Thomas Locke Hobbs
| Hi! Thanks for visiting. I'm an American photographer living in Buenos Aires. These are photos from the blog I kept on my site from 2003 to 2009. I now have redesigned the home page to just show a portfolio of my current work. I also blog at BuenosAiresPhotographer.com where I post my baires snapshots. |
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| Camarones Costa Azul at El Titanic in San Jose. Shrimp wrapped in bacon. Ain´t nothing don´t taste better wrapped in bacon. |
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| Liquids & Gels
5 Años despues: expat blogger Line of Site writes about his experience on the night of Dec. 19th when public frustration at Argentina's deflationary death-sprial burst forth following De La Rua's declaration of quasi-martial law, sparking riots that lead to his resignation, followed quickly by three presidents in two weeks, the devaluation of the peso, and, eventually, the current boom in tourism: Part 1, Part 2 I've often regretted leaving Buenos Aires in Oct of 2000. Living through the riots and devaluation would have made for interesting times. Instead I moved to New York in June of 2001 and had interesting times there too. |
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| My desk. I don't use it much.
hedging US dollar risk for personal investors. I thought a lot about this before my travels last year. World's Most Dangerous Roads, and yes, the Bolivian one is #2, and also from the same blog... Crazy Freeway interchanges. More cool pics of interchanges: Yokahama, San Mateo and LA from above & upclose, and one made of clay. El Ateneo, the most amazing bookstore anywhere [it's in Buenos Aires]. I remember seeing "Men in Black" there back when it was a decrepit movie palace. |
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| My Casio 10-PQ travel alarm clock. This must have the highest noise-to-size ratio of any travel alarm clock out there. I love it. It's tiny, simple and just works. I bought this in New York in 2005 just before my big trip and it's still going strong on the original battery after nearly two years of use. Even though I'm not traveling now I still use it as my daily alarm clock. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be widely available in the US. A google search reveals a single epinions review and two Casio product pages from New Zealand and Germany. I got mine from one of those gadget vendors on 5th Ave. in the 40s that specialize in T-shirts and WTC memorabilia and often sell oddly sourced gadgets.
The Right to Bear SLRs. Confronting security goons--a topic near to my heart.
Valleywag on YouTube's founders: Chad Hurley is more photogenic; even if Google's publicists insist on both Youtube founders being present for the photo shoots, watch magazine editors push the dorky Taiwanese-American engineer to the edge of the frame.. |
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| Once upon a time I cared a lot about my CD collection. Once in college I put off studying for finals by making this list of CDs that I own. It's woefully out of date and doesn't reflect any of the recent gigabyte's of m3s I've gotten, thanks to my friend Aaron, or even the basketful of pirated CD's I purchased while getting tear-gassed in Mexico City.
Pictured below is my current set-up; a 1gb Creative Nano plugged into Logitech x-230 speakers. I'd spring more for an ipod but I realized that I just listen to the same ten cheesy pop songs over and over again. |
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| I love white chocolate almost as much as I love vanilla ice cream. I don't know how I missed this last summer but as a tie-in with "Pirates of the Caribbean", Mars came out with white chocolate M&M's which they called "Pirate Pearls". I found these on sale at a discount store and swiped up six packs. They're good; very sweet. White chocolate is a subtle flavor so you taste the candy shell a lot more.
Not surprisingly, there's a whole universe of candy & junk food blogs which discussed them in detail [here, here and here] back when they came out in July. |
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| Peru & Bolivia photo set [flickr], 259 excellent photos of a lot of the highlights on the Andean Gringo Trail. |
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| The Amaicha Bonarda, an Argentine wine, was selling for just $2 at my local Trader Joe's. I picked up a bottle and it's a big step up from Two Buck Chuck altho it's not a great wine. I'd pick up a case if I were throwing a party.
The wine comes with a plastic, black cork that I found strangely alluring. If I ever throw a leather party I'll know exactly which wine to serve. Found on Slideshare, the YouTube for PowerPoint, Bolivian Death Roads and Indian Road Signage. Btw, if you ever go to La Paz, you can rent a mountain bike and ride down the Death Road to Coroico[pic]. A long but moving Magnum Photos slideshow on Pinochet's Legacy. Bugs, Bats & Vegas: the spotlight emmanating from the tip of Luxor attracts bugs which then attracts bats: Photo 1, Photo 2 [long exposures, flickr rocks, again] |
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| I lived for a long time in the uber-trendy neighborhood of NoLiTa [North Little Italy]. Just saying the name made me whince, even though it was accurate. My favorite place to eat was Habana To-Go, the take-out sister to Cafe Habana, a Mexican & Cuban restaurant on the corner of Prince & Elizabeth. I'd always get their Mole and it still remains one of my favorite mole's anywhere. |
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| Street art directly opposite Cafe Habana on the corner of Spring & Elizabeth. The area is a magnet for street artists. |
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| Just a random car parked in front of the restaurant while I ate my mole. Being a Californian, I'm always jealous of how easy it is to get cool personalized plates in other states.
Cool Photos & Stuff Buenos Aires HDR Photos [flickr]. I feel like HDR photos are a gimmick that will feel very much of this period but for now they look cool [HDR = high dynamic range, basically merging multiple exposures for super-colors]. Hexagonal orange [also flickr, also baires] |
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| Tom at MoMA in NYC
We were there to see the exibit of Manet's The Execution of Maximilian, a series of paintings about the execution of the the French-installed, so-called emperor who was overthrown by Juarez in 1867. Although not specifically referencing the war in Iraq, the wall text dwelt on ill-planned colonial adventures. |
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| Last week I took a last minute trip to New York to see friends. This is the view from my friend Aaron's apartment, where I stayed. The tall-ish building to the left of the Empire State is new since I left NYC. Turns out it's a 58-story tower on 31st that was developed in partnership with an order of Franciscan friars. According to this article, it was cheaper for them to plonk down a luxury high rise than rennovate their old buildings. They've got the first twelve floors and the global elite will take up residence above. It strikes me as a very Manhattan solution to a problem. Also, only in Manhattan would a 58-story buidling appear short.
I got to meet my blogger friend Modern Monk who took this photo of me at MoMA in front of their Solari de Udine Flap Display in their design collection. |
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 | Hi. I'm a 33 year-old American currently living in Buenos Aires. Before that I lived in California, Sao Paulo and New York and if you browse through the archives below you can see photos of all those places. Currently I'm posting most of my pictures on BuenosAiresPhotographer.com. I also have an old geocities page with some outdated information but also more photos of Buenos Aires, friends and my 9/11 pictures. |