Thomas Locke Hobbs
| Currently: Buenos Aires, also check out www.BuenosAiresPhotographer.com |
Guadalupe River Park
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| The Guadalupe River, really a creek, runs through downtown San Jose and occasionally floods. The park was built as part of a flood control project and runs alongside the river under streets and freeways. It's nicely landscaped but on this Saturday seemed mostly to be used by the area's homeless |
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Downtown San Jose
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| Cutesey New Urbanist town house with vacant office highrise in the background
That basically sums up all of San Jose's redevelopment efforts. |
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| Old house on Bird Ave. south of 280. I'm a big advocate of gnarly banana plants as landscaping. |
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| Underneath Interstate 280 in downtown San Jose is this public art installation where words are written on the support pylons for the freeway. Update: Lee Houk points me to this article from the SF Chronical, Revealing and Healing the Earth, from 2001 which talks about this work and others that were part of a show at SFMOMA. The work is called "Markings" and is by Hargreaves Associates: The Guadalupe River, which courses through the area, once sheltered a tribe of Costanoan Indians, and the project aims to recall their presence in what is today an uninhabitable spot (although a homeless encampment is nearby). Hargreaves has painted the pylons that hold up the roadbed a reflective silver.Landview.org has some photos showing the Karuk words on the other side. |
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| A close-up of the same work, which is locked behind a chain-link fence. I don't think the "CET Parking" was part of the artist's original conception. |
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| If you're traveling to Southern Calfornia, I'd recommend bringing sunglasses. I forgot mine and had to make do. |
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| Barney |
Tijuana
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| Saturday night we went to Tijuana to party. I left my SLR on the other side of La Linea so forgive the crappy pictures.
Avenida Revolucion, the main tourist stripped, seemed empty for a Saturday night. I wonder if TJ's tourist demographic has shifted from partying 18 year-olds to pill-popping AARPies getting cheap refills on their prescriptions. The gay bars in TJ, however, are packed and a lot of fun. We went to El Ranchero, this new placed called Chameleon, and the disco Extasis which is literally a block from the border. If you're looking for more info, I'd recommend this article by Ted Gideonse, who I know from college and who's blog I can heartily recommend, published in San Diego's Gay & Lesbian Times: Tales from TJ: Gay life below the Border |
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| There was no shortage of car traffic at the border. Fortunately the line at the pedestrian crossing was pretty short at 3am. |
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| You can see the plaque marking the exact border in the upper left. Right after I took this picture I heard this booming, American voice shout, "No Pictures!" Ahh, welcome home. |
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| TJ looking back from San Ysidro |
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| Enchiladas with Mole at Sanborns, this Denny's style, 24-hour restaurant chain in Mexico. In DF, at least, it's a popular post-clubbing joint. I joked to my friends that it was probably the most authentically Mexican restaurant we were likely to find. |
Highrise Condos in San Diego
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| It's been 9 years since my last visit to San Diego and the downtown has seen a boom in condo construction. This photo is actually of the Marriott next to the Convention Center, but you get the idea, see below: |
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| I went to San Diego this past weekend and I was struck, as I had been on previous visits, just how impressive all the freeways are. They're all 8 or 10 lane, the interchanges are 4-deckers, the pavement is smooth and there's none of this half-assed expansion of chewed up median strips and random Jersey barriers that characterizes freeways in LA and the Bay Area. It's like the planners of LA's freeways came down to San Diego and decided to do it right. They embody this Pat Brown/Ronald Reagan/Pre-Prop 13 golden era of public works and well-funded schools. Of course my friend in San Diego pointed out that growth has long since made San Diego's traffic as bad as anywhere else and San Diego's weird geography of surface strees on the mesa tops and the freeways below in the arroyos means there are few alternatives for when things get bad. |
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| The 163 and I-5 interchange in Balboa Park |
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| The 805/8 interchange in Mission Valley |
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| Angel in the backyard |
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| Another wood-carving from Oaxaca |
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| A terracotta exfoliator from Dubai
Helpful Flickr set: Tijuana for Dummies |
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| Mom recently went to Oaxaca and brought back a bunch of artesania including this carved horse by Zeny Fuentes
Great photo title: Sad Orangautan & Stripper Pole |
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| Happy Easter!
I'm not religious but I do welcome the annual appearance of Cadbury Creme Eggs at my local Rite Aid. |
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| Continuing with the maritime theme; a starfish from the tide pools at Asilomar Beach
Buenos Aires is the only city I've been where there's no standard for map orientation. Most places just use north. New York treats Manhattan as pointing to true north which is not quite right but good enough. In the year and a half I lived in Buenos Aires I can't say I ever figured out the exact direction of north. To complicate matters various maps of the city would be oriented differently. Some maps, primarily the subway, would show downtown and the port at bottom with the city growing upwards [south/westwards]. Others would show an approximate north aligned to the downtown street grid which, in any case, twisted and loses coherence as it radiates out from the center. Anyway, Line of Sight, one of my favorite expat blogs, wrote a post the historical origins of the porteño map [dis]orientation issue. |
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| Jellyfish and small shark at the Monterey Bay Aquarium
Taking pictures of the jellyfish is too easy with a digital SLR and a fast prime lens. Every shot looks amazing. From my friend Bryan who was recently in Berlin: Baby polar bears & Mullets |
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| Getting in the mood for Semana Santa: inside the gift shop at Mission San Juan Bautista.
Growing up we took annual school field trips here but I don't think I'd visited since I was 12. Now that I've basically been everywhere in Latin America, it's interesting to see the mission on the context of Spanish colonialization of the Americas. The main church hall is the biggest of the California missions but would barely merit a mention anywhere in Latin America. Same goes for the age; founded in 1797 it's been continuously occupied by the parish. Again, old for California [and impressive for its continuity] but new for the rest of Mexico. |
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| A cheeseburger and chili fries on my birthday. 31.
With myspace, facebook, orkut and friendster I get more birthday greetings than ever before. Still, knowing that people were reminded doesn't dimish the joy. The two parts of the brain are far from eachother and don't speak. |
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 | Hi. I'm a 32 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. |