn't open until 5PM. Why is it called a cafe? Do they serve crousaints? It's a whiskey bar, of course. And all the people who go there are going to drink it up. Burgers and shots. Burgers and shots. That's SF in some sense.

And then there are tourists. All over the place. Invading. People with a really really lot of money on expensive land that used to be part of a military base. People who live on the street. Alledged that folks smoke rock right out on the street. F-d up and I didn't go to that part of town except to drive through there as I was leaving.

I remember trying to understand things out there, the people you see, the folks who just mill around. There is a constant shake down going on. It seems that some of the people who were out and hanging around who were 'street' could just have easily been guys paid to watch and blend in. I was worned by a dude in Santa Cruz how violent the street can be. 'Violent' was the last word he said to me and I took the warning. Don't insert your self, even as an interested day-tripper, into some of the drug-addled cultures that you will find out there on the California (or any) street. You have to be a passer through, an obvious anomaly, not a person who is working for anyone but yourself. I let people know that I'm a weirdo-photoer by making a point of being in-your-face with my quest for the photographically stunning and unusual. When I see folks who look like they are working, guys leaning on harleys, guys at a street corner with a cell phone, guys working a part of the block, entourage of hooded guys with pit-bulls, when I see any of that I'm not taking pictures. And I've seen some fairly amusing behaviors over the years.

I am not a spy, don't want to be a spy, not a rat, don't want to be a rat. If you are a murderer chances are you aren't trying to murder anyone like me. Everyone who has that violent view of the world knows that there is a mindset for folks like me and we can walk and see what is going on and try and free the stuck from the gue of their situation. You can read people's contenance. The way that they put their eyes, or don't put their eyes, on you. Maybe you can even read their emotions through the chemicals that they emmitt in their sweat. You walk through the valley of the shadow of death and you find no evil. Those guys are all trapped into that life and just your pressence gives them hope. Nothing ulterior but to be seeing the butterfly break out of its cacoon and fly free off towards the mountain passes and highland intervales. All of this is, of course, allegory. And this is a spontaneous rant.

And if someone is so down and destroyed, like bear loose in the city, ready to eat other people's brains, if you remain aware you can sight them before they get close to you. You can smell them with your silence. Did you properly store the food that you are carrying? In the city those kinds of bears do exist. And SF seems like a place where there is a lot predation going on. So beware there. Keep your wits about you.

The same kind of stuff can and does also happen, of course, in New England. It is wise to know where to stop and poke around with a camera. There are many spots that one ought to avoid. Shooting shots of bikers on their American made choppers outside of a roadside bar is probably not a good idea. I wouldn't go walking through the allyways and photoing people huddled together with their trench coats forming a wall. Some of those mean looking guys who lean on the buildings and scope out everyone who walks by, they might not like getting their picture snapped. And, of course, anyone who is in law enforcement looks at that kind of thing as a breech of security. So ask yourself: what is more important? Your right to take a news photo or an officers right tofeel that someone isn't gathering information on him that might harm him?

In any case there is so much to take picture of that one ought not fret for the few places where it doesn't make sense. Also, one can not just pull over on the highway whereever one wants to to take photos. At one point last week I noticed a flower that I had not seen anywhere else (I notice these kinds of things when I am driving). And so I looped back around and found a safe place to pull off. Next thing I'm up where the flowers are. It's a hillside that hangs above the road. the road was cut down in it. The flowers are everywhere here. They are yellow and I'm don't know what they are called. Look like a butter and eggs relative. But I'm not an expert. The flowers were on bushes about 3 feet tall and around.

The Archiology of an Automobile Accident

As I headed back to my car I realized that there had been a horrible accident just in this spot. There was all kinds of fragments from an automobile, serpintine belt, plastic from the lamps which must have shattered in the crash, chrome trim. And a country-and-western cassette. My quess is some kind of collision. I guess I could search the web with the highway number to try and find out if there is news on this spot. I snapped a couple photos of the debree thinking it curious. It dawned on me quickly what this debress field indicated.

As promised elsewhere: pictures to come.

I got nothing more

May 20, 2011

Lost in
Boston
   

CamPics2007/08_21_2007/495canon/img_9565.jpg

Here's a quote from media-bashed Lars van Thier: "In the slang we use in Denmark -- which is not funny, but stupid -- a German is called a Nazi. So I was not a Jew but a Nazi, not meaning I was a Nazi, but meaning I was a German." (from Der Speigal). I guess someone could be that naive. Seems far fetched that an International filmmaker could be such a rube that he wouldn't know the extreame negative self-destruction it is to associate oneself as a Nazi. That is career ending stuff in some cities. Not cool, Lars. Seems like a calculated attempt at publicity mongering. Or were you so drunk and drugged up by hanging around with glitteratti that you got caught up. Seems very low indeed to imgine that German is equivalent to Nazi (which it never was). The first victims of the Nazi's were Germans. Or are we really supposed to believe that a whole country (Danemark) is so racist that German is equivalent to Nazi? You must really be stupid. I'm not even sure if you aren't just Randy Quaide playing some far fetched roll as an inept film producer from Denmark. I Was Lars the Nazi Dane staring Randy Quaid as Lars, the inept film producer.

In these modern times are people really that inept and stupid? Are you going to see Lars's film now?

 

 What do you fill in your secret room?
  Colored paper? Woven placemats? A statue of gold?
    Make that page lighter.
     Bring that lamp lower.
   Set the canvas ablaze with a torch.
      In your secret room?
        Masacure on a canvas?
    statues made of wax that you've melted?
       Tin plated with gold and sold?
     In your secret room?




Epics of the waterfront
  between the bar and the car
It's later. The drunk awakens. The sea is calm
  Storm clouds open up all at once
    with sudden lightening.
  He huddles within the crag
   shaking in his own mortality