Ink Pens and Fat Caps

[Above] Graffiti, Port of Albany
Albany, New York

Graffiti on container cars. Coded messages from New York City written wild style and transmitted via CSX by shadowy figures in hoodies and low slung backpacks.

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Building the Perfect Shanty

Kids are very territorial.

The social pecking order of the neighborhood was an intricate combination of such important factors as athletic ability, favorite baseball team, what words rhymed with your name and if they were derogatory.

Some kids were doomed by their names. There was no way to spin a bad name, no way to cage the beast of a bad nickname once it was free. I knew a kid named Gaylord Belchinger that never knew a minute’s peace. That poor bastard was cursed with two highly destructive names. In fact, I remember yelling his name as he rode off down the street and was promptly scolded by a neighbor for calling him Gaylord. How do you fight a curse like that?

No one was safe.

Some thought my name sounded like Boner. So, for a period, I was called Boner and my father was called Poppa Boner. There was nothing that could do but pretend that it didn’t bother me. Some small consolation could be derived from the fact that some kids didn’t even rate high enough to have a nickname. So, Boner may not have been all that bad. It eventually faded, but the fact that a bad nickname can make you feel like an asshole is undeniable. That word being passed around a group of kids is like having your favorite hat snatched from your head and tossed from person to person while you try in vain to reclaim it.

Some were saddled with random names like Booger, Java Man, Stink Finger. One small event could trigger a nickname. It was part of the dynamics of the neighborhood and you had to let it roll off you. Kids sense weakness, especially in other kids. One small transgression could cost you valuable cool points and spawn a horrible new nickname.

Today, the streets of my childhood neighborhood are like calendars. As I drive to my parent’s house as an adult, the street corners of those seven square blocks are like the chapters of a personal history. To me, they still exist through the eyes of a 12 year old kid. And I can remember the kids that I spent my summer vacations with in a far greater detail than I do the people from my last job. They are the minor heroes and villains of a world that was still blurry enough allow childhood fantasies to exist in the sunlight.

I may not have liked all the kids in our crew, but they were from Oneida Avenue and I would have taken their side in any fight. Like a dysfunctional family, we could talk shit about one another but heaven help you if you were an outsider talking shit about one of us. We were linked through a common geography and a common boredom. Our territory was based on a multi-layered hierarchy of factors: your street, your school, your class, your favorite baseball team. From focused to broad, your daily interactions were almost always sorted through these filters.

The summers were vacuums that needed to be filled, and we all fought that fight together. We walked everywhere, hung out in parking lots, city parks, basketball courts and abandoned lots. It was clear that we needed someplace more central, more secluded, more private. Action needed to be taken.

When you are a kid in a suburban neighborhood surrounded by undeveloped woods, someone is always building a fort. The word fort is not really a fitting description for these complex structures of stolen and borrowed materials often compete with a bar, stereo, fire pit and extensive porn library. Nothing was off limits. Weekly trash collection days always supplied a bounty of supplies. Backyard junk stashes were raided. Wood was stripped off of garages or stolen from backyard sheds.

We were always doing recon, always on the lookout for scrap wood or hardware that could be used in the construction of a fort or bicycle ramp or a baseball backstop or some kind of weapon. Over the course of a summer, we would amass a massive amount of data as to where to score plywood or wood screws or 2x4’s or spare carpeting. No junk pile was safe from our brazen acquisition tactics. We would raid forts from other neighborhoods, backyards and construction sites in search of the materials we needed. Tools would be stolen from contractor’s job sites and traffic warning lights would be removed from DPW barriers.

Kids have a natural ingenuity. Without the filters of adult logic and skepticism, the imagination is open to wild possibilities. Adults plan and doubt and rethink. Kids simply do without the apprehension of wasted time or materials. A hubcap was a radar dish, corrugated aluminum could be anything from a load bearing wall to the fireproofing of a fire pit, a piece of PCV piping could be converted into a flaming tennis ball cannon, screws were pounded in with hammers and electricity was stolen via orange extension cords connected to the exterior outlets of neighboring houses. The days were ours until our parents reappeared from their jobs. We knew which houses were occupied during the day and which houses were empty. The days were featureless, and if we stayed under the radar, we were governed by our own laws.

That is until we stole junk from the wrong man.

