The Bridgetown Hustle took place on Friday February 5th at the Nemo Design Studios in Portland. A convergence of bikes and associated culture, the event kicked off with an opening of a bike art show that featured installations, photography, prints and a few paintings and drawings. Backyard Blam held a cross genre bunny hop contest which pitted BMX versus MTB versus Freestyle fixed,(BMX won) and had a number of launch ramps, picnic tables, and other features for the riders to play on. Inside, they also held a packed Goldsprints race for the prize of a bicycle donated by Giant Bicycles.
The crowd was a broad range of cycling enthusiasts, which was more than apparent from the variety the types of bikes stacked outside and cabled up in the parking lot, though the tight girl wearing jean crowd had strong attendance, with hipsters everywhere. At one point in the evening, it got pretty tight, especially after the events outside shifted indoors.
I got wind of the event just weeks before it happened, but had a few paintings that were ready to show that I was able to submit. I brought my camera with me, and was able to test my new low-key sneaky camera bag set up that utilizes Domke inserts in my Timbuk2 messenger bag.
The event continued on Saturday, with more mayhem planned, but we were unable to attend.
Please contact me if you are interested in the use of any of the images.
After dropping my girlfriend off at the airport the other day, I stopped by my buddy Bryce’s house for breakfast. He’s a random dude, and I’m a spontaneous guy, and somehow this combination ended up with the two of us paddling in kayaks down the Columbia Slough in the rain. To date, I’d never actually paddled a kayak, (always wanted to try) but as a former Boyscout with my Canoeing merit badge, it wasn’t totally unfamiliar to me. The Slough is a good spot to paddle around for a first timer, and I was able to dial my paddling technique in pretty quickly, which allowed me to really look around and appreciate the experience.
I love the reflections in the water, reminds me of a watercolor painting.. Photo taken with my iPhone
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We drive by this wrecked car every time we shuttle our downhill bikes. One day I finally took a picture of it.
Apparently it has been there for years. Local kids in the Astoria and Knappa areas frequently utilize logging roads for party spots. This is located at the top of a mountain, at the end of the road. My buddy Jeff, who grew up here, said his father used to party up here as a kid, and it was back there even then.
This article on Photofocus.com is a good one for photographers utilizing a website designed in Flash. It also touches up on a lot on how I feel about Flash based websites from a search marketing perspective. In his list of why Photographers should choose a blog over a Flash site, he touches on how search engine friendly blogs are. Yes, search engines love blogs, but the key thing he doesn’t mention is that from a search engine perspective, (for example Google’s bots) read Flash based websites as ONE page. That’s one single page of content. If you have a website for you business and you paid a bunch of money to have it developed in Flash, guess what? No one is going to find it. Unless they are looking really, really hard. [click to continue…]
