………………………………………….(ignore April 30, 2017 publish date – this was published on July 11, 2022)

 

…………until – oh, I don’t know – a big birthday next month maybe?

These 3 “leftover” shoots contain some of the best shots I got this Independence Day season. As mentioned earlier, I shot the Paramus show on July 3. On July 2, 2 shows were postponed until July 9 because of the threat of bad weather (which never happened), so I shot those this past Saturday.

All 3 were shot through glass looking west. You’ve seen enough of my eastern view. Here’s my western view, as seen 15 minutes before things got underway Saturday: 

 

Here’s what I shot (in ascending order, quality-wise).

Fair Lawn (6 miles away and dull, dull, dull) I only picked one:

 

Paramus (5 miles away and several steps up) got a dozen. This first one is actually 2 shots: boy and girl amoebas. The pretty girl is on the left with WAY too much lipstick on her 26 lips and the unsubtle boy on the right has his grabby tentacles hanging out in her direction………typical:

 

No more stories – just Paramus pix:

 

Maywood (3 miles away) is the clear winner, if for no other reason than variety in colors and shapes (pay attention, hometown). That’s why 17 of their shots headline (and close) this post:

 

 

Next up: a huge, bi-annual post that I started putting together last month.

 

 

 

…………………………………………….. (Ignore April 30, 2017 publish date – this was published on July 17, 2022)

 

This took forever to put together and may take you longer to get through. Hopefully, it’s worth it (take small bites and I hope you enjoy the variety).

Same deal as last time: all pix are posted in monthly/daily sequence with explanations/comments on the photos that need them. Some you’ve seen in other posts, but most you haven’t.

And when you see the words “PANO” or STITCH”, click once or twice to enlarge.

 

JANUARY

January 1 – This is part of the annual January 1 “Our Lady of the Cloud” Ecuadorian religious procession that goes by my building (just don’t ask me to explain the cow hat):

 

Other January 1 goings-on involving smoking and dogs:

 

 

January 3 – sunset:

 

January 4 – ‘fro:

 

January 5 – tilted squadron:

 

January 7 – night snow:

 

January 9 – straightened squadron heads for Hackensack Hospital:

 

January 10 – like it says, “Cover your head!”:

 

January 11 – I don’t see many sunrises:

 

January 16 – I also don’t see very many love letters in the snow. Hope you saw it, Valentina, whoever you are:

 

January 20 – Looks like a wolf:

 

January 20 – nice break room:

 

January 20 – If the 3 images were put together in a straight line, you’d have the Manhattan skyline at sunset:

 

January 22 – Just a wild guess……….she’s not the 20-something person for whom these balloons were intended:

 

January 28 – Flockin’ around in the snow:

 

January 29 – Smooth exit:

 

January 29 – Make your own caption:

 

January 31 – Sidewalk plow:

 

 

FEBRUARY

February 1 – “Top Fashion”, huh? Coulda fooled me:

 

February 6 – A very lucky shot of a bald eagle in Teaneck, taken from across the Hackensack River in Hackensack with my little Canon pocket camera:

 

February 9 – Tree-trimming next-door under a crane-blocked sun………….

 

February 10 – An insane-looking shot of someone’s front yard in Teaneck:

 

February 10 – Two minutes of sunset movement on Hudson Yards, NYC (taken from home):

 

February 11 (PANO) – At the laundromat:

 

February 12 – Two avian photos on the Hackensack River:

 

February 13 – For a few years, an elderly gentleman has had no driver’s side window, but he drives the car to church every Sunday in ANY kind of weather and parks in the municipal lot:

(There’s another picture of this car in rainy June)

 

Though it’s the same day, there’s no truth to the rumor that this guy’s throwing snowballs at the old guy’s driver-side towel…………at least I hope not:

 

February 14 – (PANO) The view – looking west – from my cardiologist’s treadmill room:

 

February 15 – Scary label:

 

February 15 – Though it looks like a skyward fireball from a ruptured gas main, it’s just another Hudson Yards sunset:

 

February 17 – Looking up YouTube videos on how to walk your dog (Rule 1 – Get a leash):

 

February 18 – Aftermath of fence being head-butted down by inflatable pink thing:

 

February 20 – I posted last year about the need for accurate clocks at a bus facility than depends on strict schedules. Apparently, that’s not a priority and I’ll bet I’ll have to post it again next year:

 

February 20 – Gulls guard WWII submarine USS Ling on the Hackensack River:

 

February 20 – The Ling against the ever-changing Hackensack skyline

 

Time for a plug I never thought I’d have: I had a very similar photo in Sea History magazine (no – I never heard of it either, but how many rock photographers ever got in that mag?). I superimposed the page 5 pic on the cover so I wouldn’t overdo it by posting 2 pix:

 

February 20 – I took this on Main St in Hackensack and that number is not an address:

 

February 20 – The Bergen County Courthouse and the historic First Reformed Church (Church on the Green) from a rarely-seen angle:

 

February 20 – (PANO) Yeah – these things are back again. More to come:

 

February 20 – The Empire State Building and part of Hudson Yards at sunset:

 

February 25 (STITCH – click TWICE to fully enlarge) – Early-morning ice on trees in Teaneck (totally melted a half-hour later). Hackensack River and Hackensack buildings at the bottom:

 

February 25 – I’ve never seen a caped crusader wearing a cape with arms:

 

February 27 – (PANO) Stretched-out private jets flying over Route 46 and landing at Teterboro Airport:

I haven’t found anybody doing this type of photography yet.

 

February 27 – Meanwhile, back at the bus depot………….

 

 

MARCH

March 5 – The two-meter trash toss (I still love stop-action):

 

March 6 – From my kitchen window on a Sunday morning:

 

March 8 – (PANO) How is this super-long fire truck going to be able to turn onto that side street? And how did it manage to get where it is in the first place?

 

March 11 – It’s my understanding that Minnie Mouse usually consumes babies only when they’re awake:

 

March 11 – This guy walked across the parking lot with his finger stuck in his ear:

 

March 12 – Might not be the most aerodynamic wet kite on the market:

 

March 17 – I took this picture because the Fire Chief isn’t wearing her seat belt:

 

March 18 – They never stop building around here:

 

March 19 – This is the vicious creature that head-butted a fence down on February 18:

 

March 19 – Happy child and loving Mom (click to enlarge):

 

March 25 – Welcome to the Construction Site Games. I’m not sure what the left one is called, but the right one looks like King Of The Hill:

 

March 25 – (PANO) Anybody want to guess what this is?

 

March 25 – (PANO) I thought this would make a nice PANO shot (if only they had cleaned up the grass area). BTW – 210 Main is that tall building on the left side – a former bank where I once shot from the roof:

 

 

March 26 – (PANO) I have churches on either side of my building and another one across the street. The reason I like this picture is because I’m standing in the backyard/playground of the church across the street and included the gorgeous steeple of the church to my south:

 

Meanwhile, in the front of the church stand these…………skinny traffic cones? (Not a PANO, but may enlarge somewhat):

 

March 26 – Dunno if these show the same umbrella, but the second one WAS taken only 3 shots later, so they very well may be:

 

March 30 – Architectural variety in my neighborhood:

 

March 30 – (PANO) Weird: Bikes & Bruce

 

March 30 – (PANO) Parkway Toyota truck:

 

March 31 – Some people just can’t read:

 

 

APRIL

April 2 – Teterboro Airport-bound private jet appears to pass over the World Trade Center (but it’s really over New Jersey):

 

April 2 – Friends:

 

April 2 – (PANO) Long, bent Mustang (shot from my living room):

 

April 4 – Long, bent school bus (shot from my back room):

 

April 4 – Shopping for………a Guess?

