Mass produced everything is cheaper.  And child-labor from China and other countries make it near impossible to compete.  Can I compete with children making 10$ / month?  No.  Can I compete with a machine that can make cheap prints, if only you buy a million at a time?  Hell no.  I don’t have money like that.  All my money went to Goldman Sachs.  Yours did too.  They own us.  But don’t let them own our art, our minds, our souls.

Who told Ringo Starr he could sing??  Wow, I saw him on Jon Stewart last night and his voice and style are a sleepy train wreck.  Not the kind where you are fixated on the event where you can’t get away and the horror becomes imprinted in your mind.  No, not that.  This was like global warming at the North Pole.  You can’t see it.  People tell you it’s happening so you kind of assume it is.  I mean, shouldn’t there be ice there?  Shouldn’t Ringo be at least a washed up super-hero with an expanded belly and loss of x-ray vision but maybe he can still run a little faster than that girl down the street with cerebral palsy?  Yes, Ringo is the melting ice sheet without the glory.  Watching it was a slow death, which brings me to my point.  He is a cash cow that had mad cow disease about 10 years ago, but thinks he’s still angus prime because these vast media companies tell him he is and market the hell out of him with money.  You throw money like that into marketing, and you could sell bat shit.  Oh, yes, at my day job we do sell bat shit.  People love it.  It’s better than Ringo, and the media industries too.

In summation, buy my art because good Americans buy from their neighbors.  If you don’t, you have wet brain and are a commie loving chinese man that beats children.

no disrespect.

The word was, that she fell asleep with a cigarette on the sofa, that he tried to put it out, and the entire place exploded in flame.  I have my doubts.  There was something sinister.  When is there not something sinister at those rentals?  Sinister was in the fine print of the contracts.   Oh, hell, they probably don’t even have contracts for leasing there.  Give me some cash.  Here’s the key.  Don’t burn it down.   I assume that’s the general rental conversation.  And, these tenants couldn’t even manage that.  Nor could the one’s that lit a different unit on fire two weeks ago.  Broken glass and burning rage, and upside-down peace signs.  Or maybe it was a tilted Mercedes, their dream car.  Hard to say.  But that car that was out front had to be pushed aside because it probably hadn’t started in a year.

The firemen finally arrived.  15 minutes?  20 minutes?  Not the quickest response, though I must say it was a sleepy, cold day and who wants to be out in that?  Let the place burn.  It’s probably worth more torched and blackened.  That one brave fireman did run out and he was ready to save whoever was in that ramshackle.  He began to break down the front door when a management type ran up and told the guy it’s just cats inside.  Leave ‘em.

In addition, I will be debuting my line of greeting cards “The Barcelona Collection” which all have original photographs from Barcelona.  And, I will have a few old artworks on clearance, which means you make me an offer and if it can cover the cost of my materials or come close, I’ll accept it.

It will be fun too!  Tazza has small sandwiches and wine and coffee, as well as delicious desserts.   Hope to see you there!

Brian

So, DC was fun!  It’s a colorful place.  They are really into these painted row houses that my brother tells me they can’t paint any more.  But, why pass a law that you can’t paint these houses after they are all painted bright, fun colors already?  Because its DC.  That’s what they do.  DC = Irony.  I liked the people that I ran across there in the public domain.  They are friendly.  This one cool lady let me photograph her because I liked her hat.  And, the cab driver was like Denzel Washington.  Even the street riff-raff appeared rather affable.  Apparently they say Philly is the un-friendly place and that DC is like your mom’s kitchen.  Yummm, smell the chicken soup!

Gourmet Indian food.  WOW!!  You have to get some.  Save up the coins and go do it when you get the chance.  It’s one of those experiences worth having at least once.  Did you know you could fry spinach so that its little crispity bites??  Me either, but someone can at that place in DC.  Yumm.  — Oh is this supposed to be a photo blog?  Ya, I suppose so, but you ain’t writing it and I can only say what’s in my head.  Besides, you need a photographer that likes gourmet Indian food.  Everyone does!  And yes, as you can see, there are a couple photos too.

