This is a double view of the lovely weather we’ve been having here lately. By lovely I mean awful.

This is Pete and Esme. They’re a couple of awesome compadres who I’ve had the pleasure of knowing for the last year or so. They’re getting married soon, so I took a few (mostly digital) photos of them around town.

I’m slowly getting used to the fact that my camera will double-expose when it damn well wants to.

I took very few shots during my week at SXSW, but these pretty much sum up the good times. Lots of sitting on this balcony, spending time with some of my favorite people from around the country (Mark, Corinne, and Jaime included).

More shitty weather + accidental double exposures.

This was from a recent adventure day in the Mission. Aaron and I were walking across 18th + Mission when we heard a THUMP. We turned around to see a man had illegally run across the street into traffic, been hit by a car in the process, rolled over the hood, hit the ground, jumped up, and… continued to run away? So bizarre. I wonder what he was running from.

We chatted with the shaken-up folks who owned the car until police arrived, snapped a few shots, then went on our way.

We continued on our way to our next destination…

Dakota’s birthday brunch at St. Francis.

The rest of the day was full of donuts, balloons, piles of potatoes, and bacon bloody marys, as a birthday should be.

I actually have more photos from this day, but they’re sitting on a roll waiting to be developed. More to come soon!

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!

One month and three days. That’s fairly large fraction of the blog’s entire lifespan. I used to freak out if I hadn’t posted in 36 hours. I also used to have slightly more free time.

Anyway, enough about that. I’m blogging again! Hooray!

A few highlights from the past month in Cali:

I officially began work for Porto Franco Records, full time. I still am having a hard time believing that I’m getting a steady salary to do what I love.

I’m particularly happy to be working with this label for a number of reasons. For one, I have a good bit of creative responsibility in my job, which means I have a good bit of creative freedom. Second, the label has a good taste in music. The owners are Russian, and you can hear their tastes translated in their decision to host an eclectic catalog of artists, ranging from indie, folk, americana, blues, jazz, balkan… all with the common characteristic of artistic integrity and stellar musicianship. Third, the label is open minded to not only adapting to the changing industry, but adopting innovative business and marketing models in the interest of finding a long-term solution to the issues in traditional record industry. I spend every waking moment studying the industry and evolving technology, and they want to work with me to find ways to use these new innovations to our advantage. DREAMY!

I’m working on a number of projects for them, but my main focus for the next few months is in the realm of branding, online presence and content overhaul, among developing some really neat projects both online and within the Bay Area. We’re aiming to have the new website up by February, which is exciting. In the meantime, you can check out the existing one here.

Follow us on Twitter, too! We just redid our account: twitter.com/PFRecords.

Also – I’m not going back to grad school (I’ve been in school for an MFA in photography). It was pretty difficult balancing full-time grad work + full-time job + all of my own projects (hence the blog hiatus), and I ended up half-assing pretty much all of my endeavors in the effort to keep all of them in my life. That said, I need to simplify things a bit and hone-in my concentration toward the most relevant projects – work, blog, photos.

Note that I still include photos as a relevant project, as I am still obsessed with photography and I have a blog that runs off of photos. I just can’t afford to build up my debt going through a grad program that I can’t put 100% into, because that would defeat the purpose of going to grad school. And… I have a job that I love. Also a purpose of going to grad school. Achieved.

Anyway. More fun stuff – I attended SF Music Tech in early December. It was, as the name implies, a conference where those involved in the tech and music industries can get together to discuss current issues and ideally brainstorm innovative ideas and solutions. I will say that the discussion of (and/or griping about) current issues largely outweighed the brainstorming of solutions, but it is certainly hard to steer a conversation toward resolution in panels that have a 30-minutes cap, so it’s understandable. There were a number of great startups present that shared new apps that answer to the evolving needs of the industry, including a new facebook music app by my friends at Involver. I met a number of great people both during and after the conference, and am looking forward to attending again. Ideally I’d like to soon get involved with the planning of the conference… with just a little more structure and direction in the panel sessions, there is a huge amount of potential for this to become an extremely productive, content-rich event with a huge amount of utility.

Also in recent news:

- My friend Brandom moved to California, and has been living with me while he’s looking for a place to live. He was a friend of mine from Raleigh days, and I frequently come home to find him and other-Raleigh-now-in-SF-friend Dakota in my room, usually playing cards on my bed. It’s really great. I hope they continue doing this after Brandom finally finds a place.

