The New Old

For starters, I’m obviously just backfilling missing blog posts at this time. But I’m sure you’ll forgive me… all things considered…

The idea for this week’s project was to photograph abandoned signs with the Retro setting on the new camera. An abandoned sign by my definition is a sign that is no longer cared for. Either the business that put it up is no longer around, or they no longer care for the sign. The sign has descended into a state of disrepair, and nobody is doing anything about it. Personally, I hope these sign continue to be neglected. I for one love abandoned signs.

All of these abandoned signs can be found in Boone, with the exception of one sign. The one sign can be found if you are driving east on US 30 between Boone and Ogden. It is a sign that has always intrigued me because of the crudeness of its composition and because of its location. It is a sign that has a very strong political message, but you have to be actually looking for the sign because it isn’t placed in a place of prominence. It is more buried in a ravine in the bottom of a ditch.

Here are the rest of the abandoned signs.

I determined during this project that I don’t love the retro setting on my camera, even though I do love a few of these images. I took these pictures on a rainy, drizzly day. Don’t be surprised if I revisit many of these subject in the future with the High Contrast Black & White setting on the new camera.

If you have an abandoned sign that you love that you think I might love as well, feel free to drop me an email with the location and a brief description of the sign.

Images from Pufferbilly Days and the Boone First United Methodist Church highlight this collection.

These pictures came from backup/Old My Pictures/UnHingd

These are a mixture of concert pictures from an Iowa State game, practice and recording their first demo.

The phallic nature of the “I” was a constant source of debate.














This is a Jay Janson Photoshop original.

Next week’s folder will be:

Backup/Old My Pictures/Unhingd/Concert

A lot of old Pufferbilly Day Parade pictures in this collection:

I still get pissed when I go by our old house!

I’m not really sure about most of these pictures, but I think a couple of them might be pictures of the old Bennett coal mine in Rippey. However, that is just a a best guess.

There aren’t many pictures this week as the negatives were cut very short.

A bunch of historical documents in this collection.

These pictures come from:

Backup/Old My Pictures/Master Wentworth

Next week’s folder:

Backup/Old My Pictures/McFriends

I think some of these pictures might have processed funny, but oh well, they still look cool.

These pictures come from the following folder: Backup/Old My Pictures/Jones Soda

These pictures might come as kind of shocking. So I better give a small bit of back story.

If there was ever a chance for me to be a cult leader it was when I was the closing assistant at the Boone Outpost of the Evil Clown Empire. It was the peak of my charisma. It was the peak of the power of my sideburns. I was practically a town/county celebrity and for all of the right reasons. People did and said what I told them to and everybody wanted to be in my company.

However, I didn’t use my power, charisma, and sideburns to form a cult. At least not a religious cult. I used them to introduce my love of Jones Soda to the people that surrounded me and to get them to love Jones Soda.

Jones Soda, I say.

You see, I’m not a boring and uninteresting person. I’ve never been a boring and uninteresting person. I don’t surround myself with boring and uninteresting people. Therefore alcohol has never been and never will be an important part of my life. Actually it is no longer a part of my life period.

Sure I know plenty of people that place a premium on alcohol in their value system. I’m sure if I were them I would probably need alcohol to put up with being them too. But I’m not them, I’m me, and I don’t need to medicate away the pain of being me, because I am “amazing”, “wonderful”, my talent “knows no bounds”, and “the bringer of awesome”.

That doesn’t mean I don’t like to get together with a few chums after a hard night of serving what is laughingly considered food to some of the finest white trash in all of Boone County and have a few frosty cold beverages. Only the frosty cold beverages I enjoy are Jones Soda’s Green Apple Soda or their Fufu Berry or their Grape. All divine creations.

So it was on a hot, humid night that the 4 of us clustered into Action’s basement and made these 2 pictures with a webcam.

These two pictures existed because we were sending them to two separate places.

The first picture we sent to Jones Soda to show our love for their superior product.

The 2nd picture we sent to Hy-Vee (at least I think we did or we might have just sent a strongly worded letter that pointed out the economic impact of their poor decision) to show them exactly how we felt about a stocking decision they had made.

Jones Soda makes an energy drink called Whoop Ass! The Boone Hy-Vee decided to stop stocking Whoop Ass! because some old battle axe complained about the name of the product.

The Edge actually sent our letter on to Jones Soda and they rewarded us with a case of Whoop Ass! It was a monumental victory for the little guy!

Hy-Vee never re-stocked Whoop Ass! I’m frankly amazed that they are still in business.

Next week’s pictures come from the following folder:

Backup/Old My Pictures/Labels

I think some of these pictures were taken inside Wilson’s. I am mostly curious who the guy is in one of the pictures. He doesn’t ring any bells for me.