PHOTOS: mediterranean revelry (part 2)

 

 

 

 

PHOTOS: mediterranean revelry (part 1)

SO many more to come.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

seemingly random selection

first post of several photos I overlooked in the past year or two, and reworked in color. hope you likey.

 

 

 

 

 

 

PHOTOS: Beer, Kickball & Photography – Watching LEFT FIELD the movie

Photo publication: Chicago Reader cover page, Week of 02/26

LEFT FIELD the movie is out.

www.leftfieldthemovie.com

…which, in a deliberately fortuitous way (and vice versa) earned me two publications in the same week:

One for the front cover (!) of the Chicago Reader and the other for TimeOut Chicago,  two of the most prominent publications in the city. So I can’t really complain  In fact i’m rather psyched about it, and yet I have to maintain a certain amount of dignity and a low profile about this, for a number of reasons.

Left Field is about the very kickball league I belong to. It was shot mostly during the 2007 season as a way to portray a community of young adults in their late twenties to mid-thirties, shedding their social inhibitions and letting it all hang out every summer sunday at drunken kickball games. Essentially, the movie aims to show how commonly held perceptions of adulthood  can be, and ARE refuted once a week, through playing a game for children and consuming (and eventually abusing) life. But it also shows these kids are still able to maintain a sense of self, and a strong sense of community.

What the movie crew didn’t see coming, though, was the tragic accidental death of one of the league’s central characters, KC Haywood, who was arguably one of the kindest guys of the whole league and beyond. All of a sudden, the movie project ceased to be a mere portrayal of a community’s weekly debauchery: it showed how a group of degenerate punks come together in strength and humility in the face of tragedy. So needless to say that the movie is not only good, it is deeply relevant.

The strangeness of watching a movie about the very community you hang out with every summer is difficult to describe. Far from being any of the characters featured in the movie , I had the unique experience of being (mostly)  part of the league , but also part of the photo crew, and part of the audience in the sense that although these are people I know, I have never  gotten to know them this closely. It’s a tremendously confusing position to find oneself in, and puts me in the least likely category of people to be writing a review of the film.

So i’ll limit myself to sharing some shots from that season and from the film shooting. I feel that these photos – and I am infinitely thankful to Chris Batte, the film producer, for his support – have become part of the kickball community itself, for having been projected so many times and now published as the public face of the movie and the league. I have gotten the unique experience and honor to have a lot of these shots shown at the movie opening as well, and i’m incredibly thankful for anyone who has shown their appreciation on that evening. It goes straight to the heart.

These all go out to the memory of K.C. Haywood (R.I.P.)

I am also posting newer photos from the KC Haywood memorial All-Star game, which haven’t yet been distributed.

PHOTOS: Samothrace records “Life’s Trade” in Chicago

Samothrace (L to R: Dylan Desmond, Brian Spinks, Renata Castanga, Joe Noel) outside Volume Studios, Chicago, April 2008. This shot was actually published in the December 2008 edition of Decibel Magazine as well as Skyscraper Magazine the following month, and Britain’s Terrorizer Magazine around the same time.

Samothrace is conventionally referred to as a “Doom Metal” outfit, yet I don’t think they really like to be boxed into that corner, otherwise they wouldn’t be able to make the kind of music they actually make. I’m trying really hard not to write a (very positive) review of the album they recorded on that week of April, earlier this year. My opinion – having been with the band during the recording of Life’s Trade – is a bit biased. I can confidently say, though, that there is nothing ‘doom-like’ in the humility, passion and kind-heartedness that these kids put into their music and lives. Yes, the music is heavy, and Spinks can deliver a scorching howl. Yet everything about this album reminds me exactly of the image they use for themselves: Kansas prairie thunder. If you’ve ever been through a Kansas storm (or better, caught into one), it is the most frightening thing by leaps and bounds, especially in the springtime; but it’s a spectacularly beautiful one, and has a quality and feel you won’t find anywhere else. It is that quintessential and epic mid-western storm.

I wish I were able to capture that in photos, but this is all I got. These shots were taken in April 2008 at Volume Studios in Chicago’s West Town area, on a nice sunny weekend. I think we all had a pretty damn good time.

For more on these top-notch kids, go HERE or their label 20 BUCK SPIN.

