In Arcata someone told me the burnouts that hang out in the town square are “trustafarians.” You know, east coast families sending the family screwups to California. You can do anything out west and people will put up with it, sad to say. And the rest of the game seems to be that the trust fund babies hit California and pretend to be poor, or just making it. Yeah, right.
Wordplay in roadside signs:
• “Burning Slash”” (Slash=branches left over in the woods after logging)
• “Wind Gust”
• “Pistol River”
• Coffee shop in Brandon, Oregon: “Brewed Awakenings.” Ever notice how many hair salons have wordplay names, like “Shy Locks?”
It’s always a relief to get out of California. Oregon just feels more relaxed. I had a few days before my Portland event so came along the Oregon Coast. Port Orford is nice, with a unique port where they have a cable-powered trolly for launching boats. Florence is a pretty nice town. Yachats is a little gem of a town, with sparkling ocean air, small cottages, nice little cabins that can be rented + the Green Salmon Bakery and coffee shop with a chef that doesn’t know it, but she’s world class. I haven’t been along this coast for 30+ years and it’s a lot nicer in the non-summer months, when tourists are not out in force. Mile after mile of deserted sandy beaches. Much of the drive is right along the beaches. There are a series of concrete bridges that look art deco. Gas is $1.94/gal. (A friend of mine said recently that gas should be $10/gal., the true cost to the planet.)
I’ve got into the habit of taking small country roads when possible, and always seeking out routes not taken before. Today I was on Hwy 47 coming into Portland, stopping to shoot pictures of little sheds and shacks and barns and a program came on the radio about bands in New Orleans. They played a lot of Fats Domino. If I had to pick one musician who had the biggest impact on me, it’d have to be Fats. I first heard him played by my friend Sherman Welpton when I was 18 (1953), and it was an introduction to Rhythm and Blues and eventually the world of blues. Fats has always made me happy. Today I pulled off the road to eat my takeout smoked turkey sandwich from the Green Salmon Bakery, and was facing a green furrowed pasture hill when on came Blueberry Hill. Up with the volume.
I met my thrill
on Blueberry Hill…
Maple Island Handcrafted Log Homes produces about 40 homes a year. Most (from pics on website) appear to be mega-houses, but this one is a charmer:
Log boathouse:
https://www.mapleisland.com/
For decades, Clover has been coming up with funny ad lines. I still remember one from years ago: “Tip Clo Through the Two Lips.” The below was on the side of a truck in Pt Arena a few days ago:
CAPTION
I’ve started shooting a lot of photos of very small buildings for what may very well be our next book: tiny houses.
It was advertised pretty well and there was a full house at Northtown Books in Arcata last night.
Also, Northtown Books had our poster and three of our building books in the window.
I did my slide show from Builders of the Pacific Coast and talked about my travels shooting the book’s photos. There were about a dozen high school kids there and they had never seen stuff like this before. I continue to get amazing feedback from people, about being inspired by our building books. It’s really gratifying.
A couple of discoveries in Arcata: The Finnish Country Sauna at 5th & J, a wonderful sauna facility with a lot of good carpentry/Los Bagels, clean, cheerful bakery with good latte and excellent baked goods/The North Coast Journal is a mighty fine little free newspaper with good writing and imaginative layout.
I did my first slide show of the trip Wednesday night at the Four-Eyed Frog bookstore in the coastal town of Gualala. Yesterday I headed north for my next appearance in Arcata, the cool coastal town that’s home to Humboldt State College. I can hardly go 5 miles down the road without stopping to shoot photos. The older I get, the more interesting I find the world. It looks like our next building book will be on tiny houses, and I’m shooting lots of small farm buildings for prototypes of practical small-scale construction.
I stayed in Eureka last night, catching up on email and downloading photos via a good Wi-Fi connection at a Best Western motel. Here are a few pics from last night:
A great hometown brewpub. I had two pints of Downtown Brown ale and a huge Chinese chicken salad for $16.
Across the street from the pub; perspective on this 2-shot panorama is a little whacked, but you get the idea.
Billboard on 4th Street. Note: know thy grower. There’s a lot of chemicalized mota out there.
In a previous life, I built geodesic domes, and my dome was featured in Life in the early ’70s, so I did a search in the newly-available Life archives for “domes,” and found it:
I was also the publisher of Domebook 2, the countercultural bible of domebuilding, but after 5 years of dome building and dome living, I concluded that domes didn’t work as homes, and were in fact, a poorer and less practical way of enclosing space as compared to rectilinear construction. I took Domebook 2 out of print (and went out and shot photos for our book Shelter). I kept getting so many inquiries as to why I gave up on domes that I published a newsprint booklet titled Refried Domes, to answer all the questions. If you’re a dome fan and wonder why in the world I gave up on such an exciting concept, please don’t write me, but go to the link above and read everything on our website about domes.
Hail to the Internet! For me this is thrilling news, having been a Life magazine fan for many years. From the Guardian (UK), dated Nov 19 ’08:
One of the biggest photo collections in the world that ranges from the 1880s through to the seminal moments of the 20th century and on into the present day was made available to the public online yesterday. The bulk of the archive is from Life magazine, the premier platform for photojournalists in the 20th century. About 10 million images will eventually be available, from Marilyn Monroe and JFK to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. About 97% of the pictures have never been seen before.
Google announced yesterday it had done a deal with Life to put their pictures online. Also available is work from other archives, much of it collected by the former Time publisher Henry Luce. The collection includes the entire works of Life photographers Alfred Eisenstaedt, Gjon Mili and Nina Leen. Also available are: the Zapruder film of the Kennedy assassination; Dahlstrom glass plates of New York from the 1880s; and Hugo Jaeger Nazi-era Germany 1937-1944… About 20% of the collection went online yesterday.
https://images.google.com/hosted/life
After many years, Louie’s sailboat, the Roy Fox, is in the water in the harbor just south of Fort Bragg. Junk-rigged sail. Louie just finished building the cabin and outfitting it for travel on the high seas. Framing is white oak; planking is lapstrake old-growth clear Douglas Fir attached with copper rivets. Deck is teak over marine plywood. It’s immaculate. Louie plans to sell it eventually. As we motored out of the harbor, another sailor on the dock called out, “Beautiful!”
Louie is going to sail it for a while, maybe down the coast to Mexico, then put it up for sale.
Louie and Lloyd at the gas station in Pt. Arena; photo at right makes you wonder about buying a used boat from this man.
These were shot in the early morning on my way up Highway One to visit my friend Louie in Pt. Arena. I’ve shot photos of this little shed numerous times. To me the proportions are perfect:
Turkey buzzards sunning themselves just south of Jenner:
