North Beach Photobook

Hello my fellow ESF crue members!

Before I forget: this building to the right (the Coppola building we discussed but couldn't remember the name of in class) is called the Sentinel Building.

With the help of our adventures in North Beach and a little program called Smilebox, I've created a fully digital photobook for your viewing (and hopefully listening) pleasure. When I was in high school, we had a family friend who was homeless/unemployed 50% of the time, and spent many nights on our upstairs couch. His name was O'Malley Jones, and the other 50% of the time he was a fairly successful James Brown impersonator (rightfully so, he was one talented vagrant). His other skill, which was not really a skill at all but a way of life, was to speak only in jive talk. Although I could not understand half of what he said, this was one of the cultural novelties brought to the North Beach area by the wanderlustful beats, along with many other forms of art and poetry. In homage to the beats, I was going to attempt to restrict the text in my photobook to jive only, but even after the many hours and days I spent in my kitchen nodding while O'Malley talked at me I apparently learned nothing. Still, I made sure the text is in some sort of poetic form (in other words, it rhymes - I'm still a novice, OK?).

While I was brainstorming for this project, I got to thinking about the beats and the counterculture they represented during their time. They were and are seen as a drastic, bohemian contrast to the traditional ways of life in the 1950s. It occurred to me that they established this reputation simply by thinking, and manifesting their thoughts into creations. Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Burroughs wrote novels and free-verse. Cassady rapped and free-flowed (and adulterated). Jackson Pollock flung paint across his canvas. All of these things they were doing were considered radical and against the grain of society. They were a tight-knit group of nonconformists, and the gap that separated them from the doctrinal part of society was deep. Now, it seems, popular culture is continuing a process of coalescing with counterculture, and they are sometimes indecipherable. I don't want to delve too far into the many causes/effects of this apparent merge, but it is something to think about. We live in a culturally diverse city and have a unique opportunity to be ourselves free of the judgment we might suffer in another locale, but it is also a time when the depth of our media technology allows for the obscure and nonconforming to gain such far-reaching recognition that it becomes part of what we call "pop culture." Is it possible, with this rush of progress and global connectivity, for us to create a counterculture movement reminiscent of the beat generation without it becoming mainstream "cool?"

But, I digress! Can't wait to see everyone's projects, and without further ado...

Make a Smilebox photobook

P.S. Short review of the Smilebox program: Lots of options! But you have to stick to their formats, and pay 3$ for the full screen version (however, when you pay for a certain format design you have it forever and can make as many photobooks using that design in full screen as you want). Check it out! They have digital slideshows, scrapbooks, photobooks, etc. Also, I am aware of and apologize for my overuse of parenthetical statements, but I will not stop (we all have our thing).