 

April 5 – (PANO) Longest bus in town:

 

April 6 – From about a quarter-mile away, it looks like a chain-link fence that has 30-40’ of its height buried underground is being pulled out. I’m sure that’s not what’s going on, so send me your much-better guesses:

 

April 8 – Uh-oh! Is he thinking of jumping? I’m not worried…………he’s on the first floor:

 

April 11 – 4-pack of PANOs:

The long and short of it…………..

 

 

 

 

April 12 – 5-Pack of 3 regular and 2 PANOs:

 

 

This is a restaurant that’s about 4 blocks from where I live. I think the city’s OK with the name as long as they don’t add a “Q” to it:

 

 

Unless that headgear is edible, you can’t pay for it with Food Stamps:

 

April 13 – Baby Bella mushrooms – my favorite!

 

April 16 – Every Saturday, a car dealership 3 blocks from me puts on balloon displays as if seeing these will make people who are driving by suddenly get the urge to pull in and buy a new car:

 

April 16 – (PANO) I don’t know the purpose of all those wheels, but it looks cool:

 

April 16 – (PANO) Speaking of cool, look at the size of this car turning past the FAMOUS White Manna Hamburger joint that Guy Fieri featured in one of his shows (look it up):

 

April 19 – (PANO) I have NEVER seen a cloud event like what’s going on behind Manhattan (above the sunlit brick apartment building on the right):

 

April 20 – From my living room, I saw these girls setting up a phone against the black pole to film themselves dancing. Was this a TikTok tribute to 4/20?

 

April 22 – As I was walking by a construction site, I saw part of a worker – who was 3 or 4 stories up – pop out every few seconds, so I zoomed in as I was about to pass the building:

 

April 22 – My favorite car-carrier photo:

 

April 23 – I wanna know exactly what he’s wearing under that hoodie that ends with pom-poms…………and what’s around his right shoe:

 

April 23 – And what’s this guy noshing on? I’m guessing gherkins:

 

April 23 – Outside of a church!

 

April 24 – My PANO selfie……….even here, ridiculously-long vehicles find me:

 

April 27 – Private jets land on a Main St building?

 

April 27 – I’ve heard of carrying a grudge, but carrying a crutch?

 

April 27 – (STITCH) Nice shot of Manhattan, but all the illuminated buildings are in New Jersey:

 

April 29 – Remember these prices? (found at a local abandoned station…………not sure I understand the second one):

 

April 29 – Right across the street from that station was this kind of cool-looking car (I’ll bet IT remembers those gas prices):

 

April 30 – (PANO) Decidedly less cool-looking are this Mom and Dad and their cute little two-wheeler:

 

April 30 – I have no idea what this is supposed to be, but it was quite colorful and I didn’t have to leave my apartment to shoot it.

 

April 30 – A nice way to end the month (maybe I should have left my apartment to partake).

 

 

MAY

May 1 – (PANO) The longest antique fire engine you’ll ever see:

 

May 1 – (PANO) The shortest hover car you’ll ever see (and one of the weirdest school buses you’ll ever see):

 

May 1 – (PANO) The sky was looking a bit odd so I tried to do a PANO of it with limited success (but I DID manage to get my apartment in the shot):

 

May 1 – I’m guessing that since the bag says “Giant Farmers Market”, she’s trying to carry giant vegetables (click to enlarge):

 

May 6 – (already captioned)

 

May 7 – Is this a Happy Mother?

 

May 7 – The yellow and red are nice touches:

 

May 8 – Shiny happy people

 

May 10 – Not everyone in Hackensack can tell you what this is, but I can tell you I once attended a KISS convention there:

 

May 14 – The hoodie protects his hat, I guess:

 

May 14 – It looks like I just gave birth to a Strat lookalike:

 

May 18 – A pretty serious-looking mockingbird:

 

May 21 – Just two people I happened to see on the same day:

 

May 24 – Looking down from my living room………shameful!

 

May 24 – And while I was hanging out of my window shooting garbage, I happened to take what might be my best shot of the (half) year:

 

May 25 – Looks like something major was going on, but nothing happened:

 

May 28 – Doing pointing work on a nearby building:

 

May 28 – Mr. Excitement:

 

May 28 – GrubHub?

 

May 30 – Balloon Guy:

 

May 30 – (PANOs) At and under the George Washington Bridge on Memorial Day:

 

May 30 – (PANO) Home from the GWB (just got off the bus). I live on the roof of the brick building (not the visible top floor):

 

 

JUNE

June 1 – I thought socks with sandals/crocs was a fashion faux pas. Well, at least the dog isn’t wearing any socks with his white crocs:

 

June 3 – Active pooch:

 

June 4 – Teamwork:

 

June 5 – I wonder if Sniff ‘n’ the Tears had this vehicle in mind back in 1978:

Anybody remember this one-hit wonder?

 

June 5 – Six daytime carnival shots (5 are PANOs):

 

June 7 – I got hit! As I was making a left off a busy street, the guy at the side street’s stop sign – also making a left – miscalculated when I’d be past him, hit the gas early and smacked me on the back end – utter stupidity!

 

June 8 – Interesting apparatuses, colors, reflections:

 

June 11 Busy day (and night)!

Day – Three more boom lift images:

 

Parking lot people:

Night – Six carnival images (the last one is a PANO):

 

June 12 – We saw this car on February 13 with the same towel “protecting” him from snow. Today, it’s rain:

 

June 15 – (PANO) A school bus from the Bergenfield Board of Gibberish goes past my building:

 

June 16 – (PANO) DHL’s got Main St covered…………literally:

 

June 17 – I just happened to see this group of balloons flying by. It was windy that day, so this was the only shot I could get. The church is St Joseph’s in Bogota and the building behind it is a high-rise in Cliffside Park that overlooks the Hudson River. It’s hard to believe, but there are a couple of towns and a valley between the two buildings:

 

June 18 – Day and night views of two boom lifts (one shows a moonrise at 12:14am):

 

June 18 – Parking lot people (and yes – I was tempted to write “TitTatToes” for one of them, but I won’t):

 

June 18 – (PANO) “City of WHAT?”

 

June 18 – Another lonely balloon flown on a Saturday by a car dealership. Did that make you suddenly crave a new Toyota?

 

June 23 – The Dog Waste project (click to enlarge):

 

June 23 – Distant sunset (aren’t they all?) from my kitchen:

 

June 24 – Distant turkey vulture (red head = dead giveaway):

 

June 25 – Things on my window:

 

June 25 – “It’s a text from the dog”

 

June 25 – Sixteen minutes later……….

 

June 25 – The first two pictures are normal, but why is she holding the poop bag so close to her face in the third one? Yuck!

 

June 25 – (PANO) There are a lot of bikers in my building:

 

June 25 – (PANO) So I was shooting PANOs on one-way State St (the other end of the parking lot) when I suddenly hear a car behind me going the wrong way. Since I was already set up for PANOs, I immediately started following him to see what he would do when (and if) he realized his mistake. He figured it out pretty quickly and made a very long left into the parking lot:

 

June 26 – She remind you of anybody?

 

June 28 – Some early fireworks from somewhere south of me:

 

June 29 – A very interesting-looking gentleman:

 

June 29 – These were parked differently every night (more variety for the camera):

 

That’s it!

Think you can sit through another one in 6 months?

 

 

 ……………………………………………(ignore April 30, 2017 publish date – this was published on August 5, 2022)

 

(NOTE: When you see the word PANO, click that image once or twice to fully enlarge it. Click on Return to get back to where you were.)

 

I woke up ridiculously early (4:50am, I think) one morning last week and could NOT get back to sleep. The sun began to rise and that didn’t help, so I decided to get up and shoot what I don’t normally see, lighting-wise.

For example, I don’t normally see NYC buildings just south of Central Park lit like this:

 

But what really caught my eye had nothing to do with the sun. It was the unusual electrical lighting atop new construction right here in Hackensack. It looked like giant fireflies randomly flittering about.

