pittsburgh (2).
Well, this is a bummer. I just got back my processed rolls of 120 film, taken with the Yashica Mat 124. And …. they sort of suck. Most of them, anyway. Still have one and a half rolls to scan into the computer before I can say for sure, but it’s not looking too good. Fearing that the wildly blue skies and bright sun would throw my exposure off, I underexposed everything to compensate, only to discover last night that I had gone a wee bit too far: a hazy near-darkness blankets at least half the rolls. Grrrr.
Here are two that came out alright: the top is from Homestead, east of downtown and the former site of the largest steelworks in the country. (Dan — that’s correct, yes?) It’s now mostly a giant open-air shopping mall, though on the very eastern end, there’s still the old workers’ meeting house and a few random bits of former monumentality. And pictured below is my friend Dan’s apartment, or at least the entryway and peek into the kitchen, anyway. I’m crossing my fingers that the last few rolls of 120 end up as nicely as these — or at the very least, just don’t depress me as much as the other 120 rolls have. Otherwise, this is going to be a very long week.
for mike.
Dear Mike,
I’m sorry life is messing with you right now. You deserve awesomeness, and you’re not getting your full share of it — nowhere near your full share of it. And that makes me sad. I remember back in April 2007, when I was feeling pretty low, and you took me out to Red Hook that one Sunday afternoon (after bringing me flowers first!), and we wandered around and took photos, and then ended up eating key lime pies and then getting prosciutto at Fairway and collapsing back at your old apartment on Woodhull Street. That was a great day, in small part because I started taking photos (including these here, and oh hey, this is me via you!) again after an unhappy hiatus, but mostly because it was the first time I felt better after a long time of not feeling so hot. And I have you to thank for that.
So I guess I’m just saying that I owe you one. A big one. And I wish I was in Seattle right now to whisk you away and traipse around industrial ruins (does Seattle have them?), and then we could get drinks and talk shit about idiotic people, because there seem to be a lot of them in the Pacific Northwest. And if you end up coming back to New York this week, under less than ideal circumstances, then, well, I’d give you a hug and then feed you a burger or two. You’re awesome, and I miss you, and I’m sorry for these curveballs* that life keeps throwing at you.
xoxo ht.
* Remember how I taught you about baseball? That was funny too.
pittsburgh (1).
My first 18 hours in Pittsburgh involved marvelling at the view from my friend Dan’s deck (he has two decks! two!) in Bloomfield, wolfing down half-pound burgers at Tessaro’s, guzzling down drinks while catching some of the baseball playoffs at Nico’s Recovery Room, and sticking my head (and the Nikon) out the window at every opporturnity to soak in the city.
I brought 14 or so rolls of film with me, not including the new rolls already loaded in the cameras (Nikon, Pentax, and Yashica). When I unpacked last night upon returning to Brooklyn, I counted 4 unused rolls. I’m crossing my fingers that the Kodachrome worked, and that the exceptionally bright daylight and blue skies didn’t completely overwhelm everything else. Regardless, I can’t recall the last time I ate and napped with such ferocity and aplomb. I look forward to returning for round two in the springtime.
home.
[Los Angeles, 2009]
Pittsburgh was pretty glorious — I’ll be posting a series of photos this week as soon as the negatives get developed, and hopefully I’ll have a couple of rolls of Kodachrome back from Dwayne’s on Friday — but man, it was pretty great to fall asleep in my own bed* last night. There might also be some pretty crazy/great/unexpected news later this week, but I’m hoping not to jinx anything just quite yet.
[*My own bed is not actually pictured above, but you get the point.]
… jet plane.
[Keflavik Airport, Iceland, 2009]
Ok, ok, so I’m not in Iceland, nor am I going to Iceland. But I am going to Pittsburgh today! Doesn’t sound like much of a trip, you say? Wait till you see the food photos I bring back. It’ll be a bit quiet around here until then, so enjoy this interview I did with Slice/Serious Eats that was posted this week. Or drop me a line at ruinista [at] gmail [dot] com. Or maybe go out and take some photos of your own — it’s supposed to be nice in my neck of the woods for the next few days; hopefully it’ll be good photo weather where you are, too.
stone barns.
Last summer, Daniel and I went up to Blue Hill at Stone Barns for an extraordinary dinner. After we got to town via MetroNorth, we went straight to Stone Barns to walk around the pastures, greenhouses, and meandering paths down to where giant sows stared at us indifferently. After snapping dozens of photos, we headed back to the hotel to change for dinner — and oh what a dinner it was!
