On the Boardwalk.
All snapped in a two hundred yard stretch of the Santa Cruz boardwalk.
The speed and stealth of the small Panasonic G3 are ideal for this sort of thing where people are the subject. All except the one from last (14-45mm kit lens) taken using the Olympus MFT 9-18mm lens, a real crackerjack of an optic, and small to boot.
The 275GTB.
If you are into classic cars, the next smartest thing to attending the practice weekend at Laguna Seca one week before the official zooed event is to find yourself mooching around the streets of Carmel, CA early on the Tuesday morning before the big weekend, when Ocean Avenue and the adjacent side streets are closed to traffic and the Ferraris and other lesser marques line up on show, garage queens all in a row. Sadly, most of these machines never drive further than to and from the transporter, but the eye candy on display is undeniable and, if you rise early, there are no crowds to interfere with viewing or snapping.
There were several of Sergio Pininfarina‘s timeless designs to be seen, not least a brace of what has to be the most purely masculine body he ever penned, the 275GTB.
My son, a man of fine taste, opted for Pininfarina’s later 365, much to Bert the Border Terrier’s dismay:
At least Winston had the good sense not to go for the Yecch, the latest model solidly aimed at New Money and appropriately registered:
These things are beginning to look like that most tasteless of vehicles, the Lamborghini, Rolex, gold chains and all.
In the style of Atget.
In Carmel, CA.
Panasonic G3, kit lens.
Semper Fi.
Panasonic G3, kit lens, in Carmel, CA.
Yeah! right.
A linguist was explaining how double negatives in various languages mean different things. In English, a double negative is a positive – a construct beloved of lawyers who always seek to obfuscate clarity in the interest of charging higher fees. Can you say “not dispositive”? In Russia, on the other hand, double negatives act to reinforce the negative. If a single negative is bad, a double negative is doubly so. Doubtless a linguistic rule which is especially useful in describing any of their leaders of the past ten centuries or so.
That same linguist then went on to explain, however, that there is no language on earth where a double positive connotes anything other than affirmation.
Then a voice from the back of the hall was heard to say: “Yeah! right.”
And “Yeah! right.” was very much my reaction on reading this sign in Balmy Alley in San Francisco’s Mission District:
Usual ’60s claptrap designed to part the naïve from their cash, was my reaction. Then I checked out the web site of this business and it actually proves to be anything but pseudo-psychological bull.
Here’s a snippet:
Given that a knowledge of how others see us is worth a whole lot more than any amount of education, this seems like a pretty clever idea.
Speaking of linguistics, when I was an English schoolboy one of the more charming expressions of enthusiasm, cloaked as it is in the English love of understatement, was “That’s not half bad”. Meaning it’s really awfully good. Outerbody.org’s idea is really not half bad at all.