Posted on by — Leave a comment

Five Things, Right Now.

A picture of the R. Crumb zine "The Kinds of Girls I Like!"

1. A Major Flex (Sorry, Not Sorry!)
I’m going to kick off this week’s 5 Things Right Now with a flex. A major flex. Thing is, no one likes a braggart…but that’s what I’m about to do. Because a few weeks ago, I sent a handful of 4 Minute Mile to people I consider heroes, and one of them was R. Crumb. Yesterday, I opened my mailbox to find The Kinda Girl I Like!—marked “one of two copies.” Inside, a long handwritten letter where he riffs (in classic Crumb fashion) on the women in my zine, his own preferences, and even a memory about our mutual friend, the photographer Eric Kroll. Crumb really has been a hero to me, and to receive anything directly from him—sparked by something I made—is about as surreal as it gets. Seriously, I ain’t braggin’; it’s about sharing a rare moment where the creative energy you throw into the world actually bounces back in the most unexpected, humbling…and inspiring way. Which I really needed, cause I’ve sold like 6 copies of Four Minute Mile, almost all to friends.

2. Stanley Turrentine & The Three Sounds’ Blue Hour.
This week, I’ve had Blue Hour on replay. Re-stream? Whether I’m reading, working, or about to fall asleep. If someone could create the perfect soundtrack to the Beat Generation, this is it. Ever hear something and wonder, why did it take me so long to discover this?! Turrentine and his three sounds — pianist Gene Harris, bassist Andrew Simpkins, and drummer Bill Dowdy — in a beautifully subdued session. If you’re a Blue Note nerd like me, it’s BLP 4057. It’s been reissued in their Classic Vinyl Series, remastered from the original tapes and pressed into that thick, glorious 180g vinyl—it’s sonic heaven for late-night spinning, Daddy-O. Or late night streaming. It’s so good, I’m ordering the record. Cause I’m buying records again. Albums. LP’s. EP’s. 45’s. Just whatever you do, please don’t call them “vinyls”.

3. Alien Earth (Hulu)
I’ve really been digging into Alien Earth. It’s basically the Alien franchise stirred up with some brand-new, gross, squirm-inducing-and-awesome little critters (the Octopus Eyeball is my current favorite—equal parts ridiculous and terrifying). The story is Philip K. Dick crash-landing into an H.R. Giger nightmare. Which isn’t that far off, cause there’s a terrific crash landing that kicked this season off. And there’s Sydney Chandler, too. She’s just terrific, carrying so much of the show’s strange humanity while dodging (and sometimes embracing) its nightmare. How about a little more Sydney from here on out? I don’t care if she’s a nepo baby; truth is, without Marcy / Wendy, I’m not sure I’d still be watching.

4. Wet Leg at the Tiny Desk
Everyone should know NPR’s Tiny Desk series by now — it’s practically a rite of passage for any band with buzz. What you might have missed is Wet Leg’s recent performance promoting their new record, Moisturizer. I’ve loved Wet Leg since first hearing the greatest song ever written about a chaise longue: they’ve got guitars, hooks, and a perfect mix of cheeky and dead-serious. But I’ve always been a sucker for fem-powered pop melodies built on loud guitars. Watching them cram their energy into a cozy NPR office just makes it better — that spirit in long hair and beards and a Holden-Caulfied hat, shoulder pads built for hockey players, a red phone and library chairs.

5. Steve Diet Goedde’s Little Edition Print Subscriptions
Every month a small brown envelope lands in my PO Box with a little magic inside. This month it’s Print SDG062—a superb image of burlesque model Lucy Fur. Goedde’s thing is elegant, low-key fetish in luminous black-and-white; he shoots only with available light, and the tonality is why these tiny prints feel so big. If you don’t know the subscription, it’s the best 10 bucks you’ll spend—all mailed in his brown craft envelopes I’ve come to look forward to. It’s intimate, affordable, and old-school in the very best way.  If you don’t know Mr. Diet Goedde: a long-time LA fine-art erotic photographer (Beauty of Fetish, Extempore), with a style that reads as much fashion as fetish—precise, composed, and human. If you’re curious, his shop and books are an easy rabbit hole.

