You good?
Mhm. Go for it.
The first time I picked up a camera I was 10 years old.
My dad handed me his Argus C3, which is an old rangefinder.
And I ran out into the yard, it was November,
and took 36 frames straight up into the dead branches of the dead tree.
I brought back these pictures and I laid them out on the table
36 frames from the same angle of pretty much all these dead branches
I thought it was fantastic.
My dad was really upset.
I had wasted all that film.
When I was 12 I got a NICR mat
and we've been shooting NICR my whole life since then
but that was a great camera because not only was it a very sturdy, dependable 35mm
but it was a terrific weapon at the end of the day when you needed that.
And I had a few close scrapes in Times Square as the young started running around.
In New York in the 70s it was pretty rough.
Guys flying in on Saturday from London for the big meeting with this deal.
And it looks good.
It's 2 million and I am very happy with the deal.
My attorney's not happy yet but we have to still do the terms.
So there's still stuff to be worked out.
That's why I'm not saying it's a done deal at all.
I basically was working as a garbage man for the state of New York for $2 an hour.
I found New York at that time a pretty harsh place.
I remember complaining one day to some of these older, crusty old garbage men on the crew
about the fact that they had cut our pay $1 an hour.
So now we were getting $1 an hour from $2.
And I was complaining bitterly and this old guy leaned out of the truck window,
looked at me, took a drag and he goes,
Good, it's a fuck you world.
That kind of sums up what New York was because I got robbed three times before I was 19 on the street.
Ultimately, when my girlfriend at the time, who is now my wife, broke up with me,
I decided that was the perfect time to quit the band and dedicate my life to photography
and get serious and I moved to San Francisco, went to the Art Institute
and dedicated my life to being an artist and being a photographer.
And that's when I left New York. I was 19 in 1976.
The commuters on this bridge, when they use this lane, they're pretty aggressive.
You're cyclist, not a young filmmaker's lane.
Yeah, that's what I was trying to tell you.
That's what I was trying to tell you.
That's what I was trying to tell you.
Hey, no fuck you, no fuck you. It's a fuck you city.
Luckily, the guy didn't ram into you because they sometimes do that just to make a point.
California is a beautiful place and we enjoyed living there so much
and we had this beautiful place in Mill Valley.
But I was starting to feel creatively dead and I needed the cultural angst I felt of New York.
So I was getting called as a creative person.
I was feeling like the challenge of New York was calling me.
But before we did that, we were visiting on a kind of romantic weekend.
I took Teresa here and we were taking a very rare weekend off
and we happened to be in the vicinity on 9-11 taking a day off,
a weekend off, having a romantic weekend when the planes flew into the building.
And you could see from when we arrived in New York that weekend to after those four days the city transformed itself.
After 9-11, you had a shift in the way the community related.
I never looked anyone in the eye when I was a kid.
If you looked anyone in the eye on the subway or walked down the street, you were inviting trouble.
After 9-11, complete strangers are talking to me on the street
and then when we moved here in 2002, people would talk to me in the elevator,
in the lobby you get to know people in your building. That was a new feeling for me
because in New York it seemed like everyone was in their isolated little world
and friendships were hard won here.
In California, everyone's your best friend in half an hour, but they're not your friend.
They just talk, talk, talk, they tell you their whole life story.
But in New York it takes a long time, it's more like Europe here.
It's not that we call everyone Mr. Jones for 20 years that we work together,
but it's much more informal than that.
But it still takes a long time. New York is more wary,
I think it's harder to become friends, but then they're friends for life here.
And I really loved that combination of the toughness of New York
with this new sense of community, of people pulling together.
We wanted to vote with our feet for New York. Everyone was fleeing New York in 9-11.
We wanted to be here for the rebound.
Do you know the history of the bridge?
No. The guy that designed it actually died from the bends
and his son had to complete it, but he watched it from his bedroom in Brooklyn.
Finish it. I don't know, something like that.
I think he died twice again. What's his name?
Every New Yorker should know this.
What the hell is the guy's name?
Oh.
Okay, let's do it.
Let's eat.
Yeah, baby.
So, yeah.
Thank you, baby!
Thank you.
