marina stadium

hung out with new friend paul when i finally made my way into the old marina stadium of high school shenanigans past. it's been years since i had been there and now its gated and guarded.

i made a flickr set with some of the photos i took.

some of my favorites --

paul during a dutch master cigar break. he guards the place during the afternoon shift with honey-flavored cigars, two big gulps and in his house slippers. he was standing in the boys bathroom in front of a big spray painted number eight. the spraypaint was metallic and caught some unusually even light. looks like a halo.


someone way more ambitious than me climbed a pole halfway and sprayed my name in silver.

lighthouse

My little sister Ale (above) has spent her summer volunteering at the Miami Lighthouse for the Blind. She invited me to the talent show the kids there put on the other day. She sang that Sarah McLaughlin song "Angel."

Ale's friend Lorriane sang some Destiny's Child song. I can't remember which, but the DJ played it way too loud to hear Lorriane's little voice.
balloonface.

at the end they had a dance party --

beached

revolcar

i swear i'll stop acting on the cheap fulfillment i find photographing animals. it's just that my dog harley has always been my favorite model. and after climbing to the roof to watch the pink sunset yesterday, i looked below and saw mi puerco snorting and rolling on the ground below. couldn't help it.

gatitos

not gonna lie -- i popped the button off my jeans in the excitement of leaping off my bike to watch these kittens watch me watch them play in their front yard.

sushi rollin' with my homies

scenes from a sushi conveyor belt in tokyo

a great idea found via a series of links to beacoupkevin.com. watch it. it will make you smile.

SoBe with the Seleskies

Papa Selesky at the South Seas hotel on South Beach.

Off 17th and Collins Ave in South Beach is the South Seas hotel. Thanks to my friend Jaika, my sister and I learned this week that poolside luxury is just a putrid stroll down an alley away. While on a outing with her dad and her sister, Chipi, visiting from Long Island, we sunned and funned it for as long as the change in our parking meter allowed us.

Jaika carrying her daddy. My sister being a skinny ninny.

They have a lovely hammock area on the side facing the beach.


Chipi, on the right, came determined to crisp up before heading back to NY.

Jaika on the hammock.

We went to this restaurant following Jaika's fabulous friend Josh's suggestion. It's named "Big Pink" and stuck the motif pretty well by using pink plexiglass for the tables and embellishing everything possible in similar shades of hot pink.

Josh in a cab.

Later that night, Jaika drove as we headed towards a party where there was reggaeton hanging in the muggy air. The only relief was warm whiskey.

window shopping

[check the baby-sized miami heat jersey]

daddy day care

Jaime juggled entertaining me and a reporter as well as taking care of his really cute kids while we hung out at his house for an assignment.

generator

stop motion light painting

my relationship with cell phones and advertising are very tepid. after years of being progressively made a slave to both, i've accepted them as facts of life, but not necesarily as things i get excited over. recently though, i caught the one of the spots for sprint's "speed of light" campaign and you tubed some. i found the behind the scenes and, silly bespectacled directors aside, thought it was pretty cool.

backstage bones

My last assignment for the Sun-Sentinel was to shoot the set up for the Dinos of China exhibit at the Miami Museum of Science. The exhibit is pretty impressive in that the majority of the bones are intact and that this is the first time that they've left China. The first place they chose to display them was Miami, i guess. None of the nice people that came all the way from the far east to setup spoke English, but there was enough communication for me to get that they were understanding about me knocking my fat head into a row of dino ribs while crouching to shoot.

gangsta rap at the trailer park

fourteen of us thought it would be a good idea to go camping. somehow, what should have been tents and bonfires and sleeping bags became renting two villas at the roadrunner travel resort. it was a big difference from the camping experience i had just a week earlier -- microwave smores and AC and a pull-out couch. i'm sure it was the first time wu-tang and pitbull were blasted through place.

red : white : blue

Another hot, humid, wine-laced fourth of july in miami.

a test post and a reflection on friendship

THussin showed me the path to larger photos. In his honor, I'm putting up a photo of that time we made our heads float in the Smokey Mountains. I had to change my flippin' template because my newly larger photos we're not compatible. But this is all temporary...a real web site is in it's nascent stages thanks to another wonderfully plugged-in friend. Without my homies, I'd probably be selling shrimp out a bucket in the barrio.

corny's crib

co-co-co-co-co-corn, corneliuuuus

After west coast fun, it was back to NoFla and to gainesville to eat el indio and do some erranding with Bretty. We bought Cornelius, our turtle, a sweet fake walrus head for his tank. We adopted Corny back in the day when we were still a couple. When it was over, Brett kept custody since I was perpetually transient. I miss the little green, angry sucker, even though I know he does not miss me.

That night, I was treated to mango mimosas and tapas.

and to some unsuccessful photoboothing.

st. pete

Haslam's Used Book Store, St. Petersburg, Fla.

Anclote Key was the first leg of a week of hardcore gallivanting around the state. After filling bellies with Greek cheese and beer at the sponge docks and spending a night in Tarpon, I went to St. Pete to hang out with Casey while Steph was at work at the Times. The house they were staying in was so friendly. It's a good thing too. Casey's sunburn from the trip was still so red and we were both in the beginning stages of some kind of sickness that we spent a lot of the day inside.

It was too nice of a day though. We borrowed some bikes and went to explore the neighborhood and a nearby park.

pretty trees. ducks with funny hair dos.

oasis

anclote key, fla.

What should have been a two-hour kayak paddle was really three or so after accounting for our fruit stops, mid-bay seat changes and communing with dolphins . And with Justin and his unique brand of confidence as our navigator, I was pushing myself to be optimistic when we arrived to a mucky, rancid smelling shore. But when we pulled in and heard the waves crashing just past the trees, we all started pulling off our clothes to jump into the gulf in one of the most amazing ocean swims i've ever experienced.

In the spirit of minimizing and consolidation, I thought it best to just bring the fitty 1.8, plastic fantastic, resilient little piece . I'm still struggling with composing with it.


day to night.

we only spent one night there accidentally eating bug-covered kielbasa and getting our sunburn-covered bodies eaten by bugs. but we had beef jerky and jamaican rum and some hippie botanical bug repellent and that little stretch of the gulf of mexico to share between us and only us.