Hillbilly Coffee, Littlerock, Washington

Yes, coffee is always a good idea

After a few hours of hiking or mountain biking in the Capitol State Forest and you are in serious need of a coffee, what to do? If you have come out of the hills via Waddell Creek Road SW or Mima Road SW, turn east onto 128th Street SW, drive about three quarters of a mile, and you come upon Hillbilly Beans, the "Cawfee Shack in Littlerock, WA." Look for the "Espresso Bar" sign, an old Dodge truck, various signs, and wood cows. Good stuff!

Was this once a neon sign?

The Hillbilly Cawfee truck 

Pull up to the cow and order your espresso

Yup, coffee makes friends

Trail to Fuzzy Top mountain in the Capital State Forest. This may be old growth (i.e., never logged).

The Capital Forest is criss-crossed with gravel roads suitable for mountain biking. And a select number of trails take the hiker to various peaks. It is a nice resource just a few miles southwest of Olympia. 

I took the coffee pictures on Fuji Acros 100 film with my Leica M2 and the terrific 4th generation 35mm ƒ/2 Summicron lens (the last pre-aspherical design). The view of the trail to Fuzzy Top mountain was with my brand new Zeiss Biogon 21mm ƒ/4.5 ZM lens. It is a Leica M mount lens based on the famous Zeiss Biogons of the 1960s (such as the 38mm version used on the Hasselblad SWC camera). Praus Productions in Rochester, NY, developed the film, and I scanned it with my Nikon Coolscan 5000 film scanner.. 

Olympia in the Morning, Part 2 (Oly 05)

Let us continue our morning walk through downtown Olympia, Washington. It is quiet, and most stores are closed. I saw only 5 or 6 homeless people his time. Two years ago, there were 10s or 100s of them. How did the city purge them? Regardless, downtown Olympia is still grungy.

206½ 4th Avenue

Dumpster on 4th. I bet that stuff looks better than most of my wardrobe. 

Capitol Way view south

Alley parallel to 4th Avenue (25mm ƒ/4 Color Skopar lens)

My favorite Olympia alley (25mm ƒ/4 Color Skopar lens)

Jefferson Street view north. I have not yet seen a train, but I occasionally hear them, usually at night.

Frog Pond Grocery in the historic South Capitol district (50mm ƒ/2 Summicron-DR lens).

Argh! Another Taco truck, this time on Plum Street. The fire system is for the hot sauce? 

Well, enough of exploring downtown. Time to walk home and have another coffee.

State Avenue view west (50mm ƒ/2 Summicron-DR lens).

Proceed north and soon you reach East Bay. On many mornings, it is still as a mill pond. The buffleheads and surf scoters love it here.

East Bay from Olympia Avenue NE (50mm ƒ/2 Summicron-DR lens). Swantown Marina is in the distance.

The Bigelow neighborhood has charming traditional cottages from the early 20th century. It is not as elegant as South Capitol, but is more modest and is free from the background drone of I-5.

 

Traditional cottage on Quince Street (25mm ƒ/4 Color-Skopar lens)

Historic Quince Street house

This ends our walking tour around Olympia with Kodak Gold 100 film (another one of my experiments with expired film). I used Pentax Spotmatic F and Leica M2 cameras. We will see more of Olympia in future updates. Thank you all for walking along.

Fun in South Shreveport, Louisiana

On the way home from Houston in early 2023, my wife and I decided to break up the trip and overnight in Shreveport. 

To get to our hotel, we took I-49 south and exited to East 70th Street. We entered "that" type of neighborhood:  car shops with razor wire, closed and crumbling shops, burned houses, Popeye's Chicken, plasma centers, dead gas stations, nail salons, Pay-Day loan shops, car bling shops (behind razor fences), and an occasional resident shuffling along in a heavy parka or electric scooter. 

Heading east on E. 70th, we crossed a bayou and oops, what happened? A bicycle trail, insurance offices, the Lexus and BMW dealers, Whole Foods Market, new chain hotels, la Madeleine French Bakery. The contrast is so Southern, so typical. But even after all these decades living in the South, I am still amazed and disgusted.

The next morning, we went back to E. 70th and took a few pictures. It looked worse in daylight. It was an overcast day, and we saw almost no one out and about.

558 E. 70th Street (35mm ƒ/2 Summicron lens)

Apollo Liquor - probably a money-maker (5932 Linewood Ave.)

Grant's Automotive, 6912 Fairfield Ave.

King Tire, 437 E. 70th St.

Fixer-upper house, E. 69th St.

Southern Avenue 

Another fixer-upper house, 249 E. 69th St.

E. 66th St. (25mm ƒ/4 Voigtlander Color-Skopar lens)

No one home, E. 66th St. (25mm ƒ/4 Voigtlander Color-Skopar lens)

Well, this part of Shreveport is pretty horrifying. Why is this type of decay so endemic in American cities? I just don't understand.

