anyone want to explore tomorrow with me? new location. drug rehab hospital in alden. i guess these buffalo uer ppl that i hate are good for something.
eh maybe not. apparently it’s watched during the day. i still don’t understand the reasons for ue at night…god i need to see a new location soon!
hit up transfig with chris and alex today. and i totally pissed chris off. he prob hates me now haha. it was funny to watch him get so mad tho 🙂 teehee. nice lighting conditions, and i went up the stairs this time. we’ll see if anything comes out good. ok no…nothing good at all. something is very wrong. the colors look fine on the lcd, they look fine on the comp as a thumbnail but once i open them the colors disappear and are totally washed out. wtf. and everything is blurry
the trip to the place where i have a key, which is not the terminal, is happening on thurs at 2ish, meet at my house. i’m considering taking an artistic approach to lighting, since the first 2 floors are pretty dark (so those coming come equipped with warm clothes and flashlights please). dan, you use tealights? sorta nervous about having a key to this place. i don’t think it’s checked on much, for anyone to have stopped by and notice the lock situation, but still…for some reason i’d feel better just crawling through a window, but we tried that a few months ago hahaha. at least i feel good knowing that i had nothing to do with this lock/key thing.
david drove in from indiana today (cuz he’s crazy haha) to go to transfig. lovely little place it is. hasn’t changed much in the 3 years since my first visit. the weather was sorta crap, rainy. clearned up near the end of our 2 hours inside and the setting sun came out a few times. i took close to 200 photos and if i have more than 25 different shots i’ll be surprised haha. still trying to get the hang of the camera, more specifically how truthful the LCD is. i took quite a few overexposed frames to compensate for the difference between the LCD view and how things have ended up looking in photoshop (darker). here’s hoping i got some decent images. i can already tell, just from what i remember of my first photos of the place, these should be much better. haha
oddly, there were no birds inside. and i say oddly, because the place is filled, everywhere, with pigeon crap. i’ve quite a headache now, just like the first trip – but not as bad. i think the wetness helped keep the poo dust down. it was very weird not to have birds flying around our heads though.
and i’ve suddenly developed a fear of high steep staircases. i tried to go up into the rafters and belfry, and i just couldn’t. i think it’s because i carry too much gear now, i don’t feel safe, and wouldn’t be able to catch myself should i fall or a step give way… i dunno but i need to get over it.
i’ve decided i absolutely cannot stand The Killers.
today brought more at sattler. it was a bit weird to be there by myself at first but i got over it, then the toronto guys arrived along with 2 guys from fixbuffalo. *grab foot insert into mouth* i said nice to meet them tho i’ve met them a bunch of times before. gah. i’m so bad at meeting people. anyway. after stopped at the terminal to show it to the famous avatar-x and another guy roadwolf. that was interesting.
really bored. should have stayed at work and gotten paid to be bored.
i’m watching arlington road, it’s about your neighbors being terrorists…and it was from 99, so pre 9-11 haha. anyway. tim robbins is in it, and he’s the bad guy. and i am having issues watching him play a bad guy. he just reminds me so much of nate. he just can’t be evil haha. (ok and wow…twist ending holy crap, genius, oh god this shouldn’t be seen by potential terrorists haha)
there is reason to believe that the sattler theatre was used as a mosque of the Nation of Islam. there were records of attendance from 69 and 70, the first page labled as Muhammed’s Mosque of Islam No 23. do you think looking up info on the Nation of Islam will set of red flags in the white house spy rooms? i know nothing about the Nation of Islam except Louis Farrakhan. does it even have anything to do with the Islamic faith? (apparently it does) i just want to know if there are records to confirm that the theatre was a mosque of NoI…I found an excel spreadsheet online that lists Mosque 23 being at 512 Broadway, a different address…another website on buffalo churches list Mosque 23 being at 512 broadway, but it has now moved to 5 walden ave, and there is no longer a building at 512…next time i go down to the terminal I’ll have to stop in and see if they have any info on the old mosque.
to make things more confusing, i noticed in my exterior picture that the address actually ON the builing is 512 broadway not 516 broadway, putting the Mosque at the theatre. still gonna confirm at the current mosque if possible.
I have no idea what this spreadsheet is a list of, it’s not labled, yet it lists the Socialist Workers headquarters in Buffalo as well as the Workers of the World haha. and 14808 other group headquarters between 1969 and 1988…Alaskans for Nuclear Arms Control…”Closely Watched Films” whatever that was…the file was from the Radical Information Project “The Radical Information Project (affectionately, RIP) is dedicated to providing information about “conflict” or “contentious politics” (e.g., demonstrations, terrorism, civil war, protest policing, human rights violations and genocide/politicide) and analyzing this information in fundamentally different ways.” http://www.bsos.umd.edu/gvpt/davenport/home.htm
anyway this reminds me, when i got us lost in the ghetto yesterday cuz i went the wrong way on the 33 we found THE best church ever. HOLY GHOST TEMPLE FLAMING FIRE MINISTRIES (the caps come straight from what i c&ped on their website http://www.webspawner.com/users/holyghosttemple/). what a great name for a church. god i’d LOVE to go to a service there if i didn’t think i’d get mugged before or after. they have a fabulous logo too. unfortunately it’s not on the website. for school chris has to participate in a racially uncomfortable situation, i said he should go to a service there. i need some fellow heretics to go with me one day hahaha.
