Badges, part II

The emblematic sidewalk medallions are quite quotidian. I’ve mentioned it in passing and mentioned in the past, but they were the gem of an idea that never fully materialized.

With the digital image direct to print format, I once did a make poster-size print of tiny pictures. Must’ve been close to dozen images across and maybe 20 lines down, so it was probably 240 images?

I quickly toyed with what I had, and here’s the resulting file. Still, it’s not what I was looking for, but it’s close. There’s something that speaks to me, sort of in an enigmatic way, and I can’t quite capture it. Perhaps it’s San Antonio on a cold winter morning, the happy faces of the medallions smiling up. The gray background reminds that’s when I took a whole series of the series, down-turned face, bundled against the cold. But then, it’s hard to imagine that on a May afternoon.

History is often times a series of cyclical events, repeated over and over until someone recognizes the patterns. One of my very few regrets was that I didn’t have a better camera on the afternoon I stumbled upon this scene. A brilliant spring day, the Mission Drive-In. Located between the old missions, and backing up to the San Antonio River System, as emblematic of the area as possible. There is a whole grouping of people who lost their collective virginity in the back seat of cars at the Mission Drive-In.

That’s part of it. The regret is that I didn’t actually have a good camera at the time, and I never did get the image I wanted. However, for the sake of that landmark, and its associated image, I was happy enough with the results. It wasn’t that well-framed shot, it was just tweaked when I could crop it to please my tastes. Good enough for sa web image, too bad it wasn’t quite as sharp as I would’ve liked.

If I understand correctly, the old mission drive-in is going to be campus/industrial complex development thing. The image of empty booths, the sign says, “closed,” it captures a desoalte feeling in the middle of a populated oasis. But then, San Antonio – what falls within the Bexar County Line – is all weird.

From Austin, weird is a high compliment.

Badges: here, here, here, here, here, and here.