There’s a time and a place to sermonize about the importance of knowing where you food comes from; I don’t think this site is necessarily where I’d like to elaborate very much on that point. I will say this: I do think at times that locavorism comes across as high-minded self-righteousness, that somehow local trumps all other considerations when it comes to food and nutrition, that if you just grow some fruits and vegetables in your garden, you’re all set. Or that if you can just get to a farmers market and buy locally, you’re good to go. But of course it’s not as simple as that, especially if you’ve got a family to support and you don’t live in, say, Boerum Hill, and the idea of travelling an hour to wander around a working farm and then spending upwards of $125/person for dinner comprised in large part of freshly-picked vegetables is a laughable notion at best. I fully recognise that my ambivalence about the locavore movement comes from a place of privilege. But I do believe in Stone Barns’ mission with regard to food education for elementary school kids: getting them to think about food as having a point of origin, of having a journey, and how that journey unfolds, from soil to truck (to hopefully no planes) to market, impacts each of us, as individuals, and as part of a larger community. And how individual and collective knowledge can hopefully change local and global practices, such that local and affordable are no longer mutually exclusive categories when it comes to food production and consumption.
pizza, film, and yours truly.
A little while back I was interviewed by Slice, the lovely pizza website that’s now a part of the Serious Eats universe, about my pizza photography. The interview was just posted this morning — you can read it here.
Also, for anyone coming here via Slice/Serious Eats, you can see more of my food photos here. Enjoy!
life of sundays.
Other than the part where there was my office and weekend windowlessness, this past Sunday proved to be a most wonderful day: a morning walk across the Brooklyn Bridge, and then over to the New Amsterdam Market, where I met up with my friend Peter to try out the various wares. Duck prosciutto! Sullivan Street Bakery bread! Crazy infused salts! (In the photo second from the bottom, the salt second from the left was mixed with the famed ghost pepper — my word, what a way to start the day!) Porchetta sandwiches were on hand, but I had my heart set on Luke’s Lobster, though I opted for the crab roll instead of the usual lobster roll. Such a wonderful, bracing, buttery treat.
Afterwards, I wandered around downtown before heading up to the office (blerg). About halfway through my time there, I had a hankering for more Sullivan Street bread, but discovered that they closed early on Sundays. So down to Grandaisy Bakery it was; they used to be affiliated with the Sullivan Street folks, and have many of the same products, including the thing I was wanting most: the awesome, out of this world pizza, which is served at room temperature and, when it’s at its optimal crispiness, is hands down one of the best things the city has to offer. Sadly, at the tail end of a Sunday afternoon, the pomodoro and mushroom slices I got were less than ideal, but no matter — they were still closer to perfection than nearly anything else I could’ve found at that hour. Then it was off to Marshall Stack for vino with the lovely Ms. Kathryn. See what I mean? Almost perfect Sunday!
After about a month of shooting with my new Pentax, I thought it was time to bring out old NoName, my reliable, yet oft-maligned Nikon FE. The expired Kodak Ektachrome 64 I’ve been using for the past couple of years has a funny tweak where in low light (or shade, as was the case at the market), everything shifts blue-violet. Not the best film to use when shooting food, but it was alright; my new Pentax, as lovely as it is, has a very sensitive Takumar lens, and I’ve found that focusing can be a bit tricky, not to mention a built-in light meter mechanism that I still haven’t got the hang of quite yet. Having NoName in my hands was like coming home to your own bed after a month in a hotel: everything feels just right, so familiar and comfortable, just the way you left it, and just the way you always want it to be.
nancy.
Nancy and I met eons ago in college. Other than during our undergraduate life, we’ve lived in the same town for a grand total of 18 months. (Is that right? Crikey, that can’t be right!) She’s now out in San Francisco, and has an awesome Velo Orange bike named Pascale, a name that I love, partly because I was nearly baptised Marie-Pascale before my mother decided on the lovely, but a bit more conventional, Marie-Claire. (Nobody calls me by this, which I’m convinced is because at heart I’m really a Marie-Pascale.)
Anyhow, I’d like to say something like Nancy! Come back! Because, you know, I miss her. But I sort of know that she and SF are a good fit, and it wouldn’t be nearly as fun riding Pascale here in the city. So I’ll just say this: Nancy! Remember last summer when you visited and we ate all that fried chicken at Momofuku and then we went to Marshall Stack and drank very slowly because we were so full? Let’s do that again!
[Nancy, from top: Swarthmore 1995, Swarthmore 1996, Lower East Side 2009]
partially windowless sunday.
[Chinatown, NYC, 2008]
Nothing like spending your weekend at the office! Yup — the majority of my precious daylight hours this weekend is being spent in my windowless office, doing some minor work and organization, the sorts of things that are impossible to do during hectic weekdays when it seems like the phone won’t stop ringing. But! In preparation for my hours in artificial light, I’ll be heading first to the New Amsterdam Market, in the old Fulton Fish Market space near South Street Seaport, to stock up on good eats. Luke’s Lobster! Porchetta! Sullivan Street Bakery! Oh, this is going to be awesome.
If you’re here in NYC, enjoy this most lovely finally-autumnal day. Well, no matter where you are, enjoy your Sunday. Hopefully you’re all out and about, far away from windowlessness.
hong-an tran 