- My roommates Hoa and Cyndie both had birthdays recently, but Cyndie was kind enough to have her birthday party before I left for NC for the holidays. It was a bacon-and-bourbon themed party, and, in typical Helena fashion, I ate so much bacon that I ended up in bed sick after only drinking half a glass of bourbon. Priorities.

- Brandom and I went out to eat my last meal in California before flying back to NC. We walked to a Japanese restaurant down the street, where I ordered a big bowl of rice with an eel filet on top. Next thing you know, I have swallowed an eel bone. It is stuck in my throat. I can feel it. It is piercing my tongue every time I swallow. I panic. Run to bathroom. Attempt to find bone. No luck. I sit on floor and prepare to faint. Also no luck. I finally reach down my throat and find the bone sticking out of my tonsil. In my attempt to get it out, I accidentally push it all. the way. into my tonsil. GROSSEST INJURY EVER. PS – It never came out and remains inside my tonsil, where it will eventually dissolve. Also gross.

Ok. Now time for pictures! Some randoms from my last weeks in Cali.

Ok. That’s all for now. More updates to come!

END!

I now live in San Francisco. Holy mother of god.

Adjusting to your completely new hometown isn’t so bad when you are surrounded by former-hometown-folk to keep you occupied. Tim is here for another week or so, and my friend Brandom happened to fly in on the same night we arrived.

So began adventures with Brandom.

We started things off at Boogaloos, who I have already deemed my favorite brunch in San Francisco. Not that I have come remotely close to trying 10% of the brunch spots in San Francisco, but I AM obsessed with Mexican food and eggs in combination right now and they do a damn good job at providing me with it. We split a temple-o-spuds and a polenta + eggs plate. The day is a win already.

I decide that it will be best to drive Brandom to all of my favorite places in San Francisco, as I am not adjusted to the walkability of the city yet (aka I am lazy) and I figure that if I keep the car moving, I will reduce the number of parking tickets I’ll inevitably acquire. So… first stop: Twin Peaks.

Twin Peaks is the biggest hill in SF. You can see everything. You just have to make sure it’s a clear day, because 80% of the time it’s foggy and you can’t see two feet in front of you. Today we can see!

I wanted to take a jumping photo but it was so windy we thought we may die just standing up. So we took some normal photos and went on our way.

Next stop: Crissy Fields. Fun park and beach with a nice view of the Golden Gate. I’ve taken many a photo here before, so it’s fun to see how they end up changing every time I come back.

I wanted to drive Brandom around the west side of the Peninsula, where the road lines the hills and you see nothing but water below you, but we got lost and ended up at the Harold & Maude graveyard. This happens to be one of if not Brandom’s very favorite movie, so he freaked out and demanded we go in and take photos. And so we did.

By this time, the day had passed and we were tired. And so ended adventure day with Brandom.

Fast forward.

With Brandom and Tim both leaving the next day, I decided it was necessary to take everyone to Land’s End.

Land’s End is this somewhat secret location that a lot of SF folk seem to know of, but have no idea how to find. And somehow I managed to find it last year, by following really vague directions given to me by my SF veteran compadre Nick.

Basically, you take several disjointed bus rides to the Legion of Honor parking lot, wander through a golf course directly behind the property, hope you take the right path until you see another path going into the woods blocked off by a gate, walk around the gate, continue until you see a staircase, walk down the staircase until you reach a dirt path, walk up the dirt path until you can’t walk anymore, because you are standing on the edge of a cliff where the ocean meets the bay.

So me, Tim, Dakota, Brandom and Lewis found the cliffs once again. It was pretty foggy and overcast, which at first we thought would be a huge visibility problem, but it ended up being quite cool actually. The fog rested on top of the hills and actually rested on top of the Golden Gate, leaving a clear hole underneath it that you could see through. Brandom described it as a hole out of purgatory. If purgatory were an awesome oceanfront array of cliffs and giant rocks and waves.

I said my byes to Brandom, then went out for one last night of welldonetour-dom with Tim and company. My fellow road warrior is off to Raleigh tomorrow. Our 2009 phototour adventure has come to an end.

I would have some sort of profound synopsis for you here, but I really haven’t had any time to process all of the ridiculous incredible things that have happened to my life in the past six weeks. Maybe I’ll have have my brain reassembled by then.

