New York April Nyc Meet-up

Calzone said:
I'm a lazy-slacker: for me the three-day weekend was a 5-day weekend.

Went to the Stormville Flea Market held at a small airport on Saturday. How hill-billy is that?

Sunday went to Newburgh and bought a blue birdbath top without a base for $20.00. My thinking is that it would be a great bonsai pot for a small forest of Japanese Red Maples.

"Maggie" bought this framed poster that is an rendering of some famous greenhouse that is at some french villa. Paid $160.00 at an antique emporium, but the same framed print is listed online at some gallery for $1.1K.

The framed print looks great above the "Professor's chair" in our living room. This room is mighty built out now and free of any clutter. It feels 1912 period correct.
Click to expand...
I really enjoy the second hand markets. Anglosaxon and Scandinavian culture has the flea, thrift market and second hand places which are not a thing in the Mediterranean cultures, they just throw stuff out.
I am way far out from moving in, but keep scanning for interesting stuff. Deco will be sourced this way.
My friend is "inflation panicked" and I half joked about decoration being a good hedge against inflationary times :D
I got a small Alvar Aalto vase for $16, just needs some Windex work and voilà.

Interestingly I really liked these second hand places for cameras, but nowadays I notice they have nothing interesting at all.
 
Jorde,

I learned a lot from studying rich people. Pretty much they don't waste money in a consumer like manner.

On 57th Street is Lillian Nassau Gallery where they sell original Tiffany lamps. "Maggie" and I went to an exhibit on Tiffany lamps at the New York Historical Society/Museum.

One day I walked into Lillian Nassau to inquire about the cost of a Tiffany "Dragon Fly" lamp. The floor standing version was priced at $300K, and the table top version $75K.

When you look at a reproduction and the real deal there is a big difference in quality of the glass and the craftsmanship that pretty much anyone can see.

This pricing was over 15 years ago...

If I were a rich man, and if I had spare money laying around, I'd buy a Tiffany lamp for the Baby Victorian.

Know that women were the trained crafts-people who made Tiffany lamps.

I like buying stuff that if I had to I could get my money back. At my level my vintage guitar amps are worth double or triple what I paid for them (Mark Sampson era Matchless amps in the rare 2x10 configurations) about 15 years ago.

I kinda bought them before they were collectable, or in the case of the 1960 Fender Brown Super 6G4/6G4-A transitional amp I bought into a project amp and paid little money.

Cal
 
Cal, I live 2 blocks from this gallery and know it well. A few months ago, I was ogling a Nakashima desk and chair. I went in and found that they were asking $45k. I promptly walked out.
 
JMQ said:
Cal, I live 2 blocks from this gallery and know it well. A few months ago, I was ogling a Nakashima desk and chair. I went in and found that they were asking $45k. I promptly walked out.
Click to expand...

Jean-Mark,

You have good taste. LOL.

The problem with expensive goods is you need to wheel and deal with mucho rich folks who likely know how to leverage and bargain against you.

Also another thing is storage and maintenance as in the case of a vintage muscle car or say a 1949 Harley.

So here are some camera day trading stories, where I wheeled and dealed cameras as commodities.

I traded a Mamiya 6 with a 50, a M3-DS, 50 Rigid V.1, a brassed out black paint Leica II that needed service, along with a Voughtlander 50/3.5 Heliar, for some vintage Bruce Davidson prints (6x9) with the Magnum stamp on the back and a penned in 1967.

The prints are from the Welsh Miners seriies: one print is of the little girl in a church grave yard doing some sort of gesture; and the other print is of a little boy pushing a baby carriage; two iconic photos.

These vintage prints are of an undetermined value because pretty much these were not fine art prints and were kinda emphemra where these prints were never meant to be saved and almost all were destroyed or lost. Anyways these are mucho rare.

I was approached by this art dealer and we made a deal. Years later I got a call, I was with John in Union Square shooting on a weekend. So this dealer called me because he badly needed cash, so I played hard ball and became a loan shark.