Wedged in the middle of our neighborhood was an auto repair garage run by short, abrasive sometimes violent, ex-Marine named Squadrini. Short, powerful and permanently greasy, “the Squad” was always dressed in dark blue Dickie’s work clothes and chewing on a soggy cigar. Effortlessly connecting lurid adjectives with bizarre terms for sexual organs, he elevated profanity to an art form that took me years to decipher. Back then, I tried to nod and laugh in all the right places and feign understanding.

The dark corners of his garage were scary, pictures of pin-up girls in various stages of undress were nailed to the walls above his worktable. Tools were strewn everywhere and there was a rumor that a dog lived somewhere in the garage, but that couldn’t be proven. There seemed to be a constant supply of shady, nameless men sitting around his garage in broken lawn chairs drinking warm beer who were always happy to point out that you were a 12-year old virgin with a pin dick with no hope of ever getting laid. All factors out of your control and that made you feel even worse.

Littered with dead cars, engine blocks, and barrels of who-knows-what, his garage stood in stark contrast to the surrounding homes of manicured lawns and well-kept gardens. For his neighbors, the convenience of having a garage that gave away vehicle inspection stickers like Halloween candy was worth the eyesore and constant noise. It was also common knowledge that the Squad was a part-time prisoner at the country jail. He would work a full week, pack an overnight bag, and check in on the weekends to serve out a sentence for spousal abuse.

No one was going to say anything to the Squad.

The junk pile in the back of Squadrini’s garage was rich with potential. Wood, strange metal fittings, corrugated aluminum, plastic piping, mismatched hubcaps, all knotted into a tangled mess. To a group of bored scavengers, the back of his garage was like a trip to the hardware store and we regularly shopped his junk pile. He lived in the house next door to his garage and served as his own junkyard dog. We would wait for Friday afternoon and watch his old, matte blue Cadillac pull out of the gravel driveway and disappear. Smug in the knowledge that he would be securely locked up for the next 48 hours, we would swarm in and take whatever caught our eye.

This continued for a few weeks before Squadrini discovered his loss. Defiantly, and somewhat stupidly, we had constructed a hulking mass of a fort on the hill about 40 feet behind his garage. I can only imagine his reaction upon looking up the hill and discovering his junk’s migration and transformation from scrap heap into a shanty. Only a junk man could care about missing junk. Originally concealed in the summer’s greenery, constant construction and expansion quickly outgrew the surrounding camouflage. Our complex of plywood and logs and stolen lumber grew to such a size it could be seen from the road where to appeared to be more of an encampment for hobos than the product of bored kids who wanted a place to start fires and drink warm beer and look at stolen porn. We had transformed his junk into a broke down two-floored palace complete with a sound system, elevated lookout platform, and a wet bar stocked with whatever we could steal from the liquor cabinets at home.

It lasted only days before Squadrini came knocking.
We were caught.

His eyes turned into slits as he pulled open our door. His stream of consciousness profanity fired up instantly and without pause. None of us had the fortitude to counter his accusations of theft, trespassing, being a 12-year-old virgin, or the construction of a neighborhood love shack.

None of us said anything.

He wanted his junk back and he wanted it right away, which we did without question. He stood at the edge of his garage and watched us rip his wood and aluminum for our walls and carry it back down the hill. The lawn chair men chuckled as they took pulls from their cheap beer and made comments about pin dicks and cherries and I wondered if this was all for their entertainment.

Because the fort wasn’t on his property, we remained uneasy neighbors, the squatters in the plywood porn library, and the part-time inmate with a near-genius affinity for profanity.

His garage is still there as if preserved from that day he came knocking on our stolen door. And I would bet that the things we stole are still there, unmoved and untouched all these years. To anyone else they are trash, but for us, they are reminders of epic summers that are lost forever to the fuzzy retention of childhood memories.

I would later learn that the Squad’s name was in fact Danny and that he wasn’t the monster we had constructed in our stores. While still a master of profanity, he was an honest businessman.

When I turned 18, I saved up a summer’s worth of paychecks and bought my first car, a metallic blue Renault Alliance, from a guy I had gone to high school with. The first day I had it, the driver’s side lock cylinder fell out onto the driveway, the reverse failed, and the clutch began emitting the odor of burning sandpaper. Danny put hours into that car knowing that I didn’t have a lot of money and that it was my first car. All the bolts had rusted over and he would skin his knuckles trying to get that car to work for me. He worked on it for days and only charged me 6 hours labor.