While there, we went to an arboretum.  The national one?  Maybe, I can’t recall exactly.  I wasn’t driving.  They had a bonzai exhibit.  How awesome is that?  There were bonzai trees that were started in 1800, and even 1700.  Seriously, that is a commitment, where most of us can’t even commit to a one year relationship without losing our minds.   It’s something you can’t fathom, and I can’t fathom, but there it is before us, beckoning us to ask the question of how?  How do you keep a plant alive that long?  — Of course you know perrenials were genetically constructed for Americans so we can throw them out and get new ones next year.   It was a vast CIA coverup and now Obama is pushing his pro-perennial agenda and we can’t do anything about it because he is an imposter alien from the Vega system, sent to destroy our knowledge of the ancient bonzai.

I’m off to Austin this weekend.   But no camera

What I discovered was a generally quiet and subdued part of town with a lot of slower moving old folks mixed with a few immigrants and people walking there dogs, or riding there bicycles while their dogs run (photo in upcoming book).  I rather liked the neighborhood.  It wasn’t exciting, but at the bullet building end, was a nice area to live, if one were to live in Barcelona.  Not too pricey, not too noisy, not too Morrocan (sorry Morrocans, I don’t really know you, that’s just the word on the street here), not too fast and not too ugly.  It’s “not-too” perfect, if you wanta live here.

So, I strolled down this Rambla de Poblenou all the way to the beach, taking a few photographs, and then arrived at the beach just at sunset.  Perfect.  Been needing some of those shots, and the sky was good too with just a few clouds but not too many.  I then walked along basically all the Barcelona beaches and around the tip of Barcelonetta before finally coming back to a metro station.

Then, bored later, I tried a Barcelona salsa club.  Interesting.  No photos.  haha

We found a great place for tea somewhere amongst the alleys of the gothic quarter.  These were some amazing teas.  Really amazing.  And, what was better is the photos came to me while I sat there sipping on tea by some 500-800 year old church.  There were some tables of tasty cheeses and other wares in the plaza as well – a temporary setup as you see here and there around the city.  So, yes, you don’t always need to go to the photos.  Sometimes it’s better just to kick back with your camera and wait, and then be very sly.  Some people get very angry about photos.  Like the old chinese lady who ran me out of her store.  And, I am guessing this guy here would get VERY cranky about having his photo taken, but hey that’s the front lines of photography, right?  No, that cane is not for a gimpy leg!  Of course I’m saving the best shots of him (and everything) for my book.

The next day we returned to the area, with a friend in tow – a girl we had met at the pub a few days back, and wandered around for a bit before I starting having flashbacks of Sopranos episodes.  This area was full of guys that reminded me of Tony and the gang.  So we moved on.  And, after being fixated on bicycle photos, which I still am to a degree, I’ve added a photo fixation on mannequins.  Looking back, it’s an obvious development, but I only realized my strange desire a few days ago.  I love photographing mannequins.  There, I said it; where is the next AA-mannequins meeting?  Some fancy, overpaid psychologist would have a field day with all this.  Now why is it the mannequin?  Well sir, or ma’am, they don’t react, they are not people and well, they embody what we are and what we think and we dress them as us.  Somehow, they are a more personified version of ourselves…

Next day, or the next, who knows, the internet just came back on and I had 3 days of blurred Spanish flu delerium.  Oh yes, there have been quite a few photo days to go into, but next on this blog is my return to Park Guell.  A much better day this time.  I brought out the wide-angle lens like I was supposed to and the skies were beautiful.  Below is by the metro exit, before the 2 mile uphill walk to Guell.  If you walk just down that street ahead of you, in the photo, on the left is the freshest tap beer I have tasted.  SO good.  yummmm.

Beautiful, aint it?  Barcelona really is a beautiful, bustling city with a great dynamic between different areas and burroughs.  I read on wikipedia that the city of Barcelona was 1.6 million people, but then read further and the Barcelona metropolis (it’s not like dallas and plano, the metropolis really is all Barcelona) is 4.6 million.  No wonder I felt like the place was so busy.  Look at all the people!!  Oh yes, on to Guell, for the second round.  Got yelled at by children playing a soccer match for photographing.  “No photo!  No photo!”  No problem, they were terrible shots anyway and you couldn’t even see the people because I had the wide angle on and I was far away, through brush.  I really have no idea how they even saw me amongst like 4.2 million other Barcelona visitors that all had their cameras out taking photos of everything there.  The trick at Guell?  Taking a photo that hasn’t  been shot 10 million times.  Uggghh.  Well, it’s a challenge but I got a few that maybe weren’t exactly like everone elses.  And, I got one that is amazing (in the book, more of a shot of a person at Guell).

