sitting with ghosts
I wish I could get up on some giant stage and sing a sad love song to everyone I know. But since this isn't feasible for many reasons, namely the fact that I have a terrible singing voice, I decided to pack up my Bolex, a couple cans of film and a few cans of beer, and head east in search of more ghost towns (see the archives for past ghost town hunting adventures).
After a weekend that one might call emotionally turbulent, it seemed fitting to get out of town in a "don't look back/just keep going" sort of way. But less than an hour out of Portland, a really bad crash happened several car lengths ahead of me. A semi truck hauling Little Debbie Snack Cakes plowed into a camper trailer, which jack-knifed and smushed into a fuel tanker. Several other cars then piled on, at least six or seven in all. The authorities arrived quickly, but the freeway was completely blocked for almost two hours. It was another example of overt consumerism messing everything up: nobody really needed those snack cakes, but because of them, traffic was backed up for miles and the channel 2 news helicopter even flew over us and took our picture. People got out of their cars and began to mill about, nervously hovering as if expecting important news or exchanging useless bits of information. There is something always particularly irritating about sitting in a vehicle that is not moving. Whether it's a car stuck in traffic, or an airplane sitting on the runway, gravity feels like it is pulling harder when you are in a stationary vehicle. Something about the forward motion is comforting, even hypnotic for that matter, but when the vehicle is standing still it suddenly becomes less comfortable then ever and more ridiculous than ever.
But eventually the wreck was cleared and traffic was let through. I drove to The Dalles and then cut in on Highway 206, hoping to eventually find the old town of Lone Rock, which was just west of Condon and pretty far out on a dirt road. I had read that Lone Rock was a ghost town, but when I got there it just seemed like a cute small town with a couple rehabbed buildings like the old jail and city hall. I realize now that I probably shouldn't trust any town that actively calls itself a ghost town- I think they use it is as a ploy to form some sort of identity, to lure suckers from the city out there to spend money. Real ghost towns are ashamed of being ghost towns. They take their signs down and stop taking care of their roads. They don't actively promote themselves as being a ghost town; they curl up and hope nobody notices them as they drive by. I can imagine some underground network of folk artists, crafts-people, and hotel owners concocting fake ghost stories in hopes of bringing in tourists and boosting sales of their handmade crafts and homemade apple pies. In the case of Lone Rock, there was one 'artisan crafts' shop run out of an old farmhouse that looked like it sold nothing but wind chimes, and it was obvious that they had something to do with this scam. From Lone Rock I decided to go for broke and take an old fire road to an old abandoned mining town called Kinzua, but after 12 miles on a un-kept dirt road I gave up, as my valiant mini van (who we'll refer to as The Red Baron from here on out) didn't have the clearance to make it over the rough road. I decided to track backwards and get back on some paved roads, and then aimlessly drove around until I stumbled upon an incredible old abandoned farmhouse out in the middle of nowhere. It was a couple hours before sunset, so I decided to camp out and wait for the good light (golden hour as they refer to it in the business).
Once again I was sitting and waiting in my van, but this time it was much more peaceful. Insects and birds were busy making strange sounds, and the abandoned house would creek and moan with every gust of wind. I thought back to the accident and wondered about the people who were involved. I hoped they were okay, but when it takes two hours to clear a wreck it usually isn't good news. Then I wondered about the house. Who lived there? Why did they leave? Was there a disaster that was equally as efficient as the car wreck, or was it a slow dissolve? With every moan of the house I felt more aware of its history. The wreck happened so fast, but the house is like an ancient tortoise slowly crawling into the landscape.
Clouds rolled in and my sunset shot wasn't quite as spectacular as I was hoping it would be, but I climbed up on the roof of my van, I mean the Red Baron, and cranked a few feet of film through the camera anyhow. Shooting film is like riding a bike with no hands. You sort of hold your breath while it's running through the camera and your heartbeats an extra beat just for good luck.
