The Horrors Persist, and the Wonders Abound

I am not huge on putting myself out there. Ride a bike through random alleys? Sure. Go spin yarn at procession coffee? I am down for it. Force the folks working at Victory camera on 9th to hear my stories? You BETCHA, Hoss. Create an entire bike questing methodology like its a live-action role play game to troll a previous version of myself that wore lycra, crashed, and landed straight on my noggin (I say that it finally knocked some sense into me.) OH HELL YES, BRUDDAH. But, I am not one to make plans with someone or put myself out there and go to a group event. I'm not what you would call a people person, even though Lily says that I can talk to anyone. I find the whole process of building friendships really difficult as an adult. AND HAVE YOU SEEN MY HERMITAGE?!?! It's got all my records, cds, tapes; my gaming pc; my bass and amp; my altars; all my friend's art; and all my fiber art supplies. GO OUT AND SOCIALIZE? IN THIS ECONOMY? WITH THIS HERMITAGE? hehehe.

As someone with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder ("OCD") and generalized anxiety, it's just harder for me to do that work of being vulnerable with new people. I don't have the wash your hands 1000 times or clean the house with my own sweat form of OCD that everyone likes to march out as the definitive form of OCD. Spoiler Alert: it's not. My OCD is not quaint or quirky. Before I did exposure response therapy, my OCD felt more like losing days fearing some of the worst fears one could ever imagine and not know anything about why you were having those fears.

Dr. Rachel Davis, the director of the CU Anschutz OCD program, summed the condition up perfectly in a talk she gave during during a speaker series she participated in with the Ryan Chacra Foundation (summarized in this excellent article about Ryan's art, who we lost due to mental health complications):

"OCD obsessions are usually the most horrifying, gross, disgusting, shameful, vicious thoughts that you can imagine. OCD latches onto what we value most, and it tells us we're the opposite of that person, or that we might act in ways that violate what we believe is right. We can fear that we'll harm others and that we're immoral, or that we’re dangerous in ways that feel horrifying and out of character.”

For me, building a friendship will entail moving through at least one set of incredibly uncomfortable set of thoughts that will just flash through my cerebellum at random during each hang out. Consequently, you can understand how one would want to avoid that. That sounds fun, right? Wouldn't you want to deal with that on top of the difficulties of building community with something else?

That hasn't stopped me from trying. My most recent quest to make new friends brought me to the Art Gym's Fiber Art night, which I talked about in my past essay "Go Forth and Prosper!" Honestly, my time in this community was a great success. I had friends join me to do fiber art. I did a live raffle for a free copy of Occult Needlecraft at one meeting that the administrators at the art gym thought was an attempt by me to sell raffle tickets for cold hard cash. I made a new buddy I am still friends with who supported my family in new born life. It felt like I was building the local fiber infrastructure that I talked about in the essay "I Want to Build My Local Fiber Infrastructure." Alas, new born life, crazy times at the day job, and the art gym changing into a co-op, led to the end of fiber art night and my absence from its last few sessions.

Just like the loss of Fancy Tiger Crafts, we lost another piece of our local fiber infrastructure and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I feel grief after having tried so hard to be a part of a community and then capitalism just took it away. I am so so so sick of the dollars and cents of giving people a place to go to be with people who enjoy a craft not making sense. Wouldn't it be rad if community wasn't an opportunity to extract rents from people or sell them things they don't need? UGH, I long for this world and I mourn the loss of places where I met people who have and currently play a big role in shaping who I am as a person. I need to just organize a meet up at my local library next when I get time (hehehehe time hehehehe) or arrange my entire free time schedule to attend Rocky Mountain Weavers Guild meetings again.

It's too easy to blame myself for such losses. I am sure you have done the same exact thing too when you were in my shoes. There is this ugly individualistic strain in American culture that rears its ugly head at moments like this. "If you supported them more, they would have survived," intones a voice from one such brain worm. Another brain worm yells indignantly, "if you had attended more of their events, they would still be open." All these brain worms have the most nasally, high-pitched voice too, which underscores that they have no idea the difficulty of operating a small business in our economy where our media and what we buy is controlled by a small handful of companies (i.e., oligopoly). It's a quaint thought to think we matter that much. Our actions, words, and thoughts certainly do matter, but our power in keeping the doors of businesses open pales in comparison to the macroeconomic winds that small businesses have to weather. So, whenever those brain worms come to roost, I giggle at them like "a little girl giggling at a hippopotamus and wonder why" I do this to myself.

