Blog marked up

Normally when I post a bunch of pictures the general reaction of my friends is "that was pretty gay," except in a more hateful tone. The only person who has ever said anything nice about my photos was the man who helped me find P-Mac, Marquitos, who told me they were "Buenas fotos." But for all I know that could have been Argentine sarcasm that I did not pick up.

Below are some photos, some are mine, some are not.

This is a photo from Hewes stop at the JM line. It was pouring rain and I was soaking wet, which made a 5-hour bus ride to Boston that much worse, but I liked this picture.

This photo was stolen from the open casting call for Phoenix-MC Willy Northpole's "Body Marked Up" music video. I thought for a minute on how I could describe such an incredible tattoo, but the comment below the picture on MySpace said it best, "Damb dat shit is fukn tite..." Indeed.


I've said this about others before, but Willy Northpole is the greatest human ever. Aside from DMX on rollerskates, Willy is the only person who can make me homesick. Even though my current city may have had a little to do with hip-hop and the local guys ain't too bad either, but they don't strike that same chord that Willy does. When Willy says "Arizona stand the fuck up" and rhymes about putting a du-rag on a cactus, it just means so much.

Since Fake Rick Reilly and Brandon Jennings are Twitter casualties, Willy Northpole is currently my favorite tweeter, with 140-character gems like:

YO NIGGAS HAVE YOU EVER HAD SEX WITH A GIRL AND SHE START CRYING THINKING ABOUT SOMETHN AINT THAT THE WORSE SHIT i just keep going lol

I LET ALOT CHICKS GO THAT a fuck nigga would probably marry.. with me shit just gotta be right fuck looks i mean she has to be cute but ...

SO IF YOU HAD THE NUMBER CHICK IN THE ASS WAIST, FINE BREADED UP OPRAH STATUS BUT SHE HAD ONE TITTY LOL ill hold that titty with pride!lol

No I have not listened to all of Willy's new cd and I probably never will, it's just that good.

This is a photo I took off my roof of some weird clouds.

This is an old photo from SLAM that makes me hate LeBron James.

This is where I spent the 4th of July. Rhode Island is the truth.


Some nice views.


I don't really drink hard liquor, but it was essential to the picture.


Flipside views


This photo makes me love Melo, but hate myself for having all this time on my hands and still not watching every episode of The Wire.

Pictures: NYC Vol. 3

The photo above was taken from a Wendy's in Brooklyn. Easily the best art I have seen in any Wendy's ever.

The photo below is from the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, which were nice even though it was absent of any glass art.

It did have a Tony Danza leaf.


I saw this guy waiting for a bus on 125th and Lexington. After I snapped a picture of his tattoo, I started talking to him and learned he was from a town in the province of Buenos Aires. He came here a few years ago from Argentina and was now heading down to Florida to try to find work. I thought he was carrying a yoga mat on his back, but it was actually his bed as he told me he was catching the bus back to his shelter.

This photo was also taken on the corner of 125th and Lexington.


This is my friend Smelly G aka Altruistic G aka Sexual G aka Culinary G aka Directorial G aka Silent Movie G and in this photo he is Swedish Meatball G. This photo is also a memento to one great city-exploration day we ate Wendy's then Popeye's then $1.50 Coors Lights, then hit Ikea for Swedish meatballs, mashed potatoes, pasta, garlic bread, then found the desert bar on the floor level of Ikea where we consumed Cinnamon rolls and icecream (That sentence is a memento to poor writing). Then we learned they had hot dogs for 50 cents, a deal we could not pass up. It was a great city exploration day.

Pictures: Arco Santi Vol. 2

This is Arcosanti a quasi failed urban laboratory/ experimental town. It was created in 1970 as a way to revolutionize society and its creator Paolo Soleri hoped it would house 5,000 people.

Almost 40 years later, 90 people live here and they have only built about 10 percent of their intended community.

The part outlined in red has been built and the rest is set to be built one day. Arcosanti has no hard dates for anything mainly because they have very little money/organization/motivation. Their chief export is wind chimes.