Once the sun went down, I rolled back into Condon, a town of 670 people on highway 19, and grabbed a room at the 90-year-old Condon Hotel. I think Condon was probably a pretty happening town back in the day, but the only thing happening tonight was a bingo game at the VFW Hall and some loud drinking in the bar directly below my hotel window. I'm very impressed that the hotel has Wi-Fi - nothing like live blogging from the frontlines of a ghost town. Tomorrow I steer the Red Baron towards the town of Whitney, another reported "ghost town," though I suspect the real finds will be what I stumble into along the way.
memorial day
The Portland Memorial Peace Park was officially opened and dedicated today. Just south of the Steele Bridge, the memorial park was orchestrated by the Oregon chapter of Veterans for Peace and is thought to be the largest memorial to the idea of peace in America. Today's dedication was very moving and it made me very proud to live in Portland. Hats off to all our veterans, and especially to the fine folks who brought this memorial to being.
http://www.dunckleystreet.com/vfpchapter72/
http://www.veteransforpeace.org/
CEI = LOL
By now you probably have already heard about the new documentary film about global warming that Al Gore is involved with that is coming out in theatres next week, and perhaps you have also heard about the Competitive Enterprise Institute's attempts to smear both the film and Gore.
the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which is largely funded by Exxon/Mobil and other big oil companies, just launched two advertisements in response the movie (An Inconvenient Truth). The ads came out today, and they are absolutely amazing. I am not sure if Saturday Night Live could do a better parody, but these spots are so ridiculous it's hard to believe that they are real. Their spot "We Call It Life" could only be better if the last shot was a family taking drags off a hose attached to the tailpipe of a running car.
The spots are posted here:
http://thinkprogress.org/2006/05/18/new-ads-funded-by-big-oil-portray-global-warming-science-as-smear-campaign-against-carbon-dioxide/
or here: http://tinyurl.com/rck47
PLUS: I really encourage everyone to check out the official site of the film:
http://www.climatecrisis.net
This looks like a film that could really educate a lot of people who otherwise don't pay attention to environmental issues. But for those who are already in the know, it is still very important to go see this film. The opening weekend box office sales will have a huge impact on how the film will ultimately be distributed. If ticket sales are low it will go away quickly and quietly, but if ticket sales are high than the film will have a longer and broader theatrical run. go see it and bring your friends!
Too Many Matt McCormicks
You really become aware of how many people share your name when you Google yourself. I have no more right to the name than anyone else, but there are just way too many Matt McCormicks out there these days. McCormick is a fairly common last name (I just met another McCormick last week at the Urban Honking bowling team tryouts) and Matt is as common of a first name as there is, but I am always caught off guard when I stumble into something referencing a Matt McCormick that isn't me. I am happy that the majority of Google hits are in reference to me (i consider those the 'real' matt mccormick links) but I am always curious about the other Matt McCormicks out there. There is the philosophy professor in Sacramento, the "slot-back" for the Cal-Poly Mustangs football team, the professional hockey player in Canada, and a computer science student in Wisconsin who loves snowboarding, just to name a few. Then there is the guy who owns the domain www.mattmccormick.com, who I think is a twentysomething year-old entrepreneur from Tennessee who blogs on his site about his business and church activities. He politely declined when I offered to buy the domain from him last year, but advised that I look into the mattmccormick.net website, which at that point was owned by a Matt McCormick who lived in Brazil and was in a heavy metal band.
