So I hopped into a car and headed two hours east to my hometown.

[This is my all-too-familiar drive between my two home cities, full of tobacco fields, car dealerships, strip malls, and jesus billboards.]

I spent the majority of the next few days doing things I don’t otherwise get to do:

- Eat disgusting/awesome Southern fast food.

- Hang out with my cat (I’m a long-distance cat owner, btw).

- Hang out with my mom and watch Oprah and HGTV.

One of the particularly exciting things about this vacation is the fact that I’m having a visitor while I’m here – my boyfriend Aaron. I’ve never had a visitor on vacation before. I don’t think there are many circumstances where it is possible. But my visitor was to arrive on Thursday morning and I was to spend the rest of my trip acquainting him with the dirty south.

I spend day one showing Aaron all of my favorite hangouts in Raleigh, including Raleigh Times, Morning Times, Helios, Foundation, Busy Bee, Sosta, etc. I quickly realize my enjoyment of Raleigh revolves completely around food and drink.

After a day in Raleigh, I feel that it’s best to head toward the coast for a proper southern experience. We head out onto Highway 70 with all intentions of arriving in New Bern by early afternoon, but end up on a spontaneous adventure to Nahunta Pork Center instead.

Some context: I have seen billboards for Nahunta Pork Center almost my entire life. Billboard after billboard after billboard on Highway 70, all urging me to go to this mythical place. Everyone who drives this highway knows about Nahunta Pork Center, but I’ve never met anyone who has actually been. So… now might as well be that time. We make the turn. We drive 30 minutes off the highway into rural desolation to find ourselves in the middle of what is basically a giant grocery store, full of every pork product you can imagine. We purchase some ribs and country ham (another first for Aaron), awkwardly take photos while the locals stare, and continue on our way to New Bern.

I should mention that we’re arriving in New Bern on its tricentennial weekend. Yes, New Bern is turning 300. The people are excited, and there are lots of festivities planned. Festivities defined not really by San Francisco standards, but by 300-year-old coastal town standards.

[parade photos courtesy of my mom.]

Parades, symphony concerts, fireworks and the like.

Other than that, we spent most of our time on the water or at the beach or playing with Raphael or eating BBQ. All in all, it was a very very good trip to the south.

Here are a few photos.

See you next year, east coast!

END!

I guess I’d be going to NC in September.

Months later, everything came together and I was packing my bags to spend an entire ten (!) days in North Carolina. It turns out that The Independent (the publication who was putting this whole thing on) needed some press photographers, and I jumped at the chance. I sold my old VIP ticket (to the much deserving Kelly Reid) and secured my press pass. I was ready to go.

But then things got complicated.

Complication #1: San Bruno explodes.

Thursday night. I’m finishing up with preparations before Aaron takes me to the airport. I’m in the kitchen when I hear… “Uhhh, Helena? I think we may have a problem.”

I come into my room to see Aaron watching the news. Apparently San Bruno’s on fire.

[photocredit: Scott Fong]

I feel like most of you have caught wind (no pun intended) of the news as it since went national, but apparently a giant PG&E pipe exploded underneath San Bruno, setting the neighborhood on fire. Total unworldly catastrophe. I should mention that San Bruno is right next to the airport that I’m supposed to be flying out of in four hours.

We continue to watch the news to see what we should do, and see that the Highway 280 (what we would use to get to the airport) is completely shut down. That puts a bit of a damper on our plans. Hm.

After a couple of hours, we decide to take the scenic route down the 101 to the airport, and surprisingly, we arrived quickly with not an obstacle in our way. We gazed at the burning mountain passing by us as we approached the airport.

Aaron drops me off and we say our goodbyes. I was in.

Obstacle 2: The plane doesn’t work.

I quickly get through security and arrive at my gate with plenty of time before my flight. I’m taking the redeye – I’m to leave SFO at approximately 12:30, and will arrive in Raleigh before noon, just in time to catch all of the Hopscotch day parties, and see lots of old friends I haven’t seen in ages, including the Hometapes crew, who I toured with last summer and haven’t seen since, and who happen to be hosting a 7-hour day party with my favorite bands, people, PopTarts and nachos. Needless to say, I was looking forward to it.