So what is there left to do? I just keep showing up as the whacky, zany person that I am in spaces in my neighborhood without any expectations. Regardless of my difficulty making friends or the number of places that capitalism has taken away from me, I just keep trying to gas people up at the places I go to get records, film, yarn, coffee at and make them laugh. I have made friends showing up in my community that have literally changed the entire course of my life (I'm looking at big homie OLLIE in their sick tight death work practice) and countless others who I have shared giggles and laughs with. For me, there is something so precious and magical about show up and being with people you live near that makes a place truly one that is alive and inhabited.

Recently, I have met some new homies (GG – Gabby Gold and Wren) that have helped me a ton with learning about film photography and encouraging me to express myself in that medium. For example, did you know that for an automatic film camera to be able to shoot a film canister it has to be DX-coded (a uniform code placed on all DX-code compatible film rolls)? I didn't until Big Homie Wren helped me understand why my new Konica Genba Kantoku couldn't shoot my roll of non-DX-coded Flic Films 35mm film. Do you know the unique joy of showing another analog film fan a shot that you took that you are sure magic had a hand in creating? I do, because Gabby will look at any exposure I bring to her and tell me one thing she like about it and will show me shots she is jazzed on. That is the community that I missed that I used to get through fiber art at fancy tiger crafts or the Rocky Mountain Weaver's Guild.

Despite this, I was still reticent to attend the photo walk they were organizing downtown. It wasn't that I didn't want to go. I actually really did. I was just nervous that my OCD and anxiety would play an outsized role in my experience and make it difficult to connect to other folks. Yes, indeed, under the zany exterior of grandpa jimblers, there is still just a person who wants to be accepted and liked by cool people who make awesome art. My special blend of generalized anxiety and OCD makes attending such things pretty draining on me mentally and emotionally in a time period where I already don't have a lot to give.

I know I can do hard things, so I put myself out there and attended the photo walk. I am glad I did. Sure, I felt nervous and anxious at times. I took the opportunity when I wasn't talking to anyone to take deep breaths, which is something I rarely get to do now with two kids. It was really cool to meet a bunch of other people who were as devoted to analog culture as I was. Teenage James would not believe that we get to go on walks shooting film with cameras in a major US city. I have always dreamed of being a photographer and I think I can call myself one now. Thanks to Gabby and Wren for helping me realize that. You both are GOATs in my eyes. I hope we get to be buds for a real long time.

Photo Walk!

Once we departed our meet up location at Full Frame Coffee downtown, we moved west toward the home of the Blake Street bombers, our beloved awful baseball team the Rockies. I jumped on the Clem-L and rode next to folk on the sidewalk, which gave me the ability to linger for a moment somewhere if I got sucked it. Well, that was a good decision, because I immediately found myself sucked into an alley and a parking lot while the group kept sauntering west. The alley had a great Beige on Beige ("BOB") tucked into a mundane corner parking lot, which I snapped with my 35mm camera on Kodak Gold (waiting for developed scans). Since the light was weak in that spot, I held off on taking a polaroid shot. That proved to be a good idea, because I had the same issue with the first polaroid shot I took of the photo walk. Just as I looked down the alley from the little crevice I was shooting with my Konica, I saw two identical "Love Not War" tags writer in yellow on the green dumpster on the left and the green tarp on the right. Unfortunately, the overcast skies and the low contrast between the yellow paint and dark green led the Polaroid to be unable to pick up the absolute amazing little message that was awaiting alley wanderers brave enough to traverse this liminal space. Maybe with the Iran war and the ongoing genocides in many parts of the world, the polaroid now 3 camera did not want to recognize that love could conquer war. I know. I KNOW! I am anthropomorphizing my camera again and inserting meaning where there is none. However, it's a compelling reading of the situation given world affairs, isn't it? Don't we all find it difficult to believe that love will overcome war in this day and age? I know I have to work at it.