Camera note for the nerds: he regularly mentions the Mamiya 645 and T-Max 400 in posts/interviews — the recipe for his (now) not-so-secret sauce.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Five Things, Right Now.

A recent picture of Matt Sharpe from The Rentals

1. The Rentals — “Shake Your Diamonds” + “Forgotten Astronaut”

I’ve been streaming “Shake Your Diamonds” and “Forgotten Astronaut” off Q36, The Rentals’ last record, way too much lately. What started as a 48-hour obsession with Weezer’s first two albums a few weeks ago landed me here, mostly because of Matt Sharp’s charisma back when he was their bassist. But does anyone care about The Rentals since “Friends of P.”? I have no idea. These two tracks are strange, spacey, and glammy — the kind of songs that sound like they’re straight outta ’74. Which is exactly why I love them. But hey, I’m no music critic. Here’s a serious question: should “Shake Your Diamonds” and “Forgotten Astronaut” count as two things on this list?

2. Peggy Guggenheim — Out of This Century: Confessions of an Art Addict

I’ve been flipping through Peggy Guggenheim’s memoir again, and wow — nobody name-drops like Peggy. And I mean flipping, because this book is half gossip column, half crash course in modern art history. One page she’s lamenting her lovers, the next she’s buying a Pollock or shrugging at Duchamp or telling me all about Djuna Barnes’s lesbian loves. (Duchamp! Did you know everyone in 1923 Paris wanted to bang him?!?) This is the kind of stuff I love. Even skimming it feels unfiltered, messy, vain, brilliant — and pretty funny, too. Which is to say it’s worth a skim and not much more.

3. The Golden Age of Hollywood and Florence Lawrence!

I’ve fallen down the early-Hollywood rabbit hole more than once. It started with a pile of old de-commissioned stills I dug out of a junk shop across the way from MacArthur Park near DTLA. Lately it’s continued with Netflix’s Titans: The Rise of Hollywood. As documentaries go, it’s a little cheesy… but watchable. And Florence Lawrence! Who knew? She was the first movie star — and yeah, her name also sounds like it could’ve been her porn star alias, too. Just sayin’.

4. The Black Sparrow Press, Post–John Martin

I’ve been thinking a lot about Black Sparrow Press since John Martin passed, and honestly — Joshua Bodwell has done a terrific job carrying the torch. I’m in the middle of the Dan Fante’s terrific short story collection Short Dog: Cab Driver Stories from the L.A. Streets, and the New Year’s greetings — Wanda Coleman (2020) and Richard Bucker (2021) — fit perfectly in step with tradition. They’re beautifully produced, respectful of the past but not afraid to move forward. For a press so tied to the Bukowski / Fante lore, it’s impressive to see BSP still evolving. Bodwell is finding new voices while honoring the ones that made BSP matter in the first place. Bravo sir!

5. Austin Kleon  Steals Like an Artist.

Austin Kleon is a true champion for creatives — whether you’ve got a massive audience or you’re just scribbling in your secret notebook. His books (Steal Like an Artist, Show Your Work, Keep Going) are part pep talk, part how-to, and somehow just as useful the tenth time through as the first. All three have a place in my studio. Every week he posts “10 things worth sharing this week” on his site: art, music, literature, rabbit holes; hence, Five Things, Right Now. Cause I’m a thief. And as Austin reminds us (and Picasso before him), great artists steal. You can pretty much count on Kleon dropping his list every Friday. But me? What’ll be here next Friday?

Your guess is as good as mine.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

5 Summer Highlights: Rare Books & Photos for the Collector

A picture of Bukowski's second book published by Epos inscribed with drawing of two dogs.

Summer always brings its own rhythm — slower days (no wonder I haven’t blogged in a while — well, that and Covid), shorter nights, and, if you’re lucky, the kind of finds that make the summer of ’25 worth remembering. It might be a little dorky to call this a “heatwave of collecting”… but hey, I’m a dork. So here are five things I’d buy if I were you: rare books, unexpected paperbacks, and a photograph that hit me like a favorite song — a mix of poetry, raw street photography, jazz memoir, and pin-up iconography. Together, they make a strange but fitting portrait of what interests me most lately.