We board the plane, I check my bag at the door (if you haven’t tried it yet, don’t check your bags with Delta! You can just check it at the plane, and save yourself $25), and get settled. I casually glance at the checked bag receipt. Flight 666.

We sit. And we sit. And we sit. We sit for like an hour. Finally, the captain comes on at 1:15 or so and tells us that the left engine is broken, but they’re trying to see if they can “fix it real quick before we take off.” This feels good.

Around 1:30 the captain tells us it’s still broken, but they’re continuing to hack at it. We continue to sit. The engine is clearly shot but we’re just going to sit in it for a while anyway. Maybe it’ll work if we sit in it long enough.

Finally around 2 am, the captain tells us that our flight is in fact cancelled, and we’re all to head back to the front gate to see if we can be rescheduled for another flight tomorrow. I now miss a full day of shooting, as well as seeing all of my friends at the coolest day-party-friend-reunion I could possibly imagine. Fantastic.

Let me tell you, I have a history of exceptionally bad experiences with Delta. Well, maybe they’re not exceptional, because it seems like everyone hates Delta. If you used to be on my old travel-adventure email list, you may remember one of my previous Delta nightmare stories, which actually resulted in me getting a $400 voucher which I used on a vacation to San Francisco which caused me to fall in love with the city and eventually move here.

Anyway.

Delta semi-reschedules me for a 6 am flight. I ask the teller if I’m guaranteed a spot on this flight, because I HAVE to get to Raleigh for a job tomorrow. He says yes and gives me a $12 food voucher for my troubles. THANK YOU DELTA. I walk away, checking my ticket. I’m on the flight’s waiting list. This is all going wonderfully.

So now it’s 2:30, and I’m stuck inside my own airport. What do I do now? I give Aaron a call, despite the fact that there’s nothing he can do about it. Apparently he thought I was the alarm clock, because he “snoozed” me twice. I call my mom, because at this point I’m delirious and apparently don’t mind being a late-night calling asshole, but she didn’t answer either.

Man, it’s a pretty awful feeling being stuck in an airport overnight. You sort of feel homeless. Since security was closed until the morning, I couldn’t even go into the gates to sleep. I trudged into a tiny food court at the front of the airport and settled into a booth to sleep.

[this is the view from my regal food court bed.]

My mom calls me a half-hour into my nap to tell me that she was already expecting this to happen, as her horoscope told me that my flight would have complications and that it was all happening for a good reason. Susan Miller‘s on point ya’ll, just sayin’.

Fast forward to 6 am. My name is finally called as the last one on the waiting list as I gobble my shitty twelve-dollar breakfast panini, compliments of Delta. I hop on my flight, finally en route to North Cack.

I arrive around 5 pm. My mom and Barry Barrington (that is her boyfriend and yes that is his name) pick me up and take me home to rest for about 15 minutes. I try to make myself look slightly less homeless, then head straight downtown to begin shooting. I’m feeling a bit strange, having only physically laid down and half-slept for one hour in two days.

Hopscotch night one was rad. I saw approximately one million people I haven’t seen in nine months. I saw lots of incredible bands. I got to spend time with my best friends. Hopscotch night two was about the same, and I was fortunately a bit more rested. I won’t get into much more detail, mostly because I was in zombie mode and don’t remember much of it, but here are some photos from the weekend.

Broken Social Scene

Americans In France

Panda Bear

Atlas Sound (my favorite performance of the night)

Raekwon

The Rosebuds

Sharon Van Etten

Bear In Heaven

Spontaneous appearance by Helping Hands Marching Band during Public Enemy

Megafaun

No Age

The Love Language

NC adventures part 2 to come. END!

Great short-term solution = weekend road trip!

My adventure cohorts, Dakota and Tara, and I had a loosely assembled agenda: go see David Bazan in some random city that starts with a V, then continue driving southward to Hermosa Beach to stay with Dakota’s friend Brian.

That’s about it. So we packed ourselves into a rental car and headed southward.

First stop: Santa Cruz Boardwalk. Dakota and Tara wanted to ride rollercoasters and eat ice cream.