I would see him every 3,000 miles for my oil change but I never asked him about that day on the hill. I never had the guts to bring it up. Didn’t want to be called pin dick again.

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Spires Over Albany

[Above Top] Albany Spire
State Capital
Downtown Albany, New York

[Above Bottom]
Viewfinder, Rolleiflex 6002

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The Protective Properties of Denim

Bruno and I straddled our bikes at the top of Short Essex street looking at the loosely built ramp constructed of scavenged grape crates and milk cartons in the distance. Neither of use would voice concern about the possibility of losing skin on the road’s surface if the jump didn’t go as planned. We were still young. Our judgment and aversion to pain had yet to mature. He turned to me and said with a straight face in an undeniable action hero tone, “At least we are wearing our denim jackets.”

That was all that needed to be said.

There are many unspoken codes in a boy’s life. To a bored kid from the suburbs, earning the respect of your neighborhood friends was all that mattered. There was no wiggle room. We waited for the other to back out, but be both knew that wouldn’t happen. We were both locked into the mission.

Short Essex Street is a short hill that connects Genesee Street with Oneida Avenue. Most of the streets in our neighborhood were named for Indian tribes. Short Essex, a short hill, not too steep and rarely traveled was the perfect strip of asphalt to serve as a run up to our rickety, but death defying jumps. We constructed our ramps from whatever we could find, borrow, or steal. With no working knowledge of geometry, we launch up straight into the air. All momentum would be lost at the lip of the ramp. The arc of travel would be steep, pointing the front wheel straight up and then straight down in a short, acute arc. The equation was a near impossible combination of angle and speed and pride. Broken headsets, handlebars and front axels were not uncommon.

Someone from the neighborhood would volunteer to go first and the rest of us would look on with a mixture of curiosity and thinly concealed blood lust. We would giggle with excitement as the first person of the day barreled toward oblivion.

The year was 1983, bike hemets were still made of leather and no one had actually seen one. Beefed up BMX bikes with padding and reinforced, thickly spoked wheels weren’t easily available. Necessity forced us to make due with whatever bike was dealt to us by way of holiday or birthday or graduation present. There were steel bikes from the 40’s equipped with lights and generators, 10 speeds and street bikes with gorilla hanger handlebars and banana seats. The designers of these bikes did not intend them to fly. But tell that to a couple of kids staring down 100 feet of inclined asphalt with the belief that their Levi’s denim jacket would protect them from the road rash and impact of flipping a bike off a grape crate while peddling with extreme intent.

To a kid, a bike means freedom and risking the destruction of your bike was no small matter. Without a bike, you were forced to either awkwardly walk-run behind your friends or ride double by standing on the back pegs of someone’s bike. Peg standing was always a risky endeavor. If you were lucky enough to find someone with long wheel bolts, you were OK. More commonly, you would be forced to balance precariously on the pencil eraser sized nubs of steel that protruded from the rear axel. Again, with thinly concealed blood lust, potholes would be hit and manholes would be run over in hopes of sending a buddy’s crotch into the spinning rear wheel.

Most neighborhood bikes bore the scars of past transgressions against both gravity and judgment. Handlebars were drilled out and screwed in place with wood screws and reinforced with sloppy clumps of solder. Frames were shored up with sheet metal and a rag tag mixture of bolts, washers, and wing nuts. Electrical tape was almost always used as both a structural reinforcement and cosmetic veneer. Vise grips and adjustable wrenches scavenged from someone’s basement toolbox were all the tools that were required. Bolts would be stripped instantly.

In the world of an eleven year old boy, the laws of engineering were wide open and not grounded in common sense. The world had not yet taught its lessons about doubt and practicality. But, your bike was your freedom and one did whatever was necessary to avoid losing it until it was repaired.

Your bike was either a source or pride or embarrassment. If your parents acted unilaterally and bought you an uncool bike, there was nothing else to do but endure the ridicule of your friends. Sometimes, in hopes of rehabbing your bike, number plates, radios, water bottles, saddlebags, license plates and any other form of hanging junk would be added. Still and uncool bike was an uncool bike and no amount of accessorizing was going to change the truth.

