Anno Numero Due

This is my second year of making Nocino.  Last year's big talk about it here.

This year I decided to age 5 liters of the Everclear based portion of it in a new American oak cask.  Wisely I wrote down when I did because it would have only been a vague date if I hadn't.
Aug 29th for some reason.

Also made a few liters using Vodka as the base but that's been in glass from the beginning.

Bottled it today.  I still need to do a new label this year and then I'll be able to give a few of the bottles away to the ones that would appreciate it the most.

Taste.  Totally different this time around.  I made a decision to have each year to be it's own child.  Not trying to make it taste like the year before unless it does so naturally.  Mix up the recipe, try different aging schedules, start with walnuts at different maturation points, etc.

Throughout the year I save bottles that have a character or size to them and those will be the soldiers that will hold this year's Nocino.

Thanks once again to my good friend Bill for his nuts!  Yes sir ree, his nuts.

Firing it up somewhere else

An extension of this.

Soon I'll be out of the DogPatch.  I'll take everything with me and head on down to The BayView…..including my BBQ…and I'll be firing it up down there.  Can't wait for the first big knock down drag out party.  Whole new vibe it will be.

Before that though, I've been everynowandthen traipsing around through dogpatch and shooting some memory pics.  The cha cha changes that have taken place.  Things that haven't moved since I got here.

These cranes in front of my compound have not budged an inch since I moved in.  Graffiti on them change every 6 months to a year but the cables hanging down haven't.  I've long lusted after turning the front one into an apartment.
This is from this morning.

Dude lighting up something.

And some other random things from my walks. This ain't over yet.  More to come.

And the brand spanking new hospital two blocks away.

Re: Another Video

A couple posts down I talked about Henry's use of me as Schtick in a few of his videos.  During one of the shoots for the 3D People, Henry grabbed his camera and shot for a few minutes.  He turned it into one of the invitation pieces for a party him and I are doing at my studio.  Hit the blue link, Carol.

No Depression

Tallynn

"Hey, you just missed Lynn."
"Which Lynn?"
"You know, Tall Lynn."

Another of the Utah Death Portraits.  Lynn.  If the person sitting next to you at the Utah doesn't know which Lynn you're talking about all you have to say is Tall Lynn.
Done.

She's not really as tall as the photo suggests but I'm thinking when people walk into her wake, we'll have this as a life size print greeting everybody….maybe add another foot to the print to really emphasize the point.

She doesn't look down on anybody though so this shot doesn't represent that at all.  

And since Lynn is so angelic.  Here she is right after Death and that whole bright light theory thing.

And the Oscar for Best Whiskey Glass commercial goes to…...

Man, I had to do a lot of takes on this one.

Ben's Whiskey Glass

And by the time Henry finished shooting I was a bit tanked, faded, toasted.

Henry's brother was in town awhile back, he's a glassblower living in New Orleans, and the two of them talked me into a drink in the middle of the day.  Quite a few of them actually.  Ben makes these absolutely beautiful whiskey glasses.  He stamps in designs or words in the bottom.  They feel so good in the hand, big bunch of glass at the bottom gives it a perfect heft, a gravity. The slight irregularities from the hand made process can be felt with the fingertips.  The rim is a sensuous delight on the lips.

They wanted a little spot done for Ben's website.  I was their actor dude.

Henry knows me and so there was music playing while we filmed it.  That's where the snapping of the fingers, the tapping of the knee comes from.

Glass Blower Ben

Best friend Henry

Also, just for a little history lesson here.  Henry shot this video of me making a liquor cabinet a couple years ago.  In it I spontaneously come up with my moniker…MakerUnknown.

Pane e Tulipani.  Bread and Tulips.

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.