I happened to be battling one of the more intense hangovers of my lifetime, so I wasn’t particularly interested in either. I bought a hot dog (it’s what my hangover wanted at the time), took a seat at the sidelines and silently observed the chaos.

We wandered around for a bit, snapped some shots on the beach, & prepared to head on our way.

We arrived in the small city that starts with a V by nightfall. The venue was a lovely place. A lovely empty place. We were wondering if we were going to be the only ones here.

Sure enough, it filled out, but we easily weasled our way to the very front to watch David Bazan, one of my favorite songwriters of all time, serenade us from three feet away. One of the better moments of my life.

Being in the front row with a fixed 85 mm lens, I could basically take photos that framed his forehead only. I could have backed a few feet up into the crowd to get some better shots. It was definitely one of those moments where you decide whether you would rather have the better experience or a better documentation of your experience. For once, I chose the former.

So then we drove to Hermosa Beach. It was another 4 hours or so to drive. It was also midnight. But we wanted to do it anyway. So off we went.

We arrived in Hermosa at approx. 4 am. We tried to contact our host, as he told us to call him when we arrived. No response. Dakota proposes we sleep in the car.

Nope. Didn’t come all the way to SoCal to sleep in a damn car. So we decide to go find the apartment he described for us. We find said apartment. We knock. No answer. So… we try the door. It is open. We sneak inside.

We are not entirely certain that this is the right apartment. We could possibly be breaking into a strangers home. We check a utility bill on the counter. Not in her friend’s name. Fantastic.

The bedroom doors are open. Dakota peers in bedroom one to see if her friend happens to be sleeping in it. Definitely not her friend. Even better. I convince the girls to hold on and at least let me charge my phone before we have to run away.

Fortunately, in the second bedroom we found our friend Brian. I had already set up my bedpallate on the floor. I didn’t care whose apartment we had invaded, I was going to sleep in it.

And so we did.

We all woke up late. Brian conveniently lives a block from the ocean, so we took a quick walk down the beach, ate some brunch, then headed back to prepare for our trek home.

Only a quick 9-hour trek home. This may be a chore to some, but I absolutely love the road, so I was elated. Not to mention… we’re driving up the coast of California. There could be worse ways to spend your day.

Hooray roadtrips!

I was actually going for more productive purposes… primarily for the APAP (the Association of Performing Arts Presenters) Conference in Manhattan, to represent Porto Franco Records. It was an exhausting, work-filled week, but I managed to come away with quite a few great experiences and new friends under my belt.

NYC Highlights:
- Immediately remembering how it feels to have your facial extremities being eaten off by ever-present winter New York temperatures
- Falling completely in love with New York all over again despite these ever-present winter New York temperatures
- Meeting folks with similar outlooks on the new music industry (so refreshing and validating)
- Forcing myself to speak in front of groups of industry professionals 10-30 years my senior
- Feeling validated when I was introducing concepts to them that made sense
- Murray’s Bagels and their selection of 16 types of smoked fish
- Conversationally life-altering lunch with Mark Schoneveld
- Walking along the Highline and realizing I desperately miss innovative public use of modern architecture and I must live in NYC at some point in the future
- Seeing and catching up with Mariana Garcia, Matt Bauer, Mikey Lythcott, Brooks Wood, Mark Woloszyn, Greg Galant, Sam Rhodes, Masa Tanaka, + more.
- Mikey’s roof (as always)

And some photos. I didn’t shoot much, as it was freezing and it wouldn’t take long before my camera froze. But here are the few I actually took from the week.

See you soon, NY. xoxo

This particular adventure was centered around the birthday of my dear friend Tim Lytvinenko. If you kept up with my blogs this summer, you know that Tim toured the country with me with Bowerbirds + Megafaun, and he takes care of Raleigh for me while I’m in California. He’s a kickass web developer and is doing some incredible work with Luceo Images (who happen to be showing in NYC right now – go find them if you’re in the area). You should check them out.

