Josephyne is NOT a tour guide.

The woman is great, but we actually drove 40 minutes out of San Francisco on Wednesday for a "beautiful walk through a garden and farmland, ending on a beach". No shit, those were her words.







Oh, and we didn't even make it to the beach. I guess if nothing else, it was memorable.

Almost forgot, I'm famous!

This is from last month's MN Monthly. Thats my fucking mug!



Here is the article...

Who's Making Money Now ... - Minnesota Monthly - January 2010 - Minneapolis, St. Paul, Minnesota

Also, when you've reach nearly unobtainable levels of stardom as I obviously have in this photo, you even get to keep the gold grill!

The Great Uban Shootout.

While standing in a sea of outdoor man-jamas, Tiff and I made a last minute decision to join Aaron and Jenny in a trip up to Aaron's family cabin. Its a 10 acre area about 40 miles east of Superior, WI... perfect for dispatching a shit-ton of bullets into nature. Giving nature a lead salad, if you will.



Shoot guns, drink beer, walk around... kind of the way a trip to a real cabin should be. And a real cabin this is. No electricity, no indoor plumbing, no worries. Just keep the wood burning stove going and watch out for bears.

Springers

I went over to the Spring Street about a week ago to take pictures of the aftermath of the employee party.





I've spent an incalculable about of time in this bar over the years. To be entirely honest, there are a TON of things that I don't even really like about it. The beer isn't the most pristine, the lighting sucks, I hate the jukebox... I could go on.

What it DOES have in spades, though, is good people. And its not just the employees, but most the regulars as well. Sometime it is perhaps the most integrated and engaged room full of people that I've been in outside of a college classroom or a hot game of dice. Normal barriers that people hold tend to fall when there. Obviously, it isn't always like this. Sometimes, its just a regular, foul-smelling bar with people minding their own and putting off going home with another drink. Other times, it just organically becomes the kind of place that so many others try to mimic these days. The newest incarnation of that forgery is Northeast Social Club. Their schtick is to set up a bar, and encourage people to talk to the guy next to you. Thats just fucking brilliant. Are they running a goddamn kindergarten? I wish I could say they were joking, as if people at bars down the street from them haven't been doing that for decades.

Sorry about that rant. Here is BJ. He's the hero, as he volunteered to be the only employee to work in order to keep the bar open on party night. Way to take one for the team dude.

The up side to editing.

I don't want to rehash old crap, but I felt like doing something productive with my photos today so I started plowing through old folders. Editing, organizing, and discovering. Don't get me wrong, I'd rather be out taking something new with the camera that I paid way too much for, but the thought of going outside on a day like this is just not that appealing. I think it hit -14 last night.

So, here are a couple things I found.





I love my Diana cameras. I love the complete lack of technical anything. Granted, mine takes 10 minutes to load, because I have to apply a liberal amount of gaff tape to the entire body to both keep it together and keep it almost light-tight. It also has a broken aperture ring, so I'm forced to shoot it wide open. This is fine with me as well, as it ensures an extra-terrible image quality.

I made room for it in my digital case today...