But the only Matt McCormick that I really have a problem with is one that lives right here in Portland. I have never met him, but because he doesn't have his name listed in the phone book I have been getting calls for him for the past 10 years. I have received calls from his distant relatives, ex-girlfriends, and bars that he forgot to pay his tab at. He also has a horrible habit of not paying his bills and then disappearing on those he owes money to. I could care less about his personal finances, but the first place the collection agencies go looking for him is in the phone book, but instead of finding his phone number they find mine. The collection agencies call me, looking for him, and persist to call until they are 100% convinced I am not the one they are looking for. Credit collection agents may in fact be the most horrible people on the planet, and anyone who has ever gotten behind on their bills knows how persistent they can be. They call everyday, they call twice a day, they call at 6 AM, they leave nasty messages on your answering machine. At first I was afraid that someone had stolen my identity, but now it's become so routine that it's almost like receiving calls from telemarketers. It's always a headache to deal with, but at this point I have figured out how to shut them down quickly and must admit that having the opportunity to tell off some collection-agency-shit-head can be a wonderful stress releaver. But the amount that I know about this other Matt McCormick is freaky. I know that he is behind on several credit cards, and has been in trouble with just about every utility company in town. I know he used to live on SE Morrison and drive a red Toyota 4-runner (both of which were probably repo'd). He was/is married to a woman named Bernice, but maybe had an affair with someone named Alison. He once had a troubled cousin or sister go missing, and he recently left his credit card at Sabala's nightclub. His middle initial is A and I know the last 4 digits of his social security card. Luckily I have only received phone calls for this guy, and nobody has ever come knocking on my door.
But overall, I suppose that I am pretty fortunate. I know a guy up in Seattle named Jerry Garcia, and I can imagine that for him, Googling himself must be a terrible experience. I'd also bet that he must get some ridiculous phone calls, especially back before the Dead Head Jerry Garcia passed away. So many stoned hippies calling in the middle of the night "dude! is this really Jerry Garcia?! Awesome!"
denture work of the future
ghost city (detroit part 2)
I'm not really sure why I have such a fascination with abandoned buildings. I know that they're ultimately a negative thing, that they are a strain on a local economy and often an environmental catastrophe. An abandoned building is a place that represents a failure or a retreat. Lock the doors and run away. Maybe it is that tragic mystery that intrigues me. I like old, historic architecture, but I have to admit that I have little interest in newly renovated buildings. I'll take a photograph of a run-down building from the 1950's over an immaculately restored building from the 1890's any day. Renovation scrapes away more than just the leaky roof and layers of old paint. It scrapes away the mystery, and scares away the ghosts. In Portland, back when the Simon Benson mansion was boarded up and scary looking, I would go and look at it every couple of months. It was a stop on the sightseeing tour I'd take my out-of-town friends on when they'd come and visit. But now the Simon Benson House has been completely renovated and returned to it's original grandeur, and now it just seems like another old mansion or boring tourist attraction.
Detroit is filled with so many abandoned buildings that it becomes overwhelming, and the only thing that outnumbers the abandoned buildings are the vacant lots. The vacant lots are scars left over from where a building once stood. Some were clearly grand mansions from the turn of the century, others were luxurious hotels or car factories from the 1920's. Nature has reclaimed these spaces, and could confuse a visitor into thinking that Detroit has an expansive, if poorly manicured, system of city parks.
An abandoned space is a sad, mysterious enigma, but it also represents an opportunity or maybe a new frontier ready to be rediscovered and re-claimed. Maybe that is the allure: that you as a passer by can stake a small claim in the building, adopt a bit of the building's sad story and stake out your own little piece. A renovated space reminds you that you are the public, and that you are a spectator who will have too eventually go away. Abandoned buildings are also clearly in danger, and subject to disappear without warning or comment. I think the first time I became aware of the visual landscape of a city was when I first moved to Portland and was walking by a recently demolished building. I strained my memory to think what building was there; I knew something was there, some building that was at least four stories tall, but I couldn’t remember what it was or what it looked like. A parking structure with an Office Depot and Kitchen Kaboodle on the ground floor has since been built in its place. I remember thinking that there should have been some plaque, or some memorial set to remind people of what used to be there, the history of that particular corner, and a gesture to all the memories associated with that space.
