Friday Foto

ron, originally uploaded by greg.barbera.

This is a photo taken with my phone and part of my Random Phone Pics set. As you can probably deduct, this was taken at my friend Ron Liberti's place.

Years ago, on the corner of Franklin and Columbia Streets in the heart of Chapel Hill was a copy shop called COPYTRON. It was the place most professors from UNC had their course packs made. It was also the place that hired a lot of local musicians because of the flexible hours and the easy access to copy machines.

I logged some pat-time hours there on-and-off at the beginning of semesters to help with the course pack work load. It was like being in a fishbowl: there were big, windows that looked out on both streets. People watching during downtime was of high regard amongst the full-timers.

Then it happened.

Gentrification came to town, the mom-and-pop stores went away and professors started using web-based applications for their syllabuses. It's currently a Qdoba.

And Ron got the sign.

The Clip Show Of Archivalism

The clip show is a popular way for television shows to stretch out a season.

The blogger archive recap is a way to add content to your site by trolling your old posts.

I've got five years worth:

BLOG ARCHIVE

► 2010 (27)
► 2009 (10)
► 2008 (166)
► 2007 (130)
► 2006 (68)
► 2005 (125)

Archivalism is in my blood. Just like it is with my friend Mike Daily.

Around this time in 2007, I was writing about my job as a pool boy at the Beverly Hills Hilton.

On 2008, I was talking about losing my lake virginity (I grew up vacationing at the beach), Cloris Leachman and the summer Olympics.

In 2009, I had a total of ten posts in six months for the whole year.

Now, it's 2010, and punk rock still never gets old for me...

Friday Foto

gettingThegreenLight, originally uploaded by greg.barbera.

If you asked anybody who knows me what my favorite color is they would probably say blue or black.

But green does have a special place in my heart.

Green is the color I see most in nature from grass and trees to those fuzzy halos around street lamps at dusk.

Green also means go.

A green light means to move forward.

What does green mean to you?

It's Perseid Meteor Shower Time Folks

I love a good meteor shower.

I do.

Two years ago, I pined for a telescope.

I'm still pinin' for one...

Friday Foto

Some say it is a sign of drugs to see a pair of shoes hanging over power lines. Others say it is a sign of gang activity.

Some say it is a sign that a murder occurred there.

In some countries, it is a sport.

In other countries, it is a male past time.

Shoes hanging on a telephone could mean anything.

I'd like to debunk the first three myths by saying this photo was taken across from the Durham Police Station on Foster Street by the skatepark.

But then again, it is Durham, and anything is possible.

The Yawn Heard 'Round The World

That Smell

I don't know about you, but certain smells conjure up specific memories for me.

And if anything conjures up the past and all those things that made me who I am today - bmx, skateboarding, punk rock - it is the smell of a new pair of Vans.

This week, I passed on the smell of new Vans to my oldest son.

At some point in the near future, I'll introduce him to the pungent smell of Rector pads.

Friday Foto

crashed_car, originally uploaded by greg.barbera.

I took this picture with my phone a few months ago. My boys and I had gone back to one of our favorite spots - Bolin Creek - from when they were in preschool.

We used to hang out at the park there and walk the bike path up to a spot where you could climb down to the creek's bank. We'd often skip rocks here (and keep and eye out for snakes).

The last time we went I saw this faux Hot Wheels car wedge between some rocks, clearly washed up and jammed in there from heavy rains. I wonder what the story is behind this little lost car?

Pantalones!

I don't know why or how it came to be, but the word pantalones has become a term of exclamation with my kids.

If somebody rides by on a Harley or passes the car in a monster truck, they yell out, "Pantalones!"

I'm still unsure of whether it is a term of endearment or a something you say to jone on somebody.

Either way, it's something that deserves to be exclaimed during momentous moments.

Yes, I just said "momentous moments."

Pantalones!

That Guy

A couple of weeks ago I picked up a new camera.

I was finding myself in a pinch at work more and more for the need for a simple photo that didn't require paying a professional photographer. I needed a cheap, utilitarian point-and-shoot that I could carry around and put to use when duty called.

And besides, I think I can take a decent photo.

