staycation, day three. (a few more)
Just got a roll of Leica/Ektar 100 back from the lab, with a few stray photos from the tail end of my amble through Sheepshead Bay, Brighton Beach, and Coney Island. These were taken between 8:30 and 9am, so the sun’s out a bit, and the sky had turned that mid-morning robin’s egg blue that I love so much.
Oh, and yeah, Monday was Valentine’s Day. What did I do to celebrate? Pizza at Roberta’s, of course. Duh.
staycation, day three.
So, yeah. I wanted to get some unobstructed morning light, and I got it in spades between 6:30 and 9am this past Monday. I hopped aboard a Coney Island-bound Q train Monday morning and disembarked in Sheepshead Bay. 3.5 miles and a lot of boardwalk later, I got on an F train at Stillwell Avenue in Coney Island, completely underslept and delirious, but with 4 or 5 rolls of film — 35mm and 120, color and black & white — filled with snapshots from my amble. Most of the betracksuited older Russian emigres paid no heed to me, other than to look quizzically at my twin lens Yashica Mat 124.
I was mostly pleased with how the photos turned out, though the Yashica continues to give me problems. I don’t know if the metering is off, or if I’m not doing something right, but I can’t seem to get the exposure consistent. That, or there’s something inside the lens mechanism itself that’s fogging up the photos (though not all of them — see the photo immediately above, of the upturned chair in the empty lot — which is why I don’t think it’s a lens issue; at least I hope it’s not). And I don’t remember Ilford HP5 b&w film being so low-contrasty! Most unfortunate. (See the previous post with the two b&w photos of Brighton Beach.) But otherwise, the 35mm stuff turned out pretty well; it was a mix of Leica (Kodak Tri-X 400) and Spotmatic (Kodak Ektar 100), and I think I captured the dull morning light decently enough.
Around 10:00, after I’d dropped my film off at a lab in Park Slope, I ducked into Daisy’s Diner on 5th Avenue, and tucked into a plate of huevos rancheros. Once I picked up the developed film, I headed home, and by noon had passed out quite soundly. For every insane early morning photo action, there is an equal and opposite reaction nap that follows.
staycation, day three. (preview)
Some people, they take vacation in February and go someplace warm. Me, I wake up at 6am to head down to Sheepshead Bay and Brighton Beach to take pictures of snow on sand and of older Russian immigrants in tracksuits taking their morning constitutional. More photographs forthcoming.
staycation, day two.
After what seemed like 10,000 errands in the morning and early afternoon, my Sunday finally devolved into two hours of dim sum madness at Golden Unicorn in Chinatown. I left just as Round Two — the noodle round — was starting up. I have no idea how much longer everyone stayed, or how they managed to roll themselves out of the restaurant.
Then it was a walk through Chinatown with black and white film loaded into the Leica.
Back in Brooklyn: a visit to Mark’s new place in Prospect Heights to offer furniture advice (get the TV already!), and then an impromptu evening of drinks at Flatbush Farm with Andrew. Not unlike a regular old Sunday, but with a whole week of staycating ahead of me, it was a nice way to ease into, well, more easing.
Also, it’s Tuesday, and I’m still full from dim sum.
staycation, day one.
Day one: Maialino brunch, a walk through Chelsea to see the (now-over) Ezra Stoller show at Yossi Milo Gallery, and later some snacks at ‘inoteca, and finally happy hour vino at Marshall Stack with Lady K. And that’s just day one.
[untitled.]
[Theron, Playa del Rey, 1999]
I’ve posted this photo before, I’m sure, but it’s the closest thing I’ve got to capturing the kind of light that only comes from places with unobstructed views (read: anywhere without skyscrapers and narrow streets). Living in the city makes getting this sort of light quite difficult. I want to find ways to bring this kind of light into my photos more often, even if that light is nowhere near a beach or meadow. I’ve taken this coming week off from work, and I’m hoping to roam around the outer edges of Brooklyn a bit to see what early mornings look like in Brighton Beach and beyond.
This is something I’ve been wanting to do for a while now — both a proper staycation, and a more focused photo project — but to be sure, I’ve gotten some inspiration from a couple of sources. I’ve been absolutely obsessed with two Flickr photostreams recently, and looking through them, I’m convinced that much better light falls across Europe (well, Spain and Sweden, anyway). These photographers’ works make me weep a little on the inside:
Salva Lopez – digital, yes, but such wonderfully composed shots of an everyday, mostly unpopulated, Spain. (Though there are some great portraits too.) Such a wonderful stillness.
Lars Wastfelt – also well-composed, but somehow also with an incredibly informal, impromptu air. And my goodness, his children! And the light in Sweden is, dare I say, just magical.
Anyhow, composition and light and feeling to aspire to. Let’s see what happens this coming week.
brunch at mile end.
