Commuter Documentation: A Personal History in Two Coasts

I find myself in the mornings pulling out my phone around the same part of my commute and taking a picture of the environs, just to document the different ways the day looks in that section of South Central LA. It started, maybe, because I think the particular street doesn't look like any part of what's normally associated with "the 'hood", and could be mistaken for other locations in the Southland.

But this practice of mine---snapping a phone camera picture of the same, mostly pleasing set of landmarks or other environs---dates back to living in New York.

(I dug the following pictures up from deep in the bowels of our deathbed Mac...)

The year was 2007. I was working at the most hard-core restaurant I'd ever worked in in Manhattan. Have you seen Pixar's Ratatouille? Like that, only more serious and stressful, since it was just opening and working towards its Michelin star. The Chef was Michelin rated and had been running Grammercy Tavern for a dozen years for Tom Colicchio, and this restaurant was to be his new baby.

Anyway, I would take the A-train to West 4th and walk through Greenwich Village over to Union Square. It was a longer walk than transferring trains, but sometimes it would take less time, and I could control more of my commute, as it were.

One day, as I came up from below, I looked up the street before cutting right (and east, towards Union Square), and saw the Christopher St. Historic Firehouse. I thought it looked cool, so I pulled out my tiny, candy bar-like phone and snapped a picture of it. It had been a dreary October day, and it was mostly lunchtime:

12:45 PM

(I put, as a caption, the time-stamp data from the picture, and, you can see, I did it for all of the pictures here.)

I was working night, as was every other cook at this restaurant, seeing as how they didn't yet have day shifts. On a different day, I came up again, saw the same sight, pulled out my camera, and took another picture. This day was Halloween itself, and after my shift, Corrie and I braved the Village on the walk back to the rain. Greenwich Village on Halloween? Done it once, accidentally, and that was way enough...

Check out how blue and crisp that day was:

1:06 PM

A few days later, in November, I remembered to take another picture. It was another dreary day. I remeber those shifts were stressful and no fun, for sure. They'd start early, and end late, with your ass being chewed on the entire time. It wasn't for me...

12:46 PM

In any case, the restaurant began, in mid November, to offer lunch service, and I fought pretty hard to get one of the morning spots. Some folks really wanted those positions, but not everybody. Many of the white kids who, for them, this was one of the Golden Jobs, all wanted the night shifts. For the Latinos, and the white kids who don't love the life and were in the middle of stressful wedding planning and wanted to have a relationship with their fiance, the morning shift was key.

This led to a new style of Firehouse Photo: morning...

6:34 AM

 I'm truly enjoying the limitations of that old camera's abilities; the softness and the blurs...

Some mornings were rainy or damp, like above, while others were clear, like this next one:

6:53 AM

In the one above, and 7 minutes to 7 am, I can tell you that I was late, and that I was stressed the 'eff' out at that moment. I don't remember it personally, but I know what that job did to me on a daily basis as it was...and knowing that I was going to be even a few minutes late? Forget about it...

Here's a more appropriately timed clear example:

6:26 AM

It's so dark at this early hour because it was then December, and as it got later, it would get darker. Check out this next picture, recorded a single minute earlier, but noticeably darker:

6:25 AM

And then this collection ends with this next picture, where, taken at 6:23 am, we see it's still nighttime. It was around here that I started just transferring trains and missing the sun entirely. It took longer, but the walk across Manhattan was becoming quite unbearable:

6:23 AM

Fast forward six years and a few months, say seventy-five months. My commute, and life, are definitely different, as now I'm on a different coast, but still stationed in one of the nation's two largest population centers.

What strikes me about this whole endeavor is the vast similarity and consistency in the times that these various collections were taken.

Again the view is looking north, only here it's along Miramonte Street:

6:58 AM

The quality of the photograph is better:

7:00 AM

As is, generally, the weather, although this next picture I took specifically because it was foggy:

6:43 AM

For that one, I had left the house earlier, caught an earlier train, and had to spin my wheels, figuratively, and burn off some time before I could get to my final destination.

Mostly the days are blue and crisp, like below:

6:58 AM

And again, the sun making everything golden:

6:57 AM

I ride my bicycle up this street and turn left onto Gage Avenue. There are certainly less people than in the Village, even earlier...

6:58 AM

My reflections of my experiences in these last few, the Miramonte Collection, are mostly absent because I'm still living this commute. I don't think I would have been able to have the perspective on my own life had I had this blog active back at the end of 2007.

Sometime in the future, maybe a better and more robust reflective piece will be available to my brain...maybe this post can be considered "begun", but not ultimately done-dundy.