The Utah Death Portraits

The bar that everyone knows my name in, in San Francisco is the Hotel Utah.  Corner of 4th and Bryant.  Over a hundred years old with the usual sort of SF history of bawdiness, drunks and thieves.  It's a corner bar with big windows that wrap around both Bryant St and 4th St.

Instead of facing the bar I like to face the windows and watch life float by.  It's like watching real reality TV.

It has a large group of regulars most with Utah supplied nicknames.
There's Midnight Jeff and Goodlooking Jeff
Toothless Paulie and Shoeless Paul (me)
Aussie Joe and Kiwi Lisa, Minnesota Bob and New York Bailey
Undertaker and The Watch Man
And many many others…some already gone.

I've decided each needs a death portrait to be taken.  You know you go to wakes/services nowadays and there's always the usual slide show looping.  Always with lame photos. By the way I'm saying for the near and far right now.  Do not do the looping lame slideshow at mine.

What we need are "Official Death Portraits" ok'd by the dead person to be placed around the event.

Thought I would beforehand do a little post on them.  I know some will say no, some will say yes, go ahead post me up.

Lee said yes.

Lee….no nickname…just Lee.

Lee worked at the New Lab right down the street.  They processed E-6 back in film days.  The New Lab is how I started going to the Utah.  Drop off film on a rush basis, go up for a beer and the film would be done by the time the beer is finished.

Lee was head of the Dupe Dept.  Great title for a job, don't you think?

I had known Lee for several years before one night at the Utah he mentions he was in VietNam.  Class of 71.
He keeps pretty quiet about it which we all respect but I do like those odd times when he feels like bringing it up.  Pretty fascinating to listen to his stories of sights, smells and sounds.
He grew up on a dairy farm in upstate NY….on land that been in the family for generations.  I guess that gave him that wholesome practical philosophy way of looking at things in life.  Self reliant.  Let's just get'er done.
He's a curmudgeon lots of times but a lovable curmudgeon.  He tilts at most every organized windmill out there. Loyal as hell to his friends, loves the cute young thangs, as well as martinis and ciggies. He's able to make friends at the bar with a newbie in about five minutes.  That sort of guy that you trust immediately from his big smile and the twinkle in his eye.

Good sport too.  He allowed me to poke fun at him for his love of his vices.

Like that Cindy Nelson line from "Don't be Ashamed of Your Age."

"Don't mind the gray in your hair

Just think of all the fun you had putting it there"

I left all of the lines, wrinkles and gray hairs that Lee has earned.

He wishes it was real.

Lee and Priscilla  1971

Damn, Lee, we're going to miss you when you're dead.

Not Oaxaca, but Polaroid.

A week and half ago Annie and I were handing our passports over to the man behind the AeroMexico counter at SFO around midnight.

Just a short one weeker in the mountains of Mexico looking for the best molé and mezcal we could find.  Our plan was to go out of the city and back in the hills to find it.

It seems though there was this silly notion that one's passport needs to be valid.  Mine it turned out was not…. by one month.  Didn't see that one coming at all.

Man behind the counter said "Nope, you're not coming into Mexico."

So we did a re-group and booked a flight to somewhere domestic.  Spent the week soaking in natural hot springs deep in the forest, getting snowed upon, hiking, hiking and hiking and having drinks in dive bars (ok, that last one I like to do).

Passport requirements.
Head…inch, inch and three eighths
plain background
full face view with a neutral expression

Dusted off the view camera, pulled the Polaroid from the fridge where it's been hibernating since 2001 and shot my own passport picture.

Took two exposures to get the right exposure.  I was the type that never used a light meter.  I could usually nail it after a couple of polaroids.

I'm assuming you know that the image is upside down in a view camera's viewfinder.

As neutral as I can be.

No Mezcal is made in these mountains.

Passing through one of many Native American reservations we stop in at the Silver Dollar.

We asked why it was called the Silver Dollar because there wasn't a silver dollar in sight.  The owner's daughter who happened to be there said they were glued all over the floor over there…she pointed…but we just put on a new floor over top of them.  Seemed strange to us not have them visible.