two-bridge saturday.
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This weekend, I had to make it up to Williamsburg for Kathryn’s birthday on Saturday night, and decided to make a nice, long walk out of it. There was the tiniest bit of rain as I got on the Brooklyn side of Manhattan Bridge, but by the time I got to the other side, it had stopped, though the grey skies remained. A jaunt up Chrystie Street (or is it Forsyth? I always get them mixed up), and then over to Marshall Stack for an extended, hourlong pitstop, where I dove headlong into Henning Mankell’s Faceless Killers, the first in the Kurt Wallander mystery series (it’s good stuff! And you all should check out the BBC tv series with Kenneth Branagh — it’s excellent!).
Around 8pm I made my way onto the Williamsburg Bridge, and snapped a photo of the various booze cruises making their way down the East River, drifting towards the sunset. Finally got back into Brooklyn, a five and a half mile walk under my belt and my body ready for some birthday vino. A most lovely way to spend my Saturday, even with a mostly-absent sun.
[On a technical note: These were taken on the Leica with Portra 160, the new emulsion released by Kodak that’s going to replace 160NC and 160VC. I’m not sure how I feel about it; not as sharp as Ektar, and — maybe this was just the greyness of the day, and not the film, but — awfully flat. Hmmm.]
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recently seen.
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Top two photos: St. Marks or Dean Street, on my walk home from Pacific Standard a few nights ago.
Bottom: Saw this fellow, wholly immersed in his book, and felt compelled to take out the Leica to capture the moment. The two gentlemen standing in front of me looked perplexed; I think they thought I was taking a photo of their respective crotches.
Also: the blog is hopefully about to get a major overhaul. I’m going to give myself a self-administered crash course in CSS this weekend. Fingers crossed!
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engine failure.
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There’s a chance that the fonts are all wonky today here at the site. If you’re on Internet Explorer — well, my god, get onto Safari, Firefox, or Chrome already! — the site will appear especially garish. I’ll try to fix things when I’m on my home computer. I seriously need to teach myself CSS so that I can overhaul this blog design. Blerg.
[Photo: Tennessee, June 1996]
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from the archives: shadows, 1996.
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Old photos, long shadows. A much-needed palate-cleanser following my recent travails with pisspoor film processing.
Above: Theron in Iceland back in March, 1996.
Below: Theron, I think in Arkansas or Missouri, June 1996.
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the baby and the bathwater.
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This is what happens when you’re a bit strapped for time and your usual weekend photo lab is just a bit too far out of the way, so you drop off your two rolls of Ektar 100 at the CVS pharmacy a block away from the gym. And you’ve had good results with CVS before — they’re capable of this, so I mean, so how badly could they possibly fuck anything up?
The answer: very badly. I don’t know what chemicals were in the developing tanks, or if they hadn’t changed the chemicals recently or properly, but just about any detail got lost amidst weird saturation, red tonal shifts, and/or neon blue tones irradiating anything directly hit by the sun. The photo of Shannon taken for the Backdrop Project — I mean, I know how to do this, and I know how to do this in less than ideal light, but Give. Me. A. Break. I haven’t been this flabbergasted and flummoxed in a while. Especially since I was starting to feel more inspired of late, taking the cameras out at every possible opportunity.
The photos above were taken with the Nikon FE. The ones below were with the Leica. THE LEICA. Sigh. I guess I’ve learned my lesson.
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bark.
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You know how sometimes the best things are the simplest ones? No muss, no fuss? Bark Hot Dogs is like that. Counter service with food that comes out in little paper baskets on metal trays. Long communal tables with high stools. Unlimited refills on fountain soda! (I’m a fountain soda junkie. It’s a problem.) And, most importantly, incredibly good fare comprised of really good, locally-sourced ingredients that come together without frills, but full of flavor.
Case in point: brunch last Saturday with Mark. We each ordered egg and sausage sandwiches, Mark’s with cheese and on a biscuit, mine sans cheese and on an English muffin (Bay’s, might I add, which is the best commercial English muffin on the market). Got a side of a biscuit covered in sausage gravy. A fountain soda might also have been ordered. (Ahem.) Total bill came out to I think $18. I’ve had individual brunch dishes in Manhattan that cost $18. And what you see above may not look like much, but sweet jesus, it was good. And filling. Fat, you know, is not only full of flavor but also full of, well, fat. And porky, eggy, biscuity, er, gravy-y glorious fat is very filling.