I decided to look closer. That didn’t really tell me anything, but zooming in had the effect of scrunching Manhattan’s buildings so that they looked like they were only a few blocks away:

 

Those pix were taken a little after 5:30am. The prize of the early AM was this shot of the World Trade Center. I had never seen just that one side illuminated AND reflecting the sun. That was taken at 5:59am:

 

I wondered how things were looking in the other direction. Here are some Hackensack high-rises at 6:06am:

 

I’m NEVER out that early, but it was a nice, cool morning (for a change), so out I went.

Two blocks away, I saw some neighbors looking out their windows. Some looked pretty gorgeous for this 6:15am PANO:

Oh, wait – that’s the Parisian Beauty Academy, where they always look good.

 

Something else I’ve never seen before………..empty Main St and the early morning light on the buildings and the never-ending redevelopment construction (PANO):

 

I walked a block down Main and took the side street to get a closer look at that construction project (PANO):

 

I really should have come back in the afternoon when this very colorful side was sunlit, so I semi-saturated the colors instead:

 

Heading back down the side street, I noticed this fish crow with food in his feet that he quickly transferred to his bill:

He fumbled the transfer and promptly dropped it at 648am. Fortunately, I was quicker than he was and it was quite tasty (hey – I hadn’t had breakfast yet).

 

Speaking of fish crows, I have these two loose pix that I took on a different day and am not gonna make a separate post about, so I’ll slip them in here.

This one appears to be looking for me:

Maybe he’s the one whose food I stole.

 

In this poor quality image, it appears he found me:

He looks a bit PO’d.

 

Back to our show…………

 

It’s now 703am. I’m walking through the field at Foschini Park toward the Hackensack River and encounter a gaggle of geese at breakfast time:

One hangs in the back to keep an eye on intruders with cameras.

 

I reach the Midtown Bridge over the river at 718am and see something I’ve never seen before…………a truck on the railroad tracks that cross the river:

You can also see the Bergen County Courthouse and the steeple of the historic First Reformed Church, known locally as the Church on the Green.

 

While you were looking at that last pic, did you also happen to notice a WORLD WAR II SUBMARINE?

It’s the USS Ling.

 

It’s now around 730am and I’m walking northward near the river. On the other side is the town of Bogota (PANO):

 

A couple of minutes later, I encounter a groundhog/woodchuck (groundchuck?) who’s heading toward the river:

 

At the northern end of the park, the northbound river makes a sudden left westward at a section known as Kipp’s Bend. The shrubbery is fairly dense all along the river, but one spot opens up where you can’t go any further north.

I walk in the semi-muddiness to the water and look to my left………..Hello! Two ducks are sitting on a big rock that’s surrounded by water:

 

I’m on their sun side, so I verticalize my camera so I can get them, the rock and their reflections in the river:

 

An even cooler shot presented itself when one of them was either sharing a drink or making out with his reflection:

 

As the park’s path continued on westward, I saw some flowers and a lot of bees, who – thankfully – showed no interest in me or the camera that I was trying to maneuver toward them.

I caught this one in mid-air, but I wanted something closer:

 

This is the best I could do:

Fuzzy little guy, ain’t he?

 

By now, it was just after 8am – time to head home for breakeast that was a bit more substantial than fish crow fumblings.

I didn’t sleep or nap at all the rest of the day – I was too busy editing nearly 3 hours of early morning photography (and yawning non-stop).

 

Slept like a baby that night, however.

 

 

………………………………………(ignore April 30, 2017 publish date – this was published on August 17, 2022)

 

                                         (No pictures!)

 

How the hell did this happen today at exactly 5:00am?

I’d been just cruising along doing all the normal things, like going to Woodstock, having a science career, becoming a college faculty member, photographing almost every rock star in existence, getting published globally in hundreds of magazines and books and now moderating a local history site and leisurely shooting everything else in existence and posting it all as if it might be of interest to someone and this is what I get for it all? OLD?

Just think……..if I could sing – or actually play one of my guitars – I might have been able to add “rock star” to the list……………AND maybe I could have even had the chance to professionally photograph myself while performing! That would have been a first! 

Enough self-pity. There’s no sense in bitching about that which is unalterable, so instead, I sought professional counseling and met a support team consisting of two voice coaches (of sorts): Dr. V. Odka and a VERY loud volume controller, who goes by “Pioneer”.

Together, they created a mimicker who could hit a few notes, but only in their presence (meaning I won’t be touring).

So here’s the result (recorded four days ago………..and crank the volume WAY up):

 

Whaddaya think? Bear in mind that I’ve only had LVI years to practice “Little Girl” and that I “borrowed” it from a Syndicate (of Sound). I hope they don’t have a pair of cement shoes waiting for me after they hear this.

 

Thanks for reading, listening and for not posting a laugh track in response.

Hey – you only hit LXXV (a Super Bowl designation in 19 years) once!

 

 

………………………………………..(ignore April 30, 2017 publish date – this was published on September 1, 2022)

 

………….don’t exist here.

Even though this has been the hottest, most humid August I can remember, I’m fortunate to be able to see and photograph so many different things without ever leaving my A/C’d apartment…………with two exceptions:

– Driving home from food shopping, I was stopped for a train and shot a Jersey Central train engine that looked like it was about to demolish the old, pink Cranberry Junction ice cream place (near misses on a daily basis)

– One morning was nice enough to go out and shoot a huge pile of dirt by Main and Berry.

 

Other than that, it was solid August ICE-olation at home.

 

SO……….here’s what I got to shoot from home – chronologically – from August 6 to the 30th.      Be sure to click on the four PANOS to enlarge them.

 

1. (August 6) Men of Many Shirts (apparently, if you wear a red shirt, you MUST cover your head with a dark shirt):

 

2. (August 12) Looking south during a great sunset. I don’t know what lit-up building that is or in what NJ town it’s in, but it’s the perfect exclamation point for this image:

 

3. (August 13) This is the huge pile of dirt 4 blocks away at Main and Berry as I saw it from my living room. This pic got me to go out early that morning to shoot this while the sun was still shining on that side of it:

 

4,5,6. (August 13) These are 3 PANO shots I took when I got there. I imagine these will look quite strange to see 20 years after whatever gets built there:

 

7. (August 18) Peeping Tom at the Middle School practicing for the new school year?

 

8. (August 18) The HFD at the Walgreens strip mall 5-6 blocks away at Anderson and Linden, as seen from my kitchen. No idea why they were there:

 

9. (August 18) This is the shadow of the First Presbyterian Church’s steeple on the State St side of 389 Main:

 

10,11. (August 19, 20) Skies at sunset on consecutive nights:

 

12. (August 23) The latest bug scourge around here is the spotted lanternfly, which is native to China and was first detected in Pennsylvania in September 2014. Spotted lanternfly feeds on a wide range of fruit, ornamental and woody trees, with tree-of-heaven being one of the preferred hosts. Spotted lanternflies are invasive and can be spread long distances by people who move infested material or items containing egg masses. If allowed to spread in the United States, this pest could seriously impact the country’s grape, orchard, and logging industries.

So why is the first one I’ve ever seen on the outside screen of my living room window, 7 floors up, with nary a tree in sight?