I was surprised to find just what a digital camera can do these days, especially one as affordable as this handy little Sony.

Face Detection? A Smile recognition function? An "easy" mode?

WTF? This thing does everything but wipe my ass... and it comes with a 96-page manual (as a pdf file of course).

I took it out to lunch one day to experiment with the settings and modes and basically just try to familiarize myself with the thing. I snapped a picture of my lunch. My co-worker looked at me as I readied the camera by my plate and said, "You're not going to be that guy."

"What guy?" I said.

"The guy who takes a picture of everything he eats," said my co-worker.

I laughed.

"Oh, that guy," I said.

That guy.

Haha.

Payback

Two summers ago, against my better judgement, I let my kids entertain themselves with TV programming for the adult set.

Parenting is difficult enough but can be made more difficult when you have friends like this.

So it is with great pleasure that I share this moment of bliss - my boys filming me giving the creator of Wildboyz and director of Jackass 3-D a mamba. A white mamba at that...

I Got Bacon On My Mind

I Drive In Silence

I had just bought a new car. Okay, not new, but used, and was on the Interstate. The windows were up and the radio was off.

In the silence I listened for sounds.

The sound of mechanical problems, the sounds of an airplane chasing you, pretty much any sound.

And smells too. Like oil, transmission fluid, all that good stuff.

Buying a ten year old car can be nerve-racking to say the least but making sure it is up to snuff is a must. My brother thinks I'm delusional and paranoid. But I invested in a AAA card none the less. It's been a few weeks now and the Subaru Forester is doing just fine. It survived a five hour trek to Maryland and is slated for another lengthy haul to South Carolina next weekend. On the way to Maryland, the boys watched a DVD for the better part of the drive... so I drove in silence once again.

The return trip had them sleeping for a a better part of it, and again, I drove in silence.

My dad used to drive in silence. And it used to drive me bat shit crazy. "Turn on the radio at least," I'd think to myself. "Talk radio even," I'd think. Just give me some static to counterbalance all the quietness that enveloped the car. These were the days before Walkman and iPod my friends.

I remember feeling liberated when I got my first Walkman because it meant silence-free road trips, even if it was only a radio version and I had to scan for local rock stations in central Pennsylvania or the Jersey Shore when all I really wanted was some Minor Threat.

And yet now I have become one of them now.

One of the silent drivers...

Do The Math

My day job had me spending the weekend in Richmond, Virginia.

I've driven through Richmond countless times in the last fifteen years; I've stared at the buildings and studied the bridges yet I'd never spent an evening there.

But I confess I've always had an affinity for their anarcho-punk scene, for bands like Avail, Strike Anywhere, Wasted Time, No Way Records and the town's general D.I.Y. ethic that seems to pulse though the blood of anyone I have met from there.

The town reminded me a lot of Baltimore with its row houses, and New Orleans with its sleepy seediness, and Savannah with its Civil War history and cobblestone streets.

It was a town populated by characters and I cursed myself for not having a proper camera to document my experience.

While out running errands for the day job, where we had to go pick up some signage for the beer festival, I spotted this gem on the light post.

Sometimes you just gotta do the math, ya know?

The Rainbow Connection

It had been one of those weeks. The kind where no mater how much you got done on your To-Do List, be it personal or work-related, you still just feel like someone keeps adding blocks to your Lego tower.

To make matters worse, the photo shoot I had to AD for work ran ridiculously over schedule and I was hungry.

On the way back to the office, I spotted the OnlyBurger truck. I convinced my editor to stop so that I could get myself a burger. I was hoping they'd have Bacon & Blue on the menu but they didn't. While listening to me rant about the burger truck as I waited to place my order, I convinced my editor to try one.

She ordered the same as me and when we got back to the office, we sat outside and chatted, one of us talking while the other chewed and a brief rainstorm came upon us - it was gone as quickly as it came.

But it left this beautiful gem over the Historic Durham Bulls Athletic Park which sits directly across from our office. It is part of baseball lore and movie legend and a spot that has hosted many a blues fest and World Beer Festivals.

Armed with nothing but my cell phone, I snapped a shot and then took a moment to take this natural wonder in. There's that old cliche about how you need to stop and smell the roses from time to time; today it was about gazing at a double rainbow.

