This is the final chapter in the cross country photo diary. We drove from Knoxville, TN, straight through Virginia, to Washington DC. I picked out some of the photos I thought were the prettiest in terms of texture and color, as opposed to framing and subject. The photos turned out a little moodier on our final leg of the trip. The entire set of photos is available on Flickr. This post comes an entire year and two months from the original date of the trip – I can’t believe it’s been that long. What a great trip. I’m glad the series is finished though and I look forward to blogging more regularly here, posting my various creative work. Also, if you’re interested in more photos like these, visit A Future Present where Leah and I update with photos from our trips and life in NYC.

— Read more

The first thing we did, once we checked into our Econolodge room in Memphis, was take about a mile walk to a restaurant I had scoped out on the web beforehand. The place was named South of Beale, an upscale burger/beer “gastropub” in what the internet called the South Main Arts District. Sounded good to me. I was getting grumpy and all I wanted was to sit down and drink a tall, cold beer while taking my time to look over a menu so that by the time I ordered I could have already gotten a start on a second cold beer. (timing is everything). I was hoping for a Blind Lady Ale House or Station vibe (for you San Diegan’s reading this) and that’s what I got. The food was great, it was exactly what I needed to reset.

On to Beale St!

Like I said, I had been a little grumpy. Not at anything in particular, I was probably getting a little tired of hanging out with my dad. So we sort of took an unspoken break from each other and parted ways. I took a walk up and down the historic business district, talked to some friendly strangers and drank a few beers outside of an Irish pub.

It looked like madness in there and I really had no desire to be inside any more bars. (Conveniently, the Irish pub had a little to-go window right on the sidewalk, so I could order a beer and make faces at the sweaty people jammed up against the bar!)

These girls told me they drive 4 hours from their homes in Arkansas to party in Memphis on the weekends. Interesting! Their bulky-Razorback-football-star-boyfriends were just out-of-frame. I told them I was from San Diego and we bonded because some of their military friends are stationed there. I think I said, “Well it sure is a beautiful place to prepare for War.”

This bar was interesting.

Above: Sweet views from our $99 Econolodge room.

The next morning we did a little exploring. For some reason, the Mississippi River that borders Tennessee and Arkansas seems much more official than the Mississippi River that we [half-drunkenly] threw rocks into in New Orleans. So of course we went down to the shore to make it count.

On our way out we stopped at Graceland. Apparently that is Elvis Presley’s wall. Elvis Presley was a famous musician and performer who died 11 years before I was born.

A few hours later we stopped in Nashville for some Honkytonk and barbecue. We got out of there at just about sundown inorder to continue our drive across the state. Late that night we checked into a Super8 in Knoxville to rest up before the next leg to Washington DC.

Click here for more photos from Tennessee.

— Read more

This post took me longer to write than I thought it would…

I shot five more rolls of film during our stop in Louisiana. I’d really like to go back there, there is some ancient culture in New Orleans that I can’t describe but that I haven’t experienced any where else. Some mixture of french-voodoo-pirate-bayou that seeps up from the cracks and makes the food and the music better. It’s apparent that the dominant white/western culture has slowly been paving away the unique characteristics of this place, but the authenticity of the culture is tenacious (and has been for hundreds of years). Yada-yada-yada

Anyways, right when we crossed the TX/LA border we dipped down south to check out the Gulf Coast. We followed highway 82 into a sparsely populated chain of beach-rental communities that had been pretty ravaged by hurricanes.  Some photos from Little Florida Beach, LA, below.

Once we left the Gulf, we headed straight to Lake Charles, LA to have our first taste of Creole since entering Louisiana. One of my dad’s friends recommended Steam Boat Bill’s so we stopped in and had a seriously delicious gumbo, poboy lunch. There was a cool bridge as you enter Lake Charles so I snapped a few photos down there too.

Lots more photos below

By the time we made to New Orleans and checked into our hotel we were pretty exhausted. Of course, that didn’t stop us from checking out Bourbon Street. After all, our hotel was 4 blocks away and we’d only be in NOLA for 2 nights right? I immediately got hustled for $5 by a friendly vagrant who pulled the ol’ “I bet you five bucks I can guess where you got your shoes” trick. After that, we both bought a $12 Budweiser which we were unaware was on special: buy one get three. So here we are, on a balcony in New Orleans with six unintentional beers. Everyone is on the take, you order 1, they sell you 2. After walking around, breathing in the omnipresent smell of vomit and horse shit accompanied by “…Jeeeeenny I got your numbah..” blaring out of one of the bars hosting some awful cover band, Dad buys us a shot (of course it ended up being 2 shots out of some god awful glass liquor vile). Before long it was 3AM, I had accomplished my pre-requisite “photo with strippers” and we were out of cash sitting on a cardboard box eating falafel. Time to sleep.