In one extreme case, Mario, a kid from down the block painted his entire bike blue. Blue spray paint was applied to every surface; frame, tires, chain, seat, handle bar grips. On the chain guard, the name “Blue Flame” was written in white paint. Evil Knievel had just recently attempted [unsuccessfully] to jump the fountains at Cesar’s Palace and we all had the wind up version of his stunt cycle in our bedrooms.

In an act of genius, Mario had transformed a piece of shit street bike into a version of Evil’s mythical stunt cycle with a few cans or blue spray paint, a new name and a new attitude. The blue flame gave Mario an infusion of bravado.

Without hesitation he marched up to the top of my next door neighbor’s yard. Pausing for just a second as if bathing in the roar of an imaginary crowd, he focused. Sliding back on the blue banana seat, he began to pedal furiously. With no ramp and no possible way or becoming airborne, he roared headlong into a log and flipped his bike twenty feet into the air. He landed unconscious a few feet from the log as the blue flame landed with a thud against a pine tree. Mario was quickly surrounded by the confused and concerned family that had witnessed the crash through their living room window. As they revived him, I sunk, giddy, into the shadows. I knew one thing: He was a fool, he should have been wearing his denim jacket.

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The Anti-Design Self Replicates

[Left] Jumpin' Jack's Drive In
Scotia, New York

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Rhino Chasing

[Above] Marzocchi Bomber Front Suspension Fork

Spring 2008 Update: You may have noticed a slight reduction in blog posts in the past few weeks. Well, I will have you know all is well. I am proud to report that I have been making stunning inroads into the field of cryptozoology. In the last few weeks I have organized several expeditions into the wilds of upstate New York after a rash of Bigfoot sightings in the Adirondack foothills. I hope to produce concrete evident as to the creature's existence.

I hope to be the next Roger Patterson.

My Downtempo CD Giants Without Hearts is almost finished and ready for upload to iTunes. I will keep you updated on the progress. I have some east coast shows lined up for later in the summer. More on that later too. I want to thank the guys from the Thievery Corporation for the remix they did of my first single, 12 Forty 8.

Now seriously: I have been taking full advantage of the warm, yet sparse, Northeastern weather. At this point, I am deep into the filming and editing of Northeastern Revolution: A New England Mountain Bike Adventure. Putting up big trail runs and mountain bike rides have become a priority lately. While I have some photojournalism projects and live event coverage planned for later in the summer, I am pretty much just paying the bills these days. At this point, I am just waiting for some article proposals to come in and provide me with a little adventure. A few weeks ago, CNN's American Morning featured one of my weather images. So, for now, I am just doing enough to be able to get outside and have fun.

Cycling has been a steady part of my life since 1990. A few years ago, my passion for riding mutated into something akin to a loveless part time job. Strange interpersonal dynamics with riding partners, close calls with SUV's, and the lack of desire to be on a bike for 25 hours a week led me to take up running in a big way. My bikes sat dormant for 2 years. Time heals everything. Getting back to my roots, I am once again in love with mountain biking. I no longer ride the road and I no longer wear those silly super hero crime fighter outfits. So, for the time being, cycling and photography have fused into one. I am taking the summer to document, both in video and still, as much mountain bike action as I can.

More soon.

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Rhino Chaser

Spring is almost here and my new Rhino Chaser was delivered today in an undercover brown box. I assembled it in the basement like a mad scientist. Now I wait for the first good day.

Portfolio

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Respecting Our Temple

Please Respecting Our Temple
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Coffee Shop

Coffee Shop Cross Process
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Doorway

[Above] Doorway and Cactus
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Anandapur Bus

[Above] Anandapur Bus
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Do Not Drink From Streams

Trekkers Sign

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Bike for Hire

Bike for Hire Sign
Secret Life of Bikes

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Bike with Coca Cola Ad Panel

[Above] Bike with Coca Cola Advertisement
The Secret Like of Bikes
Disposable Camera

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The Once Loved

[Above] Abandoned Car in Snowstorm
Digital Image Captured with Lens Baby 2.0
Peeble's Island
Cohoes, New York

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Bike Chopper

[Above] Bike Chopper
Somewhere in New York City
Lower East Side

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Statue

[Above] Statue
Captured with Lens Baby 2.0

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Northeastern Photography 2008

Northeastern Photography has been redesigned for 2008
The new site includes outdoor adventure photography and video production.