The wind chimes are made at a slow clip here.
They have some pretty arches.

They have cutting-edge technology.

And they have these cool cement structures.

There is a lot more silliness about Arcosanti that I have since forgotten. I probably should blogged this stuff after I went there two months ago. Our tour leader was a young, skinny kid from New Jersey who got so lost in life that he had been living in Arcosanti for the past two years. He wore a purple bandanna around his head and had facial here similar to Hulk Hogan, except that he was not a professional wrestler, he was a citizen of Arcosanti.

The tour guide explained that Arcosanti's goal is to become a sustainable, car-free community where people can get anything they want within the community. The ultimate plan is for the community to be built of pods, some having stores, some being living spaces. Basically he described what any dense metropolitan city is, except Arcosanti is in the middle of the Arizona desert.

I still really do not understand Arcosanti and I am not sure anyone does. But it was interesting and if you ever end up lost in the greater Phoenix area it's worth checking out.

Pictures Vol. 1

I'm gonna throw down a bunch of pictures I have been meaning to blog for the past month or so. It's basically a 3-part tribute to Cumbio/ way to e-back up these pics/ forum for Gould and others to openly hate on posts with minimal writing.

These are photographs from the Chihuly display at the Desert Botanical Gardens in Phoenix.



The following picture is for Spencer Rogers, who has dedicated the last two years of his life toward generating a computer algorithm that correlates to this beautiful desert bush. Actually I still don't understand what he did with the Creosote Bush, but it's something close to what I described above.

The rest of the pictures don't have much to do with Spencer Rogers and for that I apologize.










So yeah, those were a bunch of pictures of glass sculptures mixed with desert landscape.

Flogger de Tucson

Here are some pictures I took from my recent jaunt to Tucson. As always click pictures to enlarge.

Here's the bus and it's Peruvian owner. The bus has made it back to Tampa Bay twice, New York twice, and Guatemala once.

The cool Peruvian's girlfriend, Kim, let us inside and it was unreal.

The good ol' train.

This used to be the Alamo, which my friend Dustin and I tried to save one night to no avail.


Then we journeyed to BICAS, the greatest place on earth.


I know every cool hipster biker/wanna-be photographer in town has tried to get artsy picture inside BICAS, but here is my attempt. If nothing else it was good practice for when I will be competing against hipster bikers/wanna-be photographers in New York City.

I met this incredible kid Alex, who just bought this bus for $1,200 off Craigslist. He's 19, owns a bus, and will soon be heading to Seattle for art school. If I could do it all again (meaning three years ago), I think I'd do something like that.
Alex his bike, burrito, bed and bus. Three cents, a joint and a neat wallet. Ah, to be 19 again.

I looked into this thing for 30 seconds trying to figure out why the kaleidoscope did not work. Then I realized it was a tube of long-stick matches.


Me, Alex and Donovan.


Then I started taking silly MySpace-esque self-shots in the back window of the bus.

Then I got this photo, which followed my photographic goals as stated in #2 of this post, where I wrote, "And really whenever I'm shooting any photo I'm just hoping I get lucky and it looks like a Nas album cover."


So with a little editing....

Then we biked over to the Hay House (SW corner of Fremont and Waverly), which we learned was actually a straw house.
We hung out with the owner Billy, who told us all about his project.
Here is a list of things I learned:
1. Billy's old UA professor lives next door and came up with the idea.
2. Straw is a good insulator, but Billy claims the main reason for the straw use is because of its weight-bearing ability.
3. He loves the acoustics of the house and he has a lot of jam sessions inside it.
4. He lost almost everything a few years ago, but is now happy to be out of the rat race and living in a straw house in Tucson.
5. Billy is an odd, but great dude.



Here is Billy's straw bed.


This is Jim's Market, my favorite closed market in Tucson. I always dreamed of it opening and getting a great shake there. Unfortunately it never opened.

Even worse it appears Jim's Market is being taken over by Red Coats.