weekend plans.
It occurred to me today that I haven’t been to the outdoor iteration of the Brooklyn Flea in a while. Maybe this is the weekend I’ll gobble up a huarache or maybe a nice big lobster roll from the Red Hook Lobster Pound folks. Man, those are good lobster rolls.
Brunch at Maialino is also in the cards, maybe another burger at Savoy, and possibly another go with the pasta roller. Poor planning on my part has resulted in limited 35mm color film stock in my fridge, and B&H Photo is closed until next weekend because of the Jewish holidays. I love film, but I’m loathe to pay non B&H prices (often 50%, sometimes 75% more!). This means being a bit more discerning with the camera (no fun!), and using some of my wonkier, unpredictable expired film. Maybe now that it’s officially fall, I’ll dip into the black & white film supply. This also means the website will be archive-heavy for a little while, until I get back into my regular shooting and developing rhythm.
In the meanwhile: happy photographing/eating/travels/weekending. If your plans take you into Brooklyn on Sunday, stop by the Atlantic Antic! Lots and lots of good eats — a couple of years ago, the then-fledgling Building on Bond had a stand where they served a most excellent pulled pork sandwich with spicy sauce on a pretzel bun. After standing in a line for a while, I took the sandwich back to my front stoop and took a couple of shots (blurrily, I’ll admit — it was hard to think straight with that sandwich sitting in front of me) before I devoured the entire thing in 2 minutes flat.
travis.
Travis and I met early on in our freshman year in college, and by our senior year we’d moved into one of those hand-me-down off-campus apartments that only college kids could possibly inhabit without questioning just how terribly all of the appliances worked, how threadbare the dining room carpeting was, and for how long that off-kilter, gnarled loveseat had been sitting in that unused corner of the room. I had been a mostly-vegetarian throughout college, though I soon succumbed to a Whopper Junior one night after no longer being able to withstand the completely intoxicating aromas of Travis’ weekly midnight bacon sandwiches.
After graduation, Travis spent a year in Boston, and then moved to London to enroll in a masters program in humanities and cultural studies — film, mostly. In the winter of 2000-01, on a visit to London, a bunch of us — including Travis and dear Lupe — met up at Bierodrome in Islington, where we noshed on frites and washed everything down with strong Belgian ales. I have no idea what Trav is doing in this photograph.
A quick Google search this morning led to the discovery that that Bierodrome in Islington no longer exists, and is now the Lucky Voice Karaoke Bar. My karaoke aversions aside, I’m pretty sure we’d all have had a blast if you’d replaced with frites and ales with mics and just enough hard liquor to make us all ignore the collective tone deafness. (Or at least my own.)
sara and michael.
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Back in January 2010, my friends Sara and Michael got married in a small ceremony down at the City Clerk’s office. There were just six of us: the happy couple, along with their friends Claudia and Sarah as witnesses, Sarah’s husband Augusto, and yours truly, the photographer. After the ceremony, we walked over the Brooklyn Bridge, where, at about the midway point, we popped open a bottle of Veuve Cliquot (shhhh!) and toasted to the bride and groom. Once we got to Brooklyn, there were impromptu drinks at the River Cafe in Dumbo, and then we headed back to the city to have dinner at Freeman’s. And finally it was back to the East Village for the reception at their cozy little apartment, where whiskey and champagne flowed till late in the evening (early in the morning? Which phrase demonstrates a positive or negative outlook?).
As it was my first experience as a wedding photographer, I’ll say just a couple of things: For one thing, it’s really quite difficult to walk backwards on the Brooklyn Bridge, trying to dodge pedestrians while you’re wielding three different cameras and trying to get a nice action shot of the wedding party. And secondly: whiskey consumption makes for … interesting photography. Whiskey Vision Wedding Photography — I should start a business.
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nyc (excerpts from the archives).
I love this line from Ghostwritten, David Mitchell’s first book: There are so many cities in every single city.
crypal.
My post on Gipsy Hill earlier today reminded me of the great, long, meandering walk Lupe, Al, and I took through Crystal Palace Park in SE London last February. Here are a couple of my favourite shots from that afternoon.
gipsy hill HQ.
Before I visited Berlin last winter, I made a weekend visit to London, where, with the help of her partner Al, I surprised Lupe for her birthday. She and Al returned the favour by making me a weekend’s worth of spectacular eats, including a mushroom and ale pie that I still think about, especially right now, as the weather’s turning a bit cooler and all I’ve got on the brain are oven-y casseroles. Lupe and Al, perched in their great flat down in Gipsy Hill, in SE London, were the greatest of hosts, showing me around a more outlying part of London that I’d never explored before, on an unusually springlike February weekend, and treating me to one of Al’s band’s shows over in Camden Town. But it’s the two of them, conferring back in their Gipsy Hill kitchen, that I remember the most.
kalustyans.
So I’ve heard from numerous sources that Foods of India next door is the better place to go for fresh spices and the like, but my goodness, a trip to Kalustyans brings out the food experimenter in me. So many unknown bags of spices! Random rice mixes! Lentils galore! I think it’s the checkered linoleum and tiny, narrow aisles that make me feel like I’m a serious food shopper, wedging myself between the hot sauces and the random food browser, amongst the crazy melange of powdery spice dust and confined-space New York City grocery-ness. My photo lab is only about three or four blocks from here, but I willfully forget this fact whenever I drop off a roll of slide film, for fear that I’ll just wander into the shop, and somehow, inevitably, justify a 5-lb red lentil or Pakistani basmati rice purchase. Sometimes I look longingly at the 10-lb tubs of ghee and sigh, dismaying that my shopping companions aren’t more willing to indulge in (read: carry) my own culinary indulgences.
Update: A few more pics below, on the Nikon and with expired Ektachrome 64.
recent eats, etc.
Only one food shot in this bunch, but trust me, it was a great weekend for good eats. Dinner on Friday at Perilla (duck meatballs! yes!), followed by a lovely brunch for one at the Clinton Street outpost of Cafe Pedlar, and drinks with Shannon at the Marshall Stack. The 7pm walk down to the local yielded a couple of nice, dusky shots. The photos from Sunday are having uploading issues, but until I can get them on here, I’ll just say this: biscuits and gravy. And maybe also this: 7 lbs of greenmarket tomatoes, slow roasting for three and a half hours and filling my apartment with a deep, sweet, warm, sublimely … tomato-ey scent. And! fresh, homemade pasta, my very first attempt. Success, all around.
And yes: despite my best intentions and a fairly strong will to avoid, I somehow succumbed and became that person: you know, the one who, in having a solitary brunch, still manages to clutter her table with an iphone, a hulking 35mm camera, and — this is the part that kills me a little bit — the New Yorker. I resisted that magazine for so long! And now …. why yes, I do live in Boerum Hill! How did you guess?
Update: here you go – the rest of my eats.
always already monday.
It’s not even 10am on this sunny Monday morning, and I’m already thinking of my next weekend nap.
[London 1997]
shannon.
This is Shannon. She is awesome.
hong-an tran 