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sharing space
I saw an interesting store display in El Paso last month. It was like a “compare and contrast” essay about the differences between European and Mexican versions of Catholicism.
On a side note, this sighting did increase my annual “white baby Jesus” tally by one.
El Paso, Texas
photographed 12.14.2025
arms full of jesus
I really can’t understand why I actively avoided doing street photography for a really long time. But I guess I got to it when my brain was ready. Or whatever.
At any rate, here’s a woman I saw in downtown El Paso last month. She and Jesus were out taking a bit of a stroll and they were kind enough to pause for 1/480th of a second.
El Paso, Texas
photographed 12.14.2025
side entrance (with grill)
Side entrance to the Cotton Club, with a little grill and some other crap providing a Maginot Line of defense between a vacant lot and the door. Also, I happen to have first hand knowledge that the door was locked, because I’m agile enough to get around the strategic defense placement.
Cotton Club
Lubbock, Texas
photographed 1.17.2025
cigarette smoke and beer (+ dust)
The place has been closed since the 1980s, but I swear I could smell cigarette smoke and stale beer when I was there last weekend.
I thought maybe I heard some west Texas musicians, but there’s every possibility that it was just the damn unrelenting wind blowing around my head.
Cotton Club
Lubbock, Texas
photographed 1.17.2025
the ol’ red, white, and blue
An earlier version of this place holds an important spot in music history as well as the history of Lubbock; that’s probably not a thing you could intuit from looking at this photo, though.
The Cotton Club first opened in Lubbock in 1938 as a place for the fancy people to hear orchestras, jazz, and swing bands. The place was air conditioned, which seems pretty ahead of its time. There was a lot of music played in that original Cotton Club, including five appearances in 1955 by Elvis Presley. It’s said that a young Buddy Holly attended one of those shows and was inspired to a career in music. The Cotton Club was the first integrated dance hall in Lubbock and during the 1940s many well known Black musicians performed there.
Eventually, the club relocated. Times changes, music changed, buildings burned down (mysteriously), and more of the usual stuff that happens on a downward trajectory. The building’s still there, in rough neighborhood out on the Slaton Highway, but it’s been closed since 1984.
(Editorial Comment: Lubbock’s pretty proud of its musical history, but not quite proud enough to be able to save some of the actual places where important things happened.)
Cotton Club
Lubbock, Texas
photographed 1.17.2025
One Day | One Image 