 

13. (August 23) Hackensack, Ridgefield, NYC. We start with a blue truck on the roof of a new parking garage. Peeling back the layers, we see a newer building being constructed behind it, the towers of the PSE&G facility by the NJ Turnpike in Ridgefield and Hudson Yards in Manhattan:

 

14. (August 23) This PANO looks EAST during a great sunset (which you can see reflected in the windows of the top floor of the brick building that’s left of center):

 

15. (August 24) This shot from my kitchen shows the back end of a large demolition project 3 blocks away on Anderson St, where the well-known Rudy’s Restaurant used to be………..as a train goes by:

 

16. (August 25) This shows the Central New Jersey (? – I’m in northern NJ) engine whizzing by the aforementioned Cranberry Junction ice cream place:

 

17,18. (August 27) From my apartment, I could see something being set up early on a Saturday morning at the Middle School. I hadn’t ever seen a DJ set up in a soccer goal net before, so this was a picture worth taking. An hour or so later, I saw a bunch of people there. I couldn’t make out what was being said from the “stage”, but later, people were dancing (not shown). I still have no idea what this was all about:

 

19. (August 27) Nice sunset behind a couple of hi-rises:

 

20. (August 30) The building being constructed had been red and green for the last month or two, but I noticed one day that it suddenly acquired a couple of other colors. From my perspective, this side of the building is lit up by the sun in the morning. Of course, the next two mornings were cloudy, but I finally got it on the 30th (and spent the 31st writing this up):

 

Not a bad month for a heat/humidity-hounded, home-bound hermit photographer.

 

 

……………………………………..(ignore April 30, 2017 publish date – this was published on September 13, 2022)

 

NOTE: More than half of these images are large and should be clicked to get the full effect.

 

From about 15 miles away, I took this photo from my Hackensack apartment on September 11, 2001, as Tower 2 collapsed and began to spread throughout lower Manhattan:

 

Last week on September 10, I photographed the Tribute in Light from my living room. It’s not the best shot of it I’ve ever taken………it was a cloudy evening, but it was supposed to rain the next day (the 11th), so I got what I could:

 

I was aware of a Tribute that was to be held on the 11th in front of the Hackensack Fire Department Headquarters……….

 

………but something else caught my eye on the morning of the 10th while I was out on Main St shooting at a construction site:

 

The HFD HQ is not on Main St, so what could be going on there from 10am – 2pm on the 11th  that would require the street to be devoid of vehicles?

I called the HPD: I was told that “A 5K Remembrance Run that begins at the Atlantic St Park, heads up Main St and ends at Cranberry Junction” (an ice-cream place…………..a nice way to end a run):

 

I looked it up and found this nice-looking ad with a misspelled title:

 

I decided to go out on the morning of the 11th and walk down Main St towards the Atlantic St Park starting point – almost a mile away – at 10am. I apparently paid more attention to the sign on the meter (10am-2pm) and thought that’s when they started (the ad clearly stated ”11am – 1pm”).

My thought was that if I left at 10 when they supposedly started, I would see the huge crowd of runners coming at me somewhere along the way and would get a great shot of them all running toward me.

I got about 4 blocks from home and saw a cop blocking a side street. I asked him if he knew if they had started yet. He looked at me strangely and said “They don’t start until 11”.

Oops!

I went back home and repeated the same plan at 11am. SURELY, I would see the group coming up Main St then.

Starting at Passaic St, it was odd to see Main St without a single moving or parked car on it…………in fact, I had never EVER seen it like that before (and I’ve been here a long time). So I walked right down the center stripes of the road and started taking pictures of the long and empty street before the running mob showed up.

 

For all you locals, I started the pix at Berry St. You can see the construction site and the Emergency/No Parking cardboard signs on meters and poles that I had shot the day before:

 

Still walking on those center stripes a block later, I took another shot at Camden St by the library (on the left). The runners were going to show up at any minute:

 

Out of nowhere, I hear an engine behind me………….it’s a street sweeper! I managed to elongate it a bit with my phone’s PANO setting as it went by:

 

For the next couple of minutes, it kept going up and down the same two blocks and cleaning the same few feet by the curbs (but no other part of the street). I guess experienced 5K runners know to stick close to the curbs when they run so they don’t trip on microscopic things:

 

Just to be complete – in case someone someday writes a book about carless Main Streets – I turned around and shot the northerly view of what I had just traversed:

 

Finally, I reached the railroad tracks that cross Main St just before the intersection with Mercer St. I stood right in the middle of the tracks in the middle of Main St and tried to do a 360-degree PANO shot, but couldn’t pirouette fast enough or horizontally-perfect enough, but I DID manage to get both Main St directions and both RR directions (click this one twice):

I shouldn’t tell you this, but I wasn’t able to get the whole Dominican restaurant (on the right) in the PANO – meaning that I also didn’t get the east-facing tracks – so I took another shot that included those things and tried to stitch it to the PANO. Not everything lined up, but if you didn’t notice that until I just mentioned it to you, then I did an OK job.

 

So now I’m about 2’ past the tracks and facing the Mercer St intersection. Where are the runners? I need a good length of Main St fore and aft of them to get the shot I want and I’m now more than halfway there:

 

NOTE: I’m sticking in a shot I took 48 hours later just to show you what it normally looks like from behind the wheel and a little further back from the tracks. Now you know why carless Main looked SO uniquely odd to me:

 

I’ve just crossed the intersection and have turned around to shoot where I’ve been and to also include the relatively new instruction painted on the street (“BLOCK NOT DO”):

 

As I approach Atlantic St, I hear an HPD motorcycle behind me and (only semi-successfully) give him the PANO treatment:

 

I make a right onto Atlantic and see some people in the small park. I’m guessing that the crowd of 5K participants must be lining up around the corner, so I go into the park and immediately face east to take this shot:

 

I then do an about-face and take a much-wider PANO of the other 3 sides of the park (click this one twice to fully-enlarge):

Are these friends and family of the runners?

 

I decided to hang out between the park and Main St so I can get a wide shot when all the runners come out to line up.

 

15-20 minutes later, it happens:

That’s it? The friends and family are the runners? It appears there’s been a slight miscalculation on my part.

I immediately get back on Main St, but there’s no time to run up the street and shoot the runners head-on because they’re already coming around the corner onto Main (at 11:35am).

 

Here’s the most-populated shot I could get:

 

And here’s my favorite shot of the event:

I’m fortunate that Hackensack placed that electronic sign there.

 

Everyone’s now past me, so this shoot is finished.

 

 

But there’s still the tribute at the HFD HQ that’s scheduled for noon. It’s only a few blocks away, but I have something to do at home at noon, so I’ll see what I can get on my way home. It’s a little early, but a lot less crowded.

 

Here’s the entire scene about 15-20 minutes before show time (double-click):

 

I like getting setting-up shots, so I was right on time for this one:

 

Here’s a shot taken from underneath the covered seating for speakers and guests and the podium they spoke from (double-click):

 

I’m done……………and I made it home by noon.

 

I found a 19-minute YouTube video of the HFD HQ proceedings, but the sound is terrible:

 

 

 

It’s now the 13th. I just drove from Cranberry Junction to the Atlantic Street Park. It was 1.4 miles (5K is 3.1 miles). Even if they included the run back to the starting point, it’s still not 5K. And now I’m noticing that some of the ads say “5K” and some do not. The one I posted above does not.

Some ads say it’s a “Remembrance Run/Walk” and not 5K, so I’m guessing that’s what it actually was.

In the end, it really doesn’t matter, so congratulations to all the thoughtful people who participated.

 

Local curiosity: Has anyone else ever walked down the center stripe of Main St from Passaic St to Atlantic St (0.7 miles) when there was not a single vehicle – driven or parked – on the entire road?

 

……………………………………………(ignore April 30, 2017 publish date – this was published on September 20, 2022)

I haven’t seen my brother Ed (right) since last century, so I was pleasantly surprised when I got an email from him in early July stating that he and his second wife, Linda – whom I hadn’t yet met – were coming east from San Antonio in mid-September.

We met here last Saturday morning – September 17. It turns out that he had never been to the Great Falls in Paterson, so – like with the Colorado Contingent four years earlier – that was our destination.

 

But first, we decided to take a two-block walk to the church where we were baptized and the grammar school we had both attended for proper torturing by the nuns to make us the men we are today.

I think he was surprised that the nuns no longer lived in the convent and the school had become a public charter school for the arts and sciences, yet still bore huge crosses carved into the exterior walls and “HOLY TRINITY SCHOOL” carved in large letters above the main entrance.

