Monthly Archives: August 2013
Communications beyond
We went to the Venice Beach Boardwalk, mostly because it was there. But also because it’s Famous! It’s Not To Be Missed! It’s the Number One Tourist Attraction! (I know all these things because their very own website told me.)
But, for better entertainment, you could read the reviews on Yelp. If you don’t have time, here are some convenient highlights:
* I still love visiting this mecca of strangeness and chaos.
* Crowded and funky, filled with tourists, transients hanging out/sleeping, people smoking “medical” marijuana, and people enjoying the beach.
* Stand near a hippie drum circle and try to catch a contact high.
* Just don’t equate the people you see there to everyone in this part of the state because we’re not all freaks. Some of us just like to go and watch them from time to time.
* Never again will I be coming back to the Sodom and Gomorrah of LA County.
* If you want a carnival-on-acid experience with all sorts of weirdness, come on down to Venice Beach.
Venice Beach, California
photographed 6.26.2013
How odd that this would have caught my attention
Well, look at what I found: rectangles.
In case you wondered – Charles von der Ahe was the founder of the Southern California grocery store chain, Vons, which was among the first stores to offer pre-packaged, self-service meat and deli items. (Vons was also the Official Grocery Store for the 1984 Summer Olympics, for whatever that’s worth.)
This building is on the campus of Loyola Marymount University; when you walk over to it from the visitor parking, a crossing guard will stop traffic for you. Which is sort of entertaining, since compared to the rest of Los Angeles, the campus has practically no traffic. But, still, we made it there and back without any car-pedestrian accidents to mess up the trip.
Los Angeles, California
photographed 6.27.2013
To be sold eventually to strangers: 1
My dad’s dresser, top drawer on the left. Camera body, a couple of watches, several lens filters, his Tau Beta Pi key from 1947, batteries, instruction manuals. And a tiny white envelope with, in his engineer’s printing, the words GOLD CROWN, that contains a gold crown.
This house was new when we moved in, over Christmas 1964. And now it’s time to clean it out, to let it – and all the stuff – find new owners. The state of that drawer is indicative of every drawer, cabinet, shelf in the house. All full, all a jumble of crap and stuff that may not be crap, things I ought to be sentimental about and things I’m not.
How am I going to decide what to keep? What to throw out? What to leave for the estate sale?
But before that, how will I even know where to start?
And how can I dispose of everything my dad accumulated for his whole life, and still look him in the eye when I visit him at the assisted living center?
Lubbock, Texas
photographed 8.13.2013
See it. But don’t believe it.
Another view of a movie set in the wilds of West Texas that I featured earlier this year.
As with the previously-featured building, this one was disconcerting: the exterior looked old, with the hitching post out front and that porch roof made of branches*. But on the inside, modern-day plywood was visible…
near Lajitas, Texas
photographed 1.20.2013
*Correctly called latillas, which I could pretend I knew all along, but which actually I only just now looked up. We strive for honesty here at One Day | One Image. Unless an exaggeration** or cheap joke seems more appropriate.
** Actual comment, from my spouse to me, said without irony: You always exaggerate.
Same town but a different toilet
Remember this photo of a toilet? This is another toilet, plus a random chair and a wadded up towel, from the same building.
The walls behind the, uh, seats are old – those narrow wood slats indicate that the original wall was plaster, which fell from use after drywall (or Sheetrock™) became the favored building material.
(If you want to know a LOT more about plaster walls, or any other building material, I can highly recommend The Walls Around Us, by David Owen. It’s witty and accurate, a winning combination if you ask me.)
(On another subject, I had a chat recently with the curator of the local photographic society’s exhibit. My Toilet.Seat. print was in the show, but didn’t win. The curator, whom I had just met for the first time, said, “Oh, your photo of the toilet was SO popular. Everyone loved it….well, everyone except the juror, I mean.” So, there you go: jurors don’t speak for everyone.)
Tahoka, Texas
photographed 6.16.2010
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