It’s always nice to shoot editorial travel photography assignments in your own neighborhood. Better yet when it involves food and drink. A fun travel assignment for Via Magazine. Thanks Maggie.

Once again spent the New Year holiday at Twin Rocks with family and friends. This is the first picture I made in 2011, call it an homage to Harry Callahan if you wish.

I wish I could say I was regular at Satyricon, it would make me sound much cooler than I really am. But the truth is by 1989 when I moved to Portland my punk rock days were mostly behind me. I had trashed my ears years earlier at places like the Triangle Theater in Rochester, CBGB in NYC, Continental Club in Austin and the Hot Klub in Dallas, as well as numerous other such venues.
But I did see a few shows at Satyricon in the early 90’s, no one of note and none I truly remember with the exception of Austin country/folk/roots songwriter Darden Smith, who was so completely out of his element at Satyricon that the baffled crowd of club regulars found themselves entranced by his evocative accoustic storytelling.
Even so I was saddened to learn the club was closing for good. Another piece of authenticity lost in a Portland that is fast selling it’s soul to hipster artifice. The place was legendary in the Northwest music scene hosting anyone who was anyone at one time or another. According to legend Kurt met Courtney there, Foo Fighters played their first show there. It was a classic punk dive, all black with tattered chairs, cheap beer and lots of attitude. A real shithole, with the emphasis on real. It was all about the music, not much else mattered.
Willamette Week just published a good piece with some video clips, (I like the Jackals clip) you can read here.
The following pictures were from a 1994 travel assignment for the New York Times. Crash Worship was the head liner that night but I bailed out of there before all that craziness got started after getting into a scuffle with one their drummers. I think the band on stage as I was shooting was called Plastic Horn Devils, or something.

I’m pleased to join the ranks with 52 Selects, a new online gallery showcasing the work of photojournalists and offering prints for sale. My current offerings include the image above, an interior of the Riverside Hotel in Clarksdale Mississippi made on assignment shooting an editorial travel story on the Blues Highway for the New York Times Magazine a while back.

The Riverside is a legendary location having hosted many blues legends, such as Sonny Boy Williamson, Robert Nighthawk and Ike Turner. The hotel was originally a hospital serving Clarksdale’s African American population where after being severely injured in car crash and refused treatment at an all white hospital, Bessie Smith died in the room shown in the picture above. While there I also made this portrait of current owner and operator Frank “Rat” Ratliff, below.

I love the winter Olympics. Growing up in the deep south these sports seemed so otherworldly to me. I used to ride my skateboard down steep hills, (steep hills being relative in the Arkansas Delta), pretending I was Jean Claude Killy, the three time gold medal winner from France.

In 1980 I was living in Rochester NY, working on my first book project, not yet having entered the professional photo world. My friend Sandy arranged lodging and found tickets to 4 events at the Lake Placid Olympics and it remains one of the most exciting things I’ve ever attended. I witnessed Eric Heiden win his first of five gold medals in Speed Skating.

When I told my kids I had been to an Olympics I wasn’t sure they believed me so I dug out these old photographs. As a spectator I had no special access and made these pictures with a small Canon G-III rangefinder.

Luge

Eric Heiden, Speed Skating

Women’s Luge

Eric Heiden

Women’s Downhill