Linda liked the look of the 90-year-old church, so we crossed the street for a closer inspection. The doors were locked, so we walked around the edifice. Toward the back and between the church and the rectory, we encountered a man named Joseph, who had something to do with taking care of the church.

After speaking with him for a while, he let us into the church through a side door and basically became a tour guide of sorts, though Ed and I made him aware of our familiarity with the premises via Ed’s experiences as an altar boy and my observations that the configuration of the confessionals was different and that the baptismal font – where Ed and I (and our sisters and Ed’s kids) had Holy Water poured on our heads – was missing.

As we were winding things up back near the altar, I started taking a couple of quick panoramic pictures of that front area. Since I didn’t really spend the time to get what I wanted – and I really should have backed up a bit – I decided to show the one that included Joseph’s head, as he spoke with Ed and Linda. Click twice to fully enlarge and start scrolling:

 

Time to head to Paterson and the falls.

 

I used to try to make a point of visiting the falls after large rain deluges to get the best shots of the majestic falls, so it’s unfortunate that this visit occurred during a drought. The falls were a bit puny, so I took very few pictures of them.

Instead, I looked for (and found) other things, like this algae bloom (click to enlarge):

 

Or this fisherman in an area that I think is off-limits:

What is that two-handed technique he’s using? IS that fishing or something else entirely different?

 

This all took place in the Overlook area where you first come in after parking your car.

 

From there, we walked up about a hundred steps and around the corner to get to the entrance to the pedestrian bridge over the falls. I had told E&L that the bridge had been closed for over a year due to safety issues and wouldn’t reopen until 2024, so we went as far as we could…………first past the pre-falls:

 

…….and then right up to the bridge:

 

That closure meant a 4 or 5-block hike around the park’s periphery to a lookout point where you can barely make out the pedestrian bridge to the left of center and see the street bridge to the right that we just walked across:

You can see a little mist in the air below the American flag. During much better Passaic River flow, you would see a lot more.

 

We saw something else from this vantage point:

Unfortunately, we also saw the package’s contents nearby. Let’s just say that it was not in new, unused condition.

 

Continuing on, I took a couple shots of Puny Falls:

 

When we arrived at the other end of the closed bridge, we saw a guy sitting near it. We had seen him from the other side of the bridge a half-hour before and he was still in the same spot, seemingly concentrating on something.

All of a sudden, he got all excited as a small mammal appeared out of the bushes. “I got it! A beaver!”

It was a woodchuck…………big difference.

 

Meanwhile, I took a closeup shot of the flag blocking the sun that had been blinding me until this moment:

 

So much for our visit to the Great Falls.

 

But there was a Part 2 bonus in this trip that was just across the street: Hinchliffe Stadium – one of two Negro Leagues stadia still in existence.

I’ve featured this dilapidated stadium in previous posts when trees and bushes were growing out of its concrete bleacher-type seats. It’s now undergoing a major renovation to make it a usable stadium once again. A minor league baseball team – the New Jersey Jackals – has left Yogi Berra Stadium in Montclair, NJ, and will be moving into Hinchliffe. And since the stadium is now part of the Great Falls National Park, this will become a side-by-side double-attraction/major destination.

We walked across the street. There have been a LOT of changes since I was last here a year ago. The murals on the outside walls are gone and new buildings have gone up: a parking garage, another residential building and a stadium museum.

Here’s the museum:

 

As usual, I really wanted to get inside the stadium and document the progress, but everything was blocked off…………..well, almost everything. I found an opening and – not wanting to be detected – I decided to run in and take ONE picture and get out.

There was no work being done on a Saturday morning, so the place was deserted, but I was not gonna press my luck – ONE picture and OUT!

But what a picture it is! (Click twice to fully-enlarge):

It’s not a full 360-degree panoramic shot – I couldn’t spin around fast enough to beat the moving camera arrow – but I think I got most of the important stuff. The yellowish residential building in the center has been there a while and further to the right, you can see the being-built, new residential building and the much closer new parking garage.

You can also see that there’s a lot more to be built behind my position, but I’ve got my one shot and it’s time to exit.

We walked around to the opposite corner of the stadium where you can see the new residential building with the parking garage behind it.

I told Ed that I was gonna take another panoramic shot and asked if he wanted to be in it. To my surprise, he accepted (double-click again):

As I started panning from left to right, I noticed that he started walking from right to left…………..uh-oh.

If you’ve followed my photographic adventures this year, you know that I’ve pretty much exhausted what happens when I take PANO shots when I’m going in the same direction as my subject: elongation of the subject.

Conversely, much stranger things happen when I pan in the opposite direction as my subject (is “de-elongation” a word? How about “squooshed”?).

Ed’s a smart guy who knows computers and cameras. As I started to ask him why he did that, he said, “I know” and mentioned something about becoming thinner.

Well, he partially got his wish (along with a severely-dislocated left wrist/hand).

And I got this picture of my brother to last me until next century (good thing I took that opening selfie of the three of us):

 

All kidding aside, we had a really nice time and Linda is a sweetheart.

Welcome to the family.

 

 

 

 

……………………………………………(ignore April 30, 2017 publish date – this was published on September 30, 2022)

 

I hate Summer heat and absolutely cannot tolerate humidity. I’m just like my father in that regard. My mother couldn’t understand what was wrong with us. “It’s beautiful outside!” (Good – YOU go out!)

Consequently, I rarely go out during Summer days, which means no walks (which makes my cardiologist less than thrilled with me).

No walks means no photowalks – my preferred type of walking – which makes long distances seem a lot shorter to me. They also provide me with a ton of editing work, which keeps me busy when I go home.

So you can imagine how happy I was when the weather suddenly got cooler last Friday. Saturday morning saw me out on a 2-hour photowalk. It was like a release from prison.

 

THE MORNING SHOOT

My favorite walk is a section of the Hackensack River Walkway in Johnson Park (and beyond) that starts about 3 blocks from home and goes north for about a mile. With all the little side trips and the return, it’s a good 3 miles total. And there’s a lot to shoot along the way.

Here’s the first picture I took before I even got on the path (it’s a panoramic, so click it – and all other PANOs – twice to fully-enlarge):

 

Here’s a map of the route I covered. The red X is the start and end point. You can see that there’s a bridge crossing the Hackensack River right there. If you live in Teaneck (as I did), it’s the Cedar Lane Bridge. If you live in Hackensack (as I do), it’s the Anderson Street Bridge:

I got down underneath the bridge at high tide and took the above PANO shot. I’m glad I did because that structure may not be long for this world. It’s been declared structurally unsound and the many bus routes that cross it haven’t been allowed to do so for the last few years and have to go a mile away to cross the river. Supposedly, it’ll be replaced soon.

On to the pathway (black dots on the route map heading north)……………

 

The first odd thing I see is two guys fishing. Why is that odd? Everybody – well, almost everybody – knows you don’t eat anything that comes out of that river:

 

Continuing on, we’re finally getting some colorful growth on some dirt piles:

 

Something colorful is moving on the next dirt pile………..a male American Goldfinch:

 

From a distance, it appeared that there was some more colorful flora to be seen, but………..not quite:

 

There seemed to be a million squirrels running around that day. Here’s one that stopped running to pose:

 

You’ll notice on the map that the path bends around an inlet as it exits Johnson Park. I’m standing on the small bridge over that inlet (before it narrows to becoming a creek), taking this PANO shot:

The river is in the background, running perpendicular to the inlet. The distant middle trees are in Teaneck. I’m now entering the property of the Hackensack campus of Fairleigh Dickinson University. The Teaneck campus (guess where THAT is) will be shown in upcoming images.