Of course I wanted collateral, it is just insurance and doing business, so I ended up getting the M3-DS, the 50 Rigid, and a Canon 28mm VF'er back, along with some rare print/portrait of some hansome German woman who was a notable photographer.

Somehow I got $1.5K of the $2.5K cash back, and I ended up keeping all the collateral. Loan sharking I know is illegal. Ha-ha. I ended up selling the M3-DS, this lead to a profit, and I ended up keeping the 50 Rigid, the 28mm Canon VF'er, and the lovely vintage print.

So then years later I get a call from the owner of the M3-DS who wants to know if I want it back. It once was mint, and it is a rare camera because I bought it from Adorama from my friend Angel who told me I had to buy this camera.

When I dry fired it and advanced the film I noticed that the shutter was loud, and the film advance was stiff, but then Angel explained that because it was so clean that Adorama sent it back to Leica Germany to get overhauled and that even the prism which was separating was resilvered by Leica and it had a brand new "L" seal.

The M3-DS displayed some wear and tear, but because it had slow shutter speeds it came back home at a discounted price that included a discount for a CLA/overhaul. In attempting to work in the slow speeds I ended up jamming the camera and the shutter curtain came loose. Oh-well. A repair is now needed.

So there is a pattern here where I just "mind my business" and all kinds of stuff happens.

Another deal was that I bought this schalloped lens hood for my beloved 28 Cron V.1, that also happens to fit a 35 Lux ASPH pre-FLE, for $359.00 from Pop Flash.

Of course when I brought it to the NYC Meet-Up pretty much it was looked upon as a dumb purchase, but then years later I learned that it was a limited edition, and many owners of the 28 Cron V1 and 35 Lux ASPH Pre-FLE hated the over-sized rectangular original OEM hood and were paying up to $1k for my hood.

One friend from the NYC Meet-Up repeatedly asked me if I would sell him my schalloped hood repeatedly. Since I'm a Smut Queen I knew John C. bought one, but he sold it with the lens not knowing its value. How rude was that when I informed him of its value.

I do miss this 1958 black Les Paul I once owned. It formally was owned by Ron Price, one of the guitar players from Foghat, and before that it was owned by Ronnie Montross, another famous guitar player. Somehow I bought this Les Paul cheap.

Then came along an opportunity to buy a Santa Cruz OM acoustic made from old growth Brazilian Rosewood. Brazilian Rosewood is protected today and it is scarce commodity that is controlled by a CITES Treaty.

I ended up selling the L.P. to a guitarist friend, unfortunately now a dead friend (Mark), who was one of the guitarists from the band Riot.

I traded an old 8 string Fender Lap steel, and a 1930's Marten C-1 acoustic arch-top with the cash from the Les Paul for the Brazilian Santa Cruz OM that I still own today. Today to replace the Santa Cruz OM it would take $18K to $20K.

I do miss the Les Paul because it was a truely great guitar, but I'm not a Les Paul player. It originally came with a P90 and an Alnico soapbar pickup in the neck, but it was routed for humbuckers destroying its vintage value. Also it was mucho heavy with a thigh sized neck.

Today there is even a shortage of both new and used cars. I was lucky to secure my Audi A4 with ultra low mileage, as well as my Baby-Victorian.

Calvin-August
 
I'm really effing sick of the real estate market in the northeast. We've been looking for places to buy then when those fell through, places to rent, for the past 6 months. We started looking in both Maine, and Rhode Island. While Maine has a little bit more in the way of places to buy, there is very little work for unlicensed therapists, so we concentrated on Rhode Island. Well, it turns out that folks are simply buying up properties, sight unseen, with cash in-hand. People dropping $800k - $1M on the same day on any property, is insane. It doesn't matter what we do, because cash will always win over financing. This is ridiculous.