Side note, really stoked on how my flash worked out! Frankly kind of amazed that these photos even developed!

Day 2. Woke up late, Dad wanted to get cleaned up and figure out our plans for the day, hinting at a swamp tour – I think he was hurting more than I was. I decided to skip the shower and take a long walk around the French quarter during the less-sleazy-hours in the mid day sun. It was really rewarding, that 1 hour walk gave me a really good feel for the dynamic of the city.

The guy above was rad, he was trying to talk me into a restaurant and we just started talking about other things… any ways it worked and I bought a sandwich to-go to split with Dad. I was a little late for our 1PM departure for the swamp tour so I jogged back to the hotel where the valet had our van waiting out front. I hopped in and we split the sandwich on the drive out to the swamp.

We made it back to New Orleans just before sundown and decided to have a go at a slightly less rambunctious evening. I wanted to check out Frenchman Street pretty badly, maybe see some non-coverband play and catch a bit of the Charger game. We ended up at D.B.A and did exactly that.

The band was incredibly fun, I did some research and figured out the band was “Mike Dillon’s Go-Go Jungle.” It was a weird combo of rock, jazz, funk, rap. All the players were unbelievably talented, pure musicianship. We ended up by the Mississippi River waterfront so we walked down to the banks and skipped some rocks for good measure. At some point, security guards in agolf cart told us we couldn’t be down there.

Of course since we had to walk through Bourbon St. to get back to our hotel we inevitably stopped for pizza and one more daiquiri. YIKES. The little slushie shop, ironically, was playing horrifically graphic natured television, I took some photos.

Memphis is up next! You can take a look at all the photos from our trip on Flickr. I’ll post photos from Memphis soon.

— Read more

Texas is big. El Paso, Ft. Stockton, and Austin were our stops along I-10. I shot five rolls during the course of our three night stay in Texas — one night in El Paso and two nights in Austin. A few of my favorite photos from the batch are posted below but you can view the all of the photos (there are a lot) on Flickr.

El Paso was a trip – we basically spent the night, got some coffee in the morning, and got out of there as quickly as we could.

We had plans to take the trip down to Marfa, Tx to see what all the hype is about but we literally missed the turn off and didn’t realize until 100 miles later. Instead we stopped briefly in Ft. Stockton for some Tex-Mex and got right back on the road. That actually worked out because it put us on course to meet my pal Travis Trevisan just in time to catch the Youth Lagoon show at Emo’s in Austin.

We arrived in Austin about an hour after the sun had gone down so I gave Travis a call.

He rode his bike over and I spotted him as I was walking back from the Liquor store. The three of us drank a few beers at the La Quinta Inn where we were staying, located right next to the Texas Capitol building, and we made our way out on foot to the show.

Youth Lagoon played an awesome show, but we wanted to get up semi-early the next day and tour the town so we headed back to our room…but not before some late-night pizza followed by shenanigans around the Capitol building.

More photos below

Meeting up with Travis was honestly one of the highlights of the trip – He had just moved to Austin a few weeks prior and I think both of us were excited to see a familiar face. We’ve never been super close friends but I felt like we had a mutual respect for each other’s decision to leave San Diego and try something else for a while. I had a blast hanging out with him and I hope he didn’t mind being our tour guide for a couple days.

Before we had made the decision to go south, I had visions of a weird small town tour through the midwest, just because I had never seen that part of the country. I had decided early on I wanted to skip Austin, because I had a feeling it would be really similar to San Diego i.e: tight-knit music scene, some cool bars, fun little downtown, indie shops on the outskirts etc…all of which I am far too familiar with to find interesting (that sounds pretentious but you know what I mean). I felt like I didn’t need to see any more of that. For the most part I was right. Austin felt very similar to San Diego to me in many ways. However, it’s familiarity was endearing and I definitely felt right at home. I’d love to spend some more time there.

Oh yeah, and bats!

The next morning we packed up and headed toward the Gulf, passing Houston with New Orleans plotted as our next stop.

Continued next week…
Here’s the link to the whole collection on flickr as they become available.

— Read more