08-26-2024: On Music, Friendship, and NANA
Watch This Space, im gonna write about this soon.
05-03-2024: The Apartment
My job is to take photos of empty houses. I only recently started working at my current gig,and yesterday was the first time I was asked by a coworker to document an apartment with the residents stuff still inside. One of the higher-ups came to me early in the morning asking if I knew how to take photos (lol), and how good I was at handling gross stuff. Having been on the internet long enough to browse many "battlestation threads" showing off some of the world's most cockroach infested, piss-jug packed basements ever documented by HAZMAT teams, I figured it wouldn't be such a huge deal. I said OK, bringing my 360 cam up to document the biohazards waiting for me. I mentally prepped myself to peek in, and grabbed a couple shoe covers in case I decided it was worth venturing into. The first thing I saw peering into the place was the numerous opened jars, dirty bowls, pans, plugged in rice cookers, mouse traps, and jars of various pickled objects basking in the stagnant air. Despite initial disgust, it was like walking into a kitchen that your dishwasher-avoidant roommate had commandeered while you were away for a long weekend (Thank god for tile flooring). At that moment I understood that this was a "Battlestation Thread Disaster" in its infancy. Not wholly disgusting, but you could immediately see just how terrible things could get given a week or two. Rarely do I sense such palpable anticipation from mold.
Despite the state of the kitchen, the living room gave indication that the residents were attempting to clean and pack up their stuff before leaving. Several semi-full trash cans were scattered around. Cheap plastic and pleather chairs were scattered out from the table, taking up the bulk of any spare space. The nearby broom and mop led me to believe they at least tried to sweep up, if just for a couple minutes. Each room had a small pile of packing boxes. It was like they were in a hurry to get their security deposit back and suddenly got raptured. There were three bedrooms in total, with an extra fourth bed sitting in the corner of the living room for whatever reason. Do you know that feeling you get when you go to an estate sale, do some Spring cleaning, or set up a yard sale? The amazement over the sheer amount of bullshit you have sitting around your house? It doesnt take much to stir that feeling in me. This room held sterilite bins full of masks, cleaning solution, stationery, unmarked pills, sewing supplies and half opened wrappers. A different feeling began to stir in me. I could use some of this stuff.
The process of photographing a house in 360s is easy. Place camera on tripod, connect remote to camera, get outta frame, and take your photo. Its a process that has a lot of downtime, I gotta be honest my job has A LOT of downtime. It makes up for the "market determined value" of my labor. As I move through the tour to cover the bedrooms, hallways, and closets I start noticing some of the less heinous items lying around. brass coat hangers, an unopened immersion blender kit, faber castell pens. Things you can't exactly fit into a regular budget but either cant or won't cause it sits too low on your priority list of things you need to buy. It feels like a holdover mindset from the days of scraping by in university, now transferring itself into a period where your life where the imminent threat of poverty and joblessness is ever present. "Why spent $70 on an immersion blender when ive been doing just fine without it for so long? That $70 might be desperately needed if I ever lose my job." Thats the sorta thoughts that have been running through my head the past couple months. After getting the photos I needed, I packed my stuff up in the car and went back in, eager to take my picks. I waslked outta there with a set of tweezers, two cork coasters for plants, an unopened hairdryer, an immersion blender kit, various expensive drawing pens, and an unopened set of multicolored lightbulbs. A decent haul. Despite the excitement of finally coming into posession of several item's I put off purchasing for several months, I knew that these objects were Schroedinger's biohazard until I could get home and inspect/clean them myself. I double knotted my big black garbage bag with excitement.
My manager came in the next day asking about the house, curious about the sorta stuff in there. I mention what I found inside. Aside from what I mentioned, there was a lot of standard IKEA furniture, a guitar, skateboards, Chinese New Year paraphenalia. Finally, I mention a plastic shrub in the living room corner. My office is located underground, so getting any sort of real greenery is impossible. He understands the struggle of finding home goods as a recent college grad and says "Hey, not a bad idea. I've taken plenty of stuff from homes left abandoned." It filled me with some small amount of determination to visit the area again. After all, I was heading back out into that area anyways. I went over to the unit to scope it out, see if there was anything interesting I missed, my whole perspective changed. I could only feel disgust at that environment. Looking at that plastic shrub I kept thinking "There's no way to clean this thing. If there's bugs in there, there's no getting them out. This whole place is a nightmare, what was I thinking?!" The place that once held potential goodies turned into something gross and unnverving in an instant. It was only 18 hours since I was last in there. I made up my mind not to return there unless it was absolutely necessary. The experience sat in my mind as an intersection between thrifting, dumpster diving, stealing, and whatever they call just picking up furniture on the side of the road. How often do we readily accept goods from unknown places like a thrift store without questioning its origin or conditions? We trust these companies to handle donated goods, to clean and resell them. It's true for clothes but Goodwill isn't cleaning out every panasonic dvd player coming their way. If all those items in the house I found were sold at a secondhand shop how much would they go for? Removed from its context its a completely different story. The return felt more like a perverse entry into someone else's life rather than opportunistically performing my job. Two week later they finally found a group of cleaners to empty the place out (yeesh). The amount of Stuff left behind in that house was enough to fill a dumpster container going to who knows where.
The Mills
I spent the past weekend hiking in North Western PA. The record breaking amount of rain over the past couple weeks drastically reshaped the scenery into a replica Pacific Northwest. The river valley flooded and turned a normally ordinary stream into a screaming river. Moss coated every rock, and the exact timing of my trip highlighted the green conifers in contrast to the baren broadleafs. It was the first time I hiked in a long while since I hadn't given myself the opportunity to spend money on gas. Had to build up my cash reserves after getting laid off last summer. It was an eye-reopening experience reminding me that this is the sorta stuff I love.
The Allegheny
February 2024 marked the one year anniversary of my arrival in Pittsburgh. The topography and spaghetti-esque nature of its roadways lends itself to Hidden Places. It's the hills. Your standard grid-based planning can only work in so few places that city designers have to play a game of "How the hell are we supposed to connect these two places with a road?" The city has to run right up to the edge of developable zones, unlike similar nearby cities such as Cleveland or Philadelphia where flat, buildable land is abundant. The feeling of driving around some of these roads is unlike almost every other American city. You can be less than 4 miles from the skyscrapers downtown surrounded by nature so green it's almost sickly.
It rules.