In Detroit, a lot of the abandoned buildings are pretty easy to sneak in to, and once inside you realize that you are in a different dimension. My friend Kristine and I walked right into a giant old Ford manufacturing plant that is now just a lumbering compound of decay. The floor was thick with remnants of the old ceiling, and a heady bouquet of toxic, mildewy scents filled the air. It felt more like walking into a cave than a building. We stumbled into some illegal metal salvagers who had driven a truck right into the plant and were tearing sheets of metal off the ceiling, and it was clear that we had just walked into the wild west, or maybe the age of the dinosaurs, where a hole new set of laws and realities applied. A lot of the buildings in Detroit have been damaged as much by vandals and salvagers as they have been by the natural elements. Elaborate marble carvings from old buildings are stolen and sold on the black market, and then mysteriously appear in new buildings as far off as Chicago and San Francisco. And apparently something like 400,000 feet of cooper wire has been stripped from the walls of the once-magnificent train station. Then there is just plain vandalism, like in the case of the majestic old UA Theatre, which was just torn and battered to pieces, leaving perhaps one of the greatest movie palaces of all time an utter mess of smashed statues and ripped fixtures. The theft and vandalism gets me pretty mad, but when I think about the history of Detroit and figure that the perpetrators are probably people who had their entire livelihoods yanked out from underneath them by the auto industry, it seems a little more justifiable. I mean, what has happened to all the buildings in Detroit has happened to the people as well. I'd want to steal all I could too, and then smash the old memories into the ground so no one else could reclaim them. Sometimes it's better to let things die than to let them turn into a theme park.
detroit rock city
Today I find myself in Detroit Michigan, getting ready to show my films at Wayne State University. It is pretty amazing that I made it here- for the past week I have been in a severe mental fog and have barely been able keep my shoe-laces tied, let alone get myself anywhere on time and be half-way presentable. It is my annual post PDX Fest brain melt; I think that I have become pretty good at dealing with stress and keeping things together when I have to, but the minute my brain can relax, it really shuts down. I'll apologize now to anyone who has noticed me zoning out midway through a conversation in the past few days. It's not that I am bored, it's just that my brain is on vacation.
But while I was able to get myself to the airport in time to get on the airplane that got me to Detroit, I am sad to realize that I forgot the little cable that connects my camera to my computer. I think that Detroit might be the most photogenic city in America, and I had big plans of 'blogging the shit' out of my trip to Detroit, complete with photo analysis. This is my second time in Detroit, I was here a couple years ago for the Media City film festival. Pretty much the only traveling I do these days is on these 'work' trips when some school or festival or museum invites me to come and do my little song and dance. This is pretty much how I make a living; I go somewhere and show my films and talk about them, and if it's a school I'll usually do some sort of filmmaking workshop or student critiques or something. They always pay me much more than I deserve to get paid, and I suppose the big secret is that I would gladly do it for free if I could (but then again I guess that would mean I'd have to have a regular day job which would then prohibit me from taking off time for traveling so much- one of those 'vicious cycle' scenarios).
But anyways, back to Detroit. Detroit is a crazy, messed up place that I find fascinating and beautiful. Less than a century ago, Detroit was competing with New York to become America's grandest, most important city, but now it is an urban wasteland. There are so many beautiful, significant old buildings here that are shuttered up it makes my head spin. It's like passing through the living ruins of an ancient mecca, where the decay is in process. It's hard to tell if the powers that be are waiting for the right time to renovate the buildings, or if they are waiting for nature to take it's course and naturally do away with them. Detroit is a lot like one of those ghost towns I described in a post last week, but on a much grander scale.