I’d been to Mile End a bunch of times for their smoked meat sandwich and poutine, and managed to make it to one of their food coma-inducing Hanukkah dinners, but I’d mostly neglected their breakfast menu. On a few occasions, back when I was a morning gym-goer, I’d stop by their takeout window and order a toasted bagel to go — and oh what a bagel it is! Direct from St. Viateur bakery, Montreal bagels are, to my mind, so much better than the ones you get here in New York. Blasphemy? Maybe. But then again you probably haven’t enjoyed the sweet-salty crunch of a Montreal sesame bagel before. They’re less dense, lighter affairs, with a touch more crispness than their New York counterparts. And it’s been a mystery to me why I don’t make more of an effort to consume them more frequently, especially since I live two blocks from the place.
So this past weekend I finally got a chance to have a sit-down breakfast at Mile End, and there was no way I was going to not get something involving the bagel. They’ve got a breakfast sandwich of fried eggs, chazzer (read: pigginess), and Quebec cheese, but it comes on a rye English muffin. Bah! They will happily swap in a bagel instead, for a $1.50 upcharge, making this a rather expensive little sandwich ($8!). But you know what? Totally, absolutely worth it.
Also worth it: their smoked meat hash. Now, don’t get me wrong: I love their smoked meat sandwich. But I might love their smoked meat in hash form even more. It’s like getting the burnt ends on good barbeque: smoky, crispy, a little bit chewy, and altogether transcendent. Add it to diced potatoes, throw a couple of fried eggs on top, and sweet jesus yes. After demolishing the fried egg sandwich, we ate every last piece of hash, down to the littlest nubs of potato and meat. It’s as close to an ideal way to start a Brooklyn Sunday as I can imagine.
the timewarp.
Mark and I had dinner the other night at Breuckelen, a newish New American spot over in Cobble Hill. The dinner was pretty good, though I think Vinegar Hill House does a better job with the whole New American/local ingredients thing, and in a warmer, more inviting space. (Though the trek to Vinegar Hill itself keeps me away during these colder wintry nights.) And, despite being only one of I think four tables on a mostly empty Monday night, we had particularly slow, mostly absent service.
My only point in this post, however, is really twofold: one, we had amuses bouches (see above), which strikes me as a particularly fussy, un-Brooklyn like sort of thing to have, especially at a restaurant called, er, Breuckelen. Secondly, I was amused to discover, upon getting the roll back from the lab, that the photo of said amuses bouches makes the entire dinner look at least a decade and a half older than it really was. Something about the suppleness of the glass of white wine (a very good Gruner, for what its worth), and the amuses bouches in their Asian soup spoons, and the way the light is hitting the table: it’s like this is a photograph of an entirely different restaurant, probably somewhere in west Los Angeles, that was all the rage back in the mid-90s, both known and ridiculed for its small, precious portions of fusion cuisine.
To be sure, this is more the fault of the way the photo turned out, and not at all what I think the restaurant was going for. But every time I see this photo I start giggling, and am immediately transported back to my college years, when I’d come home to LA for the holidays and my parents would take me out to the hot new restaurants that looked pretty much like this.
near wild scrambled egg heaven.
I have to admit: these scrambled eggs kind of blew my mind. I can’t believe it took me this long to make eggs as luscious as these. I’m not sure why the Leica insisted on taking photos as if it were a Lomo or mid-70s Nikkor lens, but I’m not complaining, really. I feel like in one tiny, but significant, fell swoop, I’ve earned my Basic Chef wings. I mean, no seriously, look at them.
Update: I just found out that the photo above was chosen as one of Flickr’s 500 photographs for 7 February, as part of their “Explore” feature. I’ve been fascinated with Explore for a while now, mostly because Flickr uses some algorithm they call “interestingness” to determine their picks, and more often than not, wandering through Explore makes me want to stab someone. As far as I can tell, Explore is dominated by digital photos, usually macro shots, oftentimes HDR (don’t get me started), children staring in wonderment, and/or some other completely banal photograph made Heady and Significant with some incredibly overwrought title or caption, like The Dawn of Winter or a line from an overbearing poem about lost love.
So I’m at once baffled that a fairly nondescript, underexposed photograph — a film photograph, no less — of my Saturday morning breakfast made it onto Explore. Then again, I once saw a digital point-and-shoot photograph, with bright flash, of a wax figure iteration of Johnny Depp as Capt Jack Sparrow, that made it onto to Explore and get hundreds of “Bravo!” comments, so really, all bets are off.
the dumpling party.
Saturday night I found myself at a Lunar New Year dumpling party. Folks brought various homemade fillings, and partygoers assembled and fried their own dumplings, with a two-wok fry station set up in the quite lovely open kitchen. It was a great time, full of good eats. And sweet jesus, I would kill for that kitchen space.
My photos of the actual frying process weren’t so good — I was a little nervous about getting the Leica spattered with oil, and methinks I was already three glasses of wine into my evening, so everything turned out a touch …. hurried. But you get the picture (as it were). And more importantly, our dumplings turned out pretty darn great, if I do say so myself.
hong-an tran 