Wednesday, July 04, 2001

Fourth of July bash at Doc's on 12th

I liked this image, so I snapped it. I'd decided to walk down to Doc's on 12th Street to mingle a little. I'd been doing my best to talk to people although I'm not very outgoing by nature. It had become a survival tactic here where I didn't know anyone. This window is on the corner of Marine Drive and 11th Street near the entrance to the Columbian Theatre.

The building really is on one of the docks. The "Doc's on 12th" name probably comes from the fact that there are dentists and other offices on the top floor. There's now a wonderful restaurant called Baked Alaska on the lower floor, where Kate and I had our farewell dinner. I had a couple of other pics of the river showing what an overcast and dreary day this is for a 4th celebration, but the photos were so bad I didn't use them. Here in the dark foreground you can see old pilings. You'd think the 4th would be a sunny, warm day. They were like that growing up in Southern California and later living in Colorado. In Santa Barbara, I remember a number of 4ths that were cloudy and even fog-bound and drizzly. Here in Astoria, my guess is it can be anything.

Bright colors on the docks. The event is open to all.

The beer garden is cordoned off with bright orange barricades.

I'm not sure which local band this is. I'll have to ask Kathy.

I moved the new green shelf temporarily to get a photo of what it was replacing. This black thing was not intended to look like a place of worship or sacrifice, but it consisted of some of my still-full bankers' boxes of stuff from the move. I was trying to (for once) have uncluttered living space. How long would that last?

. . . and in my attempt to unclutter, some things just had to go. In 1985, I'd made this collage painting in Santa Barbara of photos I'd taken on the beach and printed in my bathroom darkroom. The monster-looking thing was the cartilaginous skeleton of a nurse shark or basking shark or something like that. The glob is a pile of seaweed. I'd made the stretcher bars out of found wood (uneven in size and shape, and now broken, too). The edges of the prints were curling. I did my thing: take a photo and dump the original. Bye bye. Another piece of my life was gone (I have trouble throwing things out), but I'd saved a couple of pictures of it for the memory book.

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