#259: Pretty Pollution

Rochester, NY

#339: Disappointed Bridge

Pittsburgh, PA

Early in the day on June 16th, 1904 in James Joyce's Ulysses, Stephen Dedalus is giving a history lesson to an academically lackluster pack of spoiled rich kids. The lesson is not going over well, sort of the early 20th century Irish equivalent of the economics teacher in Ferris Bueller's Day Off deadpanning, "Bueller? . . . Bueller?" But it does lead Stephen to muse, when no one can answer a simple inquiry about what a pier is, that a pier is "a disappointed bridge."

The tendency to render to inanimate objects human feelings and qualities is something very near and dear to me, and it happens a lot when I contemplate a new set of numbers each week, trying to imagine what these mute images are trying to say to me. And when I look at these numbers, what I see are two 3's and a 9 all striving, with their loopy serifs, to be 8's. Disappointed bridges.

#361: Sharp Objects

Pittsburgh, PA

I love the asymmetrical slant to this one, which might be whimsical but isn't thanks to the sharply cut edges, no-nonsense stencil work, and sober-colored brick anchoring the whole image. Another shot captured while on tour with Balthrop, Alabama. I missed going out on the road with the band this year because I was busy with readin', 'ritin', and 'rithmetic. But it's good to go back and 'reminisce.

#205: Street Art Rococo

Rochester, New York

#232: Pittsburgh Palindrome

Pittsburgh, PA

#259: Meeting Poppa Neutrino

Rochester, New York

On the last night of Balthrop, Alabama summer tour -- AKA our "Six Nights in Vermont 'Cause We Got Turned Back at the Canadian Border 2010" tour -- we played a gig at the Bug Jar in Rochester, New York. About two or three nights prior to that, we played on a raft made out of recycled material in the rain between two sewage plants on Lake Champlain with a beer-guzzling duo, an amateur theater group, a couple of dogs, and a seafaring gentleman who called himself Poppa Neutrino. Poppa Neutrino had seen us play at Radio Bean in Burlington, Vermont the night before and there he was, grizzled and gentle, a man well into his seventies, seated in a lawn chair on a raft of questionable floatability.

He welcomed us on board and, once we settled in, proceeded to tell us the tale of how he once sailed from the port of New York across the North Atlantic, all the way to Ireland on a raft made out of junk. "Whoa," we said, slapping mosquitoes from our arms, eyes shifting nervously between one another. "Huh," others said, then turned around and checked to see if our van, parked on private property where the owners are famed for calling the cops and getting violators arrested, was still there.

I took a less doubtful yet still cautious approach and asked if he knew any sea shanties. But none of us quite knew what to make of such a claim. His story was fantastical, something straight out of Robinson Crusoe. And in this skeptical age, I'm afraid to say we found much to doubt about Poppa Neutrino's voyage -- worldly, urban Brooklynites that we were.

Well, we shouldn't have.

At the bar of the Bug Jar in Rochester, New York, I was drinking a pre-show whiskey and chatting with Buckridge when Michael, at the other end of the bar, motioned for me to come over. I sidled down off my bar stool and headed over. Michael turned around his laptop, which was opened to the Wikipedia page for Poppa Neutrino. Sure enough, in 1997-1998, Poppa Neutrino -- musician, nomad, philosopher, raftbuilder -- became the second person in history to cross the Atlantic on a raft, his homemade vessel, Son of Town Hall. He was certainly the first to do it on a raft built out of trash. His wife, Betsy, served as his captain.

Poppa was also the subject of a book by Alec Wilkinson called The Happiest Man in the World and a documentary by Victor Zimet and Stephanie Silber called "Random Lunacy". Also quite randomly, I used to regularly check out his daughters' band, The Flying Neutrinos, at Rodeo Bar in New York City.

In a sad coda to this story, we learned that Poppa Neutrino passed away on January 23 of this year at the age of 77. You can read his obituary here. A heartfelt remembrance to the man with a wild adventurer's spirit who made us all step back and believe in the possibility of magic.