I looked back over my shoulder and saw the last few stragglers pass by the alley I was embedded in like a barnacle. I jumped back on the clem-L and let a single pedal stroke propel me back into the gaggle of photographers on 20th. I looked around and saw everyone shooting photos in the parking lot just outside the alley. "HMM... what are they shoo," I thought to myself when I was overcome with what lie before me, "OMG, LOOK AT THAT WALL." It was the perfect mixture of urban decay, neutral color blocking, and BOB in all its glory. It's moments like this that the world falls away and I am just a hoss with a camera, lost in time and space. There is something so American about deciding to just paint an exterior downtown wall black rather than do the work to apply a new coat of stucco and invite some artists to paint a mural. That slapdash (50-cent word) approach to solving a problem is quintessential America.

I got up from my figurative armchair where I had just spent a few moments philosophizing how an ill-repaired parking lot wall helps us understand where America went wrong to find my group close to Coors field. The Rockies were away playing a set of games in Las Vegas against the Athletics, whose owners are moving the team from Oakland to the strip, so we had the whole front of the stadium to ourselves. It was a perfect moment for a group photo! Being too self-conscious to knowingly partake in said group photo, I rolled my bike off to the side, climbed up on a gigantic cement planter, and took my own photo of the group as my own personal archive of how many people showed up for the walk. It was packed! With my photo of the group tucked away into my trusty photo bag to develop in quiet solitude, I turned my camera to take a META! photo (insert crunchy surfer voice here) of Gabby taking a photo of the group. In short, I took the photo of the person taking the group photo. WOAHHHHH, that's heady dood.

I kept with the group now and walked my bike alongside folks as we made our way down Blake and then 19th toward Union Station on Wynkoop. Realizing where I was, I stopped my conversation and said, "BRB I need to check this alley." I jumped back on the Clem-L and took a flyer on the alley between Wynkoop and Wazee, entering the alley from 19th. I rode through the alley slowly, looking for any changes to the wall of the parking garage and dumpsters that I had photographed a few weeks before. To no avail, I didn't see any changes that jumped out at me as different from first glance. I rode out the alley on 18th and waited for the rest of the group to meet me. It was another quiet moment to collect myself and just enjoy listening to the Omni Garden record "Golden Pear" that I had playing at a low volume while we were putzing around.

Client Challenge

The group lingered out front of union station when we reached our next destination. I decided to veto the typical voice in my head that would stop me from shooting the same photo as someone visiting Denver for the first time. Instead of being a cynic, I tried to shoot the photo from a different angle and capture a view that I might otherwise overlook in my day-to-day life. I shot a photo looking up at the union station sign, which is often how I see the sign while riding past union station when I am downtown. I couldn't of been happier with how the photo turned out, especially with the stone "Union Station" being more visible than the eerie glow of the incandescent Union Station sign that always dominates photos of this area.

Then I turned around and took a photo looking southeast down 17th toward old downtown Denver: one of my favorite vantage points in the city. I get that everyone wants to look west toward all the new buildings downtown that have been built since I moved here in the last decade. That's where the vacancy rates are the lowest and all the development is happening. That's where all the buildings have amenities that would knock your socks off, shine your shoes, wash the socks, and hang dry them in the sun for you while you are working. Me? That new development already bores me with its sanitized, white-washed exteriors that are heavy on the glass facades. Give me the view toward the old Denver that everyone is trying to leave behind. That's the Denver I am interested in capturing, where commercial vacancy rates are 40% or more in some buildings and the facades are predominately brick. I am not even from Denver and that seems infinitely more interesting than what some well-resourced BROS might think up.

We made our way around union station to the train tracks, which houses the A Line that typically take folks out to the Airport or to the Eastside. I remember back to when I was a consultant flying out once or twice a week and cringe a little bit. I don't miss those times in the slightest. I knew that if I wanted to be the involved Dad that I envisioned I could be that I wouldn't be flying out multiple times a month for work. That has held true. I haven't been on a plane since 2019. On my way back to the tracks, I passed an empty restaurant storefront with a generic, corporate "For Lease" sign hanging in the window. I remembered when I ate in the space when it was Zoe ma ma with some coworkers back when the city felt like it was moving somewhere. Now, this space has been for lease since early 2025. Again, another sign that Denver is a once booming city that now resembles a ghost town with its numerous vacant store fronts. I took a 35 mm shot of the empty store front, not thinking the light and copious glass would be conducive to a polaroid shot.

