9/26/2008

Bodie.

So... changed this thing up a long while ago to take it in the direction of abandoned houses. You know, nostalgia or memories or whatever... but since then I've not been to many abandonments that have been very fruitful. Plenty of places that you can't get into easily but not too many photos. Here's a post though of some digital photos from Bodie, CA, a famous ghost town. A few of them were snapped by my brother Harry. This may last it may not... probably not, but it may be an every 3 months updated type thing.



































































































blue bird.

























ye olde school house.




































































































This was a jar of mayonaise... now it's white dust...

7/22/2008

6/26/2008

Just...

been working, skating a little, traveling a little, and shooting a lot! check the flickr if you feel.

















































6/13/2008

5/23/2008

Rest of the trip.

Lots of new photos and not the patience to write out and type much... so here's part of the rest all together... this is pretty much only one story, but lots of the other photos can be seen on my FLICKR.


Death.









One afternoon we went by a city park... it was FULL of couples on dates, literally every nook was taken. After going there I can see why you'd take a date there.

The whole place is like one huge sand castle, really cool from the outside and kinda fun to wander around and climb on. Then you get inside...









It's got an aquarium built in... sounds cool...








until you realize it's some sick laboratory filled with specimens they've found in the extremely polluted Nile river...








like this desecated seal carcass.............................. soooo coated in dust and rot.








oh look honey a rotting alligator and turtle!








this case was smashed to bits... from what I could tell they broke the glass, climbed inside, drank 3 orange sodas and 2 cokes and threw the cans on the ground, then stood the huge aligator carcass up on its nose, then left....









The next day we went to the zoo... it was closing right as we arrived but the owner decided we could come in.. he walked us around and took us into an employees only section of the lion building... A tiny hallway maybe 6 ft. wide and 30 ft. long, one wall of little barred cages like you see in the photo below... full grown lions chomping on bloody meat bones and roaring freaking loud... This was the last picture on my roll, and it was taken seconds before they opened up one of the cages and brought out a full grown lion, disturbing its feeding time, into the tiny hallway right next to us who are three strangers with strange smells to the lion who is also surrounded now by like 6 people... and then they encouraged us to grab its facial hair so they could take photos of us with it............................................. put that thing away now! it was terrifying and thankfully they took no for an answer as we all backed away slowly. After that the owner got pissed when I refused to pay him an extra tip for releasing lions on us and kicked us out.

5/13/2008

Day 2

Took a long taxi ride into the middle of nowhere to the camel market. Rather depressing in the end, lots of whacking with sticks and animal abuse. Still fun to wander through and photograph. Still really bummed the lab basically screwed over 90% of my color film. But here's some salvageable things.










































Are you sure about that?





























This is Abdula who took us to the Egyptian museum. He got way pissed when we said no to his restaurant suggestion which was a tourist trap. In response he stopped talking to us, drove twice as fast, and almost ran over two young girls.












The museum was really cool but no photos alowed. Tonsssssss of old papyrus with drawings/writings on it that was amazing to see. Also some crazy animal mummies, a huge 20 ft. alligator one, lots of cats, and a hippo... More interesting after this day, and they should be up a lot faster since I have everything scanned now.

4/29/2008

Egypt. Day 1.

The previous day we flew in to Egypt and took a walk in the afternoon after checking into our hotel. 5 hour flight to JFK in New York, then 11 hours to Cairo International Airport... epic. The President of Algeria was flying in that day so there were guards and red carpet everywhere.









We went for a walk that night and found some crazy egyptian pizza that was amazingly good.


























This is for someone's funeral.








The first real day... woke up at about 5am due to jetlag and couldn't sleep anymore. We eat in the hotel buffet and Harry, my brother, spills syrup everywhere when the lid comes off the syrup bottle while he has it completely inverted and is squeezing...

Then we head off to the pyramids. It was a crazy day, tons of people trying to hustle you, and/or just get free money from you for nothing, asking for "tips". Nobody wants us to walk there (they want us to pay them for a taxi ride) and they tell us it's very far, but it turns out to only be a 10 minute walk. We get there and we're told you can't walk up the street to the entrance, that it's for cars only. You have to rent a horse or camel from them in order to get up there... lies, and we kept walking up.


















The pyramids themselves were amazing to see and just to try to imagine how they were built and how genius it all is. Sad to say nobody really takes care of them... lots of garbage strewn about in the sand around them, saw people throw their empty soda cans over the fence into the Sphinx's area right in front of everyone around them, and there are ropes around the pyramids to keep people off of them but the guards around the ropes will hold them down and tell you to come across them in order to take photos on the pyramids and then they want tips for letting you cross the line. Overall it was sad to see, considering it's the last remaining wonder of the original 7 wonders of the world.

This says that anyone who enters will die...
















We took a tour around on horses and our guides heckled us for more money constantly. We stopped and got up on a camel to have our pictures taken, a tourist trap, and the guy there was super energetic and kept calling me mustache. They want money for doing this too, though you already payed for the tour. Then instead of taking us to the Sphinx they tried to take us shopping... we walked away from the tour with them desperately trying to convince us to come back, then when they gave up on us they still asked for tips before they left.








this guy was sketchy and got way pissed when I refused to give him 20 dollars when he asked...


























cornball
















We see the Sphinx and are harassed by more people. They come up and try to fix your head scarf that they give you when you enter. I had mine around my neck and had to literally grab a guy's wrists and shove him away hard in order to get him to stop... so insistent on helping you arrange it and then they want money for doing so.












The camel we got up on kept grunting and making constant funny noises.


























Overall it was a beautiful day and lots of great sights, but overwhelming amounts of people trying take advantage of us.