I took these photographs of Fuji Acros film with my Leica M2 camera using 25mm, 35mm, and 50mm lenses, all hand-held. I scanned the negatives with a Plustek OptiFilm 7600i film scanner operated by SilverFast software.

Autumn in Athens 2022 (Part 1)

2022 Note

Likavitou Hill from the Alexandros Soutsos Museum

Greece had a warm autumn in 2022 with benign weather. Tourism had plunged in 2020 when the pandemic shut down most leisure travel around the world, but it picked up with a vengeance in 2022. People were thrilled to be traveling again. Tourists were swarming all over Athens and the islands. My relatives were surprised because usually the tourists start to disappear by mid-October. But for 2022, local merchants and restauranteurs were thrilled. Hotels were heavily booked. The islands were swarming. I heard several times that merchants were very pleased with American tourists because they spent a lot of money, were especially friendly, and did not seem to care about prices. Hmmm.....

First Cemetery

First Cemetery (2018 photograph)

First Cemetery is the resting place for generations of prominent Athenians. It is an oasis of gracious trees and green in the urban jungle. Melina Mercouri and Heinrich Schliemann reside here. Some older photographs are here. It is off the usual tourist route but worth a visit. 

Protest apartment, Leof. Alexandros (Samsung phone snapshot)

Anafiotica and the Pláka

Likavitou Hill from Anafiotica (35mm ƒ/2 Summicron, deep yellow filter)

Tucked under and around the northern and eastern slopes of the Acropolis is the Pláka, the historical neighborhood of Athens occupied since the medieval era and, probably, since antiquity. The labyrinthine streets twist and turn past little houses. You could almost be in a village in the mountains. Well, except for the drone of traffic in the distance. And the different languages of the tourists. Every time I visit Athens, I take my obligatory walk through the Pláka, look at the scenery, take some photographs, eat a hearty lunch, and ponder the passage of history.

I have photographed here before, but each time I visit Athens, I can't resist doing it all over again. Here are some samples from October of 2022. 

Balcony, Thrassiliou

Stairway to ? (25mm ƒ/4 Color-Skopar lens)

Cottage courtyard (25mm Color-Skopar lens)

Where are my customers? Aretousas Street (25mm Color-Skopar lens)

Here's looking at you, Graffiti Alley

I took most of these photographs with Fuji Acros film using my Leica M2 camera and various lenses. Praus Productions in Rochester, NY, developed the film.

The Central Texas Coast - Freeport to Corpus Christi (TX 05)

Hook'ers' Bait Shop, Hwy 332, Freeport, Texas (Rolleiflex 3.5E, Tri-X 400 film)

The Texas coast south of Galveston is a complicated terrain of wide bays, barrier islands, and inlets. In Texas, these openings between the sea and the bays are called Passes. Most are used by fishing and other commercial boats. The entire coast is famous for its birding because the wetlands and bays attract semi-tropical species rarely seen in other parts of the continental USA. 

Decades ago, I went in and out of some of the ports, like Port Lavaca, on crew boats. One day I'll scan some of those photographs. 

We will start in Freeport and work our way south. 

No gas any more, Tivoli, Texas (Acros film, 35mm ƒ/2 Summicron lens)

Fixer-upper house, Tivoli

Fixer-upper house 2, Tivoli

Tivoli is an unincorporated community in Refugio County, Texas. It is on Hwy 35 a short distance north of Aransas National Wildlife Refuge. If you have been to Aransas, you probably zipped through Tivoli. I was surprised to see a street where most of the houses were abandoned. Did a developer buy the street?

Farmhouse near Aransas National Wildlife Refuge. Note the tar paper siding.

Aransas NWR is south of San Antonio Bay. The roads there are lonely and have a few abandoned old farmhouses. If you have never been to the refuge, definitely go. But be prepared for mosquitoes.  

Between Houston and Brownsville, Corpus Christi is the biggest city on the Gulf of Mexico coast. It sits on a wonderful location facing Corpus Christi Bay. 

Have a wee on the beach, North Beach, Corpus Christi (Fuji Acros film)

America the Beautiful (architecture), Surfside Blvd., Corpus Christi (Hasselblad, Tri-X 400 film)

North Beach is a rather cheesy tourist area. We stayed in a motel built up on stilts to avoid hurricane storm surge. Off season, the only food at North Beach appears to be at gas stations, so we drove across the bay into  the city.

Morgan Avenue, Corpus Christi

America the Beautiful (strip mall land), Morgan Avenue, Corpus Christi

House (bunker?) on Morgan Ave., Corpus Christi

The historic part of Corpus Christi and the business district have a beautiful setting on Corpus Christi Bay. But in my opinion, most of the city is an ugly mess of highways, urban sprawl, strip malls, fast food joints, and boring architecture. It's Americana extreme. It's a real shame.

Most of the photographs are from Fuji Acros film. I used my Leica M2 camera with 50mm and 35mm Summicron lenses.