Once on the tracks, I putzed around trying to get cool angles where the light, trains, tracks, and the platform would result in cool shadows. I am quite fond of this photo above, because it captures a real moment. There is nothing curated about this moment. There is a train sitting there waiting and another train arriving in the background. The photo captures everyday people just traversing their lives while in Denver. I realized on this photo walk how much I like shooting moments that illustrate a basic human necessity and show how much friction is still involved in our everyday lives. Yes, everyone has got to get around somehow and isn't it great that we all voted to create infrastructure like our light rail system to make it marginally easier to do that collectively without being slaves to traffic lights. The photo also shows you how much beauty is possible when we all decide to solve a problem together through a public process, rather than letting some large corporation fleece us for rents.

This was a big departure for me who is typically only photographing things for archival purposes. As my friend Sharon once noted, "Your scenes are typically empty of people." She isn't wrong. I typically only shoot photos of my family and am rarely capturing moments where I am participating in something that is happening. I am much more interested in photographing the markings people leave behind (e.g., tags, stickers, wheat pastes, buffs, involuntary sculptures) than I am in what people are doing. I think this photo walk helped me bridge that divide in what I typically photograph. Not only did the walk help me see things I would typically overlook, it also helped me take a step back and think about my typical photography approach critically. Why not take a more active role in photographing things as they are happening? I am intrigued by this possibility and will be exploring it in the future (since this is mostly what photographers do LMAO).

After I ended my "angsty-teen" moment at the end of the tracks, I rejoined everyone by the back entrance to union station near the train platform. I gabbed with my homies for a minute and took mental notes on how the GOAT's were photographing the scenes around me. I have learned in these nearly 40 years on the planet when it is appropriate to turn into a sponge. When watching Gabby and Wren work, I just try to take notes. At one point, Wren took a photo through this plexiglass near the stairs that led to the pathway underneath the tracks. What a genius idea! I am still looking for my opportunity to steal that approach for a shot. I may just have to go over to union station again to see what I come up with on the Polaroid and my Konica.

Soon after this moment ignited my imagination, our group left union station intermixed with all the travelers and headed down the 16th street mall. I typically cruise through the mall and don't pause for taking photos. Walking with folks for a stretch of the mall gave me a chance to look down alleys I never really get a good gander at. This turned out to be a boon for me, because these spaces are tremendous cathedrals of liminal space. I don't think I truly understood the potential of downtown shooting until this walk. This makes sense, because riding downtown does not allow a slow approach. You are more typically riding with your life in your hands, because some motorist is not used to seeing folks on bikes. Consequently, it took me slowing down on the walk to see gorgeous BOB examples like this one on a pillar in an alley that reeked of pee. I could not believe that this polaroid photo turned out with this much detail. I love the three vertical layers of BOB with the random pops of neutral buffs interspersed with what is likely damage from carts or cars hitting the pole and causing paint to chip away. America, the decaying!

Once the group reached 16th and Arapahoe, I split off to do my own thing. I had a quest to capture a very specific alley off of 15th and was running out of time before putting my "Mediocre DAD" hat back on. I gave all my thanks and goodbyes to the homies and set off down toward 15th. In a flash, I found myself in front of the alley in question. Yes, dear reader, I am going to mention the Matrix again. Am I getting old yet? Yes? Ugh, I am sorry. I am truly a one trick pony. At any rate, I looked northeast down the alley in-between Champa and Curtis. Lo and behold, there was a Gigantic "Matrix" tag written hastily on a dumpster on the right side of the alley. I took a double take and I was transported to the first Matrix film and felt like I was in one of the scene full of brick buildings where the heroes were rushing to a phone for an exit while being chases by agents. I had been blocked from taking this photo two times already by delivery trucks trying to access the diner on the left side of the alley. TODAY WAS DIFFERENT! The dumpster were visible with only one car in the distance in the alley. HUZZAH! HOORAY! Let's get that shot.