Charles Bukowski — Epos: A Quarterly of Poetry (1962)

I’m gonna call being a Bukowski completist a near-impossible mountain to climb. Owning all the BSP titles an expensive task. But what about making a run for the first 10 chapbooks? Still kinda expensive…but doable I say! Bukowski’s second book, tucked inside a “little” called Epos that came straight outta Crescent City, Florida. Five (or so) years before the beautiful Black Sparrow titles and at the start of what I’ll call “The Cult of Buk,” Charles Bukowski was hustling poems and growing his audience with small journals like this one. As the title says, this special issue featured his poems and drawings. Is this the point he starts pushing past the underground mimeo world?

This copy inscribed in big, bold Buk handwriting from 1969: “Early poems, early screams.” That’s the kind of thing only he could scrawl without irony. He even threw in a quick drawing inside the cover / endpaper, as if to remind you that poetry was just one of the ways he made marks on paper. For a Bukowski collector, I’ll go as far as to say this is a real score — not just because it’s scarce, but with its signature and bold drawing, it carries the whole arc of the title.

Mike Disfarmer — Photographs

Disfarmer was one of those small-town photog kooks who only makes sense in hindsight. He set up his studio on Main Street in Heber Springs, Arkansas, and spent decades shooting portraits of farmers, families, and the local kids with his no-frills, plain-backdrop style. No props, no glamour, no “rules” — just faces staring straight into the camera, caught somewhere between dignity and awkwardness. At the time, nobody thought twice about them. Now? They feel like haunted little snapshots of America’s heartland, unpolished and unforgettable. And if you’re thinking maybe I should jump in a car, road-trip it to Heber Springs, and knock on random doors with a pocketful of cash to see which families are sellers — you’re too late.

The Photographs book from Twin Palms is where a lot of collectors (myself included) first really learned — they fell — for him. BTW I love Twin Palms / Twelvetrees. As with all their titles, the production is second to none: heavy stock, deep black-and-whites, binding that feels like it was built to outlast us. Every page has weight, every portrait space to breathe. For photobook collectors, this one’s deceptively simple but ends up being indispensable — the kind of book you pull down when you want to remember that America was never as simple as you might imagine. Did I mention this title is long out-of-print?

Garry Winogrand — Winogrand Color (Limited Edition, Twin Palms)

Most know Winogrand for his black-and-whites — New York streets, airports, political rallies — where every picture feels like everything in his frame is seconds away from falling apart. Or coming together. But Winogrand Color is something else entirely. Working in Kodachrome (because who doesn’t love Kodachrome!?), he caught the same restless energy — but through a completely different lens. It’s America in full saturation, and like all color work, it hits differently. If his black-and-white images feel like history, his color pictures feel almost like life still in progress.

And then there’s the book itself — another amazing Twin Palms / Twelvetrees production. Here I go again. They didn’t just throw the slides into a binding; they made something special. Heavy pages, big reproductions, and the kind of design that makes you linger. The copy I’m flexing here is one of the slipcased limiteds, and it comes with a tipped-in photograph of Women Walking right on the slipcase. That little detail makes it feel even more alive, as if The Man himself just dropped a print in your hands. For collectors, this isn’t just a photo book — it’s a Big Book, and proof that even in color, Winogrand could bend the world to his eye.

Mezz Mezzrow & Bernard Wolfe — Really the Blues (Dell Paperback)

Mezz Mezzrow wasn’t just a clarinet player — he was a hustler, a self-mythologizer, and a bridge between the jazz underground and the mainstream. In other words, my kinda dude. This memoir, co-written with Bernard Wolfe, reads like one long riff: Harlem rent parties, Louis Armstrong, reefer smoke thick enough to choke, and a life lived half in shadows, half in neon. It’s one of the first real “insider” accounts of jazz culture, written in a hipster slang so authentic it practically swings off the page. Oh yeah Daddy-O!

