Long View

So Thanksgiving technically isn’t an assignment, but I have my camera anyway and I am in Nevada, the birthplace of all things Jason Doiy. Seriously, I was born on the darkest night of the year, in the desert of the now fastest growing city in the United States—Las Vegas.

I’m up north though in Carson City, although I was born in Vegas we moved early on, probably before the next summer started.

Big Box stores are all that remain of a once vast high desert landscape surrounded by sage and low property rates. I drive around new tract homes and behind the Home Depot right off of Highway 395. I can almost hear someone say, “If you build it, they will come” as I pass empty lots in between fully developed homes.

I used to ride my bike down this hill before there was even a road. It was a washed out, rutted dirt trail that led down to the only place a kid could buy candy in the whole area. Now its a paved road.

I remember riding my dirt bike with a pocket full of Atomic Fireball jawbreakers and Big League Chewing gum past where these two vistas meet.

Been There Done That

I am in the Haight, walking towards 96 Delmar Street and I notice this old meets new, yuppie vs. hippie picture.



I remember the first time I meandered up the street made famous by the Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead. I was in awe that such a place of counter culture existed on the planet. Today, I find homeless kids and gawking brats from Concord crawling up the block. Been there done that seems like an understatement for shops hawking bongs, tye-dye shirts, hemp stuff, and the dreams of a past generation turned into marketable products. Maybe I am jaded and just too old (never trust anyone over 30), but more likely it is because the “times they are a changing.”

I meet a couple in there ballroom apartment. I am not kidding; it’s rumored to be a former San Francisco hang-out for Hollywoodites of the late 40’s. Supposedly, Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe once danced the night away. Of course my subjects remind me that it’s all just gossip and lore.