So, we figured Philly is miserable and desperate but we're here already, so perhaps just moving to a nicer part of the city would be good. Again, very low rental inventory (there's no way I'm buying a house in Philadelphia, I'd rather buy a boat then set it on fire and watch it sink.) Renting in this city has become some kind of sick sport, in which people pay thousands for just a room or two. This is not NYC; Pennsylvania has failing public schools, broken infrastructure, corrupt pay-to-play city and state government, mismanaged taxes, and crime that is only eclipsed by central American cities in this hemisphere. Yet, people are flocking to this city, offering NYC rental rates and turning this dump into the 6th borough. At least we don't have one of the nation's highest mountains of trash...

I'm just so sick of this further separation of caste here in the USA, through the machine of the housing market. I'll never own a house at this point, and I'm not going to be willing or able to buy one after I'm in my 60s, if I'm still alive. I'll work until I die, always paying someone else's mortgage, and never being able to "get ahead" that little bit to build my own equity. Please don't reply with words of hope, knuckling down, bootstraps, all that garbage. I came from a poor family, I will die poor and will pass along essentially nothing. Yes, there are a few cases where exceptions have been made to the rule of caste, but the world has changed from the old model of work then retire.

I'm just so sick of entitlement everywhere.
::END RANT::

Phil Forrest
 
Phil_F_NM said:
I'm really effing sick of the real estate market in the northeast. We've been looking for places to buy then when those fell through, places to rent, for the past 6 months. We started looking in both Maine, and Rhode Island. While Maine has a little bit more in the way of places to buy, there is very little work for unlicensed therapists, so we concentrated on Rhode Island. Well, it turns out that folks are simply buying up properties, sight unseen, with cash in-hand. People dropping $800k - $1M on the same day on any property, is insane. It doesn't matter what we do, because cash will always win over financing. This is ridiculous.

So, we figured Philly is miserable and desperate but we're here already, so perhaps just moving to a nicer part of the city would be good. Again, very low rental inventory (there's no way I'm buying a house in Philadelphia, I'd rather buy a boat then set it on fire and watch it sink.) Renting in this city has become some kind of sick sport, in which people pay thousands for just a room or two. This is not NYC; Pennsylvania has failing public schools, broken infrastructure, corrupt pay-to-play city and state government, mismanaged taxes, and crime that is only eclipsed by central American cities in this hemisphere. Yet, people are flocking to this city, offering NYC rental rates and turning this dump into the 6th borough. At least we don't have one of the nation's highest mountains of trash...

I'm just so sick of this further separation of caste here in the USA, through the machine of the housing market. I'll never own a house at this point, and I'm not going to be willing or able to buy one after I'm in my 60s, if I'm still alive. I'll work until I die, always paying someone else's mortgage, and never being able to "get ahead" that little bit to build my own equity. Please don't reply with words of hope, knuckling down, bootstraps, all that garbage. I came from a poor family, I will die poor and will pass along essentially nothing. Yes, there are a few cases where exceptions have been made to the rule of caste, but the world has changed from the old model of work then retire.

I'm just so sick of entitlement everywhere.
::END RANT::

Phil Forrest
Click to expand...

Phil,

I sat in your boat. In fact I was 62 when I bought my home.

The Chinese expression, "Time is the best weapon," rang true for me.

Take what you already have and build on it. You have education, you have skills...

I do understand that the real estate market is insane at this point. The fact is the shortage in housing might last for 5 years by one account due to pent up demand.

Around the world much of the same is happening, but then again you can buy an entire abandoned village for a dollar in Italy and in poor rural areas here.

Interesting to note that I have heard people call Beacon, and separately Peekskill, as well as Philly as being the sixth borough.

This is not any false hope, but know that "Maggie" and I were considering and getting ready to buy something in Center City because it was affordable, but Covid happened...

My point is keep you ammo dry, patiently wait, and when the opportunity opens go all in.

I never thought I would retire early at age 64. I didn't think I would have enough money, but back when I lived in Long Island City 15 years ago, I decided to "downsize" and live simply as a pre-retirement exercise. This actually moved things along so I could afford a house, and led to a sustainable future.