And then there’s the copy I’m offering — the Dell paperback, complete with its lurid, oversized type screaming “TRUE… SHOCKING.” This is where literature meets pulp, and the combination is irresistible. Collecting paperbacks is on the rise — maybe it’s the price point, maybe it’s the “everything vintage” thang…maybe it’s just the sheer thrill of holding a book that feels like it’s lived a dozen lives before it landed in your hands. For me, it’s about the object itself: cheap paper, wild cover design, the promise of something lurid and forbidden between the covers. Really the Blues is all that and more — a cult jazz memoir hiding inside the skin of dime-store paperback sleaze.

Bettie Page — “Devil Girl” by Bunny Yeager

If Bukowski was the poet of America’s underbelly and Mezzrow was its jazz hustler, then Bettie Page was its grinning, winking id. Nobody has ever mixed innocence and danger quite like her. In this original, silver gelatin Bunny Yeager picture “Devil Girl” shot, Bettie looks like she just stepped out of a pulp comic — horns on her head, tail curling behind her, smile wide enough to let you know she’s in on the joke. It’s camp, it’s kitsch, it’s sex appeal with a wink.

This particular print is one of those pieces that stops you in your tracks, partly because it’s Bettie (always a showstopper), and partly because it’s Yeager at her most imaginative. Developed in the 80’s, stamped on verso, and signed by Bunny Yeager. The composition? Pure mid-century fantasy — playful menace wrapped up in satin and a smile with horns. For pin-up and picture collectors, Bettie is ground zero, and for Bettie collectors, Yeager is the high priestess behind the lens. The “Devil Girl” image hits both marks at once. Call it kitsch, call it art, call it Americana, or an investment — but whatever you call it, this one’s the devil you’ll gladly make a deal with.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Four Minute Mile: A Limited-Edition Photozine by Jim Camp

A picture of the photozine Four Minute Mile by Jim Camp and published in 2024 by the synaesthesia press.

There’s a reason most self-published work is self-published. Sometimes it’s a vanity project. Sometimes it just isn’t “very good”. I get that. But I’ve been making pictures for a while now, and enough people have taken notice that I figured it was time to put more of my work out there—on my own terms.

Four Minute Mile is my first self-published photozine. It collects some of my portraits—though I’m not a big fan of the traditional definition of portraiture. Some of my favorite subjects are strangers, other photographers at work, sex workers, oddballs, and weirdos. People who made me pause, or made me nervous. People who truly earn their living. Some I know well. Some I met literally seconds before I hit the shutter. All of them terrific subjects.

I’m a big believer in Cartier-Bresson’s idea of a “decisive moment.” I also think about Eggleston’s “democratic way of looking around.” I probably think about stuff like this way more than I should. And in our digital world where everyone’s a photographer, the real challenge is getting someone to stop and do a little more than just glance at your picture.

Four Minute Mile is full color, short run—99 numbered copies and 26 lettered copies that come with a giclée print laid in. I made the pictures in all kinds of places: on the street, in flea markets, thrift stores, porno sets, red carpet events, backyard BBQs, hotel lobbies, and professional studios.

There won’t be any reprints. But Four Minute Mile will be a quarterly series—until it runs its course. I’ve got a lot of images I’d like to show you, so who knows how long that’ll take.

In the meantime, here we go.

Posted on by — 4 Comments

In Memoriam: John Martin

A picture of John Martin

I can say without hesitation that John Martin was the single biggest influence in my life.

Not because he published Bukowski—though that was the start—but because of what he built: The Black Sparrow Press. A press with vision, with guts…and a whole lotta style. The first BSP book I ever held was Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame, and I bought it minutes after walking out of the movie theater where I’d just seen Barfly.

I didn’t know who Charles Bukowski was. I just knew I liked the movie. And then there it was: a book in bright orange wraps with a title that looked like it had been pulled out of who-knows-where. I didn’t know yet that this book actually collected three of Bukowski’s earlier volumes. I didn’t know it would become, in my opinion, the best single-volume entry point into his poetry. All I knew was: I needed that book.

And then I devoured it.