All I can say now, is that tour made me grow in so many ways, as a PR professional, as a photographer, as a planner and a thinker and a friend and a person. I don’t think I’ll have a grasp on the amount I’ve learned through this for quite a while, but know for sure that I am definitely a different, better person leaving this tour. I got to spend my summer with some of the most wonderful people I’ve met in years. I love Bowerbirds and Megafaun and Tim and Sarah oh so dearly and can’t wait to see them again, and I’m going to stop typing now before I get emotional in the middle of this coffee shop.

END!

As many of our drives do, we had some choices as to what route to take. We could take the scenic 101 down the coast (Shaun demanded we do this at least for the Oregon stretch), or the more efficient HWY 5 route. Having slept in a bit too late, as per usual, we were logically forced to choose route 5. It was a 9-hour vs. 13-hour decision, and we had to get into town by the time that Bowerbirds + Megafaun took the stage at Cafe du Nord. We were barely going to make it.

Well, what do you know. More traffic. That + my fairly poor ability to take proper exits turned our proposed 9-hour drive into a 12-hour drive after all. Needless to say, we missed the show. Fantastic.

We did make it in time to have a beer with my dear friend Dakota, who was housing us for the night. As I’ve said in previous posts, after any drive longer than 10 hours, no matter how tired you are, all you want to do is go out, have a beer, and do something social, as you have spent your entire day sitting in the same car seat looking at the same highway. So we stopped by 500 Club, had a beer or two, then headed back to Dakota’s to crash.

The next couple of days were a swift kick in the hind for me. As previously stated, this tour was also a process of moving me and my life to San Francisco. Upon arrival to the city, I realized that I had spent so much time focused on tour that I had put several important projects on the backburner, such as finding somewhere to live, or finding a job. Both quite important.

So I took a small hiatus to hide out and figure out my new San Fran life, while Tim went off and explored the city and caught up with friends.

Things that make San Fran different from North Carolina:
- It’s colder here. Like, way colder. Between 60 and 75 most of the time. I had already discovered this last summer, but while packing for tour, I had only included clothes that were appropriate for summertime in the rest of the country. Basically, I have a few long-sleeved shirts to rotate until the rest of my “winter” clothes are shipped over. I also have no jacket. However, I am very excited about finally being able to wear boots and scarves every day of the year.
- You can be a foodie for cheap. Local/organic seems to be the baseline for food standards here, when in NC, it seems to be the exception. I have also recently realized that I have an obsession with eggs and Mexican food eaten in combination. Cannot-function-without-it obsessed. I blame Boogaloos.
- Beautiful hills, cliffs, ocean sunsets, blah blah beautiful scenery blah gorgeous awesome stuff to climb and look at etc. You can expect plenty of photos of all of this in the next three years (the time that I will be living here).
- You can’t have a car in this damn city. You just can’t. Unless you have a garage and you never ever let your car out of it.

It did not take long for me to become intimately acquainted with San Francisco parking law enforcement.

I was sitting at Dakota’s, bumming her wireless internet while she was at work. I hear a bit of streetside commotion directly outside her living window. I pay it no mind. However, after a few minutes, I become curious. It seems to be coming from exactly where I parked my car. I casually glance out the window.

There’s my car. A tow truck has attached itself to it.

Panic. I run outside. Tow man is trying to break into my car door. I vomit apologies and frantic pleas to let my car go. He ignores me.

I notice a road cop not car from me, viewing the situation musingly. I run up to him.

“I AM SO SORRY I AM NOT FROM HERE I DIDNT KNOW CAN I PLEASE HAVE MY CAR BACK I HAVE MY KEYS I CAN TAKE IT RIGHT NOW”
“You have your keys on you? Right now?”
“YES THEY ARE RIGHT INSIDE THE DOOR”
“If you go inside and get your keys, and get back out here before he breaks into your car, you can have your car back.”
(I run inside and grab keys)

By the time I get back out, I see the road cop talking to the tow guy, ideally about how he should let my car go. I take no chances. I jump in my car, still fully attached to the tow truck. I roll the window down and continue to plea from within my vehicle.

Apparently this worked. The tow guy slowly and reluctantly unhooked all of the intricacies lacing our vehicles together, and went on his way, leaving me in my car, still hyperventilating, still in a state of severe but reducing panic. I park it a block away and head back to Dakota’s with my brand new $73 parking ticket (another distinct difference between San Fran and NC… give me a $12 Raleigh ticket any day).

Fast forward to lunch a couple of days later. Tim and I are faced with a big decision: end tour here? or continue on to Arizona?

