Los Angeles

Another small trip to Los Angeles is done and under the belt so to say. When I heard I was to be laid off this was the first trip I set up to keep me busy and relaxed of sort. The last time around I had stayed in Korea town, but this time around I wanted to stay downtown. It's kind of odd, but having grown up in LA I kind of spent the first 40 years of life avoiding it. What time I spent in downtown was either getting dimsum, or crewing some student film. But since I left LA, the downtown area of LA has kind of fascinated me, mostly it's been the history and all the noir films I've seen over the years. Anyway, I booked a few nights at the Stay on Main, which is a very old flop house conversion (originally the Hotel Cecil). The lobby was rather nice, the rooms were rather sparse and cheaply updated, which oddly enough was exactly what I wanted. The reason was I wanted to spend as little time as possible at the hotel. Anyway, after getting into town my early diner plans went south as my old work colleague was stuck in a long meeting and had to cancel on me. Oh well. So I headed to the hotel and spent the evening rambling about.

That first evening I mainly roamed around the hotel area, picked up some tastie proper Mexican food and snapped a few photos before it got too dark. I was happy to find some of the old downtown I was wanted, but was also struck by all the new young well to do residents who were out and about too.

I was up kind of early on Saturday, tried to have breakfast at the hotel, but really could only have a small bowl of cereal as the rest of the free food looked rather dreadful. Anyway, I left the hotel and wanted over to the LA's flower market in hopes of finding folks at work to shoot (photographically that is), but the whole hood was rather sparse. I suspect most of the bulk of the flower distribution business takes place in the early AM, so most of the folks I ran into were mainly tourist or brides to be on the look out for cutting out the middle man for their upcoming day in the sun.

After the flower market, I wandered south to check out the Santte Alley, which is kind of hidden in the middle of the downtown fashing district. It's an odd mix of local latino and korean stalls filled with stuff. I was still kind of early, but workers and owners were busy setting up for the day's activities none the less.

Around noon, I was off to valley to meet up meet up with an old friend for lunch who had been kind enough to pick up some film equipment I had won in LA auction a few weeks earlier. We spent some time catching up on all sorts of stuff and learned what was up in each others lives and what not. I did get to hear about his current attempts to get a low budget film off the ground. The premise sounded good too.

Afterwards, I headed into hollywood to visit all the places I always visit. Mainly it was old house on haunted hill, a few old record and camera shops. For dinner I met up another old friend who mentioned that the New Beverly was running double feature A Fist Full of Dollars and Yojimbo. Holly shit I cancelled my later meet up and spent the evening in wonder. Actually when we got to the theater, it was technically sold out and we waited in a line that went around the block with the hopes that we'd get one of the 100 reserved seats that they don't sell online. ANyway, the crowd was mainly male and was mainly there for the Leone film, which was rather faided and scratched too hell. It was a good showing none the less and Yojimbo was as always fantastic (and very good print too).

Sunday: I was up early again, but I also had plans for brunch in San Marino, so I didn't have much wandering time as I had on Saturday. Anyway, brunch was catching up with an old friend who I hadn't talked to in about 8 years, I think were were the only folks under 50 in this particular place to boot too. The brunch went rather long, so I headed off to Pasadena to my old friend Norton Simon, so wander the garden and catch up with Degas.

After the Norton SImon, I was off late lunch with a pair of friends I hadn't seen since I was teenager. Our meeting was one of those Facebook things of sorts, the friends in question were from my teenage years and actually slightly older then me, so when we hit college, we started seeing less and less of each other and our grown up ways really cut us off from each other too. Facebook was institute that brought us back together. So by count this as reunion 25 years in the making. Oy vay. Anyway, we caught up, but also talked about those of us who had passed on or had succumbed to mental illness. Mental illness and gamers from the 80's really do seem to walk hand in hand, as a mutual friend of all of us who had come back into contact with via facebook was obviously in midst of a his own long winding meltdown was the last subject of lunch.

