More Videos and Type-In Prep

It's been a busy several weeks, though that is not in itself adequate justification for ignoring this blog for nearly two weeks. There's a certain amount of irony in the observation that a recent video was about the power of blogging; a power which I've apparently ignored.






This week I've produced four videos for my YouTube channel, three of them about photography. The first two were about the Stearman Press SP-445 sheet film developing tank, a new product which promises sheet film processing in daylight, using a changing bag. In many ways it offers a similar result to a rotary tank, with the added benefit of not requiring constant agitation, as is the case with rotary processing, and thus permits stand development methods to be employed. I found my test results using the SP-445 to be satisfactory in terms of uniformity of development, but did note a bit of emulsion scratching along the very edge of the film, due to the way the thin, ABS plastic holders clamp the film. I didn't think this was a "deal-breaker," however.

I did experience one negative detach from the holder sometime during either the five minute fix (using continuous agitation) or the initial rinse cycle. But the image results were fine. My biggest concern with this system, aside from a few dribbles of liquid leaking from the o-ring sealed lid during inversions, is the seeming flimsiness of the internal plastic baffles and film holders. Longevity will only be proven over time, I suppose.




I produced another video, at the prompting of a viewer who liked the camera I'd been using for the film development tests, presented as a 75 year-old camera review of the Graflex Anniversary Speed Graphic, which has been my primary workhorse for large format and experimentation with adapted lenses; since it has a functional curtain shutter, any lens that projects a usable image can be employed, even if it lacks its own shutter. I've over the years employed several decidedly unphotographic devices as lenses, such as the front objective to a 7x50 binocular, a plastic, credit card-sized fresnel magnifier, a Xerox machine lens and a brass pinhole. Certainly newer field cameras are lighter in weight, but they don't offer the flexibility of a functional curtain shutter, along with a wire frame viewfinder to augment the ground glass view screen. This camera I had purchased from a local camera store years ago, and it's been worth every penny to me in return.

It's been several weeks since I made a typewriter-themed video, and as I was looking through my video production notebook I found a post-it note I'd made to myself about a potential video idea, that being making a log book for one's typewriter collection. The idea is to have a separate section for each machine, with detailed data on date of acquisition, serial number, age, past service, present mechanical issues, date of last ribbon replacement and one's own personal observations about the machine. It might also be of value to include a log of how each machine is getting used, in the form of a list of entries documenting the date of use and for what purpose - letter writing, blog article, short story, etc.

The video itself ended up morphing into more of a Confessions of an Office Supply Junky theme, as I delved into using the Staples Arc system (compatible to Levenger's Circa) of disc-binders for making customizable notebooks. Since making that video I've decided to also update my ad hoc video production journal with the Arc binding system. So now there are a plethora of little colored paper chads dotting the floor in my office, as the cheap little Arc hole punch likes to spew chads intermittently.

My wife and I spent several hours of the last three days spreading posters and fliers around town for the upcoming ABQ Type-In, scheduled for April 23 at 1 PM at Nexus Brewery. One downtown coffee shop we wandered into resulted in us meeting a poet who writes via typewriter, whom we invited to the event. You just don't know which venues will lead you to meeting creative people who employ typewriters in their work; one reason why I wanted to visit as many coffee shops as I could, since creative types and caffeine seem to go together.

At a downtown bookstore we talked to the proprietor about the Type-In, who in turn suggested we contact a local poetry collective, many of whose members might also be interested. All of a sudden I'm getting this feeling that our venue might be too small; a good problem to have, I suppose, but I can remember just a few weeks ago when it seemed like I was worried about nobody showing up.

I've contacted a local alternative newspaper about getting a notice for the event in their paper, and I'll also be contacting more local media in the next few weeks.

I'm also amassing a small stack of letters and postcards from new pen pals. This is another good problem to have, since I haven't been in regular correspondence with out-of-town folk in many years. Time to get that fountain pen filled and the Facit 1620 typewriter's type slugs cleaned and readied for use.

