I was looking for photos that may or may not have been lost in the great ibook meltdown of 2009. Specifically these pictures were taken by me a little more than a year ago when I first visited Seattle meaning to write an article about it, a travel narrative. That didn’t work out; the article didn’t get published, and somewhere along the line I forgot to put all the pictures on my external hard drive. Perhaps I had? I didn’t really know so I did some poking around. Using spotlight, I queried my antique external hard drive for ‘photo’, which yielded pictures of my ex I wish I didn’t still have. I tried ‘Seattle’ and got to a folder with notes I took during the trip. I tried ‘.jpg’ and found photos I had forgotten about and some I had never known to exist. The photos I was looking for are probably gone forever.
(from top to bottom)
Mercer Street, Fishtown, Philadelphia. The ‘NO NO PARKING’ sign makes more sense if you know that the sidewalk in front of that fence is sinking.
The Bell Tower, Temple University, Philadelphia. Every Friday this douche would come out to the Bell Tower and scream about Jesus while painting these pictures. I asked my ultra Catholic friend (he’s in seminary now!) what he thought of this guy. My friend said that some people are more concerned with showing off their faith than actually worshiping God.
The El, Kensington, Philadelphia. I waiting for the train, the sun was going down. I love Kensington.
Danger Danger Gallery. I went to see Blues Control because they were opening before Growing and my friend was really into Growing. I wanted to see Blues Control because I saw them listed on Kurt Vile’s myspace as an influence.
The Bathhouse, Hicks Street. My roommate was filming in the kitchen; filming in the kitchen involved placing high-wattage light underneath the green mystery fiber awning that spanned our ‘backyard’. Did not know the awning was translucent.
???. Upon looking at the file path for these two, I figured that they must be on the Adobe staff or something. But what are they on my computer?
???. I think this is in India.
Union Carbide (Dow) Factory, Bhopal, India. This is just inside the gates of the factory responsible for one of the worst industrial disasters ever. On December 3 1984, a shit ton of Toxic Fucking Gas escaped from the site, killing 8,000 outright. 25,000 have died ‘to date’ thanks to the long term poisoning of Bhopal’s water / nasty shit everywhere (via). The site hasn’t been cleaned up. The victims were the sort of people that would end up living close to a pesticides plant, e.g. they were / are ‘poor as fuck’. Perhaps it’s not a surprise, then that little to no action has been taken to punish those responsible for this incident or to help those still affected. Except for these guys. Or, rather, NGO / Activist intervention have been substituted for an actual corporate or government response. Also this:
I went to Bhopal trying to gain access to the factory. It didn’t really work out but there was this kid that followed me into the first set of gates (before the checkpoint / police men’s card club); I asked him if I could take his picture.
Some Hotel, Diu. Sarah got very, very sick multiple times during her stay in India.
Raj Mahal, Dhangadra. Sarah with dogs. This was the courtyard where we slept during the first weeks of our stay, when it was totally hot ass summer and not at all wet ass monsoon. The dogs were the palace’s resident strays.
Rah Mahal, Dhangadra. Leah and…totally forget his name. Damn. They are on a motorcycle.
Some city in India.
Fairmont (sort of), Philadelphia. Tiff decided to be me for Halloween. I took it as a testament to the strength of my personal brand.