We had planned for San Francisco to be the last stop of tour. But, seeing as we missed the show, we were feeling like there needed to be some better sort of closure for this tour. We also knew that Megafaun wanted us to come down to do some more projects with them. We also knew we had places to stay and lots of fun things to do. I also liked the idea of not having to park in San Francisco for a while.

So we discuss the pros and cons over this at lunch, and by the time we pay, we have made a decision. We are going to Arizona. Why the heck not. We pack our things and are on the road a few minutes later. 11 hours til Phoenix!

END!

It’s sad that pizza time was the only time I will have with them this year, since they are some of my favorite people, but they do have school this week, and they still had to drive all the way back across the state to the desolate shithole of a college town they call Spokane. It was fun while it lasted. We talked about going out, but ended up in bed by midnight (3:00 your time).

Today we did as much exploring as possible within walking distance. This visit is a bit complicated, because Logan and I have explored most of this part of the city before, but Dakota is new to the area. We took D back through the main spots, including the waterfront, the aquarium, the EMP, and the space needle… but we only paid to see the aquarium, since the best thing about the EMP (Experience Music Project) building is the exterior of the building itself, which is free, and going up to the top of the space needle is not worth twenty bucks when you can pay only four bucks to go to the top of the Columbia Tower. I’m broke, so I prefer this method of tourism.

We explored the SAM (Seattle Museum of Art) sculpture park, since the SAM itself is closed on Mondays. It’s right on the bay, and the view is awesome. It’s also right beside Pier 70, the building where the participants in Real World Seattle dwelled.

Speaking of celebrities, Logan introduced me to the concept of “microcelebrity” today. A subtitle of celebrity in which one is well-known by anywhere from a few-dozen to several thousands of people. These types are becoming prominent due to the internet – blogging, Myspace and Facebook profiles… many people are microcelebrities without even knowing it. If everyone on my mailing list actually read these, I think I could qualify.

You can read more about it here:

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/15-12/st_thompson

We headed back to our favorite grocery/deli, where I made another friend who was friends with the friend I made yesterday. This grocery sells a ton of 22oz. local brews, so we each bought two and headed on our way. After spending dinner money on beer, we wanted to find something cheap. Everything in the market is closed. We walk to 2nd street. Everything is closed. We walk to 3rd street. We walk and walk and walk and finally find our saving grace among a plethora of homeless crackheads and shady pubs: Mom’s Teryaki. Glorious. We stuff our faces and head back to the hostel, where we are currently enjoying our local bottled brews.

By the way, me and Dakota are sick. Somebody is always sick when I am in Seattle. Last year, Logan was dying of some sort of deathly fever, but he was a trooper and didn’t let it get in the way of our adventure. I was diagnosed with the flu on Thursday, and Dakota has just been really sick, but we are both now in that awkward hacking stage that is somewhere between death-sickness and recovery. We are the people that everyone in the lounge stares awkwardly at us because we are constantly hacking our lungs out.

I don’t know if any of you guys have been flu tested, but I wish the process on no one. Let me fill you in. I was sitting in urgent care on Thursday, waiting to figure out what was wrong with me. In walks nurse with an 8-inch Q-tip. The physician looks at me with sympathy. The nurse proceeds to insert half of this Q-tip into my face through my right nostril. I am not exaggerating. I have no idea how so much of this Q-tip entered my head, but I am fairly certain that it was poking somewhere between the back of my eyeballs and my brain. She repeats the process in my left nostril. I am also fairly certain that this q-tip was also doused in either battery acid or fiberglass, because it felt like she was trying to sample tissue my frontal lobes. It was the most painful five seconds of my life. I almost never cry when I am in pain, but by reflex, I immediately began snotting and sobbing all over myself. I am getting a flu shot from now on.

I am about 20 oz. behind my travel mates because I have been writing, so I need to get back to business before we go explore the bars of Seattle. Hope all is well on the east side… I will fill you in on whatever shenanigans we get into tonight.

As most of you know, I write when I travel, and I mail my logs to a very select hundred or so people in hopes that maybe five of you will find them somewhat interesting or entertaining.

Why did I choose to spend yet another spring break in Seattle? I don’t have a really well-thought reason except that I fell in love with the city last year, and I can’t keep myself from finding ways back whenever possible. I snuck through Seattle for a day in June as well while I was touring, but a 24-hour exposure is just a tease to me. I need a good few days in this city to even begin exploring it, so that’s what I’ve decided to treat myself to. I also brought friends along – Logan Sayles, a great friend who I met at NCSU design camp when we were sixteen, and Dakota Keck, an awesome chick who I really barely knew until our accidental temporary vacation in the Atlanta airport quickly fostered a friendship between us. I’ll get to that later.