I've also been working on making my small video studio more efficient. It's funny with television production, you can't tell from the perspective of the viewer what a studio looks like off-camera. My local PBS station, for example, has a dumpy, cluttered studio, having visited on numerous occasions; but you can't tell from watching on TV.

My own production studio is in a corner of my bedroom-based office, where I employ some dark blue curtains in front of the closet doors, and some LED lighting in metal hardware store reflectors, clamped to wherever I can manage. I had been using a folding wooden tray table as my presentation table, but that's proven a bit too small, and also I've been needing to change the height of the table relative to my seating position, in the case of presenting some object on the table where I still want my face to be in the frame.

My solution was to employ an old Bruneau's Pneumatic Tripod, that I've had for decades, with the large metal mounting plate attached to a sheet of wood, atop of which I can set my new carpet-covered plywood tabletop, now wide enough to cover the camera's 16:9 field of view and able to move up or down with the tripod's pneumatic elevation system. I also attached two hardware clamps to the back corners adjacent to the camera, upon which I can now clamp my lights. And best of all, the whole shebang disassembles and stores away, for when I'm at work and don't wish for the office to appear quite so cluttered. Perhaps a future video will be a show-and-tell of my new video digs. Until then, have a great week!

Personal Discoveries and Barry's Folly

Ageing Hippies at Winning Coffee

Is there some universal law that dictates when a person first makes a personal discovery? What if that discovery involves a public venue, like Winning Coffee Company, in the University Neighborhood of Albuquerque? These things are like wings you don't even know you've put on, they've become so comfortable. In the case of Winnings, I can't now recall how I first heard of it, or from whom, or the circumstances of my first visit. All I know for certain is that there came a time, in the mid-aughts, when I began spending many a morning at Winnings, eating breakfast, drinking coffee and writing in a journal.

The circumstances of how these places come to be are mysterious, or so I'd like to pretend. In fact, some one or group of people had the vision to start this business, in 1996; but that's not what this story is about. The story I'd like to tell is that Winnings is as unlikely of a hangout for creatives as one can ever imagine in this dry, dusty southwest city, seemingly perpetually insulated from the balance of civilization by many hundreds of miles of badlands and years of history.

If Beatnik culture were a "Thing," let us presume, and someone with the vision and aptitude to make a buck off the declining entrails of mid-20th century American Beatnik culture were to have a free hand in fashioning a simulacra of that culture, they could do no better than start at Winnings, study what it is and what it is they do, and try to franchise the results far and wide.


Simulacra of Decrepitude

You'd need, at the very least, an aroma of cumin and cayenne wafting from an ancient-looking kitchen, just as mood music fills the modern spaces of Starbucks out in Suburbia. You'd need some corporate specification defined for how intense the aroma becomes, along with how to simulate the decrepitude of years of caked-on paint, crazed plaster walls and tin ceilings in some state of disarray. An exacting simulacra of decrepitude, canned and marketed for the suburbanites in newly built communities of cracker mansions out by the Interstate, neatly set down in their precise rows of grids, enticing them to drive their SUVs down to the strip mall and experience a bit of inner-city, beatnik funkiness distilled down to its essential ingredients. Employee personal hygiene would be optional, in order to preserve the aroma of the unkempt philosopher, specified in the corporate policy manual, which also mandates faded bell-bottom denim, braided beards and bandanas securing greasy locks. Most essential would be the front patio, where tables and chairs offer a convenient place for revolutions to be fomented in billowy clouds of hand-rolled cigarette smoke; local ordinances would require special exemptions, palms would need to be greased. We have money to make, boy!

Of course, no true revolutions will arise from our imaginary chain of faux-beatnik coffee shops (Now Nationwide!), only harmless little pretend ones; for the affluence of American Suburbia is predicated on the notion of keeping one's head to the grindstone of Corporate America, doing as one's masters might dictate, and don't rock the boat.

