Glenn's Cafe

Glenn's Cafe, when its neon still illuminated the curtained, second floor windows of The Missouri Press Clipping Bureau, on the northwest corner of Ninth and Cherry.  Glenn's old space is now home to Kaldi's...I'm not sure what happened to the Missouri Press Clipping Bureau.  The non-conformist graffiti and the shadow-casting tree were here for many years before this corner got renovated.

Booches Front Window

Booches on a Sunday night, through the front window.

Tiger Pawn in the Rain

A rainy night on the east end of the business loop. 

Peckham and Wright, Architects

I've got some of my night work from downtown Columbia hanging in the window gallery at Peckham and Wright, on 10th Street.  I've always wondered how artists were chosen to get a month-long showing in the window.  They contacted me after the Vox article came out in June.  I was flattered.  Through the end of September.

Acorn, Dawson, Salt

A view of south Ninth Street in Columbia, around fifteen years ago.  Before the enormous expansion of the Missouri theater, this block used to house Acorn Books, Dawson Shoe Repair, and Salt of the Earth Records.  Taken on a rainy June night, this is a slice of what Ninth street used to be.  I have a feeling that this nostalgic theme will persist through the next several posts.

Osco Drug on a wet night in June

There are many titles that I could choose to attach to this photo.  I believe it to be one of the saddest nighttime photos I've ever taken, and sadly prophetic as well.  This was immediately outside the liquor department entrance to Osco Drugstore, which used to be located in the now empty building behind Walgreen's on the corner of Providence and Broadway.  Earlier in the evening I had been to a photo exhibit at Legacy Gallery for some friends of mine, then we had gone out for a late dinner at Cornerstone Cafe.  Feeling restless and creative, I walked the rest of the way home and took photos as I went.  At the time I lived on McBaine Avenue, just a few blocks from Osco Drug.  This scene confronted me as I was wandering home.  One sad, rain-sodden shopping cart poised expectantly beneath a now sadly dated message..."Buy & Leave Film Here".  Buy and leave film here...fourteen years later this sounds like a tombstone message or epitaph for a photographic medium now nearly extirpated.  How many items in this story are now extinct?  Film is for the most part gone, local film developing is nearly gone, a large, centrally-located drugstore that also offered liquor, furniture, clothing, candy, and a somewhat discotechnical atmosphere is gone, Cornerstone Cafe has been replaced by a trendy dinner spot/club, Legacy is gone...one might even make the case that most metal shopping carts are gone.  Could William Carlos Williams have made the same poem about a plastic wheelbarrow? 

Puente's Barber Shop--Bayview

Another image from a cooler night in a much cooler place.  An attempt at some kind of visual or symbolic air conditioning.  The neon sign in the window of Puente's Barber Shop, on KK in Bayview, probably taken in late November or early March on a cold, misty night.  I'd pawn my eye teeth for a couple cool, misty nights right now.

Boulevard Theater, Bayview

Considering that it is 102 degrees as I craft this post at 8 p.m., I am going to continue the defiant tone begun in the last post.  A few hundred degree days have their place in any summer, as a way to test our mettle and to bring about the focus and introspection that a period of forced housebound hibernation can yield.  But two or three running weeks of upper 90s and mid 100s...my mind flees back to a cold, frost-gripped night in mid-November.  I was just starting to get to know my new, Mamiya 645E purchased a few weeks before at a camera store in Madison, Wisconsin.  I left the warmth of a Stone Creek coffee shop and spent an hour or two creeping around the darkened streets of Bayview.  This image has always reminded me of the spare, unflinching view of an Edward Hopper painting...he seems to have been one of the first American painters to produce canvases of nocturnal views of American towns and cities.  Since this was taken, the Boulevard has upgraded its signage, and I'm not sure if that liquor store is there anymore.

Missing Milwaukee

Our high temperature in Missouri today was somewhere around 105 degrees Fahrenheit.  The photo above was taken on the south side of Milwaukee, on Kinnickinnic avenue, on what was presumably a very cold night in November or December, several years ago.  It was just cold enough that icicles were forming on the underside of the railroad overpass, beneath which I nervously walked from my car to gain this vantage point.  Cold enough that I was wearing several layers of wool, denim and fleece, along with a pair or two of gloves and most likely a stocking cap.  Cold enough that I probably went home with glowing red cheeks and tingling extremities.  Hence it is that the Nightview Columbia blog is taking a brief hiatus from any nighttime Columbia images.  It's just too hot....I throw up my hands and throw in my creative towel.  Even in the middle of the night Columbia's downtown streets are hot enough to coerce perspiration from even the most casual walker.  So my protest shall take the form of images from a much cooler city.  Milwaukee.  Where I lived for five years and never needed an air conditioner.  And for those of you looking to hide from the heat on Saturday, I'll be giving a presentation on night photography in the Friends room of the Daniel Boone Regional Library from 1-2:30 p.m.