Anyway. For Tim’s birthday:

- A big group of compadres gathered at Tim’s for an epic curry feast, courtesy of his family.
- We kicked around a large ball containing ice cream ingredients until ice cream was formed. Flavors: avocado and Guinness. Yum.
- One full, we all sat down and began a white elephant gift exchange of sorts – the only real difference being that, instead of people picking gifts, ladies were picking men.
- Once men were drawn/selected, the pairs were matched up and handcuffed together. Yes, you read that right.
- All of us, once handcuffed (there must have been at least a dozen pairs), headed to the bus stop to be shipped to the one and only Glenwood South to do what we never do… go dancing on Glenwood South. Destination #1 = The Pourch. (punny, yes.)
- We quickly dominated the club, dancing in attached pairs, sometimes getting creative and find ways to interlock multiple cuffed groups of people into one giant dancing human mass.
- It wasn’t long until we all got kicked out. No big reason… just for being handcuffed.
- We then found the R-Line, which toted us to our favorite downtown neighborhood, where we only had time to run to Landmark and Busy Bee, where we danced, still handcuffed, til the bars closed. People began finding ways to disconnect, but Chad and I were determined to be the clustercuffs winners and stay hooked together until approximately 3 AM. We deemed ourselves winners until Logan and Stefanie arrived and were in fact handcuffed the longest. Assholes.
- Then we all danced around Tim’s living room until 6 in the morning.

Normal birthdays FTW!

Ok, here are some photos. I didn’t bring my camera downtown, as it’s not really possible to take photos while handcuffed… you’ll just have to imagine the chaos for yourself.

Raleigh adventures, I love you. Please don’t ever change.

Of course, after a day or two I began to get stir crazy and began to contact humanity again, as well as take some photos of all you can really photograph in New Bern during the winter – myself, my cat, bear statues, and whoever happened to wander into my mother’s house. Enjoy.

END!

It’s cold here. I have realized how ridiculously spoiled I have become living in SF. I can function completely without a car, I don’t wear pants half of the time because it’s between 50-80 degrees all year, and coffee is as thick as espresso. Oh, and the surplus of cornerstores with awesome juice selections. And the lack of jesus billboards and general perceptions of “weird.”

I can work via le internets, so I can still maintain my projects from wherever, which is really nice. It will be nice to get back to the new SF homeland though, as while most of my projects are online, they’re very locally-intensive, and you can’t do much local bay-area work from the east coast. Well, you can, but it just doesn’t feel right. I’m ready to see real faces instead of email addresses and twitter names.

There are plenty of real Raleigh faces to bide my time, though.

I’ve just been doing what I usually do in Raleigh. Work on projects in Helio’s or Morning Times all day, then when I become restless, begin wandering around downtown, seeing and catching up with familiar faces on every corner, grabbing Lebanese food at Sitti, BBQ + Aventinus at Raleigh Times, local bands + Big Boss at Tir Na Nog, ginger ale at Foundation, greyhounds at Landmark, the sting at Busy Bee… inevitably getting into adventures that last me through the rest of the night. Wake up on friend’s couch, get up and do it all over again.

Note: I bought my entire family Luchador wrestling masks for Christmas. They happened to make their way around Raleigh before I wrapped them.

END!

- I was working yet another Eve in the service industry, this year as a cocktail waitress at Blue Martini in Raleigh. The bar is shoulder to shoulder, but all of the customers are ordering from the bar (therefore not from me). I remember the pinnacle moment of my night, where I’m stuck in the middle of the bar crowd, carrying a tray of several dozen mini champagne flutes over my head, trying to get to my tables. As I attempt to push through the crowd, the people around me begin stealing the flutes off of my tray, getting so out of control that the entire tray falls over and I find myself covered in champagne, flutes strewn all over the floor. This all happens as the clock strikes midnight. I silently observe the entire crowd begin screaming and making out around me as I stand, defeated, soaked in champagne. I remember thinking… “next year things will be different.”

Other general conditions of the time -

- I lived in North Carolina.
- I was in school.
- I was waitressing at Blue Martini and bartending at Sitti in downtown Raleigh.
- I hadn’t really begun pursuing photography, and didn’t even own a real camera. I just knew I liked taking pictures.
- This blog didn’t exist.
- I had no intention of moving to San Francisco or pursuing grad school.