On October 1, 2011, (un)Occupy Albuquerque, a protest group loosely inspired by the then ongoing and worldwide Occupy Movement, began a weeks-long protest and occupation of Yale Park, across Central Avenue from Harvard Drive, the location of Winning Coffee, which became for participants a de facto support triage, with food, drink and moral encouragement. For myself, Winning had by now also become my own personal triage, a place from which to escape middle-class suburbia and it trappings. I'd visit almost every week, notebook and camera in hand, simultaneously inspired and also desiring to capture on film a fleeting essence of the ephemeral. Like capturing fairies on glass plates, how does one capture the essence of a culture defined primarily by the negative space of protest and opposition? It's like that old optical illusion: is it a pair of faces or a candlestick?

I think it always comes back to that most essential approach, storytelling. People are intrinsically interested in the lives of other's, especially if those others come from a different walk of life. I've always felt a bit out-of-place visiting Winning Coffee because of the imagined disparity between my station in life (middle-class suburbanite) and those Winning regulars closer to the streets. And yet, as I've come to know some of them, I've found a richness in their diverse backgrounds that is wholly unexpected and irreplaceable.

Some of these people I've gained only a casual familiarity with, enough to catch a mere glimpse into their psyche, but enough to serve as inspiration for fictional characters in a series of short stories based on Losers Blend, the parallel universe fictionalized version of Winnings.

It's been many months since I've visited Winnings; their coffee roaster guy quit and we'd begun buying beans elsewhere. It's been several years since I was a regular enough visitor to spend hours there writing, or visiting with fellow patrons. So it came as some shock to learn this week that they are having financial difficulties, brought about by the Albuquerque Rapid Transit project, which has resulted in the entirety of Central Avenue being torn up, disrupting traffic, parking and shopping for miles. The project has earned the scorn of most every business along Central, known by its initials ART; but there's nothing art-like or redeeming about it. The Mayor, Richard Barry, heavily promoted it as a way to begin transitioning the city's transportation infrastructure away from being so automobile-centric; a noble cause. But instead of placing it in a part of town most needing mass transit - the suburbs of the densely-packed northeast heights - he instead located it along the one thoroughfare already better served by bus lines than any other. So while the city might call it ART, I call it Barry's Folly.

It will take several more years before the project is concluded, and funding has not even been appropriated for any more than the initial demolition phase currently underway. Neither was the public given an opportunity to directly vote to determine the project's future, but it was instead mandated from the top, down. Theoretically, a democratic society works by the government working for the people, not the other way around.

There is the very real prospect that, even if the project is successfully completed, those areas of downtown, the University District and Nob Hill who were to benefit so directly from the transformation will be burned-out, boarded-up shells of their former vibrancy, a zone of economic blight brought about by the reality that the cure was worse than the illness; that in attempting to revive the city's core through infrastructure improvements they've killed off those essential but delicate economies of small businesses which make up most of this city's commercial liveliness; the very opposite of what Mayor Barry promised. Unique places like Winning Coffee might very likely cease to exist.

Conspiracy theorists might even conjecture this was their intention all along, so that real estate could be bought up cheaply and sold off to new corporate clients waiting in the wings.

This morning we had a late breakfast at Winnings, a hearty burrito filled with eggs, potatoes, green chile sauce and cheese; and their wonderfully rich lattes. Bradley, the bookseller, was there, setting up shop in the corner nook by the coffee roasting machine. He has a younger assistant who does the heavy lifting of setting up and tearing down, whom I asked how the books are organized, and the answer I got revealed once again the rich diversity of this crowd, as he told me that they're organized by genre: beat authors here, soviet realists there, feminist lit over yonder, Latin American fantasists over there. Only at places like Winnings will you find the guy with the strong back also has a strong mind for literature.

As we entered through the front door (there's also a rear entrance from the alley) the regulars were seated outside at the patio tables, while the big oval table inside by the order line had the usual old guys, the knights of the round table I call them, including the one who always sports some puffy-sleeved shirt and black vest, with black top hat. As we stood in line waiting to place our order, I overheard one of them inform the others "One of the Chicago Seven is now a stock broker."

I'm hoping Barry's Folly will fail to have its full sway, and that these unique venues like Winning Coffee will survive and prosper. In the meantime, Bradley informed me that the new coffee roaster guy now has his act together, and so perhaps next week, when our stock of beans begins to run low, I'll make a drive down to the University District, brave the construction barricades, have breakfast and perhaps do a bit of writing. Maybe I'll take a portable typewriter, sit out on the front sidewalk tables, sip my coffee and pound inky words into paper, the aroma of hand-rolled smokes wafting in the breeze.