Cubist still life with plant and bottle

An office window at night.  An unassuming plant and a haphazardly placed bottle caught in the rectilinear mesh of a backlit block glass window.  This scene is somewhere between an alleyway haiku and a nocturnal Braque. 

A quiet night at the phone company

Summer is here once again, and with it comes the quiet nights and somewhat empty streets of downtown Columbia.  And of course, my visual summertime predilection for all things minimal and spare arrives too.

Crepuscular Manhole, or Less might be more

This image straddles the border between visibility and obscurity...I'm sure there is some philosophical parallel I could draw.  But it's a Friday night and such thoughts fled with the pleasant spring weather...

Barber Shop at Night

Like any photographer who peers into the windows of a darkened barbershop at night, I was fascinated by this scene.  To me, it is almost as magical as Sendak's Night Kitchen...but Sendak didn't have an antlered deer in his imagination.  On ninth street, downtown Columbia.

Busman's Holiday at Cafe Berlin

The harmonious and engaging busker duo, Busman's holiday, playing at Cafe Berlin, during the True/False Film Festival in late February.

Through a diner window

A scene glimpsed through a diner window, downtown Columbia.

Kwik Mart on a very warm night

Every time I photograph this Kwik Mart on Hitt Street, especially late at night, I am reminded of a scene from Haruki Murakami's recent "After Dark" where a computer programmer goes into a convenience store late at night to get some supper after spending long hours at the office.  For me, this is a Murakami scene and a Murakami moment.

Exhibit opening at Tellers on Monday, March 5th

After the frenetic and inspired fury of True/False has begun to subside, Tony Irons and I will be hosting an opening reception for our exhibit at Teller's, downtown Columbia.  Monday, March 5th, from 6-8 p.m.

Last Winter...

Get Lost bookstore, on Ninth street, during the meteorological magic that was last winter.  Alas...

Three Pieces of the Puzzle--One night in early January

Arrow Head Motel, Business Loop

The Arrow Head Motel on Columbia's business loop, as it used to look when they still turned the neon on every night.  Now the motel (and its sign) are candidates for the 2012 City of Columbia historic properties status...http://gocolumbiamo.com/Planning/Commissions/HPC/

Dawson's Shoe Repair

Dawson's Shoe Repair, on an unseasonably warm night in a snowless January. 

Night in a small town in Iowa

Paul Simon has a song called "My Little Town", whose refrain goes something like this: "Nothing but the dead of night in my little town."  A requiem for the once economically viable and sustainable American small town.  This post-Hopperesque scene was photographed in the small town of What Cheer, Iowa, on highway 21, during a road trip back in early December.  I hope it doesn't seem completely hopeless, though.  Otherwise I would have cropped the Christmas decoration out of the composition.  I like it in there as a positive and somewhat ironic counterpoint to the defunct clothing store.

Otterville by night

Taken on an atmospheric night in late October, this is a glimpse of downtown Otterville, Missouri from across Missouri Highway 50.  In the right foreground is the vintagely-neoned Bixler Gas Company, a warm pink light emanating from the letters of its sign.  In retrospect, this image reminds me of some of the work done by O. Winston Link for his Norfolk and Western Railway commission.  Except that I was using ambient light, rather than lugging in several tons of lights, wires, and equipment.  Why am I posting this on my nighttime Columbia photography blog?  Well, I think part of the reason is that this fall and winter have not been that conducive to my brand of photography.  I think that by this time last year Columbia had already experienced two or three snowfalls, and was on its way to another 30-35 inches before spring arrived.  This winter has been kind of a dud, so I just haven't felt that moved by it.  I'm planning on spending most of my free nights printing for an upcoming exhibit at Teller's Bar and Gallery in early March.  More on that to come.  So in the meantime, my posts will at least be nocturnal, but they might not all be taken in downtown Columbia.  Let's treat it as a refreshing hiatus from the usual, and a chance to see something different.