Technically I wasn’t leaving until 1:20 a.m. on the 14th, but I wanted to get to the airport early enough to snag a decent seat from Eva Air this time. Still, I had all day; I took my time packing my one suitcase and getting everything charged before Ken called me a Lyft over to Joe’s place. The Lyft driver was named Elizabeth, and she expressed not only great interest in street photography, but also great dismay that she had missed the festival. I told her some sites to visit and people to contact.

Joe and I walked around the neighborhood, stopping only for some mint iced coffee and to attempt to resurrect a small dead bird on the sidewalk with incessant flashing (It didn’t work). The light was excellent, and I don’t wonder why we see so many such shots in the HCSP queue. Joe had to go to a shoot in the afternoon, so I headed into a mall to look for some neat-o stuff to bring back to Taiwan. As I was walking into the basement level, I ran into Vineet, who was with his family. Our interaction was both brief and awkward. I emerged in back of the mall to find a Target where I could get some goodies, and I walked around both sides of Market while waiting for Joe to return; we met back up by the trolley cars at five, right near a Muslim man all in white was holding a sign reading “I come in peace.” A couple of white men had approached him at one point in a way that made me think there might be trouble, but either their intentions were honorable or the Muslim brother won them over.

Dinner was at a Vietnamese place, after which Joe. Just. Could. Not. Get. A. Ride. Drivers kept cancelling; one even claimed he’d already picked us up and dropped us off, without us ever even seeing the car. Eventually we got an Uber back to Joe’s place, where I picked up my stuff, and we headed out; Joe to the theater to see the latest X-men movie, and me to the Bart Station to catch a subway to the airport. In the station was a very good violin player, good enough to make me wonder if Joshua Bell was moonlighting again. But I couldn’t linger; I had to get out to SFO. I couldn’t help but feel, however, that I was just getting used to the place, not to mention the timezone, and now I had to leave.

The sun hadn’t set when I stepped off the subway at the international terminal, even though it was 8 p.m. Nobody was at the Eva counter, so I sat and charged stuff until a small crowd had gathered. When I got to the gate, I found that the only seat left was an exit-aisle window seat. That would do, though I’d prefer to have an actual window. Don and Gene were also at the airport at the time, but they were at one of the domestic terminals.

I again took my time, wandering over to the TSA line, dispassionately watching the somewhat desperate people in policesque uniforms trying to convince everyone that they had an important job to do, even though it was blatantly obvious that the whole thing was a big show. They even played a video for the people in line showing normal people going about their day and suddenly getting shot dead. The spot concerned human trafficking, but that was beside the point; they obviously want people to be as nervous and afraid as possible. Let people relax and think, and it won’t be long before they realize what a farce the whole thing is.

I opted out of the rapiscan machine, as usual. And, as usual, the short, squat woman in “uniform” called out, loudly and repeatedly, “MALE OPT OUT OVER HERE!” It took a while for someone to come, but I wasn’t in a hurry. I watched as some people were herded into the rapiscan machines, while others simply walked through the X-ray machine. “Can I do that?” I asked, pointing. “I was given a choice between a pat-down and the rapingscanning thingy, but it seems like lots of people are just going through the X-ray only.” Of course she ignored me; any answer would have implied some kind of safety concern was involved.

When the officer finally got around to groping, I almost thanked him for the massage. The moment did seem to call for a little levity, so when he told me to spread my arms, palms upward, I said in my best Jerry Seinfeld impression, “Ladies and gentlemen….I implore you!”

The officer was not amused. “Too old a reference?” I asked.

“That doesn’t happen,” he said. Ok.

I still had plenty of time before my flight, so I bought a sandwich and some yoghurt and sat at the gate listening to music. I hadn’t listened to music in a while, so it was even nice and more relaxing than usual.

Then boarding, squeezing into my seat, followed by 13 hours of watching animated movies, eating and sleeping. Too quickly, I am back in Taipei. I went straight to work, but I’ve been loopy all day. I just want to sleep, but I know that if I do, I’ll wake up at 2 a.m. and not get any more sleep. It’s weird to be back; it feels like the last week was all just a dream by now.