Afterwards I was southward bound to Dean's shop, for a BBQ. I ended up getting back to Stay on Main around 1am. I wasn't up as early as I would have liked, so my morning was mainly spent hiking to my last get together in LA for brunch with Debra and her son. I think it had been about 15 years since I had seen my former coworker from UCLA, and I most definitly hadn't met her offspring either, so it was nice way to end my stay in LA. Afterwards it was a 8 hour drive up the 101, with occasional stop to use the xpan and back home for a few days rest.

I'm done, again. . .

. . . with another job, that is. Today was my last day and was oddity to me I guess. I'm still really figuring out my feeling about it I guess. Anyway, about 2 months go I made a decision that I was going to leave the CCC, I wasn't very happy as whole, I was bored too, which tends to be the kiss of death for me at any job I've had. At the same time the CCC had spent the last 3 years expanding and expanding, but not really increasing it's profits as it thought it would, so 5 weeks ago I and few others were given notice. They laid off about 5 people and I'd be done by end of August. Anyway, when they told me it was a relief. I had been expecting this for the previous 6 months and now I could let potential employers contact them. I could also start to use some of the videos that I had cut for CCC too.

So last week a bunch of us had a BBQ and then went whiskey drinking as my last hurrah of sorts. This weekend was fairly boring too, so heading into work I knew had a 3-4 things to wrap up. Mainly I had to post a few videos, find a few videos and teach someone the basics of how to CatDV. All done by 11. So grabbed my good, and wrote up the following goodbye to my coworkers:

Ya, I just rick-rolled everyone I work with in the above. Actually I'm guessing only 5-20 folks actually read all of the above and clicked on all the links.

As I left, I was feeling mildly emotional and also trying to prep myself for an interview at UCB (later in the day). I came home and took a long shower then took my time readying myself for my interview. For the most part it went fine, but I feel pretty over qualified for it and I suspect they do too. AS such I don't know if I'll land it, and I don't know if I want to land it now either.

Ugh, now I guess I'm feeling depressed about it all too. I'll figure it out and get on with life too.

Wiseguy - in Restrospect

So, it's one of those weekends and I made the decision to clean up the place and let an old TV program play in the background. The show in question was late 80's show called "Wiseguys" with Ken Wahl (what ever happened to this guy?). Anyway, I didn't really catch this show back in the day but did catch an episode from time to time, which was kind of the appeal for trying to watch season one. Now, nearly 25 years later I gotta say, this show has not aged well and I'm surprised as hell that this show lasted more then a single season, let alone was OK'd beyond pilot. Why, because it's not been very good so far. It's hard to believe that this preceded "Good Fellas" too. The big hair, over use of aquanet and loads of really crappy 80's era cars abound. The best looking car after 12 episodes was a Porsche 924. Otherwise loads of 'Merikan made crap. Hell it's hard to ever think of the 924 as classic in any way shape or form either. The story line and writing are all cliche ridden as hell to boot. It's kind of hard to beleive this was show by Stephen J Cannell who also gave us the Rockford Files and the A-team (which was at least fun). Oy vay. But I guess I have think this is the late 80's and standards and tastes were in fact much different then today. Or maybe it's just that the Soprano's was just that much better. Though I'm kind of glad I had different tastes, even back in the day. Oh it's also kind of surprising to see that Vince Gilligan wrote for this series, but you can see why he choose Johnathan Banks or Breaking bad 15 years later. OK, back to cleaning up the pad.

Castro Point/Magnum Force

Last weekend was another weekend of taking the kayak out. This time around though I stuck closer to home and headed out North Richmond after the morning marine layer had lifted. A few weeks prior I had been on a date and the conversation had turned to various Dirty Harry films and SF Bay locations. I had oddly been struck that I had no idea where the ending of Magnum Force had been shot. The near ending of the film takes place aboard two WWII era light carriers (CVE's) and at the time I remembered that you could make out bridge in the background.