As I come around the inlet (on the right) to the point where it meets the river, I come across a few more fishermen, who didn’t want to be photographed (or in this case, PANOgraphed). If you look closely on the left, you can see one of their fishing lines extending downward towards the river:

They were convinced that eating their catch would be OK because “this river is the same as the Hudson River since they meet together”.

Oh, brother………..

First off, they’re assuming that anything from the Hudson is OK to eat (it’s not) and second, I had to explain that these two may be parallel rivers, but they don’t meet. The Hudson flows into the Upper New York Bay and the Hackensack ends at Newark Bay (along with the Passaic River).

I suggested they protect themselves by doing some research on the edibility of the fish in these rivers.

 

Continuing north, I saw these small riverbank openings with seating for one, two or three people (or foolish fishermen):

 

A dining squirrel:

 

Here’s a nice PANO view of (right to left) part of FDU’s Teaneck campus, the pedestrian bridge across the river and the semi-distant statue of a certain gentleman we all know:

 

That gentleman, of course, is Dr. Martin Luther King. To the right of the PANO is a view of the pathway that I had just come up and to the left is the Hackensack entrance to the pedestrian bridge to the Teaneck campus (and I wish his face was on the sun side in the closeup):

 

Before we cross that bridge, I’d like to mention that I was/am quite proud to have been the photographer who documented the truck-to-standing installation and the two-days-later dedication ceremony of that statue eight years ago:

That last one is a PHOTOSTITCH (click twice). And as I wrote on the original 2014 post:

Lastly – and right on the Hackensack side of that pedestrian bridge – is a 4-image stitch taken at the unveiling/dedication of the new Martin Luther King statue, which you saw earlier in this post.

If I recall correctly, everyone was singing “We Shall Overcome”.

 

On to the pedestrian bridge……………..

If you go back to the day’s route map, you can see that I crossed the bridge to take the following two photos.

I took this 180º PANO from the bridge’s midpoint (looking south) to include both campuses:

 

This PANO was taken from the Teaneck side, looking back towards Hackensack:

 

Continuing north on the pathway, you can see a sort of looped area on the route map under where it says “Bergen County Technical Schools”. Within that loop is FDU’s baseball field. My position on the river pathway is on the other side of the center field fence.

From that position, I can look across the field into one of the dugouts and it appears that someone is in it, though the field is deserted. Here’s what I saw when I zoomed in:

Fooled by a cutout!

 

As I continue along the last segment of the pathway toward Rt. 4, I notice a squirrel strolling along the top of a fence. He looks pretty tall in the bottom pic. I never knew a squirrel’s legs were that long:

 

There’s nothing to see when I approach Rt. 4 because of the density of the trees/foliage there. It’s time to head back.

But a couple of things distract me enough to draw me away from the pathway and closer to Hackensack Avenue, which – as you can see on the route map – is sort of parallel to the pathway.

The distractions:

For that second shot, I saw a container/dumpster that was taller than I was. All I could see was a chair wheel poking out the top, so I raised my arms as high as I could and took a small, blind PANO to see what was there…………a keeper!

 

By now, I was close to Hackensack Avenue and since I had never before walked down it from Rt. 4, I decided that would be my return route (white dots on route map) – something different to shoot.

I’ve always been aware of Hackensack Cemetery across the street, but never had occasion to enter it. I crossed the street, but still had no reason to enter it, preferring to shoot what I could from the sidewalk (two clickable PANOs):

 

I seemed to recall some sort of Catholic connection to this place – Holy Trinity School and Church were less than a mile away – so something was sticking in my mind.

As I continued south, Hackensack Cemetery ended and St. Joseph’s Cemetery began right next to it. (A-HA! – the connection I was looking for!):

If you look at my route map, it appears to be two sections of one big cemetery.

 

Again, I didn’t go in, but I did see a couple of familiar surnames from the sidewalk:

I didn’t know these people, but “Foschini” is a well-known name in Hackensack. Foschini Park is a big park in town that was named for a former Hackensack mayor.

 

I didn’t know the man, but I recall the name “Father Van Wie” as being Holy Trinity Church’s pastor:

 

I was very surprised to see two headstones with one word on each: Gatti:

Maria Gatti was a good friend in my class at Holy Trinity. I’m guessing these are for her parents, but I really have no idea.

 

My only incursion onto the property was when I saw these two buildings at the southern end (top). The smaller one is the cemetery office and the larger one is the mausoleum. The stained glass image inside the mausoleum (middle) caught my eye, so I took a shot with my camera against the glass of the door to cut down on reflections and got a nice, clear image (bottom):

 

On the road at the cemetery’s southern border, I saw a small flag laying in the street and that ain’t right. I had seen flags this size by headstones in the cemetery, so I figured it must belong there, so I placed in on their fence:

 

On the western end of that same road is a water company facility with a video-guarded fence. From a distance, I could see some red, white and black………..things, but couldn’t tell what they were without zooming in:

A whole bunch of new fire hydrants – I’ve never seen that many together before. Being horizontal makes them even stranger-looking………..almost like a stockpile of weapons.

 

Continuing south on Hackensack Avenue, the other side of the street started looking more interesting, so I crossed it once again to take these three shots:

BTW – that second image is a PANO and was taken at a long-closed gas station (you can tell by the $2.73/gallon price. After reaching $5.00/gallon around here lately, it’s now in the lower $3s, but nowhere near back at $2.73 yet………and BTW – the right booth tells you there is “NO GAS!”).

 

And here’s your chance for all you Whopper fanatics to own a home or business right next to Burger King!

 

The tall Burger King sign made me notice that its height is not unique on this stretch of road, as this PANO shows:

 

Hackensack Avenue becomes River Street when you get south of Burger King, as the route map indicates.

The last thing to shoot before reaching the starting/ending point is on River St and it closed a couple of years ago:

Can you read it?      (Sears Auto Center)

 

Last pic of the AM shoot……..bent sign shadow on my next-door-neighbor church’s wall:

 

 

THE NOON (actually afternoon) SHOOT

I’m always seeing interesting things (and people) from home. This afternoon’s haul:

 

Seeing fire trucks outside a nearby apartment building is always concerning and the fact that one of them is facing the wrong way on a one-way street might indicate some urgency, but the assembled firemen aren’t suited up or gathering equipment, so what’s the story?

 

Sometime later, I saw one of them carrying a ladder toward the back of the building:

 

They were on the roof for a majority of the two hours they were there, but again – no obvious problem or sense of urgency:

 

Finally, they gathered by the elevator door and left:

I’m glad there was no fire, but what were they doing on the roof for all that time?

I emailed someone I know at the HFD and asked.

The reply: “Training”.

 

 

PEOPLE

 

For some reason, this photo…………

………….reminded me of an old “Non Sequitur” newspaper comic:

 

Hood-do and Hair-do:

 

No comment:

 

Looks like a skater-biker collision (it’s not):

 

Look at all the little green poop bags:

 

 

Sunset – The bottom structure is a block away in Hackensack, The Modern 1 & 2 towers are in Fort Lee by the George Washington Bridge and the lit-up high-rises sit atop the Palisades overlooking the Hudson River (as the towers do) in Cliffside Park:

 

 

SO AM I FINALLY DONE FOR THE DAY?

 

(Hey, dumbass – did you read the title of your post?)

I withdraw the question.

 

 

THE NIGHT SHOOT

So it’s after 9pm and I’m sitting at my computer editing the 200-250 pictures I took that day, when I heard a familiar popping sound that I usually hear on the 4th of July.

“Fireworks on September 24? Can’t be.”

It was. And I could see them from my living room window in my World Trade Center line of vision.

I couldn’t tell if they were fired off from the Hudson River down near the WTC or if they came from a NJ town between here and there, but now was not the time to ask questions………….shoot first and ask questions later (I never bothered to do the latter).

Here are my Top Ten fireworks shots from that night in ascending order (I didn’t like the shaky backgrounds in the first two shots):

In that last one – taken toward the end of the finale – there’s so much smoke that only the WTC’s lit antenna is visible.