#348: Ups-a-Daisy

Pittsburgh, PA

#999,999,999,999,999

North Philadelphia, PA

Another round of 365 numbers in 365 days begins at the bubbly pop of midnight tonight as the ball drops in snow-encrusted Times Square and one short-lived, enthusiastic countdown gives way to a much longer, though equally enthusiastic, one. Am I excited for the new year of Ampersand Seven? Heck yes. Apprehensive? A little. After all, it's a commitment, this virtual page-a-day catalogue of typographical treats, and the &7 arsenal is by no means fully stocked. But if I need any reminders of why I did it before and why I'm ready to do it again, it's this picture. Snapped furtively through the window of a hurtling Acela train from Washington, D.C. to New York earlier this year, this bewildering congregation of nines stands as my reminder that you can take the girl away from the number-hunting, but you can't take the number-hunting out of the girl.

This bizarre mural first winked at me on a train trip down to D.C., standing out like a sentinel amid the grim, swiftly passing run-down dregs of north Philadelphia. The bubbly turquoise background and pattern of repeating nines snagged my attention as I was looking up wistfully from the first paragraph of a short story I'd just begun. I knocked Alice Munro's Ontario clean out of my lap in my effort to capture this snippet of blighted post-industrial Philadelphia, but alas, I was not fast enough. I had to wait a full 24 hours before I could spend the entire Philly portion of the train trip back to New York gazing anxiously out the window, camera at the ready, for the weirdly bright vision to reveal itself on the landscape once again. When it did, I was ready. But this was 2010, my reasoning brain told me. Hadn't I given up the number line? And if so, why was I behaving like a demented kid on a safari, nearly breaking my neck for a picture of a bunch of nines painted on a couple of bright turquoise thought bubbles? No, it seemed that even in the new year, my attention continued to be drawn by numbers.

Some of the thrill is the hunt itself. But I've become a collector, and like most collectors, I imagine, I find great joy in sharing the highlights of my collection with anyone whose attention I can cajole long enough to say, "Hey! Would ya look at this crazy bunch of nines on the Cabrun Ink Products Corp. building?" And so after another year of collecting, I'm happy to be back, kicking off another year of linear-themed pictures with some decidedly non-linear digressions and impressions. And no, I won't be counting down from #999,999,999,999,999. Not yet anyway. But you never know. There's always next year.

#216

#216, Pittsburgh, PA

It was late afternoon when we pulled into the parking space out front Howler's Coyote Cafe. Liberty Avenue was drenched in setting sunlight as we unloaded amp after amp and a trail of white picket fences through the narrow passageway onto the edge of the carpeted stage. The ceiling was hung with t-shirts of local bands and other acts who had passed through and left their Sharpie-signatured merch stapled to the ceiling. Big Green Tanks. The Beautiful Losers. Ninjas Who Met God. I spotted a bright red Bloodshot Records bumper sticker on the door and smiled. It was a little taste of Chicago, my hometown, in this Pittsburgh bar where we were about to play our first show of tour.

Pizza orders safely placed, all equipment snugly settled against the stage, I set out with my camera to see what numbers I could find. I hadn't been to Pittsburgh since my college years. I was going out with a DJ who went to school at Purdue and lived in Pittsburgh, and I spent a few days one summer touring the city with him. We saw Andy Warhol's grave, lay on the grass at Carnegie Mellon, and rode a car on the Duquesne Incline. I liked what I'd seen of Pittsburgh and was glad to have a chance to revisit the city. With a stroke of luck, our gig had landed us in Bloomfield, a residential area with plenty of houses in the 200 and 300 range -- you understand. It's all a work in progress.

The neighborhood was sleepy, a combination of aluminum sided homes and old brick buildings on a low scale. Telephone wires stretched and gaped across alleys. A suspicious man in a car yelled out to me, as I was taking pictures, "Sweetheart! Sweetheart!" Reluctantly, I turned to face him. "Who you lookin' for?" he bellowed. "Numbers," I shouted back. "Don't worry about it."