Well I guess I can just get to it now. Delta Airlines. They make you feel so good when you successfully purchase a $172 round-trip ticket to Seattle. Me and Dakota were headed to the airport yesterday (Logan flew up early to visit his hometown on the harbor), ready to catch our 2:25 flight to Cincinnati, then straight to the west coast, arriving around 6 p.m. Simple enough. I will speed through this to avoid drawing out yet another customer complaint regarding air travel, but I just need you guys to see the irony of our lives.

Delta airlines calls us while we are on the way to the airport. Our flight has been rescheduled. No, now it is cancelled. We are now scheduled to fly out at 5 p.m to Atlanta, wait 3 hours, then fly out at 9:46, arriving in Seattle around 12:30 a.m. Sad. We lost our first night in Seattle. And it’s 1:00 and we are already checked into RDU, and our ride is long gone. And wireless isn’t free.

I order iced coffee from Starbucks. They give me iced tea. We read Cosmo for two hours.

We arrive in Atlanta. Dakota’s parents come pick us up (they live right outside Birmingham, which is about an hour drive from the airport) and take us out for some grub. We return with plenty of time to catch our flight.

We head to A19. Free wireless. We become enthralled. We casually notice that there are only four of us waiting for a nonstop to Seattle. We continue Facebooking. Finally, we look up at a side-screen that is occasionally displaying the fact that our flight was actually changed to gate A2. We quickly pack up our things, glad that we noticed in enough time so that we didn’t have to run. We arrive at the gate 10 minutes early. We feel lucky. Then we notice that nobody is there, except another pissed off and confused guy. We look out of the airport window, and see our plane. We wave frantically at the pilot. They wave back and signal for us to hold on. We feel relieved. We wait. Nobody is coming out to get us. Finally, the attendant comes back inside. We ask her what is going on and she said they closed the gates ten minutes prior. We ask if we can get on the plane, since it is right there, still connected, but she says it is full and there is nothing we can do.

So we are stuck in Atlanta. Delta shuttles us to a lovely Comfort Inn Hotel with a Mexican restaurant/night club attached. As much as the thought of grinding to Latino hip-hop tunes was appealing to Dakota and I, we decided to just stock up on potato chips from the vending machines and call it a night. The situation wasn’t THAT bad. Yes, we were spending our first night of spring break watching Rock of Love 2 in a cheap Atlanta hotel, but we had a flight booked early the next morning, and we’d be in Seattle by lunchtime. It was a nice little mexi-trash honeymoon for us.

Dakota modeling one of our free XXL skyteam t-shirts, compliments of Delta Airlines.

The next morning.. we wake up at 8. The flight leaves at 8:30. We are fucked. We missed our second flight. We make it to the airport around 9 and manage to get standby tickets (we only make it onto the flight if people don’t show up) for an 11:00 flight. If we don’t make it onto this flight, we have to wait for another one at 9:50 that night. We wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and finally, as the plane was getting ready to take off, they call our names. We haul ourselves onto that plane and finally arrive in Seattle at 1:22 this afternoon.

This has been a good, somewhat uneventful day in Seattle. Me and D checked into the hostel, and immediately set out to find sustenance in the fish market. We immediately made friends with a guy at a fruit stand, who talked us into buying six pieces of fruit and then offered to take us out to dinner. We told him we were eating pasta at the hostel and that we’d see him soon. We then made friends with Mario the fish guy, who let us sample the best smoked salmon we’ve EVER had. We bought half a pound. We then went to the bakery and bought some baguettes, passed by the first Starbucks ever, then explored a small grocery for the perfect beer. We ended up buying juice instead. We sat at one of the high-top tables at the grocery store that overlooked the bay, making salmon sandwiches and eating our fruit (at this time Dakota informed me that she was actually allergic to fruit, despite the fact that she bought three pieces), and talking to the store clerk about beer and North Carolina. He gave us his number and told us to contact him if we wanted to go experience good Seattle breweries. We might just do it.

Logan isn’t here yet, but he should be eventually. Now we are going to eat a free pasta dinner, compliments of the Green Tortoise. Tonight should be a new adventure, weather permitting (so far, it is). I’ll keep you posted.