Mark and I have this to-eat list of Brooklyn restaurants. There are four categories: Tried and True; the boringly titled New Places; Try, Try Again; and I’m Starving, Let’s Just Go Here. In the time it took us to down our sandwiches (7 minutes, maybe?), Bark went from New Place to Tried and True. Just like that. Can’t wait to go back.
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Above: Mark tossed a napkin at me just as I clicked the shutter.
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under/over.
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Around the corner from my house is this faded pink building — I think it’s a school of some sort. On Saturday, on my way to a picnic in Fort Greene Park, I snapped a few photo with Pony the Yashica, only to discover that I had quite misjudged the exposure (top). I took another shot, about five feet to the right of the first photo, only to discover when I got the film back from the lab that I’d overexposed it a touch. Alas.
That said, I sort of prefer the underexposed photo — it looks like it was taken in the middle of some sort of ash storm, or perhaps from a late-19th century northern England industrial city (minus the parking sign, sneakers, and air conditioning units). Or it’s a still from some horror film about a mysterious fog enveloping middle Brooklyn. “Bourgeoiszilla,” we’ll call it.
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m. wells din(n)er.
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This Tuesday evening, a few of us headed to M. Wells Diner in Long Island City for a long-anticipated dinner. Though I’d been a number of times before for breakfast and lunch, I hadn’t yet been to the restaurant since they started their dinner service a few months ago. And then Sam Sifton gave them a glowing review in the Times, which was great for the restaurant, but not so good in terms of trying to get a reservation. But when Mike confirmed his NYC vacation plans, I called up the restaurant and made a reservation for a month in advance. A month. For dinner in a diner car.
Our fourtop became a …. uh … threesome when a couple of friends had to cancel at the last minute. Mark stepped in, not really knowing what he was getting himself into. Then again, I’m not sure any of us knew what we were getting into. I’d read a bunch of different reviews, so I had some idea of what to order, but the menu changes pretty regularly, if not daily, so, well, best laid plans, blah blah blah. While we waited to get seated, we eyed every dish coming from the kitchen; everything looked and smelled spectacular. And when we were finally seated at one of the long tables at the end of the diner car, we decided on four small plates, with the caveat that we’d order more if necessary.
And the reason why there’s only one photo of food on our table is that, well, the food came fast and furious, as did our consumption of said fare. There was escargot + bone marrow, steak tartare, and butter chicken — all pretty amazing, but nothing compared to the soft shelled crab club sandwich that you all MUST get if you’re at M. Wells for dinner and the sandwich is on the menu. Oh my god. There was crab. There was bacon. There was mayonnaise. There was something else. A bunch of something elses, actually. And together, it was awesome.
We briefly considered ordering a second club sandwich, but decided instead on dessert: a Paris-Brest the size of my head. I’d never heard of the dessert before Tuesday night, and now it’s all I think about. Well, that and the club sandwich. It was a great, great meal, one of the best I’ve had in a while. I slept incredibly well that night, quite completely stuffed.
Oh, and the party next to us had ordered the $99 beef shank. It was huge. I think there were six of them, and the leftovers they boxed up were sizable. Next time I go, I’m bringing a small army so that we can consume that and the 24 ounce hamburger. Yes. 1.5 lbs of meat. Apparently with the bun, it’s closer to 2.5 lbs. M. Wells, I love you.
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the housewarming party.
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I went to a lovely afternoon housewarming party on Saturday, at the home of my friends Ryan and Caroline. They recently moved into a third-floor apartment in Fort Greene, not too far from me, and goodness me, what a place! I didn’t get a chance to snap many photos, but here are a few from the day, including one of yours truly, taken by Ryan, who’d wanted tool around with the Leica, and one of the co-host himself, in his de rigueur dark tie and blazer.
Oh, and also: the doughnuts, from Dough, were incredible. Must. Eat. More.
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peter.
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My friend Peter, in front of the recently adorned wall at the corner of Canal and Ludlow. Though I’m still not feeling inspired by my photography in general, I have to acknowledge the moments when the universe gives you a great confluence of subject, backdrop, and wine. And you gotta make the most of those moments.
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hong-an tran 