Six Palms with Flag

Fixing a hole...... a million holes in the roof.

Negative Space

 

shadows are cool

Everybody's Sweat is Clear

Was taking a sweat at the downtown Oakland Y, and like Oakland in general, there is a wide swath of diversity in the sweat room.  All colors were representing.  Like me, most naked, one maybe with a towel of modesty, one with swim trunks on.
A hulk of a man comes in and booms out "How's everybody doing?"
I'm supposing it's pretty universal, but the sweat room at this Y has live acoustics from the tile floor, tile ceiling, tile walls, tile sitting benches.  You say something and it reverbs and bounces and echos around for a long time. Words leave your mouth and spend some time in that room before vanishing.
Even your thoughts keep coming back to you.

One of the men says he's doing ok.

I say.  "I have never lived my life in fear and have always tried to judge a person based on the content of their character but man, there's some fuckery going on in the world right now."

And that starts the most beautiful of conversations.  Maybe all conversations of import need to be done naked and sweating.  Maybe if we can be stripped of the things we put on to hide our humanity we can just be.  And we can just talk.

The hulk of a man starts in on his religion and I'm a bit disappointed at myself for throwing the F grenade so early into something but apparently this man's religion fully allows for swearing because he's swearing up a storm.

We all talk, and the words take on extra meaning from the timbre of the room.  Sentences are said and are allowed to careen and ricochet before another is started.

The machine turns itself on.  Wheezing, coughing, sputtering as it spits out the steam.  Conversations stop as the heat lays upon us.  But you can almost hear the thoughts of this tiny slice of Oakland as they can't be silenced by the machine.  The machine shuts up, it gives up and we carry on.

I'm drinking up the love of the room.  There is no fear, there is no hate in that room.  You look at each face and realize everybody's sweat runs clear.

There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious.....

Notes to Me

I leave notes to me a lot.  Mostly in Sharpie. There are some I've been rereading for decades.  Some I bury never expecting to see again.
This was the kitchen table I built for my first studio back in 1988 which I've been using until the move into the new West Oakland studio. Two layers of 3/4" shop Maple ply covered in a grey Formica. It didn't fit in here but I knew I would find a use for it so I buried it.

Got a job that needed it so I pulled it back out and peeled off the Formica, it was delaminating at this point anyway.  "Bad Edge."  With an arrow!

Apparently, this edge was bad.  I'm assuming it was good at one point but then, who knows what, maybe got mixed up with the wrong crowd?  I dunno, but I do know it's bad now.

This is a note I left for me in the top of the location box I made for a monitor.  One job I forgot to bring multiple sync cords. I had one, but I didn't bring more than one and that is a no no.  One can break at any time and then you're screwed.  Back everything up with multiples.

That photo by the way is of a birthday of mine.  There are two malcontents with balloon sticks in their mouths..One of them is me, the vertically striped one.  The other is Peter Young.  Man, did Peter and I get into trouble as kids.  One of the most famous incidents involved us going into a neighbor's garage, opening some cans of paint and pouring them on the brand new Cadillac that was in the garage.
True.

So the 1988 studio kitchen table top was used as an incline plane for some people to be standing/sitting on.
Illustrating a magazine story.  Enlisted the art director and client for some super early "polaroids".  Not the finished shot by any stretch of the word.

Divewalk

Well, we needed the practice.  At least OakyJ and I needed the practice.  Set up the kit in the back of Tone Tones van on the way to play a gig up in Sonoma....for the brunch set at the Divewalk Cafe.

OJ and I tried to get the breaks settled on his songs featuring the banjo as we floated our way up the back roads.

As you can see, an extensive audience for the early part of our day.  This kid came up and wanted to sing "Puff the Magic Dragon."  He wasn't bad, just hella not loud.

And the first official impromptu band photo of the Kitchen Rats during a pause for some beer next door at a brewery.  Since OakyJ is only 13, he had a root beer.

 Last photo by Lorene Reed

Top of the Island Gone

Ken and Kevin came to carry the island top back to the E'ville studio.  And there it will wait until the install of it in a couple/few weeks.  I have another thing happening in my studio that I needed to have the place clean and clear.

Hoping the next photos of this will be in a finished state.


Also a little detail shot of some sloped drainage grooves that drain into the sink.