Visit: www.northeasternphotography.com
& northeasternphotography.blogspot.com

[Below] Candy for the Yamabushi
An Adirondack Photo Essay: A Collection of Alpine Environments
Promotional Graphic and Web Banner

[Below] Offerings for the Throne Room
Candy for the Yamabushi: A Collection of Alpine Environments
Photo Essay Page Layout
Photo Location: Petersburg Pass, Petersburg, New York
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Elevated Trail

[Above] Elevated Mountain Bike Trail
Hudson River Tidal Zone
Somewhere North of New York City

Image sequence for Northeastern Revolution Video Production

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Race Point Surf Wagon

[Above] Surf Board Trailer
Race Point, Massachusetts
Click here to see the promotional poster.

For more outdoor sports photos, videos, and gear reviews, visit:
Northeastern Photography & Killswitch Magazine
Unique Images of the Vertical Northeast.

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Clocks Tick Slower in the Winter

I can see the capital from my living room window. That wasn't always the case. Before the $300,000 condos sprouted overnight, there was a full forest of trees blocking the view of the Albany skyline. The universal law of the suburbs claimed the foliage. There can be no undeveloped land, only unwanted real estate. All but one of the condos sits empty. Every day I look out on a multimillion dollar ghost town, sterile, pristine, and empty.

On sleepless nights, the lights that creep out from behind the curtains of the Albany skyline give me the feeling that there are other people awake: lovers, insomniacs, the suffers of bad dreams, those whose miss their children, those who miss more, the businessmen working late, those without enough money, those preparing to witness another sunrise, the new parents, and the old souls clock watching. We are all in this together. This is what passes for company in the dread hours of insomnia.

On the nights I can't sleep, I take refuge in the anonymous channels inhabiting the upper reaches of my cable service: foreign movies, India business reports, reruns of Cheaters [always a good choice at 2am], the Henry Rollins Show, game show reruns from the 70's, and Cops. From the list above, Cops is my pick for thoughtless, time killing TV. Each crime is neatly resolved in 4 – 8 minutes. There are no lingering questions, no subtle subtexts, no cliffhanger endings. Sleep could come at any moment and I wouldn't have hours invested in something more culturally redeeming.

At 2am, I can be found hiding out on deep cable, the uncharted region of television found between channels 120 and 680, where perpetual reruns of Cops flow abundantly from the vaults of Fox Reality Network.

Tonight's location is Austin, Texas.
Summer.
Sometime in the early 1990's.

The cars, watches, and hairstyles betray the chronological reality of "present day." Although I don't remember this as such, everything was boxier in the 1990's. Hopefully most of these people have gone on with their lives since their 15 minutes of primetime infamy. But the one universal truth about cops isn't derived from the snippets of street geopolitical philosophy dispensed from law enforcement officers in high and tights. While it seems as though everyone arrested isn't wearing a shirt, this too isn't always true. There IS one thread that ties all the episodes of Cops together into a masterpiece of junk food TV.

It' s always summer on reality TV.

Any night of the week, I can tune in and watch slightly overweight men chase down fleeing perps while wearing short sleeves and sweating profusely. Winter simplified is nothing more than a wait and the math is undeniable. Subtract the last warm day from the winter and you get 4 months of low concrete gray skies and cold fingers. Upstate New York hasn't seen two solid hours of sunlight in what seems like weeks. There is a slight yet twisted solace to be found in decade old footage of a summer night long forgotten.

There are no shows about waiting for winter to break, shoveling snow, or washing the whitewash crust of road salt from your car. Those are tales better left in the land of never summer, a place too real for reality TV.

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Martyr

[Above] Graffiti
Harvard Square, Boston
Massachusetts

At the end of City Lights, when the film's heroine at last sees the man who has delivered her from blindness, we watch her romantic dreams die in an instant. "You?" she asks, incredulous. "Yes," the Tramp nods, his face, caught in extreme close-up, a map of pride, shame and devotion. It's the oldest story in show business — the last shall yet be, if not first, at least recognized, and perhaps even loved. This holds true for real life too. Sometimes. All the answers to all the questions are hidden on deep cable, wedged between remixes of Temptation Island and the Mole. Sometimes we're the hero. And sometimes we're the tramp.