I didn’t know yet that I was stepping into a whole universe—one built not just by Bukowski, but by a publisher with vision who had a designer with an eye for the extraordinary. And when I got to the end—to the colophon page—something happened. I had never even heard the word colophon. But there it was. Martin’s voice. His care. His note about the design, the typography, the printer, the limitations. It was the first time I realized a book is a made thing—not just a container for content, but a piece of art, crafted start to finish.

Of course, none of those Black Sparrow books would’ve looked or felt the way they did without Barbara Martin, John’s wife and the designer behind the press’s entire visual identity—those were hers. Her aesthetic became Black Sparrow’s signature, and it left a mark on every one of us who ever judged a book by its cover. Who can’t spot a BSP title from a mile away?

And while it would’ve been easy—maybe even profitable—to stick with “sure things” like Bukowski or Fante, John Martin did something braver. He took real financial risks on writers who had little-to-no audience at all: John Yau, Larry Eigner, Fielding Dawson, Ron Loewinsohn, Paul Goodman—names few remember, but whose voices were preserved because Martin believed in them. That’s where his heroism lies. That’s what made Black Sparrow more than just another “indie” press.

Bukowski got me to the Beats, to the little mags and Marvin Malone and Gypsy Loy & Jon Webb. Hal Norse. Jack Micheline. Johnny Brewton and his work, too! The Beats got me to “academic” literature, for lack of a better term. And John Martin’s colophons—those little back-page meditations—led me, ultimately, to the founding of the synaesthesia press.

How about that?

All because I walked into a movie theater to see a Mickey Rourke flick. All because I grabbed a book in bright-orange wraps.

Rest in peace, John. And stay strong, Barbara. You made books that mean something. You built a life on championing voices most publishers wouldn’t touch. You made literature cool. And for at least one young man walking out of a movie theater and into the buzz of a mid-1980’s, new-and-used bookstore (when bookstores really buzzed), you changed everything.

Thank you.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Starting Over with Blue Note 1500s (Because 10 Records Wasn’t Enough)

A Picture of Blue Note 1558 Sonny Rollins Volume 2.

I’m the first to admit a bad idea. Especially when I’ve made it.

Bikram Yoga, just off the top of my head. It’s tough enough sitting in a 105-degree room for 90 minutes. Add the same 26 postures, over and over, and you’re slow-roasting in a humidified cult. And yeah, the people who really love it? Like I said — culty. And kooky. Making for an unsustainable practice.

Picking up a skateboard after a couple decades, thinking I’d pick up right where I left off? Bad idea. I’m lucky I didn’t break an arm — or at least dislocate a shoulder. And how come adults don’t fall like kids do?

Pulling out the novel I submitted for my MA at the University of San Francisco? Still in the box I taped up in 1999. I’ve got a feeling that’s going to be a bad idea, too.

Then there was the day I sold off my entire record collection. Honestly? Not a bad idea. But when I shook The Record Dealer’s hand, I got a little verklempt. Not over the sale itself — more the sense that a chapter was ending. I blogged about it. Almost went a little cry baby.

The Record Dealer just smiled and said, “Don’t be upset. Just start collecting again!”

So I did…sort of.

And I made up a rule: only ten records, max. If I wanted to bring home an eleventh, I had to choose one to cut and trade back in. A brilliant idea, right?

Meh.

For reasons I can’t fully explain, it really didn’t stick. Elegant in theory; not so much in practice. Come to think of it, not-so-elegant in theory, either.

Which brings me to what will almost certainly be another bad idea: the Blue Note 1500 series.

From 1955 to 1957 (give or take), Blue Note released 99 albums, starting — of course — with 1501: Miles Davis Volume 1. The 1500s might be the most iconic run in jazz history. Legendary musicians. Unmistakable sound. And the cover art? Mid-century amazing. Clean layouts, bold typography, and some incredible Francis Wolff photos. A whole aesthetic summed up in less than 100 records.

Collectors have been chasing them for decades. Some pressings go for absurd money. Like, “you could’ve gone on a really nice vacation” money.