Yesterday was brilliant again. I was determined to join at least one photo walk this time, so after a nice breakfast at a nearby crepe place, I walked over to the golden gate park to meet up with the group at the Deyoung museum. After quickly browsing the tiny Davidson show there, we headed off through the park. The breeze coming in off the ocean was brisk, and for once I was glad that I’d brought my heavy police jacket. The drum circle was rather than usual, they said, but the hippies were there in force, as were the roller skating people. We ended up at the Haight street fair, where everyone pretty much disbanded, though we bumped into James and a few others on the way through. I don’t generally like event photography, but there was one guy there with two Olympuses (Olympi?) around his neck, so I figure it was covered.

After that, Ken drove us down to Joe’s work, where I chatted with him and others for a bit before taking a short tour around the area while the wonderful light lasted. The sound of a bottle breaking just behind me made me wonder once again about the general level of sanity in that neighborhood. Down at the town hall, the colors of the homeless people lying on the lawn matched the flags flying above.

After Joe had locked up, we caught a Lyft down to meet Ken at a sushi place, We Be Sushi, which was delicious and fresh. Our non-Japanese waitress was still learning the terms and pronunciation; it was cute. We talked until late and then headed home.

Saturday, June 11th

It is so dry here! I prefer a bit of humidity, and this dryness has me drinking gallons of water all day.

I woke up before sunrise, for some reason, and watched from my window in Ken’s apartment as the city came to light. We’re on a light rail line, so every so often a streetcar will whoosh by. Ken says he’s used to it, but I’d quickly get tired of having to pause movies every time it happened.

Ken was going to Jack’s workshop, so I tagged along, and probably pissed off some people with my various interjections as Jack spoke calmly and deliberately about his subject. When the group left the classroom to go out shooting, I kept my distance, looking at where they went, what they shot, etc. It was interesting, and not unlike my experiences teaching in Taipei.

I’d wanted to join at least one of the StreetFoto photo walks, so I left the group at 11:30 and headed towards Chinatown. My stomach then took the opportunity to remind me that I had only eaten one slick of toast so far that day, so I had a bite before heading over to the meeting point. Unfortunately, I was late; the group had already left. So I wandered around the area on my own instead, eventually bumping into JC, a photographer who wanted my advice on his photography. We arranged to meet later near the Cuppola building, and I continued down towards the harbor, approaching it though the second floor of an empty mall. I could only imagine how bustling and alive the area had been in the past.

I caught a ride with JC, his wife and his daughter over to Joe Goode, which is fortunate as I wasn’t looking forward to that long walk just then. We got some food at a nearby market, which of course was far too much for one person to eat, and I looked through JC’s book and gave him my thoughts.

They were making a video about the event, and so I missed most of Vineet’s talk, unfortunately, but I was able to enjoy Ken Light’s stories about his career, as well as Richard’s talk about his background and his work. After they announced the winners of the contest, we wrapped it up and headed over to a nearby place for dinner and conversation. There was a snag when we found you had to show picture ID to get in, and my Taiwanese ID apparently wasn’t cutting it (It ain’t my fault the bouncer couldn’t read Chinese). I managed to get in with my passport, but some of the other attendees weren’t able to enter, which was unfortunate.

We ate and talked and enjoyed each other’s company well into the wee hours; it had the atmosphere of conclusion as people said good-bye and left through the chain-link gate, back out into streets.

I’m sitting at Ken’s table writing this; it’s the morning after, and he’s gone to help Jack with the second and final day of his workshop. Don and Gene have continued on their 40th anniversary tour of the area, though they might go back to the Rayko Center before they leave. There’s one more photo walk today, staring at the Deyoung Museum in the park, where they have a Bruce Davidson exhibit, apparently, so I will try and make that. I’m leaving tomorrow night…well, technically in the early hours of the 14th, but I have to be at the airport on Monday night.

It’s another beautiful day. God it’s dry though.

Friday, June 10th
I woke early to a clear sky outside, the sun forcing its way into my room around 7 a.m. Still no wifi, and I was checking out that morning. Downstairs at the donut breakfast, the manager lamented that they were losing all kinds of reservations due to the lack of Internet. What a disaster.

I packed up my one piece of luggage and headed down Market towards the waterfront, checking for wifi along the way. There was one point in between two Starbucks I could manage a short Line conversation with Chenbl, which mostly consisted of “I can’t hear you” and “What?” But I couldn’t linger, as I was heading to Pier 24 again, this time with Don, Gene, Blake, Joe and others.

It’s a nice exhibition, but I was all about that Eggleston…just lovely. Afterwards some of us walked along the waterfront and back up Market; Joe knew of a good Vietnamese place; we were in the mood for pho. Don and Gene graciously stored my luggage in their rental car.

We met Tyler and Skyid on the way up Market; they were making their way down, but as the street was so fabulously lit, there were having trouble justifying their usual flash.

Everyone met up at Turtle Tower, a restaurant where they apparently cannot separate their cilantro from their green onions, resulting my raw beef pho being just meat and broth because I told them no cilantro. It was still good. The Thai-style tea caused a small sensation at our table.

After lunch, we caught a bus out to the inner Richmond to take a look at the Green Apple’s photobook offerings, which were very nice. I could have stayed longer, but Blake was itching to return to the streets, so Joe and I caught an uber to the place he’s staying, which is near the Joe Goode annex. I got the opportunity to meet Icarus, Joe’s famous cat, who was friendly and laid-back, as well as Matt Gomes, whom I’ve known for a while online but had never met in person. This trip is full of that kind of thing, and I love it. I wish I could do more of it.

We headed over to Joe Goode in the evening; they were having some trouble with video, so Don gave his talk on his background first, and then I gave my talk on my Sunflower experiences, and then we did the BME panel, unfortunately lacking Andy and Simon, who had thought they could come but couldn’t because of various extenuating circumstances. Still, I thought it went pretty well. A lot of people came up to me to tell me how much they enjoyed the presentation, which was extremely gratifying.

After another presentation on the drought in California by a very talented young photojournalist, we headed out to the Mexican place again. I had an enormous burrito. I’m not kidding, and neither were they; it was huge. You could knock a man unconscious with that thing. I really don’t know what the hell is up with American portions these days.

Ken Walton, the hard-working organizer of the event, was gracious enough to let me stay at his lovely place near Golden Gate park for the remainder of my stay here, so I left with him instead of going out with the others. It’s just as well; I was exhausted.

Thursday, June 9th
The maid hadn’t set foot in my room the day before, so I was working with previous-day towels and bedsheets, but I managed. I’d actually met the maid, who is from Guangdong, the day before, but apparently she only sweeps by once a day, and if you miss her, too bad.

Being without wifi, I was cut off from everyone’s plans. After my donut breakfast, I walked down to the nearest Starbucks, a small, gritty edition on Market, where I sat eating a salad and croissant while checking my messages. Next to me, a woman chatted on her phone about some meeting, and after she stopped, I heard her say, “I guess you must hate all the noise I’ve been making.”

I assumed she was still on the phone, and ignored her, but when I looked up, I saw she was looking at me. I started and stammered, “Uh…what? No! Why would I? This is a Starbucks!” I left the FFS unspoken. Was she coming on to me? Why else would she say something like that? This is a strange city, I concluded as I walked up to Union Square, where I’d lay out on the lawn in the sun a quarter century ago while visiting. They’ve redone it so that there’s no lawn to lay on; instead it’s now all concrete and awful street paintings. I then walked over to the Apple Store, which impressive; the Top Security People standing ominously by the door and the green-shirted Geniuses bustling around. Classes were being held on iTune on the second-floor mezzanine.
I walked up the street past more crazy homeless people to the restaurant were Joe works. On the way I spotted a large older fellow with an iPhone on a tripod, which he moved lazily around a street corner taking shots. He wasn’t looking at anyone. I approached him, questions on my mind, but he radiated fear. I retreated.

Up the street, I found Joe bustling around, chatting up customers and getting drinks, a little tattooed ball of energy with an on-point coif. I don’t know how he does it. I sat and chatted with Chris, a fellow from the UK who is a DJ and record collected, about the sad state of the music industry, and how iTunes sucks. Joe gave me a white-chocolate/caramel cookie that should be illegal to go with my ice coffee.

It was SFMOMA day in the StreetFoto schedule, so I bade Joe and Chris farewell and walked back through a new set of crazy homeless people back to Market and Third, and on to the museum. Inside I found Richard and Jared and some other folks I knew. They’d been there a while, so I took off on my own to see the photographs, some of which were worth looking at. An original Stephen Shore, recently printed, made me realize what he meant when he said the “vintage” feel people attach to him is really inappropriate, only a product of old prints aging naturally. The real scenes from the 70s look far more like what I remember being true in the day, though I was just a kid then. I also saw some Winogrand, and there was an Arbus show upstairs. I took a shot of a woman whose hair matched one of the paintings almost exactly. One of the museum guard told me in a confidential fashion that the “black hole” on the 5th floor would “blow my mind.” It didn’t. In fact, much of the exhibit seemed overly precious, and some of the descriptions had small errors such as misquotes of Henri Cartier-Bresson. But the architecture of the place was impressive, drawing me up staircase after tilted staircase. I wondered if they chose the guards based on their interesting appearance. They are part of the design, aren’t they? Either way, it works.

I got so caught up in the whole thing, standing on the upper balcony looking out of the city, which was magnificently lit by the afternoon sun, that I was late in setting out for the Joe Goode Annex, which was the site of the evening’s activities. I walked through a park and up Market back to my hotel, which was still without wifi, and then continued on. And on. And on, eventually arriving at the venue just as the photo talks were kicking off with a talk by the laconic Ben Molina. I loved it because Ben gave concise answers to many bullshit questions, and I knew exactly what he meant.

Most of the talks were interesting, particularly the one by Koci Hernandez about his photographic search for a man in a hat representing his absent father. Joe was particularly active in asking questions, but I wondered if perhaps they should have let the speaker decide the pace of the slides. I’m talking there on the 10th, along with Don, Joe and the rest of the BME people in attendance. I guess we’ll see.

After the show winded down, Blake Andrews and Tyler Simpson joined Joe and me and a few others to a nearby taqueria, which was delicious. Then we went to a bar where they played magnificent 70s music, and chatted while Joe printed out shots from his Instax. We caught an Uber with a driver named Lorenzo back to our neighborhood (Blake is staying at the Goode Hotel, just around the corner) around 2 a.m. I walked the rest of the way back to my still wifi-less hotel, took a shower and slept. Another good day.

Wednesday, June 8th
I spent most of the morning after waking up in my hotel room figuring out over Facebook what everyone else was doing. The Aida’s Hotel Breakfast consists mainly of a big box of donuts from the place across the street, but it’s hard to argue against a big box of donuts from just about anywhere. Fortunately my old-fashioned room has a nice view of the rooftops next door, though the sunrise was hidden by cloud cover. In typical San Francisco fashion, though, the sun had come out by the time I made it out onto Market Street to navigate the crazy homeless people on my way to meet Joe Aguirre down by the cable cars. As I waited, I took photos of a guy hanging colored lanterns in the trees to the monotone tunes of a man playing harmonica.

After Joe arrived, we walked over to a burger joint near the overpass and met Jared Iorio, whom I’ve known online for years but had never met in person. It turns out that this would be kind of a theme with this trip, as it was in London and Paris. Jared had dragged one of his friends and co-workers on a long drive out from LA, and we talked over lunch while workmen jumped up and down from a truck parked outside.

We met up with Jack Simon to go to the Pier 24 show, which had a few interesting pieces. Jared and I gossiped about the Hardcore Street Photography group that he is also an administer of (though he rarely visits these days), and other things.

The Rayko Center, where our BME show was opening, is an old warehouse and apparently a well-known venue in SF. Our show was bigger in scale than I’d imagined, the images almost too numerous. People started trickling in through the afternoon as jet lag began to fog my brain. I nearly fell asleep on the sofa, not exactly the thing you want to see upon entering any venue, but was rescued by a large cup of Pepsi.

All kinds of people showed up, including some I knew, like Richard Bram, and some I hadn’t met before, such as Stephen McLaren. We talked and looked and milled and mingled until late in the evening; it was a great time, and great seeing old friends like Don and Jack, both of whom were accompanied by their wives.

It was after 10 p.m. When we left the Rayko and walked over to a bustling bar. The group got strung out between the traffic lights, but I could tell they were ahead by all the distant flashes from their cameras as photographers dueled with each other. At the bar I ordered a Cuban sandwich that I knew would be good because the menu demanded no changes to the recipe, and I was right. Then it was back to the Aida, only to find that the wifi had gone out. The staff claimed it wasn’t their fault, but a hotel without wifi these days is like a hotel without running water.

I’m sitting in my little room at the Aida Hotel, listening to police sirens going up and down Market Street. Today is apparently the big California primary or something, but I’m not sure if that has anything to do with it.

Packing was a mad, last-minute scramble, as usual. I wasn’t really in the mood for a trip, actually, but here I found myself entering that world of travel, step-by-step, from station to station, whereupon one surrenders ones local identity and becomes A Traveller. Afraid of being late, I took the HSR to Taoyuan and a bus to the airport, but I needn’t have worried; Eva Air, I was told, had sold all the good seat a year ago already. While I doubt this was true, I still ended up in a middle seat from Taipei to San Francisco. Granted, it was exit row, but that just meant that I could have my stuff with me, with nowhere to stow it. The woman next to me watched the same episode of Downton Abbey over and over throughout the flight. She also ate spicy crisps and filed her nails. The. Whole. Time.

But it was nice not to have to change airplanes. When I got to SFO I purposely avoided white immigration and customs officers, and thankfully everything went smoothly this time. Lines were long,  the Bart took forever, but eventually I found my way to my hotel. It should do.

There are photo events happening here and there throughout the week. We’ll see how it goes.

I went over to the SynTrend Building to attend a VR/AR “Show-n-tell” gathering hosted by the Taiwan Start-up Stadium. I’d been told about it by Holly Harrington, who works there, and she has been very busy lately. It was on the 11th floor, welcomely air-conditioned after a long hot day. Stylish people were milling around the snack bar and a few headset setups. I met a co-worker of mine who is soon being sent to New York; she didn’t know anything about VR/AR, but her future boss had told her to study up on it, which is interesting.

The conference room where the show-n-tell presentations were held was packed, standing-room only, though the adjacent room where the meeting was being broadcast on a large screen was empty. I stood for a while at the back of the room being bumped by the photographer, who was none too subtle about changing lenses and using flash, before retiring to the other room to sit down.

One of the VR teams had an idea about creating and manipulating music in VR, which was interesting. The other seven teams seemed to only be shoehorning VR into existing procedures such as interior design and online shopping. Also, the videos nearly never worked at first, which was troubling. Someone introduced a 360-degree camera. But these things have never interested me that much. Is it 3D? How could it be with only one lens? It’s all just wallpaper, not a world.

Afterwards I chatted a bit with Justin Hendrix, who heads up the NYC Media Lab, and he seemed to agree with my conjecture that we’re currently in a similar phase with VR that movies were when they were new, and all anyone did was plop a camera in front of a stage play and call it a movie. They didn’t realize the potential of the new technology yet, “movies” didn’t really come into their own until they decided to throw out all of their stage-play constrictions and work in the new medium. Justin then told me that he’d heard of people in the nascent VR world referring to traditional movies as “flatties”, which I find fascinating, in that they’re already ready to move on…but to what? He hinted that the next generation of VR devices would most likely not only improve on resolution, refresh rate and viewing angle, but they’d become untethered as well, which would be huge. “2018 is the year everything will come together,” he predicted.

As far as Taiwan’s participation goes, however, I have my doubts about the content side. It’s wonderful that we’re trying to grow a start-up culture, something that is sorely lacking in this Confucian nightmare of Office Politics, but we have a long way to go before a truly innovative employee can easily gain the attention he or she deserves. Valve made a wise choice in choosing HTC for their hardware, but I haven’t really seen anything on the software side that could be termed revolutionary.

Then again, what do I know? Mssr. Hendrix is immersed in this stuff 24/7, and has been for years. I’ve only sampled a few VR experiences, and everyone’s different. That said, I still think that the trick to immersion will be making the player feel like a part of the world, not just physically, but also mentally and interactively, which means strong predictive AI. As much as I’d just gush over being able to wander around Hogwarts castle or the Enterprise, it’s going to be the interaction with other people and the characters that will being people into the world. No forced framing or close-ups; the environment will have to accomodate an almost-infinite number of paths. Forcing film-like narratives into a VR experience seems counterintuitive, and Jason got me thinking when he suggested that perhaps going back to the idea of stage plays, where every performance was live and therefore different, could be one way of thinking about it.