Sing along… if you know the words.
From Victoria and Joseph, this is Kitchener.
DW
1shot #233-sign sign everywhere a sign
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1shot #232-thousand footer
Photo: Duncan M. White – scan from print
Pop shot this on one of his many lake freighter trips. Taken from the port side of the bridge, you see the mist streaming through the self-unloader and across the hatches. This is not a pleasure cruise. This is a working boat that just happened to have one lucky photog on board. It could have been loaded with coal or stone or anything that needs to be somewhere else in large quantities.
Broj and I thought this might be the M/V Paul R. Tregurtha and our friend Marc Dease suggested it could also have been the M/V James R. Barker. Lake boats are by definition big, most stretching between 600 and 700 feet, limited by the lock lengths of the Welland Canal. Laid up for the winter in the north slip at Sarnia, you used to be able to walk out on the ice in the winter right up to touch the hull. Thousand footers however are a class onto themselves. 1000+ feet long with a 105 foot beam, 50 feet deep. They can carry more than 60,000 tons. When they’re downbound from Lake Huron into the St.Clair river they glide by like silent giants with the current. Going upbound, you can hear the whop whop whop of the engines turning the screws.
Do I miss the water, living here in WR? Yes, but the absence makes me more restless than wistful. And I channel that restlessness into doing something productive here. Invested.
DW
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1shot #231-unrelated Thursday night
Skaters gotta skate. And no skaters were hurt in the course of this shoot. Ambo was probably for somebody texting while crossing the street, which seems substantially more dangerous and common.
Perfect night for a walk. On King, this is Waterloo.
DW
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Forde photographs in DVLB
My friend Nancy Forde (left) has her photos up in DVLB right now. Check it out.
I dropped by last night for the opening reception which was jammed with mutual friends. If you don’t typically go to these things you might think “What does it matter if I go or not? I’m just one person.” Trust me: it matters. The first art show reception I attended was in 1987 for my studio professor Rick Potruff. I had to take about four buses from residence at U of G to get to the Kitchener Waterloo Art Gallery for his show of awesome enormous drawings. He so obviously appreciated me showing up that it clicked a lightbulb on in my head. Putting your work out there takes a metric tonne of work and makes you vulnerable. When people show up, it validates your effort. It’s not the flattering praise that matters as much as warm bodies in the room. People going in a hundred different directions in their own lives converged for one moment to see something you made and to support you.
Back in late-May of 2013 when I hosted a reception for my show that was projected up on the Sky Gallery, the weather turned unseasonably gnarly. Sleet pounding, wind whipping. A small subset of the promised attendees showed up and I remember them all two years later. Hilary, nik, Melissa, Conor, Raluca, Jen, Shannon, Lisa, Arden, Calder, Dave, Bernie, Denise, Antonio, Dave and Andrew.
Last night at DVLB, if it wasn’t obvious from Nancy’s happy glow that she was totally grateful for those who showed up, it certainly was obvious today from the torrent of thank-you’s on social media. Good on ya, Nancy.
A few more pics on the other side…
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1shot #230-DTK mystery bus
Y’all know how I roll: curious as a cat, always looking for signs on the trail. On Tuesday this week in the Bramm Street lot where I park every day near Park and Victoria, there was this bus. A private bus. Unmarked. That bus had five air conditioners on the roof and it was idling in the lot when I rolled in around 10am to meet a client. Walking back to my car from The Boathouse around 9:30pm after the IoT Waterloo meetup, that bus was still there rumbling away.
Whose bus was that? The Dutch King and Queen were in town visiting. Google I/O was going on this week. Tech Leadership Conference was Thursday, but that was down at Bingemann’s. To my informed, well-connected, resourceful readership: whose bus was that?
From the dark parking lot, this is Kitchener.
DW
1shot #229-they see me rollin’
On Willis Way at King, this is Waterloo.
DW
Demo day at The Mayfair Hotel
Serendipity caught me walking out of Kitchener City Hall after a meeting just as the demolition of the Mayfair Hotel was kicking off with a tremendous crash and a small crowd. Pasteur said “Fortune favours the prepared mind” and that works equally as well for photogs who habitually lug their gear as it does for scientists.