I think the consensus of the conversation had been that it was shot around Pier 54 in SF, but it seemed odd and I actually thought it had shot up in Suisson Bay area with one of those bridges in the background. So after the date I came home and did a lot of internet searching and found that it had been shot in Richmond area. It turns out that few military based BBS boards had hit the subject and tracked down two CVE's in question ("USS Badoeng Strait (CVE-166)" and "USS Rabaul (CVE-121" to be exact). Both had been stricken and sent to Richmond to be scrapped at this time.

The Pier in question (Point Richmond Pier 90)had been abandoned some time later and and over the decades since had collapsed. On one of the BBS boards it was indicated that collapsed pier was actually still findable depending on tide level and could be seen via google maps of the area. The area in question is just due north of San Rafeal/Richmond Bridge and part of it had been opened as a state park. I had actually once kayaked the area several months prior but had no idea of it's background at the time.

Anyway, so last weekend I took the kayak out to re-explore this area. I easily found the old pier, or what was left of it. Landing at the base of the pier wasn't that easy due to all the rocks and that it was all fenced off too (not open to the public). I kind of expected the state park rangers to show up and kick me out too. Oh well. The rest of the trip was kind of boring and the wind was kind of killer too, so kayak never tracked well in the water always wanting to veer starboard or larboard depending on where I was in the water. I also kept having my left foot fall a sleep. Ugh, which sucks.

Kayaking Hunters Point

With the nicer weather and a long weekend I tempted by the bay and pulled the kayak out of storage and headed over to Islias channel in SF to take the kayak out for few hours on the water. I circled the small bay getting my bearings and expecting my left foot to fall asleep (it always does). So after about 15 minutes of paddling I had to put in and let the blood get back into my leg again

After I could feel my foot again I headed straight out of Islais channel, past piers 80, 90 and 94, pulling south past pier 96 where the US navy parks SS Petersburg (reserve fleet). I've pasted this ship once before about a ear ago and I've never seen anyone on board. I did keep my minimum distance away as I pasted it. But I did stop to take a few photos from the new to me Nikonos. From what I've read, the SS Petersburg is a refueling ship that the Navy has owned since the mid 60's.

The next leg of the trip took me across Lash Lighter and Indian Basin. I'm not that fond of this part of the paddle generally due to the west to east winds that take toll on my paddling. But I guess I was lucky as the winds were not that strong as a whole and about 20 minutes later I had passed across and rounded into the old SF Bay Navy yards.

At the very norther end of the base is a set of 3 dry docks that used to handle repairs on Destroyer, cruisers and submarines. None of the dry docks are in great shape these days and the long caisson that would normally have been in front of the three docks looks to have sunk with noticeable holes in it. Oh well. After exploring the larger of the three I had a near mile paddle to Point Avisadero to explore another set of dry docks

The Point Avisadero dry docks (a pair of them) are tad bit older and larger then the three I had passed earlier having been build around the time of WWI. The sizes of the two dry docks are noticeably larger as they were built with battle ships and large liners in mind. Architecturally they are also different. They are built almost as reversed pyramids with large steps along each side of the dock. I'd visited these two about a year ago and had planned this time around to try and exit the kayak and do a little bit of exploring. Unfortunately i had timed my visit badly and the tide hadn't rolled in as much as I need it too and I couldn't tie the boat off and exit without swimming. Ugh.

The next leg of the paddle would take me to the last of the Hunter point dry docks and past the large Gantry crane that looms above the base. This wasn't quite another mile of paddling, but did open me up to some of those west to east winds I hate so much when I paddle. I made my way around the large docks that straddle the last of the big dry docks. Back in the day you could park aircraft carriers on these docks and park a Enterprise in the dry dock in question. But today they long abandoned and kind of lonely

The caisson for this lat dry dock was actually located at the rear and it looked like tide was far enough in that I could leave the kayak and start to explore. After finding a spot to tie of and exit the boat I poked my head above edge of the dock I caught what I was afraid to see, about a 100 yards away was a small parking lot filled with cars and trucks. If I had left I would easily have been seen and caught. Ugh. Anyway, dropped back down and used the time to reload the camera. I also used the stop to fill back up on water.