With the photo tucked into my camera bag, I turned around and looked across the street at the alley. Globsmacked, I saw two incredible BOBs up against an indescript wall. I waited for a bus to pass me by and pushed myself on my bike with one foot on a pedal across the street to get a closer look. I glided into the entrance to the alley and tentatively took a photo, unsure if it would turn out. To my utter astonishment, the photo turned out. Typically, the I-type film does not like this level of light and shadow. When I pulled the resulting photo out of the insulated sleeve, I just stood there dumbfounded at what was captured. This is actually why I love film. You just grip the camera and let the shot rip. It's not up to you about whether the photo turns out. You are just punching your ticket by depressing your shutter and taking the ride waiting for the photo to develop. Here, we have complete darkness, strong sunlight, and all that is buffed over hidden in the shadows. Shoot, we even have a light at the end of the tunnel for those folks who favor Disney-movie endings. "10/10, no notes," as I say to folx whose art I appreciate.

With this photo captured, I jumped on my bike and started riding back to the Eastside toward home. Never one to miss an opportunity to capture something before it's gone, I stopped to take a photo of my bike against a mural that will likely be painted over soon with all the businesses that once inhabited the buildng gone or relocated. This building housed Craftsman & Apprentice where I took a class to learn tapestry weaving from Sarah Neubert with Lily. That was the class that taught me how to make weaving a part of my everyday life. So, what happened in this building on that fateful day almost a decade ago changed my life and led me to be here typing these words to you all. I may have still found my way to writing stories for you to read along a different pathway, but who is to stay a different future would have been charted. Consequently, it felt important to take this photo as a way to log part of that past inside the present.

Once my overly nostalgic streak was satisfied, I continued on down the road. I didn't make it more than five or six blocks before I encountered one of the rarest of ride finds: the elusive discarded exercise bike. I am still toying around with what to call this series. I am choosing between Fitness Dreams Lost and Pandemic Interrupted. Despite what we call it, I just love thinking through what brought the person to discard their exercise bike. Have they given up on fitness altogether? Did they return to group fitness classes IRL? Did they buy the bike during the pandemic and now don't see a need for it? Did they turn into a bike questing wizard who loathes to ride indoors? I have so many questions for these photos. The older the bike the more interested I am. What brings someone to keep an exercise bike from the 80s or 90s and then decide one large-item pickup day to discard it? This is why you don't give a sociologist a camera. The same thing happened when they gifted Jean Baudrillard a 35mm point and shoot. The dude was hooked. Should I do some hill climbing intervals on it before I head home? hehehe

Whenever I get done with an event like this, I always feel simultaneously relieved that I was able to get through it in one piece while also just glad to have had the experience. It's funny. Having OCD and living through so many terrible things, I feel so intimately acquainted with how the horrors persist. Yet, with my new photography questing practice, I am so much more acutely keyed into how much more numerous the wonders that abound are. I can be bogged down in my head all day at work over this or that; go for a bike ride; and then be cracked open with wonder, awe, and gratitude with how amazing it was to find a damaged kiddie pool or an umbrella just sitting in the middle of an empty alley. And that is just one of dozens of things that I may find in any one day.

I think that is why I am starting to be as grateful for photography as I am for weaving. Weaving got me through a lot of the grief associated with my Mom's death and got me through the door into Cognitive-Based Therapy. It appears that photography is helping me take that next step into embracing all the wonders that are to be found out in the world. And guess who was the photographer in my family growing up? My mom. Again, my mom leads me to the exact practices that I have found to be the most helpful in putting myself back together again in perilous times. Big up to Shelly to still be providing me guidance for how to live this life even though she is gone. Love you forever, mom.

Yoooo, thanks for being here. I appreciate you for reading. This was one of those essays that came out of NOWHERE. I was sort of stumped after about 1000 words and then it all just started coming out. The most surprising bits were the last part. I was in the car pretending to be the interrupting duck to keep my daughter J awake and feeding milo. In my head, the main take away from this essay sort of floated in out of no where, "The Horrors Persist, and the Wonders Abound." It's not about me persisting. I know I will. I got a PhD with serious anxiety and OCD, working full time, and losing my mom. I don't need to emphasize the persistence. That is like celebrating a cockroach surviving a nuclear blast. No, I need to emphasize that despite all these horrors that wonder can still be found down any unassuming alley if you open your eyes to look for it. I hope that can offer you hope that in your own difficulties that you might find the light you have been searching for. That said, there is nothing better than talking to licensed therapist. I thank great gelatinous glob that I found my therapist and still routinely talk to them. I hope that if you are struggling you find a way to find yourself a therapist too.

Peace!

James