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bookmark_borderSalvaging old film photos

Posted on by PAO Productions
Back in 2010, I stumbled upon some 110 film for sale inside a Mesquite Walgreens while visiting my parents. I was surprised to see it there and even more surprised to see that it was unexpired. I hadn't seen the format anywhere in years, and hadn't shot a cartridge of it since 1995. I ended up buying several boxes of the stuff and actually shooting four cartridges of it not long afterward at the Mochalux open mic, Curtain Club, and just around my apartment. It then sat dormant on a shelf for thirteen years before I finally got around to getting it developed. I hadn't planned on this - on more than one occasion over the past several years I had looked online for a lab that could still develop and possibly print the film, but I just never viewed it as a priority. I never bothered to freeze the film cartridges, so when I finally took some of them to Garland Camera to be processed and scanned, I wasn't expecting pristine color fidelity or high quality results. And by then, save for some of the shots from Mochalux, I had long since forgotten what had been recorded. Continue reading "Salvaging old film photos"

bookmark_borderScenes from my vintage photo collection

Posted on by PAO Productions
I'm an informal collector of vintage and antique photo snapshots and slides. Professionally taken pictures of course have their own particular charm and value, but when I'm perusing antique malls and estate sales, it's the vintage stuff I'm on the lookout for. My tastes trend heavily toward depictions of places I have visited, historical oddities and one of a kind items, children/families, local history, and the occasional random, heartwarming or otherwise eye pleasing snapshot. I pick these up wherever I find them, whether at the aforementioned antique malls and estate sales, online listings, or anywhere else they happen to cross my path.

Here I present a selection of items from my vintage photo collection, all of which depict locations I've visited during my various road trips across the United States and Canada. They are accompanied by some of my own photos of the same or similar locations.

Grand Canyon, 1922

I visited the Grand Canyon's North Rim in October of 2021. The writing on one of my pair of antique photos identifies the views as having been recorded to film in June 1922, some 99 years prior to my visit.
Grand Canyon, 1922
Grand Canyon, June 1922
Continue reading "Scenes from my vintage photo collection"

bookmark_borderGhosts of DFW music history: Honest Place

Posted on by PAO Productions
This is part of a continuing series of posts exploring locations of former DFW musical landmarks

flyer for Process Revealed at the Honest Place
1988 show flyer
The Deep Ellum neighborhood has been home to a dizzying number of music performance venues over the past century. In the early days of Ellum's renaissance, many an aspiring entrepreneur opted to roll the dice on a new venue. Some, like Charlie Gilder, were able to successfully circumnavigate the sea of red tape put forth by the City Council and obtain permits and liquor licenses; other, perhaps more bullish, entrepreneurs chose to go a different way, with all ages clubs and "unofficial" liquor on tap. Some of the resultant venues, such as the Prophet Bar and Theatre Gallery, achieved fairly long term success and drew a regular contingent of music fans and clubgoers, but Deep Ellum's history is also full of short-lived, fly by night venues that had their brief moments in the sun before flaming out and disappearing completely. And perhaps the most infamous of these long gone, also-ran hotspots was a hole in the wall off Commerce Street, a one time weighing scale and butcher equipment outlet turned punk club known as the Honest Place.

Continue reading "Ghosts of DFW music history: Honest Place"

bookmark_borderGhosts of DFW music history: Silver Dollar Rock Shop

Posted on by PAO Productions
This is part of a continuing series of posts exploring locations of former DFW musical landmarks

flyer for Deadly Force at the Silver Dollar Rock Shop
1989 show flyer
The Silver Dollar... it sounds like some sort of cowboy watering hole, a place you might expect to see country and western acts and not a series of metal bands. Yet here I was with an old Deadly Force show flyer in my hands promoting moshing and urging support for the DFW metal underground of the 1980s, and the show was taking place at the Silver Dollar Rock Shop. What kind of place was this? Where was it located, and when did it disappear into the ether?

Continue reading "Ghosts of DFW music history: Silver Dollar Rock Shop"