Longevity is both a blessing and a curse, David Brooks wrote today an opinion on aging and living longer, and he wrote, "The average 80 year old suffers from an average of 5 diseases."

I have Cold Aglutinan Disease where my blood thickens when exposed to cold. This disease is idiopathic, meaning for an unknown cause, and might be just a genetic disposition.

I'm 63 no meds, and otherwise no diseases, except perhaps "Linhof Disease."

I expect you too will live longer than you think, and nothing wrong with buying your first home in your 60's like I did.

Life is kinda funny. Keep that ammo and accumulated wealth stored safely, and get ready for the next opportunity. Life will surprise you.

Cal
 
Phil,

Here's a question for you: How will the end of the eviction moratoriums and mortgage foreclosures moratoriums work out?

I say the money has to come from somewhere, and who will pay for the looses?

The game is not over, the world is crazy, and anything is probable at this point.

Cal
 
Last Saturday we had to produce content for a shoe brand. I wore a pair of blue "Driver's Shoes" that were made from recycled plastic. Very lightweight, very comfortable, and they feel like slippers.

Best is that I get to keep them, so I got free shoes.

The PR firm loved the content, and Maggie kinda promoted the shoes using my slouchy style as a fulcrum and marketing ploy saying how generally I'm a sneaker kinda guy.

Seems very plausible that the client might line us up with more work, and perhaps this time they will send me free sneakers.

Seems like we may hear any day now about this gig in Europe, seems like we are on the short-list, and also a beer company wants us as a couple to promote beer drinking. You should know that I don't drink, and perhaps that is one reason why I'm a skinny bitch.

"Maggie's" agent seems to think that a bit of work looks to be lining up as a couple.

My beloved APO 35 Cron is being used as a 50 on the Leica CL (crop factor of 1.5). Mucho tripod shots now required. This likely is the best "50" available for use on a Leica CL.

Sunday Maggie had some two hour zoom event with Hermes that involved cooking with a french chef. Hermes sent us two crates of food. I saved the cool packing crates, and they are being stored in the porch basement. There is a tin of caviar in the fridge, and the oranges they sent are likely the best oranges I ever had in my life.

Please send me more. LOL. In foresight Maggie thinks I should of joined in and been her assistant. Looks like she will get invited back to Paris. Anyways I could have met some of the big shots at Hermes via zoom. Instead I mowed the lawns and washed my evil black Audi A4.

Lately I have ventured into the tunnels heading uptown from Grand Central to explot as short cuts in my morning time trials. I found one that leads out to 48th street and Park Avenue. This makes it easy to avoid the jam ups near the 59th Street bridge where I can loose time stuck at intersections.

I garbage picked a Ghetto Blaster that has cassette and CD player. Looks to have been in a dirty basement, but it cleaned up nicely. The battery compartment still had the OEM tape on it from the original packing.

I used a spare cord at work and it turns on, but I need a CD or cassette to see if it works. I can really use this at work.

Last week I saw a squirrel in my backyard. This is the first squirrel I have ever seen in my hood in 6 months. Let's see if the Red Tail Hawks eat him for dinner.

Calvin-August
 
The Ghetto Blaster is a QFX J-50U which currently sells on Amazon for $119.00.

So far it seems that the only thing wrong with it is that it was dirty.

I'll bring in some CD's tomorrow.

Cal
 
Afternoon Cal,

This weekend I rearranged the Kodak 8x10 Basket Line. I'm going to fill the dev tank with stock DK-50 (bought out a camera store closing up long ago) and I've got DK-50 Replenisher as well. Will be good to finally get this going.

Darkroom Renovation Phase II 1 by Nokton48, on Flickr

Darkroom Renovation Phase II 2 by Nokton48, on Flickr

The JOBO is the uber hard to find European one that spins six sheets of 9x12cm. Devil Christian would approve I think.
 
Nokton48 said:
Afternoon Cal,

This weekend I rearranged the Kodak 8x10 Basket Line. I'm going to fill the dev tank with stock DK-50 (bought out a camera store closing up long ago) and I've got DK-50 Replenisher as well. Will be good to finally get this going.