So yeah, a few things have happened.

January: I bought an SLR and began taking photography more seriously.
February: Friend Kate called and asked me if I’d join her on a random trip to San Francisco, knowing I say yes to every travel opportunity offered to me. I said yes.
March: Visited San Francisco, accidentally fell in love with an MFA program and decided to pursue it. Applied, got in.
May: Graduated from NCSU. Decided to start a blog to have somewhere to place my stories and photos. Bought Queen of the Pavement domain. Also decided to make a project out of my upcoming trek across the country and plan a national phototour.
June: Gave up my apartment + began floating around houses in an effort to save money for traveling. Have my first (and last) photography showing in Raleigh at the Busy Bee in promotion of the phototour.
July: Set up phototour website. Leave Raleigh, begin phototour. Spend six weeks traveling the country with photographer Tim Lytvinenko, meeting up with Bowerbirds and Megafaun for the later portion of our trek.
August: Arrive in San Francisco. Realize I haven’t lined up a place to live or a job. Decide to drive to Arizona instead of figuring it out. Arrive in Arizona. Land a temporary place to live in SF. Drive back to SF and settle in to my temporary home in the Mission. Begin to settle into life in California.
September: Find permanent place to live near Hayes Valley. Begin graduate school. Meet neighbor Mark Growden and am incredibly impressed. Begin doing some freelance projects for him.
October: Quit PR job to help work on Mark’s CD Release. Mark gets signed to Porto Franco Records.
November: Porto Franco Records offers me a full-time job.
December: I finish up my first (and last) semester of grad school. I decide not to go back to fully pursue my career in the tech and music spheres, accepting the job with Porto Franco. Dream life begins. Spend New Year’s Eve dancing in the backwoods of NC with great friends + a bonfire.

So yeah, the year’s been good. It’s been a fucking whirlwind, frankly. I feel incredibly fortunate to have crammed this much intense life experience and adventure into one year, and there are so many incredible people I have met along the way.

Now as for last night. I started the night off with pizza night at Reagan’s. I did not know Reagan until I arrived in her home, but I feel like I knew her already, as she is girlfriend of David Millsaps, who I have known for a bit. Tim and I had a photocolumn for a short bit in his incredibly successful blog, NewRaleigh, while we were phototouring. Reagan apparently reads my blog from time to time and feels like she has known me for a while as well. I always love finding out when that happens. We became ladybros quickly.

Other new ladyfriend Katie Aiken was responsible for introducing her mother’s signature pizza recipe to us for the first time ever. It was a succcess. Lots of fun things involved – homemade wheaty crust, kalamata olives, mushrooms, goat cheese, pine nuts, etc etc. Awesome.

After we had all consumed our fill, we headed to the backwoods of Wake Forest for Burninator, hosted by our friend Will Reynolds. You may know him as “dancing Will.” Apparently his family has property out in the boondocks, which he decked out for the event, with a giant circle of Christmas lights (“the dancefloor”), three bar areas, lounge areas, and a huge bonfire area. Oh, and a waffle making area, naturally. We spent the night burning Christmas trees (at least a dozen of them), eating waffles, and dancing around the woods til the wee hours of the morning. It was wonderful.

I think the year is starting off just fine.

Ok, that’s all for now.

END!

I really couldn’t ask for better people to be honorary third wheel with. First round was with Kelly and Jim. I spent last Sunday with them shooting some engagement photos. I still feel like a total novice when it comes to shooting people… with a purpose or objective… the pressure is intimidating. But they were fun and cooperative and took lots of breaks to eat diner food and dumplings (in two separate meals). My kind of folks.

This weekend I found myself with my mother and her boyfriend, Barry Barrington (who I will always refer to by his full name because it is incredible), visiting from NC. It’s much easier photographing cute couples outside of any assignment whatsoever, as it was free and pretty much comes with the territory of hanging out with me and my camera, and they can’t get mad at me if they suck.

We adventured through the city on Saturday, then rented a car and ventured northward on Sunday. Lots of good food and good views. I was pleased.