 

A phabulously-phitting ending to a phull day of photography……………….

 

 

 

………………………………………..(ignore April 30, 2017 publish date – this was published on October 15, 2022)

 

(click to enlarge)

 

I live in Hackensack, New Jersey – a city that is the Bergen County seat. I live 3 blocks from the Hackensack River.

As you may know from previous posts, I enjoy walking on the Hackensack River Walkway. What you may not know is that there’s a Walkway /Greenway on the other side of the river in Teaneck. I usually only go on it when the leaves are off the trees because the foliage is just too thick to see the river or my neighborhood.

For some reason, I decided to visit the Teaneck Hackensack River Greenway  – still in full foliage – on October 12. I didn’t expect to see anything of interest.

This is the Greenway’s barely-open, semi-nondescript entrance, located just a few feet into Teaneck:

 

Ho-hum – looks pretty boring…………….until it wasn’t.

(I should first mention that this entrance is located at the end of the most commercial street in Teaneck – a more-than-a-mile stretch that begins with a hospital and ends with a university and has everything else in between, from a movie theater to gas stations, pharmacies, restaurants and a hundred other stores.

It’s also 2-3 blocks from the two most commercial streets in Hackensack. Hundreds of cars passed by this entrance in both directions while I was there.)

Once inside, I was maybe 200’ past this entrance when I saw something large with a big rear end – and possibly a tail – burst out of the bushes a hundred feet ahead on the left (non-river) side, scamper away for a few feet and then re-enter the foliage.

Was that what I thought it was?

I proceeded slowly, trying not to step on anything made of wood that would make a loud snap – which was almost impossible. I scanned the thick brush for any signs of movement………….

Suddenly:

 

And then:

Buck, doe!

 

Were there more? I continued on the Greenway path. Fortunately, there was no one else around…………..I had the entire path to myself. I scoured every inch of its left side.

Nothing.

I started back, REALLY taking my time.

Then I saw something in the distance. I didn’t have a rifle, but I DID have a Canon with a great zoom.

Young buck!

 

Suddenly, there were THREE of them!

The buck on the left seems to have a malformed antler pointing downward.

 

They were aware of me, but I never moved, so they didn’t either. When they momentarily turned away, I moved a couple of feet closer.

I was also trying to film little videos that I could stitch together later. The problem was that at that magnification, the tiniest movement on my part made everything jump wildly (what I would have given at that point for a tripod!).

It was necessary to do some narration at just above whisper-level, but every time I said anything, a buck that was at a considerable distance away would immediately raise his head in my direction.

When this one did it, the result was almost like a two-bodied, one-headed animal:

 

Finally, they started to melt back into the brush, but they couldn’t go too far from the Greenway because of a property fence, so they traveled parallel to the Greenway and close to the fence.

I caught an occasional glimpse, but they were difficult shots:

 

Luckily, this doe-eyed honey paused to say goodbye:

 

This is the 7 or 8 little videos stitched together from various stages of this encounter. Initially, I thought there were only 2 deer, then a third popped up. At one point, I thought that they may have totaled 5, but their exit at the end seems to show only 4:

I have never seen a deer in Teaneck or Hackensack before, though I’m aware that they’ve shown up in probably every town in the county.

And good thing I didn’t have a rifle. According to the chart at the top, I’m in red zone #36 and X was my actual location, but I would have been over a month early for hunting season and I can’t imagine being seen trying to drag a dead deer into Hackensack – especially out of season.

 

 

 

                                (ignore April 30, 2017 publish date – this was published on November 5, 2022)

 

If you’re unfamiliar with this great story, go here and check out the trailer:

https://bandedtogethermovie.com/

 

This is a very appropriate opening image – even if I DID take it as my last photo of the entire two-day, two-screenings event when I was on my way home from the afternoon screening at a different location on October 30.

THIS photo shows the Festival’s street banner above Montclair’s main drag (Bloomfield Avenue) by the Clairidge Theater – the heart of the Festival where the movie had premiered the night before.

The movie’s producer, Barry Rubinow, said to meet him in his hotel’s lobby between 5 and 5:30pm. This is the MC Hotel, a few blocks up Bloomfield Avenue from the Clairidge:

 

Because of the influx of cars carrying a multitude of people to view the various movies playing all day long, parking would be difficult, so the Festival people provided Barry with a guide that showed where more than a dozen parking facilities near Bloomfield Avenue were located. I looked up the addresses of the hotel, the Clairidge and the place where the after-show gathering would be and added them to the map, so I could figure out where to try to park:

As it turned out, I found a free street spot about a block-and-a-half from the hotel on Orange Rd (blue dot on map). That’s a good start.

 

I was early because I had allotted time to search for parking facilities, so I took a short walk down Bloomfield Avenue to kill some time.

The only picture I took on that walk was of a store across the street that seemed to be calling out to me:

I declined because it appeared that I had just missed a visit there by the Smashing Pumpkins…………plus, I was due back at the hotel.

 

I found Barry (standing) and – from left to right – his wife Carey, band members – and Glen Rock High “boys” – Jimmy Vivino and Jeff Venho, their legendary music teacher from 50 years ago (and star of the show), Joe Sielski and his wife Carolyn, and a woman I didn’t know named Karen Barnet – another Glen Rock High graduate (as was Barry, giving him the ability to put all these pieces and their remarkable story together).

By the way, this is a panoramic (PANO) photo taken at close distance with my iPhone. This is a remarkable camera setting that I am constantly finding new and sometimes quite unusual ways to use it creatively. It’s been my favorite toy for the last year and shows no signs of getting old.

It also makes all my PANO shots much larger than normal, so when you see any photo labeled as PANO, click once or twice to fully enlarge the image. Hit your back button to return to normal.

 

So much for the posed shot. Here’s a boring, unposed PANO that I took just for the hell of it:

 

Barry and bassist Doug Romoff:

 

Barry had to get to the venue a little earlier than everyone else, so he, Carey and I walked down Bloomfield Avenue. Of course, a shot that included the theater’s marquee was in order. To cover MY bases, I took a non-flash one with the iPhone and a flash one with my pocket Canon. I like ‘em both, so……………

(why does the marquee say “TIXS”? “TIX” is already plural.)

 

I strolled in right behind Barry and Carey, so between their official Festival laminates and my “The Band From Glen Rock High” (the original title) t-shirt, no one asked me for a ticket. Fine with me…………I’d prefer to have the keepsake.

Time to start doing my job. Barry working the long line in the lobby with his wife is a good shot – especially when it turns out that the man in the couple they’re talking with was a classmate of Barry’s at Glen Rock High:

 

Another line-in-the-lobby shot, but this one shows the movie title:

 

Celebrities in line, as Joe and Carolyn Sielski arrive:

 

Jimmy Vivino trades in his ticket for a stamped hand:

 

I didn’t get a hand stamp, but I DO have this instead to add to my collection:

 

Time for photos in front of the event’s official background.

 

Carey and Barry:

 

Joe, Carolyn and Barry:

 

Jeff, Joe, Barry, Jimmy, Doug:

 

The previous five plus Carolyn, Carey and Karen (the Festival needs to provide a wider background):

 

He’s got a right to smile – he created something very special:

 

Showtime! Some of our seats:

Note: The reason this movie earned a second screening the next day was that this premiere sold out very quickly. That may have something to do with the fact that this theater only has 102 seats. Another factor that’s more likely is that half of Glen Rock probably wanted to see this home-grown miracle. That’s why a second screening the next day at a much larger facility was immediately arranged.

 

After the premiere, a Q & A took place. This shows parts of 5 little videos I shot from my seat and stitched together and is hardly professional-looking. My only interest was in preserving a little piece of music history. And please hit the “Watch on YouTube” links on these videos – it gives a more accurate view count:

 

After THAT, Jimmy, Barry and Doug posed by the show poster:

 

Finally, it was time to head for the after-show gathering at a place down Bloomfield Avenue called The Pineapple Express. BUT……………

because I had a lot of downloading/photo-editing to get to………….