And yet, I’ve been thinking about this much longer than I’d like to admit. Perhaps waiting for a sign. A sign from wherever the signs come from that trigger The Collector to start collecting. Then, a few days ago, I walked into Grace Records. I’ve mentioned Grace before. Just like I’ve been blogging about this whole 10-record thing. I walked into Grace, and there, in one of the three boxes behind the cashier, that sign appeared. A wonderful, beautiful sign, solid black, highlighting The Man with the tenor saxophone in blue with amazing white & blue typography. And a first pressing!! For less than a hundred bucks! In decent shape!

So yeah. I’ve made another bad decision.

Besides, I’ve been lucky enough to visit Europe a whole lot. And Hawaii? It’s totally overrated.

Posted on by — 1 Comment

The Ad on the Back Page: Bukowski, Richmond & a Record That Barely Was

a picture of an ad for the Steve Richmond Charles Bukowski record!

I’m a sucker for vintage, underground newspapers—and even more so for their back-page ads. Sure, the content is great. Some of the articles in Berkeley Barb, The Oracle, and Open City are essential counterculture journalism. But the ads? That’s where the real treasures lie.

They’re flimsy things, barely held together if in collectible condition. Flip through and you’ll find offers for Super 8 adult films, pen pals from prison, rock shows I wish I’d seen—and the occasional rare gem you never knew existed.

Like this one.

Tucked away in the Open City First Anniversary Issue was an ad that stopped me cold. A hand-drawn offer for a long-playing record of poetry. One side: Charles Bukowski. One side: Steve Richmond. Each reading his own work. Send 3 bucks to Earth Rose in Venice, California, and you’d get it.

I’ve seen this record. I’ve heard it. I even managed to own one. But I’ve never seen this ad. And trust me—being both a Bukowski and a record geek, I would’ve stumbled upon it somewhere.

The record is mythical-level rare. Maybe a dozen copies survive. It’s so rare most Bukowski collectors don’t even know about it. Oh sure, they know 90 Minutes in Hell or certainly the few released later in his life. But this one? Richmond issued it himself under his Earth Rose imprint. And the story I was told? After releasing it, Richmond asked Bukowski what he thought about the record.

Buk’s reply: You sound like T.S. Eliot.

You sound like T.S. Eliot.

That was that. Richmond destroyed the rest of the pressing; only the handful he managed to sell survive.

And the ad survives, too. Maybe it was the only one Richmond could afford—I don’t know. But this is what keeps me thumbing through paper that feels like it might disintegrate at any moment—just to find one more gem.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Crumbs of Cool

A picture of David Johannson and Johnny Thunders in Hollywood during their peak years as NY Dolls.

Some mornings I stare at my phone, and it’s like being hit by an avalanche of greatness. Sometimes I think what’s so great about any of this? Substack, X, YouTube, Instagram, Blue Sky, Threads, Facebook. On a good day, they’re all kinda brilliant. On a bad day, they’re all fucking garbage. Or maybe it’s the other way around. One thing’s for sure—I’m overwhelmed.

This morning, I stumbled on a photo of David Johansen and Johnny Thunders on Hollywood Boulevard. I’ve never seen it. I’ve seen others…just not this one. They’re in front of Frederick’s, just chillin’ on a trash can in peak New York Dolls mode. Then I’m reading a tight little essay on Modernism that enlightened me on À la recherche du temps perdu (spoiler: not a wine). Over on YouTube? A Minutemen video from the ’80s I didn’t know existed. Then the New York Times app pings me: the 10-minute audio news roundup. Just news. No editorializing. Well. Kinda. My kinda editorializing! But wait—should I listen to Sherman Alexie read Carver’s Where I’m Calling From instead? My New Yorker app is open too.

So I text my NYC Crew: “How often do you guys feel overwhelmed with all the stuff we have access to?”

NYC Crew 1 replies: “It makes me feel ick. Manipulated.”

As I read that, I’m literally listening to Haruomi Hosono—never heard of him until Tosh Berman’s Substack post, like, 30 minutes earlier. (Hosono is so good. So weird. Very cool. Kinda like Tosh!)