The Spinks Station and the shoes of Doom

Renata

Spinks and Joe trading

Dylan, basking

Joe Sticks-Pack

Renata and Joe

they take away our jobs

(photographs taken at West Fest, in Chicago’s West Town neighborhood by Damen and Chicago Ave, summer 2008)

the story:

I belong to a kickball league (yes, kickball, I’m 27, sue me) which, to oversimplify it, consists of a horde of drunken degenerate punks that gathers every summer sunday in the Chicago area known as Humboldt Park. Why I do this is completely irrelevant at the moment (but it’s a whole lotta fun, lemme tell ya).

Humboldt park is a predominantly Puerto Rican area a little north-west of town and the main park is always a busy place come summertime. You would think Puerto Ricans would choose perhaps tuesday (or “toozdey”) to swarm the parks, but noooo. It just so happens that, just like the rest of us, Sunday is their day of choice to show up… all speaking Spanish and whatnot… A good time for family and friends, a good time to show off your 1950′s red Ford Crown, and a good time for small, mobile and portable business.

Thus, every so often in between kicking a ball and chugging a Pabst, we’d hear the jingling bells from a good old ice cream vendor‘s cart – we’ve all seen them . Some guy strolling slowly through the park with his cooler. So slow in fact that you wondered whether he came there to sell anything at all… Those dudes have no marketing strategy beyond the fruity stickers garnishing the cooler and the tiny bells, and for good reason: most of them do so without a permit, against city laws; so discretion is key. Unmistakably, however, they look happy; or satisfied at the very least. Selling cold treats on the street – and street food in general – is no novelty in Latin American culture or in any culture for that matter, and it must be a humbling experience to see tons of children everyday, all excited about a bunch of frozen sugary stuff, a universally bonding experience for the kid in us. And yet, though, I am sure that, somewhere inside, they wish their best days were worth a little more than $50. Just a bit.

Cut to about 6 short blocks east of that area one evening, in the Wicker Park / Ukranian Village neighborhood – once an industrial area; a hub for punks and artists; and now recently an upscale yuppy self-important Prius driving mecca – I suddenly heard one bright shiny bell ring in the distance as I was crossing the street. I turned my head in the direction of the sound… and there she was. The lady (trying hard not to call her “the blond chick”) with the ice cream cart.

Or “gellatto,” I should say. Because that’s what she called it, in her overly sweetened inquisitive voice, extending that last syllable just painfully enough to make it sound like an “eww.” Yeah, there she was; strolling down the street at a busy intersection, selling what surely must be some sort of organic ice cream made with milk from south-eastern France; and I am not exactly certain I thought those things had ever existed before that night. Let me clarify what I mean by “those things.” We’re not about to enter a debate on ice-cream ingredients.

A squeaky clean, blond haired, tank-top wearing, capri-jeans sporting, former sorority girl with a “college degree” and a tan, pushing an ice-cream cart with a business logo on it is nothing short of an anomaly in my book, and it quite honestly made me cringe. In a very odd way, this was borderline insulting. I am not so much upset at the girl as I am at the people who decided to implement that idea in that area, and using such a protagonist. But the ultimate anger goes to the ones who decided to ratify and allow a business permit for this shit just because they could afford it. These are the same people who handed out countless other permits, giving green light to ludicrous projects amounting to cultural snobbery. This most notably includes the handing out of permits to build overly-expensive, frankly unattractive “affordable housing” developments and overpriced “organic restaurants” that offer a choice of 12 different buns when you order a goddamn hamburger, thus resulting in the displacing of those (ethnic minorities mostly) who can’t afford soaring property and hamburger values.

The invasion of the suburbanites is upon us… and they want us to eat healthy, be clean, and go to bed early.

Gentrification spreads fast and while it may improve certain things, these improvements almost always come at the cost of something, or someone else at all levels of the cultural spectrum. Even at the ice cream level; and I am sorry, but until you hand out a decent job to our Puerto Rican kids and integrate them in your plan, I’m gonna want my street ice cream poorly packaged, made with basic ingredients, and stored in a dusty sticker laden cooler pushed by a guy who loves doing it and hates it at the same time. That’s why they call it street food. And while we’re at it, guess what, it’s supposed to be noisy too. You don’t whisper sweet “gellatto’s” at passer-by’s ears, you shout it the hell out, and we shout back! Because food is something worth celebrating with others.

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UPDATE: This is exactly the kind of bullshit i’m talking about. This time in Pilsen, another slowly gentrifying neighborhood.