CITY DAILY PHOTO JULY THEME DAY - BLUE

Only one possibility in this town this year.

BEEN THERE, DONE THAT

Another interesting conversation at dinner the other night. Charles has lived in a number of places and made his living in several ways. He has cooked in fine restaurants. He is a musician and has an encyclopedic knowledge of guitars. (The necks on Martins are too thick.)

I shot a whole bunch of shows at the Grand Center Theatre Crawl. Still just sorting the images. The Pride Parade is today and it's going to be bloody hot. Careful, old guy.                

OH THE PEOPLE YOU'LL MEET

Articans can be fairly characterized as free spirits. That's a big part of what Artica is about. There were so many diverse and interesting people at the dinner and hang-out Thursday that it reminded me of a certain Dr. Seuss fable.   

By the way, his white pants were also tie dyed. But different.       

EINE KLEINE NACHTMUSIK

My friends Lohr Barkley and Carrie Goodson are the propelling force behind Artica. For the last several months they have hosted a creatives pot luck dinner on the last Thursday of the month at the old brick building they are renovating into their home. It was very pleasant last night, not so common at this time of year. Several people brought musical instruments. Celebrate summer. That can of PBR didn't hurt.

I have more good images if I can find time to edit them. I am shooting the Grand Center Theater Crawl tonight and tomorrow. Sunday is the Pride Parade, the don't miss photo op of the year. Then we get into the Fourth of July stuff, with the enormous Fair St. Louis downtown and a more manageable festival in Webster Groves, the suburb where we live. Sometimes I complain about lack of material. Soon I'll have enough to blow out my hard drive.

THE MAN ON THE FLYING TRAPEZE

Sorry no post yesterday. Way too much work interfering with the finer things in life. But who remembers that old song? It sounds pretty corny today but it's a cultural artifact.

The performance of Circus Flora ended with a long performance by the trapeze artists. Some of the stunts seemed to border on the reckless but they pulled off each one with precision. This is a so-so picture of them. I wish I had, and had permission to use, a tripod. I wish I had brought my heavy f2.8 telephoto lens instead of my lighter f4. I wish I knew more about color correction in Photoshop. Still, there is a bit of the flavor here.

           

HEADS UP

More images from Circus Flora. A young man with what I assume is a deliberately wacky hairdo avoids a club on the nose. In the middle, a multi-talented woman entertains the crowd with an electric violin while entwined in cords high above the floor. Below, the same dancer-acrobats we saw yesterday strike a pose that reminds me of a scene from Bob Fosse's All That Jazz.                

UNDER THE BIG TOP

One of the nice things about The Lou is that we have our own permanent circus company, Circus Flora. It's been around for 33 years and has its own sophisticated big top tent in the Grand Center arts and education district. I had never been there but we took Ellie on Saturday.

What fun! It was a long show with many acts, all performing feats that you and I could never dream of doing. Plus a little comedy thrown in. More of this to come.            

ART AND SKILL

 

The subject matter of Elisabeth Townsend's play Count Time is so somber that I decided to edit some of the photos in monochrome. Townsend is a great talent, both as an actress and a writer. Those of you in Missouri owe it to yourselves to read the summary of the case in the link just above. The last picture shows her wearing a scarf and head warmer that Patty Prewitt knitted for her as gifts.

I get a lot of satisfaction from theatrical photography, working with talented, fascinating people. The result sometimes captures the depth and breadth of their art.         

COUNT TIME

 

I first met Elizabeth Townsend and saw her searing play Count Time while shooting for the St. Lou Fringe in 2016. It tells the story of Patricia Prewitt, who was sexually assaulted and her husband murdered in rural Missouri in 1984. She was wrongfully convicted of his murder and sentenced to 50 years in prison without parole in 1986. It was one of the most awful miscarriages of justice in the history of our state. Townsend and many others have worked tirelessly for her release ever since. The link above sets out the mountain of lies and negligence that brought Patty to this place.

Townsend performed the play again last night to a large audience at a local church and asked me to photograph it once more. It was my pleasure and honor to do so. (If you scroll down her gallery page to this play you will find my pictures from the Fringe.) There was a large television to stage left and it occurred to me to shoot Elizabeth in its black surface. Perhaps it captures some of Patty's nightmare.       

HISTORICAL COINCIDENCE

The St. Louis Blues were established in 1967, when the National Hockey League grew from six to twelve teams. By coincidence, that is the year I left NYC and showed up at St. Louis University. Fifty two years later, the Blues finally won the championship and I'm trying to retire. I'm not sorry life set me down here.

Running low on material. Got a theatrical production to shoot tonight.       

THURSDAY ARCH SERIES

Blues fans on a gray day. The semicircular structure on the lower left is the entrance to the Arch's wonderful underground museum.           

ALL THINGS COME TO THOSE WHO WAIT

http://bit.ly/2MWTdJ5 . Maybe. If you know something about probability, some events may take an awfully long time to come around. But it's wonderful, though, that this happened here, now.             

Viewpoint

It was impossible to get a spot on Market Street to view the Blues championship parade unless you arrived many hours early. Some people improvised, standing on the portico of what we call the Old Courthouse. It's part of the Gateway Arch National Park. Normally, park staff would have shooed them away quickly. Others avoided the problem by just hanging out in Kiener Plaza, soaking up the party atmosphere. Nobody got drunk and disorderly. There were no arrests, a bit surprising given the size of the crowd and river of beer.            

 

YAY FOR US

The crowd, as they say, went wild. I can't imagine, though, that this was really about a couple of dozen mercenary athletes paid to represent our city. I like to watch well-played sports (with the exception of football, the sanitized modern version of the Roman arena) for its beauty, skill, daring and competition. This vast street party, however, was about us, the people of the St. Louis area.

We are mid-sized and Midwestern, sometimes sneered at by the coasts and much bigger cities. There is a self-esteem problem. But look at us - our team went from worst to first, kicking the pants off every other team in the US and Canada. Yeah, St. Louis was the best of them all.

The memory will fade, but for this one brief shining moment we towered over all. And, as I have pointed out several times, The Lou loves an excuse to drink in public during the day.   

WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS

As most of the US and Canada know, the St. Louis Blues improbably won the Stanley Cup, professional hockey's championship trophy. They had the worst record in the league on January 3, got a new coach and performed an amazing recovery. There was a huge victory parade and party yesterday, with the sound of Freddy Mercury's voice ocasionally hanging in the air. 

The authorities estimated that a half-million people turned out and I believe it. I couldn't get near the parade route itself but there was plenty of good people watching. The most common musical theme was a peppy 80's pop song, Gloria, that became the team's anthem. The Blues have been around for 52 years and never before won the championship. The city was bursting with joy.          

STL DPB ON THE ROAD - CADDILAC

Mt. Desert Island has several moderate size mountains. The highest is Cadillac Mountain (not Mt. Cadillac for some reason), 1,527 feet / 465 meters above sea level. That part is easily determined. You can drive to near the top but you need Ellie's scrambling skills to make to the  pinnacle.            

STL DPB ON THE ROAD - THE BAR IN BAR HARBOR

Didn't take a single picture yesterday. Raining and chilly all day long. No wonder my right index finger feels flabby.

So, back on the tour boat. There are a lot of sand and gravel bars from the main island to the little ones that surround it. Walk-able at low tide but you better get back in time. Some members of the crew were goofing off but they were observed from above. This will be noted on their time cards.