So, I found this book by “Michael Douglas” on Castro Street at around 6.30 pm. Right across the street from Castro Theatre in a box scrawled with the word ‘FREE”:

It turns out to be a book written by Michael Crichton and his brother Douglas, a Hunter S Thompson drug lark sort of japery that males of a certain age fixate on, it seems. I might read the first ten pages, or if I have a beach vacation then the entire book. What really made this a score for me, though were the photos and ephemera of a bygone era tucked into the pages of the book. omg. This is the stuff for me, my raison d’être if you’re French or fancy.
Lets start with this one. It’s pretty cool. A definite depiction of a historical, monumental and tragic moment.

This one though, is moving more into my favorite zone. ‘Old Wives Tales’ on Valencia. I bet there are still people ALIVE who went there even. It’s an artifact of a recent historical time! Super fascinating to me and I could stare at it all day imagining the comings and goings on in this feminist bookshoppe.

Hot Update: I found an article on the history of this bookstore, and I was right. Lots of crazy interesting stuff went on there. See? Educational!
This one too is made of the stuff I love. Lazlo, who are you? Did you go to Old Wives Tales? Did you buy this copy of ‘Dealing’ there?:

These though, are my top favorites. To have visual proof of this particular day in 1976 or 1993 or whenever? It pretty much blows my mind. Is this a picnic? A meeting of inlaws who are just being introduced to a new family member? Did these people just get escorted across the border and are they looking forward with trepidation and delight to their new lives in Los Angeles?

I’ll never know the answers for certain and this is what makes these types of finds sososo awesome.

I’ve been going through my collection of vintage photo’s the past few days [all of which are black and white and contain no one I ever knew or was related to me]. These are a couple of my favorites. They have a sort of Sigmar Polke’esqueness about them that I love. The blurry dreamlike figures tell a story of that particular day the picture was taken, to me anyhow.

These ladies are at Coney Island on a hot day in the summer, just before their family reunion in 1946.

And this mother of four is at the Montana State Fair, where her prized bull SteamEngine has just won first place in the ’350 pound Steer’ contest. She’s posing in front of the Statue that honors the very first winner.

I just recently heard the news that one of my favorite college painting professors died on March 21st. It makes sense to add this now not only because he died recently, but also because he is the first person to ever mention Polke to me. Michael Brakke was not my favorite professor because we had a lot in common artistically. To the contrary, he produced the kind of New York’ish conceptual thinky art that will always be over my head. Even if I can appreciate it aesthetically, it’s still a bit mirror, father, mirror to me.

I don’t mean this in a disrespectful way, and I think he would laugh at the comparison. I greatly admired his work, and still do. I also admire the articulate conversations that Brakke and artists like him can participate in, I just cannot seem to do the same. Brakke was one of my favorites because he taught me to figure out what I care about, and try to make what I work on about that. It’s so much harder than it sounds. Practical things [like paying those effing bills!] have gotten in the way of this at times, but the impulse is always there, and I know I have Brakke to thank for that at least a little. So, thank you and goodbye, sir.