Damn 110

The St Edward's campus overlooks the Austin skyline. When Claudia and I arrived in 1989 to start school we would stop to look at Austin and wondered where the neighborhoods were, where the clubs were, wondered when we'd be able to really get to know the city and be in it. St Ed's seemed apart from it because of this view. It took a few weeks to make friends and get invited to go into town. Then we learned about the bus and buslines and headed out on our own adventures.

I wish I had a better camera back then. I was always snapping pictures with my 110 on bumpy bus rides, in low lit clubs. It had the weakest flash ever. The camera had worked fine for classroom shots in high school, birthdays at a friend's house but it just didn't seem able to capture everything I was taking in at the time. Not many photos came out. What little did print never made it into albums and got scattered over the years. I still find them stuck in books or among old, personal, ephemera. These attempts at photographing our Austin experience as we lived it was important because we didn't think we'd remain in town longer than three or four years.
When our first #1 bus ride kept going, because we failed to recognize our stop at The Drag and thought it best to keep riding until we saw something familiar, I pulled out the ole 110. Claudia and I saw the businesses and buildings begin to disappear and give way to nothingness. We thought the bus was headed out of town, "Oh shit!". It was only going to the transfer station but it looked like the outskirts of town. At the time, could very well have been. I wanted a picture of the vastness surrounding that station. It was like a trip, already longer than an hour and ending up in the middle of nowhere. Photos were snapped through unclean windows of places we thought were interesting and are now forever changed and not the same. What developed were pictures of a cloudy window with smugginess in perfect focus. UGH! what a shitty camera, no manual control over it at all.

I remember the Greenbelt flowing so strong one summer, I went tubing with a group and never had to get up and walk. At the time there were so many swimming holes in and around the area, I don't think I went to one twice during my first summer in Austin. The Quarry was a favorite spot too, especially at night and during a full moon. You'd hear the scampering of little animals in the brush as you'd head towards the water. Condos now sit around what was once the swimming hole and right in the middle, where Chia and I would tread water and talk about life, sits a fountain in a very small pool of water. Photos of those nights were dark and grainy at best. Damn 110.

One memory I visited recently was of Liberty Lunch. At Genuine Joes sits a piece of tiled rubble from an building. I called my friend over and asked, "Is that a piece of Liberty Lunch, you think, didn't it have that tile?". I told her how I had gone to the heap of rubble that remained and grabbed pieces of brick. I wondered if someone else had been lucky enough to get the bathroom tile, teehee. I never thought the place would ever be torn down but one day restored and protected, if for no other reason than, I guess, because I loved it so much and figured others probably did too. It wasn't loved enough. If only I had a better camera at the time, I would have had great photos of the shows and the place.
Once a friend of mine invited me to an Inspiral Carpets show at Liberty Lunch. She knew them and we met up with them before the show and then after. I never got to actually see them perform like I had wanted too. I had brought my 110 camera this time. I didn't snap photos when around them because I thought it would be way uncool. My 110 stayed in my purse. However my friend dug out from her bag this sharp, sexy, nicely outfitted Zenit and snapped a couple of shots at rapid speed throughout the night. When I got home I put the 110 in a drawer. It was a Christmas gift and still carried sentimental value but it was finished.