Darkroom Renovation Phase II 1 by Nokton48, on Flickr

Darkroom Renovation Phase II 2 by Nokton48, on Flickr

The JOBO is the uber hard to find European one that spins six sheets of 9x12cm. Devil Christian would approve I think.
Click to expand...

Dan,

My dip and dunk is lagging way behind, but pretty much I'll be doing uch of the same.

Gotta love a monster JOBO. I have a similarly sized one, but my version can do 4x5's

Lately I have been distracted by my new identity as a male model. How crazy is that? Not that I'm a super model, but I'm the guy with unusual looks that stands out in a crowd, even in NYC.

The house, the modeling, and the war on Knotweed...

Next year though when I retire there should be explosive growth in building out and setting up.

Cal
 
The Ghetto Blaster works like a charm. Not bad for free.

Other than cleaning up all it needed was a power cord, and I had one laying around the lab.

The 48th Street tunnel allows me to beat the time clock and shave off work time. The 7-8 minute rule I exploit both ways to save nearly a half hour to shorten my work day.

Bonus is that I can use this saved time on a Friday to leave ultra early.

The next six months of work before I retire should pass fast.

Cal
 
Calzone said:
Last Saturday we had to produce content for a shoe brand. I wore a pair of blue "Driver's Shoes" that were made from recycled plastic. Very lightweight, very comfortable, and they feel like slippers.

Best is that I get to keep them, so I got free shoes.

The PR firm loved the content, and Maggie kinda promoted the shoes using my slouchy style as a fulcrum and marketing ploy saying how generally I'm a sneaker kinda guy.

Seems very plausible that the client might line us up with more work, and perhaps this time they will send me free sneakers.

Seems like we may hear any day now about this gig in Europe, seems like we are on the short-list, and also a beer company wants us as a couple to promote beer drinking. You should know that I don't drink, and perhaps that is one reason why I'm a skinny bitch.

"Maggie's" agent seems to think that a bit of work looks to be lining up as a couple.

My beloved APO 35 Cron is being used as a 50 on the Leica CL (crop factor of 1.5). Mucho tripod shots now required. This likely is the best "50" available for use on a Leica CL.

Sunday Maggie had some two hour zoom event with Hermes that involved cooking with a french chef. Hermes sent us two crates of food. I saved the cool packing crates, and they are being stored in the porch basement. There is a tin of caviar in the fridge, and the oranges they sent are likely the best oranges I ever had in my life.

Please send me more. LOL. In foresight Maggie thinks I should of joined in and been her assistant. Looks like she will get invited back to Paris. Anyways I could have met some of the big shots at Hermes via zoom. Instead I mowed the lawns and washed my evil black Audi A4.

Lately I have ventured into the tunnels heading uptown from Grand Central to explot as short cuts in my morning time trials. I found one that leads out to 48th street and Park Avenue. This makes it easy to avoid the jam ups near the 59th Street bridge where I can loose time stuck at intersections.

I garbage picked a Ghetto Blaster that has cassette and CD player. Looks to have been in a dirty basement, but it cleaned up nicely. The battery compartment still had the OEM tape on it from the original packing.

I used a spare cord at work and it turns on, but I need a CD or cassette to see if it works. I can really use this at work.

Last week I saw a squirrel in my backyard. This is the first squirrel I have ever seen in my hood in 6 months. Let's see if the Red Tail Hawks eat him for dinner.

Calvin-August
Click to expand...

Squirrels, Pigeons and little dogs watch out! How's that Fender amp you found Cal?
 
The most precious commodity to an artist is not money, but time.

To make art or develop craft it takes time. Rushing or deadlines are counterproductive. They say it takes 10K hours to develop a mastery of skill.

But what if life is full of interuptions, stops and starts? It could take a lot longer...

My life is such the case, but retirement means lots of time, little worries, and not many interuptions. I will have mucho time.