Yes, it has metamorphed, metastized and moved through the ether from Paris to Barcelona.  And I  have to say, it looks just as good if not better here.  It’s on the outer end of the city park which is a long avenue with central walking (as many promenades here are).  Starting with the Arc de Triomph, it ends with winding paths of garden and sculpture, somewhat akin to Central Park in New York.

At the park I met a nice British family with a father who either a. has no idea what he’s talking about or b. has the worst British taste in history.  Why?  He went on and on about going to to Palau Reial.  So I did, and it was the most boring place on Earth.  Gladewater has way more flavor.  Really.  Everyone in that section of town wore this “kill me now” mopey look and I can’t blame them.  All the buildings looked like communist tenements from the 70′s.  And, the park there was in terrible condition – the actual palau reial building has these parts of wall that are falling off (and not even in a cool, oh I can photograph this way) where they are replastered.  Looks like some child did it after fingerpainting.  And, they didn’t bother to repaint.  We got coffee nearby and one of the spoons came out with dried food from some other meal where it apparently had not been washed.

So we moved on as quickly as possible to another region which was definitely better.  Though, I had one old chinese lady chase me around yelling at me because I took a photo in her store.  Lame.  You do your job and you let me do mine lady.

Then, we arrived.  From a distance, it appeared like old apartment tenements that had decayed with age, but as one approaches you see it with better distance perspective and you realize they are not quite so large.  It is a city of the dead, tenement upon stone.  Stone upon death.  And of course I was excited.  We were hoping to find one of our items for our photo treasure hunt there (though we were not so lucky with that).  After some time we determined that we had to enter by the appointed entrance, where I found a sign that indicated no dogs and no photography.  Ok, well my challenge was up, since there were quite a few people in the place as well as a fair amount of security personnel.   I put up my big, and obvious, camera and went with the subcompact in my pocket.

After spending thirty minutes or so in there, I was tired and finished and couldn’t use my big camera so it was time to move on.  On the far side of the cemetary you can see the commercial shipyards and the sea.  They were as busy as the rest of the city.  We finally wound our way down and eventually found the only other exit from the cemetary, which led onto the main highway which runs by the sea all the way from Barcelona to Valencia.  From there we walked along the highway for nearly two hours and finally made it home, with very tired feet and ate some leftover Barcelona Fajitas that I made.  Yes, I finally found tortillas!!  And one Mexican restaurant too, which has the best mojitos and tequilla sunrises ever.  The food there was ok, but not great.  They have a deal if you order two things you get some free nachos.  The free nachos were like 7-11 nachos with chili and fake cheese.  Don’t ask me where they find that fake cheese in this city because I wouldn’t have thought it could be done.  And guess what?  Those nachos hit you later the same way the 7-11 nachos do.  Ouch.  haha.

But there are funny surprises still, like when I stumbled upon Pitta Hut.  No, I didn’t eat there! I mean, how funny is naming your place Pitta Hut?  I’m sure the locals had no idea at my amusement as I laughed walking by the Pitta Hut outdoor terrace.  They thought I was just a looney American.  Ok, I am an Americana loco, but I’m not the one who named my quaint little restaurant in the sleepy burrough of Barcelonetta in eyes view of the sailship pier… Pitta Hut.  They should have punched in a google.

Two days prior we went to the olympic grounds right at dusk.  Amazing.  It’s all a very cool place to look around and I would definitely suggest seeing it at dusk when all the fountains are on and the fading sunlight glows off the structures and the lights are on.   It’s very peaceful there, unlike much of the city with it’s constant hum of just about everything.  There are a few places here that are kind of quiet but not many.  Barcelonetta is a quiet burrough with the gridded city streets, but lively along the edges which are beach.  Barcelonetta is a short little peninsula.

Another thing.  Barcelona is HUGE.  It’s difficult to realize how big it really is.  Central Barcelona is a compact but decent size, and it gives the impression that the city isn’t that large and is compact.  This is not really the case.  When I went to the Olympic Park which is where I though the outer part of the city was, I climbed quite a hill to get there (since it is on one side of Montjuic – a small mountain hill).  When I got there I peered out beyond where we had been.  Looking that other direction, I saw an entire “other” city with skyscrapers and businesses and who knows what.  I haven’t been there yet, though I’m sure I’ll at least make an appearance there.

