House of Hades tile in NYC. These tiles started in Buffalo a few years ago and are mainly centered in NY. They look nice, but don’t last long. All 3 Philly HOH tiles didn’t last a year. This one is at East 12th street and 3rd Ave.
Category Archives: general
9th Street Sausage Party
There’s an old saying that if you like sausage, you should never see how it’s made. That’s crap. Sausage making is actually pretty cool. On Friday night I met with some people from a local photo posse and we hit up 9th street after dark. The lights at Cappuccio’s Meats at 9th and Kimball were on with a man inside working away.
That man was Domenick Crimi. Cappuccio’s is a family business, but Domenick spent most of the last 20 years working as a professional photographer. Once hearing of the 8 or so of us lingering outside his store, he came out to chat and then invited us inside to shoot the exciting world of sausage making. Next week is the annual 9th Street Italian Market Festival and Dominick was busy preparing 70 pounds of sausage for it. I’ve had his sausages at past festivals and will absolutely have at least 1 this year. Below are my shots from the night. I’d link to the rest of the posse’s photos, but I don’t think any of them are up yet. Click to enlarge:
Domenick Crimi
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First you grind it
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Grind it
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Mix it
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Then you add the spices
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Add the spices and some water
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Then this:
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Pack it in the sausage stuffer
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Stuff them in natural casings
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Repeat late into the night
Shepard Fairey
Filed under Philly, Photo, TOYNBEE IDEA, general, promotion, street art
So every once in a while I’m sitting around trying to attach a SQL database to a laptop when a random request comes my way.
“Steve, Shepard Fairey is coming tomorrow and no one is covering it. Can you shoot it?”
“Yes.”
And with that I found myself covering a very small and almost completely unknown, but supposedly public Shepard Fairey wheatpasting extravaganza up on Girard Ave. It was me and a freelancer sent by the Fishtown Star.
The event itself was pretty awesome. Highlights included the fact that the man himself is a gracious, friendly and by all accounts decent human being… which goes against the norm with a lot of people of his stature and fame. Otherwise it was interesting to hear war stories from his collaborations with Banksy, witness a wheatpaste project from start to finish and finally fulfill my personal mission to ask him about the Toynbee tiles. That cuts my list by a third:
Shepard Fairey ✔
William Gibson X
Larry King X
For the record, he knows of them, but not much about them. My experience has been that most street artists that retain anonymity do so only outside their circle of peers. Within the club, they’re well known. Being completley anonymous has caused the Toynbee tiler to slip completley under the radar… even among fellow artists.
I did explain how non-labor intensive their installation was and encouraged him to explore the medium. I highly doubt anything will come of it.
All in all, it was a good event that totally blew my previous day’s meeting of Tony “no photos” Danza out of the water. Here are some shots from the afternoon. Click on any to enlarge.
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Speaking with Students from the Mural Arts Program
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Chatting with Mural Arts Director Jane Golden
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Understatement of the Century
In case you can’t see, the sign says, “Excuse our Appearance.” I spent the better part of this beautiful day driving to every corner of North Philly and this is nowhere near the oddest thing I saw. This city is a strange and beautiful place. Click to enlarge:
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Love Train
A few photos from the Valentines Day “Love Train” tour of the Love Letter murals in West Philadelphia. The Mural Arts Program chartered an el train for the tour. Artist and creator of the project, Steve Powers guided it over the sold out train’s PA. A good time was had by all. Click photos to enlarge:
Passengers wait for the Love Train.
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Steve Powers going into the light
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Michael & Lisa Nutter ride the train. Balancing light at close range was tricky.
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Mural Arts Executive Director Jane Golden
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Open Your Eyes
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Hug Me
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Kiss Me
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Team USA!
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The End
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More photos on my flickr page.
Northern California Around Now
If I didn’t have the photos, I wouldn’t believe my memory of this place. This is what the countryside of Northern California looks like this time of year. Click to enlarge:
Sunol Regional Wilderness, December 30th, 2006
Merry Christmas From Leather Santa
Happy Holidays from the nicest, combat boot and leather motorcycle vest wearing Santa you’ll ever meet at City Hall. Rock on Philly:
Horrible Place: Snow
Once, long ago I lived in a poorly maintained apartment. To help produce a more vivid understanding of it, here’s the story of the toilet:
Just before I moved in, the guy who lived above my future home died on his toilet. Because he had no friends or loved ones, no one found him until he started to smell. The maintenance guys had to scrub his melted skin off the porcelain.
A few weeks later my new neighbor moved in. When employed he worked at a wawa, radioshack or on the overnight shift at a center city parking lot. He got fired a lot. Eventually he was unemployed for too long and was forcibly evicted.
In preparation, he stashed all his female body building porno videos and magazines in my hall closet. The closet was right below the death toilet. Soon after, the toilet broke and poured gallons of raw sewage into the closet and into my apartment. Repair took a couple of weeks.
And that’s the story of the toilet. Why do I bring this up? Because this evening I found a picture of the hallway of that apartment. I took this whimsical photo during the 24″ blizzard of 2003. As beautiful as this was, I had no heat at the time so my memory is kind of bittersweet. Here’s to a better blizzard in ’09:
Click to enlarge
Man and Stray Dog
It was hard to find an authentic moment on the island of Santorini, but I managed this. This is an actual Greek person sharing an authentic moment with an actual stray dog. 99% of what I saw in this place was tourists enjoying thoroughly artificial entertainment. Click to enlarge:
Greek Tourist Trap
Santorini (Thira) is many things, most of them for tourists. With that said, it is pretty. This was taken with the camera balanced on a railing. Click to enlarge:
