Welcome to Darlington

Yesterday I made my first trip out of the great state of California, 3000 miles to South Carolina. It's definitely a different kind of place, but I like it. I came out this way to help with the Inaugural Darlington Historic Racing Festival, which will feature all kinds of oval racing cars at the famous Southern track. Here are a couple of photos I took today.

It's interesting being behind the scenes and watching how an event like this unfolds. Today was a lot of final decision making and last minute organizing. People down here love their racing and a big turnout is expected, which would be awesome since so much work has been put into this event.

Don't know if I'll get much up this weekend but I'll try.

I tell you what, this humidity is something else.

IRL

I headed up to Wine Country this weekend for the IRL event. It was my first contemporary racing event and was pretty cool. I am not as familiar with Infineon Raceway as I am with Laguna Seca, but it is a very cool track that some say is more exciting to race on that Laguna. I shot mainly video there with works new camera, a Canon HV30, which is whole new world that I am excited about jumping into. Hopefully I'll have that video up soon.

Here are a couple photos of Helio Castroneves and Danica Patrich. Helio went on to win Sunday's race, after like a 17 month dryspell.

I don't know how much posting I'll be doing in the next few weeks, as today is the first day of school and I leave for Darlington, South Carolina on Wednesday. This is going to be a busy semester, but I am looking forward to it.

Monterey Historics

This past weekend was the Monterey Historics in the beautiful town of Monterey and at the world class race track, Laguna Seca. It's one of the biggest vintage events of the year with gorgeous cars all around. You got racing, auctions and even the parking lot is like a car show. Here are a few pics from the event that I really found interesting.

This is why I feel like I gain 10 pounds every time I go home

If you think you're man enough for an S.O.S., go ahead and try. Me and my buddy Mike didn't stand a chance.

Keep it Steady

A few weeks back I did a photo shoot for a buddy of mine who is starting up his own music thing. This guy is dreaming big and hopefully it'll all come through for him.

He started his own label with some friends, called Thoro Bread, and one of the rappers cutting tracks for them is Steady, pictured here.

He might look all tough in the photo but this guy and the rest of the group were cracking up all night. It was one of the funner shoots I've had, and the group was easy to work with.

Where did the newsracks go?

Okay. This post has got to be a little different than others. Normally when I find an interesting article I leave a link here and you can go read it for yourself. But the problem this paper, the Palo Alto Daily Post, doesn't have a website or many newsracks now.

Actually they do have them, as they were plucked from their normal spots along side another newsracks and delivered to their front door by Palo Alto City workers . Acting on complaints from longstanding competing papers, the city ordered that 27 freestanding post newsstands be removed from downtown sidewalks.

It's an obvious violation of city law, which requires that a hearing be had prior to such action.

Post Editor and co-publisher said in this mornings post, "This is a first Amendment battle. The U.S. Supreme Court says you can't have a free press unless you have freedom to distribute, and the city took that freedom away from us today."

He is pretty mad.

So, after that whole debachle, the Daily Post staff spent the night replacing all of those newsracks and promise to keep doing it.

This paper has a fire lit under it. Many have speculated that it would fall flat on its face in no time, especially since they have no website and face stiff competition in the Palo Alto Daily News. Though it is worthy to note that Price was one of the people who created the Daily News and sold it for $25 million. The guy has an idea of what he is doing.

But since their inagural edition they have raised their circulation and at the end of the day when I pass their racks, they are empty, along with the Daily News. And frankly it is surprising, since the times of exsisting only in those metal boxes that line city streets is suppose to be long gone. It's refreshing to see a newspaper, with a newspaper mentality.

One thing to think about though, is the city can remove their newsracks all they want, but they would have a hard time removing their website if they had one.

Lazy summer

This was suppose to be the summer where I got stuff done. I was going to be an artist, a dedicated blogger and a big freelancer. I got none of that done. But that's not to say my summer was a complete waste. In fact this has been one of the best summers ever, just not for productivity.

But all of that will be coming to an end in a couple short weeks, as SJSU starts classes on August 25. I am a little bummed that I won't be taking any journalism classes, as my schedule is full of art classes, but I will still be doing some work for the Spartan Daily. I still think this has been a beneficial summer, a much needed break. Hopefully I'll kick off the semester with my batteries fully charged.

Here are some photos from an All Star football game I covered in San Jose a few weeks back. It was one of the few freelance gigs I did over the summer for the Almaden Times.