ok so that was fun. yay research. photos to come in a separate post.
i think the minolta has finally bit it. even more than it did after i broke it. i thought it was just the batteries being dead on sunday, but put new batteries in it today, it is still stuck at full zoom. the slider makes it look like it’s supposed to be zooming, but it’s not. may be looking at cameras tomorrow. gah.
so the outing today was shot on film. chris and i went to sattler theatre. upon walking in it wasn’t as fabulous as i was hoping. but by the end it had grown on both of us. unfortunately i can’t shoot color film, plus i used one of the expired rolls, so the colors are way messed up. i’m not good enough with photoshop to make it look normal haha. most were switched to black and white, and i have 2 real black and white rolls to pick up tomorrow. it’s a neat little building. i’ll need to go back with a new camera if i get one, for color shots.
so looking for a camera, i still want to go with nikon. it seems silly to spend 900 on the d70 when for 100 more i could get the d80…but i’m still having issues spending that much money. gah. so expensive. and i don’t know whether to get the kit with a lens, when the stock lens was reviewed sorta badly, or not. i know nothing about lenses, and maybe mine is shit right now too and i just don’t know any better. will i really notice a problem with the stock lens? i doubt it. gah so so so much money.
early seinfeld episodes, jerry’s dad was played by a different actor…
i drank apple juice today cuz kathryn had juice boxes and i was beyond thirsty so i gave it a go. i haven’t had apple juice since i was a kid because frankly, i imagine that apple juice is what pee would taste like. i just find it so terrible. but it was the best damn apple juice ever – at that point i probably would have drank the water sitting around the site…hahah. i was THAT thirsty.
finally a sucessful trip to beth steel today with dusty and kathryn. met them at the site around noon and headed straight to the coke plant. it was sunny when i left the house…not so once i got to the lake. clouds and hurricane winds. thankfully i left my jacket in the car when i got home last night. spent 5 hours at the coke plant. i can safely say i have shot all i can shoot at the coke plant, and i might as well just give up on the coke plant at sunset desire…tho by the time we left around quarter to 6 the sun was starting to come out. of course. but after 5 hours there, i think i’ve had enough. i will return with people who want to go but please not for 5 hrs again. we didn’t see a single sole there, and no evidence of any work beyond “slag” breaking as far as the windmills go. there were obvious changes to the rest of the site, even from 2 weeks ago with dan. continued demo of the remaining buildings and parts on the other side of the canal. i wanted to climb the big black towers, but the wind was way too scary. one of the cool things i saw this time around was the “car dumper”. i never really thought about how the coal was removed from railroad cars, but i would have thought some kind of bucket scoop shovel contraption, or something like the grain elevators. nope…the cars were moved into this big yellow cylinder thing, which i am assuming by the way everything looked, flipped the cars over, and the coal was collected in a big chute below. very cool.
new location to check out – statler theatre. looks fabulous, and apparently is wide open at the moment. but i swear someone told me about it at the terminal, probably mike, and that it was purchased…so i’m worried that the openness will quickly go away. i may try it wed/thurs if the weather is nice and i can get someone to go with me. it’s on broadway, not exactly sure where, but still…it’s broadway. i’m not taking any chances. so if anyone wants to go… 🙂
editing pics now, and pics from the wedding.
HA i had a dream about nkotb last night. i thought my dreams revolved mostly around urbexing something also called spaulding in las vegas that involved water and the tide coming in and out and weird stuff. but that was only the beginning. was urbexing and then i realized what time it was and i was supposed to meet my friends, so i left and went to find them, and they were in a treehouse type thing in a playground. we were discussing what we were going to do, and i mentioned that me and someone who turned out to be angela had tickets to nkotb tomorrow and that after the show we’d be leaving to go back home. except our flight was at 7pm and the show didn’t start til 8. that made me realize that the show was that night, and not the following. and here we are all scummy from exploring but we had no time to shower and change or anything. so we went to the hotel where the concert was, and it was a reunion show, and an extra special one at that because it was to be the only one, and jon even gave in to being in the show. i was running around trying to find the box office, because for some reason the tickets we got sent were just preliminary tickets and we had to turn them in for the real tickets at the box office. i had to run around and deal with stupid crap before finally getting the tickets and going back to where they were playing…oddly they were playing live, and there was a section of seats, but they were also broadcasting it on a big screen in another room for overflow from the main room LOL. i managed to score 4th row tickets. i went to this lobby area where there were ppl standing around to try and find angela and i found my other friends. and at this point we were a half hour late for the show. found angela and that was about it….hahah