And while we’re quoting quotes, kick-ass photog Jay Maisel observes in his new book: “never go back.” You have to shoot it now. So I did. Click through for a semi-reasonable number of pics.
From King and Gaukel, this is Kitchener.
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Mid-town music and porches–June 14!
From the don’t-miss-this department, The Grand Porch Party 2015 is less than four weeks away. Sunday, June 14, 2015 2pm-5pm in Waterloo mid-town west. This map link to the corner of Alexandra and Avondale will get you in the general vicinity. It’s free-no-pay, but your support is massively appreciated when you buy the music and merch. Get this in yer calendar right now: Sunday, June 14, 2015, 2pm.
If you’re new here (and that’s cool ‘cause we love new people), the GPP is an afternoon of eclectic music performed on porches in one of the most delightfully walkable neighbourhoods in WR. You can check out my coverage of the event from the past few years, and before you do please allow me to highlight that GPP is hipster-friendly, dog-friendly, kid-friendly, wheel-chair friendly, bike-friendly, 40-something-parent-friendly, and friend-friendly. If I may, I’ll ask two services of you:
1. Commit to going to this event: pack away all your we’ll-see’s and try-our-best’s and lock in on this one. It’s a month away, you can do it. History, they say, is made by those who show up.
2. Tell 2 friends: in this, our web-of-trust for cool events, I’m confidently endorsing GPP and you can, too. Please tweet it, like it, share it, text it (or text from an iPhone), email it, phone somebody, or lean over the back fence and tell your neighbour the old fashioned way.
What do these people…
have in common with these people…
and these people?
They showed up. I hope you will, too.
DW
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404 on King Street–a photo survey in DTK
I think it started with the news that one of my fave DTK watering holes, Imbibe, was shuttering over some misalignment with THEMUSEUM. Then I heard from Ian Pilon that IoT Waterloo gigs would have to shift due to Ren @41 closing. I watched the trucks emptying out the remains of Carbon Computing and most recently saw the sign pulled down from Artisan Zone and the store vacant. The ION light rail construction is primarily fouling up Charles Street and *not* the main drag, so what pray tell, dear reader, is going on with King Street?
404 is an error code indicating a missing resource in the hyper text transfer protocol. Keen to avoid confirmation bias and reality distortion by woeful scuttlebutt, I set out last Thursday morning with Brohemus to simply photograph every storefront on King Street between Victoria and Cedar around 10am. I wanted to really look for myself in a methodical way at the state of the street. What’s open for business? What’s vacant? 404. This is not Photography, but rather a quick and quasi-objective visual record of the streetscape. You can start scrolling King Street below.
SCROLL RIGHT for a wrap-around tour of this section of King Street.
I thought I might later count doors and bucket them into [occupied | vacant | undetermined]. Seems like a good way to start an argument over my classification and counting abilities. I’ve got about 183 photos, some show multiple doors of a single business, some show parking lots, some show multiple businesses. Arriving at numbers of open versus closed businesses on King Street would distract us from more important conversation. Getting less data-oriented, I’ll ask you “What’s the feel of the street?” It’s only 1340m of a street. That’s human-scale. Walkable. The City is working hard on DTK as is the Downtown Kitchener BIA and its members. What role do you and I play? Click through for a few observations…
1shot #228-boots on the ground
Yes, again. I was heading out from the Hub on Friday afternoon and spotted these work boots lined up on the curb near the corner of Victoria and Michael St.
No, I don’t have a foot fetish, nor even a footwear fetish. I just suffer from an irrepressible curiosity that is applied evenly across the broader enigmas and mundane mysteries. No owner in sight. No obvious signs of a struggle. Quite the opposite: only half the people in my house line up shoes in the front hallway this neatly.
Current working theory: this is some selfless social-good side-channel mechanism of equipping those in need. Like you might leave a lawnmower on a lawn or a snow shovel in a snow bank. You leave footwear where people walk. Buddy’s making the long haul home across Victoria and, lo… size 12’s! Sweet.
This is Kitchener.
DW