The same day I visited the Olympic Park, I also visited the National Catalan Museum which resides in and old and huge palace on the side of Montjuic in front of the Olympic Park.  It was rather extensive and had a great variety of artwork.  But most noteworthy was a piece of graffiti outside the place on one of the stairway railing columns.  It said “Catalania is not Spain!” in English.  So why in English?  Was it an American or Brit?  I think that is unlikely.  I can’t imagine what American or Brit would care at all about some locals only cultural indication.   And enough to graffiti it…  No I think it must have been a local.  Why English?  It would have been in Catalan, but perhaps this Catalan man or woman did not know Catalan, as the language was nearly stamped out by Franco before making a late resurgence (you find Catalan on many menus and signs and it is significantly different from Spanish, as much so as Italian or French).  No, I think this man or woman knew English as a second language and refused to use Spanish to write that Catalonia is not Spain.

So perhaps, I have yet to visit Spain.

I woke up late, but quickly got ready and we were out for the adventure.  Of course we stopped by our new favorite place for our daily cafe con leche.  After that it was determined that we would go on a “treasure hunt”.  A couple nights previous, it was determined, while sitting around doing nothing with no tv and no music and no internet that we should do a kind of photographic treasure hunt – so a list was made.  What we were looking for yesterday was:  pandora’s box, insight, the key, the throne and the garden.   Now, let me tell you, taking photographs of what’s there is one thing, while actively searching out and creating photographs of preconceived ideas is quite another.  That is no easy task, even in a place as diverse as Barcelona!!  But, we did get photographs of pandora’s box, the key (the photo is a keyhole, but abstractly it the same concept) and insight.  How do you photograph insight?!  This is what I was mulling over most of the day when Misty finally saw “insight”, so she gets full credit for that.

When we left the cafe, we headed for the Picasso museum, but when we got there, the sign said if you are there after 3pm on Sunday, you get in free, and so we figured free (gratis) was better than 18 Euros.  Much better, so we wandered off to find something to eat.   We shortly came across an entire section of this road (la princessa) that was covered in chocolate shops, so we couldn’t resist and got a couple items for later, which were awesome later last night!  After that, we kept wandering, looking for food and whatever interested us.  What we found, was the Born district.  It is the hip part of town where university students and artists hang out, and has a really nice feel to it.  If I were to live in this town, I would probably live in the Born.  We saw a few restaurants and we went inside one to check it out further, but weren’t sure yet, and it had a back door, so we went on out the back and there it was!  An entire plaza of artworks, not the repeated kind they sell tourists on Las Ramblas (which are nice, for sure, but not the same), were displayed all over the place.  One was even placed in the branhes of a small tree.  Artists milled about, and there were a couple musicians here and there mixed in with students with books, probably not really studying, but feeling better about having a textbook with them.  We found a little cafe with outdoor seating at the edge of the plaza and got a snack.  I ordered swiss fondue with curry and toast with thin duck slices, but the waiter said the fondue was only at night, so I amended the order to add sauteed mushrooms with bacon and “nachos”.  Yes, nachos!  Ok, they weren’t really nachos but it’s the closest thing even resembling Mexican food I have yet found.  It was tortilla chips with a bowl of real cheese, melted and stirred with about three peppers in it.  Of course peppers are easy to come by here, but tortilla chips?  They almost don’t exist.  It was awesome.

After we finished dining (con cerveza y vino), a street musician offered to let me play his guitar and so I played for about 10 minutes to the dining audience at the cafe.  And, I got a hearty round of applause (particularly from the women, says Misty, lol).  It was a thoroughly enjoyable experience.  I had been saying for the last couple days that I was dying to play a guitar out on the street, and then, lo and behold, this guy offers me his guitar.  Awesome.

After that, we returned to the Picasso Museum where I discovered Picasso’s early work, which was not good.  What was great about that, is that they enough of his early work to show how he learned art, and discovered how to draw and paint things.  Even Picasso sucked when he started.  That is inspirational.  And, his later works have given me an idea with my photo-art which I will attempt to implement upon my return to the land of cows, space and quiet.

After Picasso, I was pumped, and really feeling the photos (which showed later – I think I must have shot 50 + good photos yesterday), so we contiued on into the Born and discovered many cool shops where Misty bought some earrings and a skirt and I found an awesome shirt (shown below).  We wandered some more and after finding two of our three “treasure hunt” items, suddenly we were back at the restaurant we had lunch at.  We basically had wandered completely aimlessly for a couple hours and there it was.  And it was night, so we went back for the fondue!  Though, I decided on the mustard and tarragon fondue instead of the curry.  It was really, really good.

And, so was my day.