The reverse trip back to Islais channel was rather uneventful, other then reversal in the wind around pier 94 which pushed me back into the SS Petersburg. So by the time I was back at the landing exhaustion was pretty the point of order. It took me another 30 minutes to load up the boat to the Element and I was off to find some food and caffeine. The paddle took me about 3 hours and was just less then 8 miles of paddling.

Oakland Festival of Book

So last weekend I made my way over to Oakland for Oakland Festival of Books in the Frank Ogawa Plaza. Up until visiting the Frank Ogawa plaze, I had no idea who Frank Ogawa was. So now I know that he was a local Oakland politician, but really other then that, no idea (BTW That's a bust of Frank above). Anyway I was mainly interested in going due to presentation by an old acquaintance (and I do mean acquaintance) from my AMIA days. His presentation was showing various home movies that showed state of Oakland over the years entitled Lost Landscapes of Oakland. Year and years ago I used to regularly go to AMIA annual meeting and have to say that catching any of Rick's presentations was always a treat. So the chance to catch a new presentation was definitely a treat, but it also turned out he had cut it down to match the schedule of festival, so now of course I want to see the full presentation. Oh well (Rick and Alex below)

The second presentation I caught was with Ben Fong-Torres who is best known outside of bay area as the guy at Rolling stone in movie "Almost Famous". Actually before the presentation that was all I knew of him. As you can tell most of my interest in the festival wasn't really book related, but mostly history based. I blame that stupid BA I have History for it. Oh well. Anway more at Ben Fong-Torres

I spent the rest of my time attempting some street photography, which is aquward to say the least to me. You can see some of those photos below.

Leica m240 + 35mm f2 biogon in the atrium of Oakland City Hall

Leica M240 + 28mm f2.8 Canon in ltm

Aquward shot again from the M240 and 35mm f2 Biogon

C'est La Vie in BW at the SF Leica Store

So last Thursday night I went on Sf to catch the gallery opening of Vladimir Panasenko, a long time street photographer of many many years who primary can be found on Market street" in Sf taking photos or the world around him. Up until a few weeks ago I had never heard of him let alone seen his work. After a few google searches I quickly figured out that 1)that his work was a lot better then mine (duh). 2) he's been shooting for a few decades. 3) His work is pretty raw, meaning he doesn't suger coat his work in any way shape or form. 4) What the hell did he do to those M2 Leica's he shoots on?

As usual I brought along a camera, actually it was 2. I didn't shoot too much this time around, but mainly wanted to shoot the rest of a roll I had in the M3 and wanted to use my favorite unused lens the MS Optical 50mm f1.1 Sonnetar. I was able to shoot a few cells after getting off BART and running into a pretty decent violin player at work Busking in BART atrium. 10 minutes later I was SF Leica and run into a few faces I knew. After a 5 or so minutes I had a chance to see two of Vlad's M2's that the gallery had on display. Vlad apparently likes de-chrome his Leica's and then modify them and the lenses he uses. Most of the time he he shoots as quickly as possible, so this means zone shooting. He also added a small timming belts to the lenses so he he can feel the modified belts for distance. It oddly made sense. He also liked to modify and name his cameras and the two he had on display were "Mickey and Minnie." Afterwards it was time to see the silver gelatine prints. All were full frame and in groupings of subjects. So the first group was "women at work" series of street shots with most shot on various 50mm lenses. His work was very good, but didn't quite reach technical level of Winogrand. Winogrand's ability to get close and use wider angle lenses brought more of sense of intimacy to his work, while the longer 50mm work had more of a hunt feel to it. That also having been said, Vlad was far daring when it came to subject matter and wasn't afraid to show life along Market street as dirty as he could find it. From very out of the closet gay S&M partners out for a stroll, to drug addicts and prostitution.

Afterwards a few of us took in a drinks at Irish Bank just down the street. For more info try Here or better yet, go into SF Leica and see the prints