Post-Script: I enjoyed writing the first draft of this piece on the teletype paper roll using the Facit 1620. Spaced at 1.5 lines, the piece came to 31 inches.

Good Enough, Close Enough

Post-Script: Another theory is that I'm sufficiently unskilled at typewriter repair that I have to use these kinds of justifications to live with a collection of machines that's less than pristine. But really, as soon as you drive that new car home from the dealership, it's beginning its long decline into decrepitude. All it takes is sufficient time. And so it is with typewriters, whose parts are essentially no longer being manufactured; in contrast with antique automobiles where you can assemble an entire 1930s-era Ford Coupe from parts ordered from catalogs. And thus we find ourselves, as typewriter lovers and users, living with little nagging problems, the essential ingredient being not letting them nag you to bits.

I think this is one key factor in the phenomenon of uncontrollable typewriter collecting (I'm a recovering addict), that we'd like to find some specimen with that ideally perfect combination of typing action, appearance, features, functionality and reliability, all rolled into one. It's fairly easy to find two or three out of the five, but all five? A perfect typewriter? Not gonna happen! Thus the mantra indicated in the title of this piece.

But I did take the Olympia SF out to the work bench today and performed more tinkering. When I'd first cleaned it last week the foam insulation pieces glued inside the side panels fell to dust. So today I replace them with 1/4" thick black craft foam and double-sided adhesive sheets. I also added some to the inside of the top ribbon cover, which never had any from the factory. There was enough clearance between the inside of the top panel and the ribbon spool axles to permit installation without interference, which hopefully will further reduce the noise level; not that it's so excessively noisy to use, but it's also not the quietest in my collection; and being small and easy to carry, I'm more apt to use it in public.

I also looked into the wobbly carriage bearings, which I made mention of in Episode 60 of the Typewriter Video Series. I tightened the rear bearing track a bit by adjusting the set screws, then reoiled the bearings with gun oil. Now there's a bit less wobble. Afterwards I did a half page or so of test typing, and this afternoon I'm going to sit in the front patio, drink more coffee and do some stream-of-unconsciousness typing.

This morning I took the Olympia SF, in a shoulder bag on my motorcycle, down to Michael Thomas Coffee in Nob Hill and did some indoor typing at the bar adjacent to their fancy siphon coffee machines. The combination of mad scientist-looking glass lab ware, manual typewriter and wood-&-metal counter somehow fit nicely together. I didn't get any negative feedback from my typing, as I'd asked the waitstaff ahead of time, and the gal indicated another of their customers also types there. I did overhear some customer point out my typing as they walked inside, but it didn't sound all that negative, probably some snide remark about hipsters. Imagine me, a nearly 60 year-old hipster!

I also handed out more fliers for the April 23 ABQ Type-In. Now I need to get more printed up.

Munk's Tape Dispenser Meme & More

Post-Script: Here's the link to Rev. Ted's tape dispenser blog article. Alas, my Brother Charger 11 doesn't exactly match the color of the 3M Model C-15 dispenser. Does this mean I should immediately run out to the nearest thrift store and look for another typewriter? No, but I like the way you're thinking.

Here's Mike Clemens' blog article from 2009 (I had the date wrong in my typecast above) on what he calls "colorcasting." Not to be outdone, here's Strikethru's article about colorcasting at Starbucks. And here's Little Flower Petals' colorcasting article. And here are some of my own blog articles from that same time period on colorcasting and aluminum foil typecasting. Wasn't that a great time in the formative years of the Typosphere? Thank you, Ted, for reviving our spirits a bit.

I was surprised by my dear wife's reaction to my suggestion that those plastic tape cores might serve as napkin rings. She's normally very sensitive to clutter and junk (an intrinsic problem when married to a packrat such as myself), but she suggested I decorate these cores with colorful adhesive tape, and collect eight of them for our formal dinner service. I should check if she's running a fever...