AND because I wasn’t staying at a nearby hotel and therefore couldn’t get loaded and drive home………….

AND because I had to leave the next morning to come back for the noon screening at a different venue………..

AND because these gatherings are usually not great photographically, I went home.

Big day tomorrow.

 

I guess I should mention that I also shot the reunion show on 12-2-21 and made a big blog post about it here: https://iaintjustmusic.bobleafe.com/?p=14920

If you didn’t get to go to this once-in-a-lifetime show, this may be the next best thing (he says semi-modestly)…………at least that’s what some of the post’s comments seem to imply.

 

 

SUNDAY, October 30, 2022

 

I thought I knew where the MKA (Montclair Kimberley Academy) was, but………….

I figured it out after a while. Here’s the entrance (PANO alert!):

It looks like a tiny school, but, of course, it’s not………….but look at all the great Fall colors!

 

I found parking in the back, but wasn’t sure if it was for outsiders. It was early, so no one else was there yet. I waited in the car until someone else parked, asked them if this was the right place to park and they assured me it was.

By now, it was just after 11am, so I walked around to the front entrance to see if anyone was there yet. I saw maybe 15-20 people hanging out. I recognized one right away with a loud porkpie hat and jacket.

But before I could get a word out, I heard him say loudly from 50′ away, “And here comes Bob Leafe!”

“Hi, Floyd.”

 

Right after that, band keyboardist Lee Shapiro shows up. Here he is with Floyd behind him:

 

……..and with Floyd:

“He’s the fourth Vivino brother!”, Floyd says for the first of many times that day.

 

The doors open. I have to trade my ticket in for a stamped hand:

What does it say? Is that a 2?

(NOTE: 11 days later, I found this in my shoulder bag:

How did I not trade in my ticket when I got stamped? Who knows? Who cares? I’ve got my tickets for both screenings.)

 

The next hour is spent in the good-sized hall off the entrance. I explore it.

Interesting “guitar” on display………..it looks like it could use a restringing:

 

There are two interesting-looking classrooms off the hall that appear to be the windows you saw in the first picture (school entrance). The rooms’ contents are quite colorful and the sunlit trees outside only add to it. These are shots worth taking! (the second one is a PANO):

 

Here’s a photographer who’s trying to learn how to smile as his original-title t-shirt gets together with the final-title poster:

The shirts were for sale at the 12-2-21 reunion show, but I didn’t buy it there. As the movie premiere approached, I thought it might be nice to have one, so I asked Barry if he knew where to get one.

He gave me the email address of the woman who had them. I contacted her and arranged to pick one up at her Ridgewood office.

It turns out that she’s the mother of a current GRHS band member and all shirt sales go towards the band fund, so it’s for a great cause and I was happy to buy one and help out.

The shirt got a lot of compliments at the MKA screening (I was surprised no one else had one). If you go to my blog post about the reunion show, you can see some of the shirts that were being sold (same design, different colors).

I contacted the woman who has the shirts and here’s her reply:

People can reach us at: glenrockbandparents@gmail.com

We have plenty of the sizes and colors indicated below. We are accepting donations at any amount in exchange for a shirt. 100% of the proceeds go to support the instrumental music program at GRHS/GRMS. 

Thanks!

 

LOOK AT THE CAUSE…………..BE GENEROUS!!

If you look at my reunion post, you can see that the shirts were selling for $30 apiece at the show. They’re rarer now and should be worth more, so please no under-$20 cheapskates, OK?

 

Time for some more photos in front of the official background. Note: only one band member could not be here today: John Feeney. Unfortunately, Frank Pagano – who’s supposed to be here today – isn’t here yet.

 

(L-R, front): Jimmy, Lee, Floyd

(L-R, back): Joe, Jeff, Jerry, Barry, Doug

Lee looks pretty relaxed (but not for long)

 

Holy shirt! Frank Pagano just popped up, practically in Lee’s lap! Lee’s not looking as calm and relaxed as he was a minute ago. Meanwhile, Doug – the sit-down bassist – has a new picture shirt of John the stand-up bassist, so the gang’s all here:

How the hell…………………..?

 

 

Actually, Frank DID show up later on, saying he got lost. We tried to get everyone together again after the screening so Frank could be included, but it didn’t work out.

When I saw him in the hallway later, I explained to him that we couldn’t do it, so maybe I’ll have to Photoshop him into a group shot.

I didn’t see Lee make that face nor do I know why he did it. He had to have done it just as I took a shot, so I never saw it until I uploaded it to my computer. Wow!

I immediately searched my Q & A video footage, looking for a moment when Frank was either smiling or laughing and……………bingo! Instant pseudo-classic!

 

Lee did better on the next shot when Laura Vivino jumped into his lap with her husband Jerry right behind them:

 

Posing is over:

 

Lee partially surrounds himself with women:

 

Selfie-with-Floyd-time for Karen and Laura:

Note: Someone/something was blowing his/her/its nose in the background above Floyd’s head, so I blacked it out (but if you’re REALLY curious, he/she/it might be in Laura’s selfie).

 

Scott Gordon (from the Uncle Floyd Show) and Floyd pose just before the screening started:

 

Barry addresses the audience before the flick starts:

 

Having seen the movie the night before, I wanted to capture 3 screen-size images that were of personal interest to me. I only managed to get one of them. It was an Uncle Floyd Show cast shot I had taken somewhere around 1983:

You can see stage lights above the screen and the edge of the stage below it.

 

I swung and missed on the other two, so I asked Barry if he could send me two screen grabs and he was kind enough to do so.

The first one was a fooling-around shot I took of the Vivino Brothers Band onstage before an Uncle Floyd show at the Club Bene in Sayreville, NJ, in 1983, with Jimmy on guitar, Jerry on sax and Frank holding his sticks:

 

The second one was a surprise in the closing credits that I didn’t know was going to be there:

Thank you, Barry.

 

And once again, it’s Q and A time! This time, I’m sitting in the front row and here are 8 pictures to start you off with (no captions needed):

 

Jimmy talks to himself:

 

7 more pix:

 

Q and A is over and Tom Hall – Co-head and Artistic Director of the Montclair Film Festival – thanks us all for coming:

 

But it’s NOT over. As I did the night before, I interspersed taking pictures with shooting small videos that I stitched together to make this four-and-a-half-minute vid. And again, professionalism was not the goal………….history was:

 

 

By the way, if you see “EyeShotThis” anywhere in the writeups, it’s my YouTube handle.

 

And I’M wrapping up the Q and A with one minute of a poignant and funny video of Uncle Floyd:

 

During the screening, I sat on the right end of the center section of the front row. When the Q & A started, it was dark when I took a vacant seat right in the middle of that row. When it ended, I took this PANO shot to show the venue when lit. Oh look – three band members and Joe and Carolyn were sitting right behind me!

Unfortunately, as I panned from left to right, I happened to catch a woman in an less-than-flattering position that she might not appreciate me showing, so that’s what the black block is about:

 

Back in the hallway, I met a woman named Susie Tanenbaum, whom I had only met online. She’s a longtime friend of the Uncle Floyd Show and it was her birthday, so I had told her to find me to see if we could get a birthday shot of her and Floyd together. Success!

 

Time to go home.

 

Outside, I found Joe and Carolyn with a movie poster that wouldn’t exist without him. Job well done, sir!

 

As I drove off the MKA campus, I stopped by the sign that was too small to read in the first MKA picture, rolled down the window and took this Fall-colors-enhanced closeup of it:

 

And now it’s on to take my final picture of the day that somehow wound up as the very first picture of this post.

 

Hope you enjoyed the ride.