It would be very difficult to sum up the issues and conflicts that face Detroit with real accuracy, but the one thing that seems clear is that Detroit is a good example of what happens when a community puts too much faith in a single entity- in this case, the auto industry. Detroit was already a thriving city before Ford and General Motors came along, but in the 1920's, Detroit saw a boom unlike any American city has ever seen. Those corporations became so powerful that they could just completely have their way with this city, and when the time came to pull out, they let this city crumble. The thing that gets me angry is that this is not exactly a poor city. One look at GM's "Renaissance Center" or a drive through some of the outlying suburbs is a clear indication that there is plenty of money floating around here. But instead of taking care of the community that made all this growth possible in the first place, those with wealth have retreated behind walls and have fortified themselves away from the actual city. The economic and racial issues in this town are as blatantly terrible as anywhere I have ever seen, and one has to wonder if this city has deteriorated beyond the point of possible resurrection. The problems here are deep, and far more complicated than I could ever grasp.
But I am excited to do some 'urban spelunking' tomorrow, and maybe i'll even be able to wrangle the right kind of cable to download the pictures I take. Urban Spelunking is huge in this town, so much that I think the city should consider legalizing it and marketing it as a tourist attraction. Maybe they could hire me or Bill Brown or Jem Cohen to make the television commercials: "Come to Detroit to explore the millions of acres of abandoned factories, sky scrappers, warehouses, and famous train stations!" The commercial could have a bunch of attractive young people with flashlights strapped to their heads and wearing safety boots, repelling down one of the elevator shafts at some abandoned Ford manufacturing plant, or maybe looking out at the view of the downtown skyline from the top of the abandoned train station. We could shoot it all in Super 8 Kodachrome. It would be hot.
looking for ghosts
A couple of days ago, me and my pal Bill Brown drove out to Eastern Oregon to search for ghost towns. Bill was in town for the PDX Fest showing his new film "The Other Side," and once the fest was over we jumped in my minivan and drove out to the sticks. Before heading out, we checked in on www.ghosttowns.com, but quickly decided that we should just get on the road and read about it later. It sorta seems wrong to drive all day to see something you saw a picture of on the internet, so we figured it would be better to just get lost and see what happened.
A century ago, the region just south and east of The Dalles, Oregon, was spotted with small farming towns that dated back to the early pioneer days and the Oregon Trail. These little towns started as trading posts and transportation hubs, but for various reasons many of them didn't last long. Some of the towns were on a train line owned by a company that went out of business, while others didn't have an adequate water source. And if that didn't do them in, then the advent of trucks and the highway system left them in the dust (both figuratively and literally). Bill and I were pretty excited to find some of these old ghost towns, and hoped we might even find some ghost tenants, but what we found was that the visual reality of a ghost town is not nearly as romantic as we had thought. I suppose it is expecting too much to be able to drive your minivan on paved, public roads right into a perfectly abandoned ghost town, but we did find some interesting stuff and came to realize that these days it seems like there are three categories of ghost towns existing in Eastern/Central Oregon.
The first type of ghost town is one littered with old, abandoned buildings, but still has a few inhabitants. It would be easy to confuse these ghost towns with a run down trailer park that just happens to be out in the middle of nowhere. Kent, Oregon is a good example of that. There is an old abandoned grain silo that marks the center of town, and a strip of old store fronts that line what one can assume was Main Street. There are several abandoned, ghostly looking houses, but behind them are what appear to be even scarier mobile homes with mean dogs tied up in front of them. There is an old, half burnt down school and an abandoned gas station, and two or three little houses that actually look pretty nice. Kent looks like it stopped being a town several decades ago, but there is another layer of ghostly evidence of the town's second life as a home for old, kooky folk artists. Maybe these were original inhabitants that never left, but my guess is that in the 80s and 90s Kent was a hot bed for back-woods eccentrics. One house in particular was lived in by a guy named Leo Decker, who decorated his yard and house with whirly-birds and other airplane-style paraphernalia. Apparently he was an old air-force pilot who flew in Korea and then spent his last few decades in Kent decorating his yard. On the roof of his house there is a single chair mounted to a platform that is pointed toward Mt Hood, and it was nice to imagine Leo sitting there and watching the sun set. But these days it looks like old Leo has either passed on or moved away, leaving his house and yard to whether away like the rest of the town.
