I was having a conversation with my physical therapist when the topic of camping came up. She was utterly shocked by the fact that I had never spent a weekend or even a night in a tent with the glow of a warm fire just a few feet away. Growing up in Queens, New York. There were always adventures to be had. Playing inside and on construction sites, fumbling through cemeteries at night and trespassing in general. Not to mention the bus trips to the Bronx Zoo where we could catch a glimpse of the burnt out buildings and the areas crack heads and window washers. who begged for money outside of the tunnels or where the bridges dispatched cars, trucks and buses throughout Manhattan.
It wasn’t until my early twenties that I began traveling extensively, skydiving, white water rafting and cliff diving. Still, there was always the opportunity to return home to a hotel or hostel at the end of the day. No disrespect to campers, tents, sleeping bags and roasting marshmallows by the campfire. Each and every one of those mentioned would be super cool. But I slept off a night of heaving drinking and hardcore in Central Park in my teens and I think my fear of being murdered by an axe or machete wielding maniac trumps that of a mugger in the park. Years, no decades later. I have a hard enough time getting my wife to join me game of Wiffle ball or Frisbee. I don’t think my chances of getting her to go camping with me are much better. People change, so who knows. Maybe my time will come.
Knowing full well the perils of cluttering your hard drive, computer or phone device with countless unwanted images. Old habits die hard and trying to capture images that inspire you in on way or another is nothing to fault someone over. Still, capturing images with my phone allows me to instantly edit and feel less compelled to keep what I don’t want. Being that I still find inspiration in things others often overlook or discard. I’m thankful for having more than one option to capture and share the things I love.
After my Father wrecked or sold ever car he owned. He began using his Mother Veronica’s decade old, beat up car to get from A to B and not much further. The trunk was so dirty that your hands would instantly turn black once you unlocked it. The seats were torn and tattered and the floorboards were often covered with debris and weeks worth of empty fast food containers. Regardless, we were able to fit my Father’s 6’4 frame, our dog, myself and up to eight kids piled up in the backseat. The Hawkins brothers Keith, Petey and M.J., Glen, Tommy and whoever else would risk the trip on that day. (Aside from those named. The cast would always change depending on the day and who was willing to brave the back seat.
During my first days in Seattle I found myself in a small record shop talking to a native New Yorker who did time on the early New York Hardcore scene. He pointed himself out in a Live DVD of the first Bad Brains show at CBGB’s. Later on that week I struck up a conversation with another employee who used to volunteer at the legendary Gilman St. Project. Just last week I was pulling records out of the bin when I learned that the clerk behind the counter was also originally from New York City and worked at a record store just a few blocks from the one off St. Marks St. where I was working nights.
“Oh, you know that art market they have in the airplane hanger.” was all I come up with at the time. The truth is, that since moving to Seattle in June of 2017. I’ve left most of, it not all of the weekend driving to my wife. Though much of my driving during the week has me within the Columbia City, Downtown and West Seattle areas. The weekends usually take us far beyond the areas mentioned. And while I retain minute details of the places we’ve visited. I can rarely remember the names of the towns, cities and businesses. Having visited the same market just a week ago. I still never bothered to remember the town, military base or the name of the market. Who knows, maybe it’s a subliminally intentional thing. If life has taught me anything. It’s that, the less you know…
No more than four, maybe five years old. Completely freaked out by the cover art of records like Leon Russell’s “Stop All That Jazz” Frank Zappa’s “200 Motels” or Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here”. Album covers that told stories I might not be quite ready to read. One’s that might have me checking the closet or under the bed that night. A few years later, as my ear for music began to form. My Dad would sit me down and play Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton’s Blues Breakers, and for me, the most painful torture a nine year old can suffer, Frank Zappa’s 79′ release “Joe’s Garage.” Years later though, many of the records and artists my parents introduced me to reside in my own record collection. Artists such as Frank Zappa, Hendrix and especially Tom Waits get countless play on the turntable and all my other modes of music enjoyment. I pick up just about every Leon Russell and Frank Zappa I see and being drawn to record based on it’s cover art remains crucial to many of my crate digging adventures. Still, I can recall sitting in my pajamas among those piles of records, How each cover either told a story or inspired me to create one,
Some of my earliest memories of baseball involve the Major League Baseball’s 1977 expansion that brought us the Toronto Blu4 Jays and the Seattle Mariners. Though it would be another three years before the Great American Pastime would take hold of my imagination. It served as a gateway drug to what would become a lifetime obsession.
I was in Japan when Ichiro Suzuki played his first games for The Mariners in 2001. Getting to see his first games, at bats and center field wizardry from his place of birth was, to say the very least, outer worldly. Still after more than forty years of existence. The Seattle Mariners continuously sport the ugliest uniforms in all of baseball while never appearing in a world series. Not even the 2001 team that won 116 games.
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