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Fortune is Gone

[Above] Winter Surfer on Ogunquit Beach
[Lower] Surfer through vintage Kodak Duaflex

Rain hits the windows of the car in sheets with a sound similar to rock salt being thrown at glass. A lone, neoprene clad surfer makes his way through the 4 foot breakers to a non-existent lineup. Everything is gray. Up is gray. Down is gray. The only line of demarcation between the horizon and beach is the white fingernails of the waves. Somewhere off shore, a winter storm draws in energy from an air mass over the Canadian shield and coughs this miniature winter swell shoreward. There is talk of snow tomorrow. Another trademark day for the Maine coast. 50 feet from the car, a boarded up fortune teller’s booth reads “See you next season.”

There has to be a lesson in there somewhere.

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Rose with Logo

[Left] Rose on Black Velvet with Logo

Photography for Promotional Materials & Website Background

In-Studio Photograph

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Northeastern Revolution Promo Image

[Above] Image for Northeastern Revolution:
A New England Mountain Bike Journey
DVD menu screen and web promotion.

In-Studio Photograph

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Spheres

[Above] Terracotta Spheres
Texture Stock Image Series

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The Last Angry Man

[Above] Incredible Hulk Action Figure *
© Marvel Comics

This guy has been kicking around the studio for years. He used to live on my desk at a job I really didn't like.† He faced out to greet anyone who entered my office. His expression told the whole story, I raged vicariously through him.

Growing up with a darkroom and studio in the basement of our house, my father and I used to build elaborate miniature photographic scenes with Star Wars action figures, painted Styrofoam planets, and poster board. In retrospect, our visual effects were slightly less ghetto than the original Star Trek. In attempt to keep shooting and stay out of the concrete gray upstate weather, I scheduled a little photo time with Mr. Hulk. I chose a studio backdrop that would best set off his profile and mimic the color of his tattered shorts.

Really, who am I kidding? Like trying to assign meaning to reality TV on deep cable, I am just wasting time. There are no lessons for the outer world when someone is voted off the island. But wasting time is sometimes fun too.

* I wanted to name this post Some Kind of Monster until I realized it was the name of that documentary about that bad metal band and their millionaire personal dramas.

† I'm contractually prohibited from mentioning the name of the firm. Upon my departure, there was a mutual agreement that this firm would not defame me and in turn, I would not speak of their corporate secrets.

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Marvel Comics Logo & Incredible Hulk © Marvel Comics

Fallen Comrade

[Above] Fallen Comrade
Wild Beach Horses
Outer Banks, North Carolina

Early morning on the Outer Banks, 5AM. The solemnity of the scene weighed as much as every grain of sand on that 9 mile stretch of beach. I stood in silence watching them as they watched over their fallen comrade.

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January Notebook

While I miss the summer terribly, there are benefits to the winter. Over the past 10 days, the northeast has endured a chain of storms that have blown in from the Midwest, gained strength over the eastern seaboard and dumped a swath of heavy snow from the Ohio valley into upstate New York. This is considered to be a classic Nor’easter pattern of storm development and this season has seen a steady diet of these powerful storms. This particular weather pattern usually targets upstate New York for the heaviest precip. Right now, the weather station mounted to the back of the house reads 3 degrees. While I hate the gray skies and lack of color, I accept the cold. My personal theory is that if you choose to live in the northeast; there isn’t much of a basis for complaining about the winter weather.

Last night, a friend and I snowshoed eight miles of virgin powder. My secret stash of trails is always a great fix for quality snowshoe terrain. * [For purposes of anonymity, I call these trails the The Race Track. Locals only, Brah.] The sky was sharp and clear. Radational cooling chilled temps to the low single digits and the wind made it all feel that much colder. On the coldest night of the year, we hiked for well over three hours. Chemical heat packs under layers of fleece and gore-tex kept the arctic air at bay making for an almost comfortable excursion. Felt great to be outside. The reductionist in me tends to see the winter as series of portages between heated boxes. I have never dealt well with being locked down for long periods of time. Winter is a wait. The numbers don't lie. The next warm day is months off.

Not much in the way of new photography to post. I am in the midst of numerous writing and media development projects. Planning a minor road trip tomorrow in search of some ice climbing to shoot. The cold temperatures of the past few days are the perfect incubator for strong, plastic ice. I am sure it's possible to find some climbers who've shelved their day jobs on a Friday for some crampons and ice tools.

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