A minute later, Crew 2 chimes in: “I feel bad when I get sucked into Twitter and can’t pull away.” But in 1990, if someone said they got lost in a novel for hours, we didn’t call that a problem. Unless maybe it was Danielle Steele. Wasn’t she ridiculous?

So yeah, maybe the algorithm’s feeding me crumbs. But mine? Only the cool crumbs, damnit! Sometimes they’re delicious, too. Other times, they’re a madeleine dipped in tea. Which—as I now know—is how you start remembering everything.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

The Floating Gnome

A picture of a found photo of a parade float.

I don’t believe in reincarnation. But sometimes, I get this odd déjà vu when I’m rifling through a big box of loose photos at a flea market. Something stirs—part memory, part imagination. The “memory” seems to linger more than the imagination, that’s for sure. The memory? Why does it feel like I might have been at that parade?

I can spend hours digging in a single box of old pictures. I have, too. Many times. And discarded photo albums! Turning those pages creates a strange intimacy—flipping through the days of someone else’s life.

We make more photos in a single day now than were made in the first 150 years (give or take) of analogue photography. Today’s photos live on phones. Disposable. Delete-able. Quickly forgotten. But every analogue shot? Those mattered. You had either 12, or sometimes 24, and if you splurged, 36 shots in a roll. It made a photog to think. The photog had to slow down. I need to slow down.

I’m not even sure why I’m writing about all this. I guess it’s The Floating Gnome. That’s what I call this parade float photo I found. Four black photo corners, affixed to a comic book backer board, then slid into its poly bag and ready to find a new home.

That’s what I do with these pictures. I find them, and save them, then savor them. Eventually, I sell them. They deserve to be saved—from the city dump, mainly. They deserve better. They’re tiny little masterpieces in their own right.

But sometimes I wonder—did I see that gnome in another life, in some other city long ago? The woman holding the rifle. How do I know her? Those flappers laughing in front of the Model-T and showing a little leg. Was I married to the one in the middle — in a life I can only recall in some weird space in my mind? I don’t know. But some of these pictures feel oddly familiar. Actually, more than I’d like to admit.

Or maybe I just love weird, old photos.

Hey — don’t judge.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

I Subscribe to The Surfer’s Journal (and I Don’t Even Surf)

A Picture of the Surfer's Journal

I’m no surfer. I tried it once—on tiny waves in Hawaii, the summer of 2006, while on vacation with a porn star. Vacationing with a porn star should be a whole other blog…but a vacation in which I managed to ride a few tiny waves is what you get now. Doesn’t matter if the waves were small, surfing them was exhilarating.

Closest you can get to surfing is skating, and I skated when I was a kid. A lot…on the street, in homemade, wooden half-pipes and in Phoenix’s one skate park  — Highroller. I even recall skating at this weird, temporary skatepark that was made out of blue, fiberglass pieces that were assembled and disassembled as the park moved from place to place. I’ve only suffered one broken bone in my life, and it happened in Highroller’s concrete half pipe. Which is about the time I called it quits.

It didn’t take long to realize I liked the culture of skating more than I actually liked to skate. Tony Alva and Jay Adams. The idea of trespassing into someone’s back yard to skate their empty pool (no empties where I grew up in Arizona…and if so, would I have had the balls to trespass?). Skateboarder Magazine. Punk rock. Dogtown and Badlands. Stacey Peralta and The Logan family. 360’s and hand stands. Memories of begging my dad for plywood and two-by-fours from the homes he built, so my friends and I could build our own half-pipe (he finally said yes!). Oh — and Big Brother!

All things I love to this day. And I love The Surfer’s Journal. It’s my only magazine subscription. Mainly because it’s one of those rare magazines that still feels like something. Embossed cover. Thick, toothy paper. It’s a quarterly, so it’s substantial. Gorgeous photography. Layouts I want to linger over. Flipping through an issue of Surfer’s Journal reminds me of why I love books and printed matter in the first place: the experience of the object. It’s very tangible…which, to me, is a thing.

The writing’s good, too. Lifestyle stories, mainly. Beautiful photography. When I read TSJ, it makes me want to surf.

In fact, in my next life I shall surf.