Day1:

Somewhat relevant story (that I still need to tell Andrew):

After hanging out on the top of that epic hill above, we all walked down the path that takes us back down and around the other side, towards the Castro. I suddenly found myself quite overwhelmed with deja vu. I then realized I was in fact on a museum property that I had trespassed on just a year previous while vacationing in SF (having no idea I’d be living here a year later). It was the site of one of the photos I used for my grad school portfolio (that contains the Andrew of note). I actually wrote about this experience in my old mass-travel-email-list that I used to maintain before I started this whole blog thing in May.

An excerpt from July 2008:

Once home, I got a message from Dakota to meet her in the Mission.  We had a date.  Our friend Zack, who we met at the cookout my first weekend in town, had offered to take us out to dinner at an eclectic little spot called Delfina, on 18th and Guerrero.  Italian/American/French-inspired cuisine, big emphasis on fresh ingredients and innovative food combinations.  Sounds like my cup of tea.

On the way to dinner, I pass Delores Park, and see a phenomenon I could have never fathomed – bike polo.  Really.  Like… polo.  On bicycles.  How awkward and amazing!

I wish I had some sort of scandalous story for you, but no cops came, the dogs were not sent for us.  We just wandered around forbidden museum property and enjoyed a fairly good view.  We eventually tired of being bad asses and headed back on our way.

Day2:










(PC: Barry Barrington)

In other news: I leave for tour today. BTW… I’m going on tour? I’m pumped. I’ve been having tour withdrawals for a couple of months now. I’m supporting Mark Growden w/ Alex Kelly, and representing Porto Franco Records. Best job ever? It might be. If you live in CA, OR, or WA, you should come see us. It would be neat. Just sayin’.

More on that as we hit the road. Until then…. END!

My brother was off work for the night and offered to tote me. He would arrive at 1:00. This would all be great, if my belongings weren’t strewn all over Raleigh.

Most of my luggage was stored at friend Sam’s house, which wasn’t of much use, as I hadn’t actually stayed there at all during this trip. As many of you know, planning while traveling isn’t really my thing.

It would be easy to swing by and pick up my stuff, but unfortunately, Sam was nowhere to be found. So Logan and I decided to go search the establishment most likely to find her in – The Busy Bee. I decided to call brother Kane and friend Erika over to meet us for brunch in the meantime.

We found Sam, and we found brunch. I got a key, and we were on our way to find my luggage.

Upon arrival, I spend a good five minutes trying to get in the front door of her apartment with the key she had provided me, but to no avail.

I try and try and try. Kane asks me if I am sure I have the right door. I tell him he is being silly.

I was definitely at the wrong apartment. I’m sure the crowd of people cooking out outside were a bit confused to see me try to break into two adjacent apartments, successfully entering the second one. I hastily grabbed my luggage and we were on our way.

After two hours of observing eastern Carolina’s brilliantly designed storefronts and billboards, we finally arrived in the homeland to find my mother and my baby catchild, Raphael, waiting for us.

Raphael was my partner in crime in Raleigh. He was my only roommate, and we were serious compadres. I gave him to Kane to babysit while I toured the country this summer, and he soon ended up with my mom in New Bern. I had all plans to fly him over to California upon my settling in, but as I predicted, my mother has become quite infatuated with him and is not so ready to give him up. For now, it is probably for the best, as I will probably be touring and traveling quite a bit in the near future… but I do miss him so so much. He is my precious white monstrous yeti cat child.

Raph apparently has a new fun habit of climbing onto the outside edge of the second-story patio, just for shits and giggles. I’m not entirely sure how he hasn’t died yet. But there’s not much you can do other than just let him do it.

Anyway. Enough about the cat.

My one night in New Bern was great. The three of us ate soup, sat on the porch, played fetch with Raph, and nerded out on our computers together until the wee hours of the morning.

The next day I spent my last New Bern meal at none other than Carolina Bagel (yet to find bagels that compare, even in San Francisco), then took a final walk around downtown with the family, shooting some glamour shots here and there. I’m getting them to work on their sweet model poses while I’m gone. All of us will be pros by Christmas.

(PC: Annette Stone)

Goodbye, North Carolina. I love you, but west coast is calling.

END!