The second category of ghost town is the type that was probably a really cool ghost town twenty years ago until somebody came along and renovated it in hopes of it becoming a tourist attraction. This is about as disappointing a ghost town as you could find. Sure, it's cool to see some old buildings, but at a certain point you can't even tell the difference between the old, original buildings and the new, fake ones. Shaniko, Oregon is a perfect case in point. The ghosts in Shaniko have clearly been run off, replaced with busloads of Elder Hostels, and the entire place just takes on the vibe of some big Las Vegas theme-park casino. Scary, for sure, but certainly not ghostly. What is even scarier is that the town's renovation is being financed by super-rich-super-freak Robert Pamplin Jr. I am all for the renovation of old buildings, but there just seems to be something wrong with the idea of visiting a ghost town and finding soft-serve ice cream and machines that will smash a penny into a personally engraved souvenir, especially when you know it's funded by the guy who brought the world "Bible Man."
The third type of ghost town are those that simply are no longer there. If you stop and look really hard you might be able to identify were the old train tracks had been, or maybe find an old foundation or pile of rusty metal artifacts, but for the most part everything is gone. But the one thing that probably is still there if you look hard enough is the cemetery. The old town cemetery is the one thing that the wind couldn’t knock down, a fire couldn't burn down, and a farmer wouldn’t plow over. It seems to me like these are the real ghost towns- the ones that only leave a scant trace and a lot of questions. Ghosts are notorious for hiding out and playing tricks on you, and what is more mysterious than an entire town that has vanished?
Bill and I got to wondering if a town that becomes a ghost town feels self-conscious about it. I mean, is a town that stops being a town considered a failure, or is it kind of like retirement? It seems like there might be a joy in being able to go back to nature, and not have to bear the weight of a city or feel jackhammers pounding into your back. But I could also imagine that there could be a sense of failure, as the ghost town sees other towns around it grow and prosper. I think my favorite ghost town in Oregon is a town called Friend. It’s mostly on some rancher's private property, so you can't really hang out there for too long, but it consists of one abandoned store, an abandoned school, and an old cemetery. You can make out the grade that the old train tracks once sat on, and you can tell by the placement of the buildings that the town was fairly big. But now it is primarily wheat fields, and it seems perfectly content to sway back and forth with the breeze and greet the occasional ghost town hunter or lost road tripper with a sense of calm melancholy.
blink twice if you can hear me
I always seem to get in on new trends way late. I used to pretend that I was my own island of coolness and just too far ahead of the curve to be appreciated by the masses, but I have long abandoned that notion and given into the fact that I am just not with it. blogging is a perfect case in point. here I am, nearly half way into 2006, just now losing my web-log-virginity. there probably is already some new thing that the cool kids are all into these days, but here I am, jumping on the wagon days/months/years after the fact. but maybe that's a good thing. maybe trends don't really pass, but just weed out those who aren't committed. either way, I still feel like I'm trapped in a never-ending game of catch-up.
looking at the archives of other urban honking blogs, it looks like most blogger's first entries usually consist of either a very basic "test / is this thing working?" style entry, or a simple introduction of the blog or the blog writer: "hello, my name is (blank) and this blog will be about (blank) and (blank)."
I figure I'll skip the whole self descriptive "welcome to my blog" entry, since I figure there is more than enough info about me on my website at www.rodeofilmco.com. And as far as what the theme of this blog is going to be, well, at this point I'm really not sure. I mean, it'll be about a lot of things, but I am not setting out to do anything specific. I suppose it will be a receptacle for passing observations, spontaneous brainstorms, notes from the road, angry rants, and images captured by my camera.
I know that mining old content for a blog is sort of against the whole point of blogging, but when I took the following picture last fall while on tour in Europe, I distinctly remember thinking how I wish I had a blog to post it on. So with that I'd like to throw out a giant THANK YOU to Mike and the Urban Honking team for helping me put this together, and thank you for checking it out. hopefully something interesting will happen.
