A few beers in the only bar in town with life…

Hungry, but lo-fi is what the stomach ordered.

Pernod, cheese, spinach. Knockout.

A short drive. All sorts of consumer goods meeting a sticky end down these slopes and gullies…

And the M9 falls four feet to meet concrete. The filter takes the hit, the camera is undamaged, but that filter is jammed on and isn’t coming off.

The marvellous Richard Sintchak drops off a bag of lenses for me to play with. Time for a wander around Presidio and then across the Golden Gate bridge and up to overlook the Bay.

Sometimes, the best spots are right under your nose, if you’d just look. Or have a little local knowledge. Step forward Richard Sintchak.

Eastside Culture Crawl is a yearly event in Vancouver where artists of the Eastside open their studios and host visitors to show and sell their latest work. Led by the lovely Valerie Arntzen, the Crawl lets artists engage directly with the public and gain a huge audience in the space of a weekend rather than having to tout their work around galleries and spaces, and also give people an insight into their workspaces and often living spaces. I spent an afternoon at the Crawl and went to meet Valerie at her HQ, AMP at 800 Keefer Street, where several other artists have studios. She spoke to me about how they ended up there - several of them bought the place over a decade ago to safeguard their workspaces, and it’s worked out wonderfully… (audio sadly lost)

Finally uploaded the Vijapur story about a tribe whose homes were demolished at 4am. I arrived a day or two after the event to document the damage and speak to the tribals. While this story has been on Facebook since Day one, I held off publishing it until I had some more recent information, as the wheels were beginning to turn for them just as I left India in the summer. Unfortunately, I’ve no more information at this time, but I feel the story should go up, late, but better than never. (Story returning soon.)

I think the M9 took a hit, because the rangefinder is rather out of alignment. Mostly vertically but also, sometimes, on the distance too. So it’s off to Leica USA as soon as I can dig up a copy of the receipt from the UK, and they’ll have to ship it back to me on the road. Slightly annoying to have a camera built like an brick on the outside and like cream cheese on the inside. I suppose it’s a common problem and an easy fix.