Cal
 
I'm having a good day. I was just minding my own business when I find an 8 foot library ladder made of oak on the curb on Second Avenue near 64th Street on my way to work.

I beat the clock easily and all my time-skimming will allow me to leave an hour early. I'm following all the rules and policies, but I'm also gaming the system: for one I use the 8 minute part of the rule that rounds up to the nearest quarter hour to shave seven minutes to leave 7 minutes early; and secondly with my power walking I can beat the clock on the other side where I have seven minutes of grace where my clocking in where even though I'm late I get credit for being on time.

So after clocking in, going to my lab to drop off my breakfast and a bunch of CD's, I went back to retrieve my library ladder.

I "smuggled" the library ladder through the main lobby past the receptionist and building administrator. I cleaned it up a bit and presently it is stored in my office with a surplused hospital hamper, doctor's stool, and one of my multi media paintings from the 1970's, plus some other odds and ends for recycling.

This will be perfect for my garage studio where I will have a gabled roof with an optimized 41 degree pitch facing south for a solar array. The roof will have a load beam and lack trusses.

I learned from Devil Christian that attic spaces are considered storage areas and are not taxed. Changing the roof from a hip roof that is like a squat pyrimid to a tall gabled roof with the solar twist really is a clever way to have additional space without the tax increase.

Christian surely is a clever devil. He also instructed me how roofs can get over-the-top, but because the house is a Baby-Victorian the flavor of an old carriage house carries over well.

Christian also brought up a good point that any stairs or stairway is a waste of space. It seems the library ladder is the low footprint solution, and now of course the price is "free."

The forensics (price labels) indicate that the library ladder came from a store on Second Avenue that use to be "The Health Nuts" that was established in 1971. Sadly this was one of the early health food stores, but finally Covid took it out.

Also it came with a cat toy attached to the second step that I will leave as a conversation piece.

My two car garage has the odd size of twin 8 foot square garage doors, where most garage doors are only 7 feet tall and 8 feet wide, and evidently I have an added foot of height over standard garages.

This added height promotes having an atrium and balcony of sorts. You know me: I like drama and romance.

So maybe with my Hill-Billy training one day I might relegate to parking my Audi A4 in my driveway as my neighbors do, and then I'll have a 400 square foot studio with an "attic." Currently though the A4 looks like a brand new car even though it is a 2015 and is 7 years old.

"I come to work to rest," I say, but perhaps a hard day's work might kill me. LOL. Today my first Cyclotron run is due at 11:30 and that only requires about a half hour.

In the afternoon at 1:00 I have another run that will take about another half hour.

Then I go home early. BTW my coming to work early works to shorten and limit my availability. It serves no one but me and my convenience. In a ways I'm already retired.

Right now I'm listening to a CD compilation of Muddy Waters, Little Walter, Lightning Hopkins, Jimmy Reed, ZZ Hill and Mike Bloomfield.

Cal
 
Balloon Head Impact 41 4x5 Norma TLR 250 Imagon by Nokton48, on Flickr

Here I have switched out the Pulso Hazylight for the Broncolor Impact 41 with "Balloon Head". Totally -shadowless- utterly soft lighting. Notice the new Viewing System on the 4x5 TLR. Norma Monocular Bellows on top, Reflex Binocular Sinar on the bottom. This camera is now a true in every way TWIN LENS -REFLEX- 4x5. Viewing the image right side up through the bottom lens, and being able to move the mirror around to scrutinize every mm of the viewing screen, is a great luxury. This works GOOD very direct super user friendly studio portrait camera. I made two more exposures Impact 41 set at 1/4 power, f5.6 on FM2 incident flash meter. Yellow green filter added, so exposures on Fuji HR-U of, 2 pops, and bracketed also for four pops at H5.8 on the 250 Imagon taking lens. I know you are supposed to use sharp pincer-type lighting with Imagons, but I am breaking some rules here. Looks cool on the ground glass, can't wait to develop it hopefully later today.
 
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