No pot of gold was to be found, but I have since been unable to get this song out of my head.

Bang, Bang.

I've long been fascinated by elevators.

I think this goes back to my days as a bicycle messenger - because I spent a lot of time in those boxes of transportation. There's a weird etiquette to life in the elevator, ya know? Another thing I've always pondered is the use of braille with elevators. And apparently I'm not the only one. Don't get me wrong, I think it is totally awesome that elevators have braille, my question is in the "How do they get to the elevator?" and "What do they do when they get out"? As a seeing-eye person, I've have some truly baffling experiences trying navigate the numbering systems of businesses and hotels so I can only imagine how completely frustrating this must be for a blind person.

Come to think of it, in all my years of riding elevators, I don't think I've ever encountered a blind person on an elevator.

Another thing I tend to look at is the signature from the Commissioner of Labor, who in the state of North Carolina just happens to be a woman by the name of Cherie K. Berry.

And apparently I'm not the only one who has noticed this either. She's even got a song dedicated to her.

But this photo was new to me.

Living in a carry concealed state, I often scan establishments for this sign. But seeing it on the doors of an elevator was a first. I know you can't take them into establishments that serve alcohol and they are not allowed at parades or funeral, but elevators?

Do this seem strange? Looks like it falls under the selling of alcohol rule.

Anyway, you may start seeing these pop up on the doors of hotel elevators nationwide.

But be sure and look at who signed the letter from the Labor department...

Food, Glorious Food

Panko fried asparagus with sea salt, malt vinegar and lemon.

Oh, and some Brussels sprouts for good measure...

Welcome to My Nightmare

There's nothing quite like a good nightmare to shake things up.

I had one last night, and as per usual, it involved aliens.

This time there was a big party. A party of epic proportions. Like Burning Man except that, if I recall, family members were involved.

And as my dreams tend to be, it was all over the place.

But the alien invasion did come. They dispersed some sort of spores that were like little nails/tacks/sharp objects which people easily inhaled. People were having trouble breathing and started dropping like flies on the ground as pandemonium ensued.

Then the machines, like metal spheres with octopus tentacle-like legs, began to spread bullet-sized magnets into the air. The magnets would then latch onto the person who had inhaled the "spores" like leeches causing the pointy "spores" to dig into a person's insides in the name of connection.

Then the octopus leg things sucked up the dead like a vacuum.

Yeah, I know right?

WTF.

The Currency of Skittles

My oldest son is currently obsessed with two things: soccer and skateboarding.

His soccer coach, after every game, hands out Skittles to the kids as a reward. All team members get regular. Captains of the game get wild berry, if you had an assist you get sour and for those who score goals there's tropical.

My son is more of a granola and yogurt kind of kid; he's the kind of kid that doesn't eat all his Halloween candy in one sitting. I knew he would quickly tire of Skittles, especially since he's usually a captain, almost always has an assist or two and is one of the main goal-scorers on his team.

So by now, with a few weeks left in the season, he's got a bounty of Skittles up in the joint.

Fortunately for him, Skittles are currency in the ol' neighborhood.

He recently scored a used Tony Hawk HuckJam Series deck for 5 bags of Skittles.

And he was stoked because it meant he was moving up from the micro mini he'd been skating for the last few years.

Even better was the father/son moment we had taking his trucks off the old board and putting them on his "new" deck.

A priceless moment indeed.

Now I just need to have him let me cop a few bags of the candy for this...

The Uncle Mike

My brother Mike, much like myself, is a serious foodie.

A couple of summers ago while at the Jersey Shore, he turned me onto a deli called Blitz's that served their breakfast sandwiches on kaiser rolls. We've had a long-running joke over the years about us one day partnering up to start our own deli, so we always critique the food we eat when we are together (and sometimes over laborious phone conversations). In our clever little fantasy world, we try to think up good menu items for our place.

After that trip to the Shore, all breakfast sandwiches made with a kaiser roll from then on have been dubbed, "The Uncle Mike."

So enjoy a shot of today's Uncle Mike, with cheddar, bacon and jalapenos.