Momma’s Toy
It’s always been one of the most perfect images that defines a city, a state of being, and location, plus the mechanics of the the image? It was exactly what I was attempting to do, so in its time? This was the perfect image.
Momma’s Toy is an example of what that site was originally intended as.
It was a “click from the hip” image, and it included the Tower of the Americas, cars, lowrider elements and the general timbre of the South Side – S. St. Mary.
At one point, I kept a cheap digital camera stashed in the old girlfriend’s car, in case I either caught fish or snagged an image – like Momma’s Toy.
Years later, I hope I have a high-resolution version floating around. It would be a fun image to toy with as it speaks to a time and place. As it is, though it’s just 500 pixels of era, time, place and personality of a neighborhood.
That website started as an exploration, visual exploration, of a place. I’m a resident, but forever an outsider, not being “from” there. Perpetual tourist, and yet, the food, the atmosphere, the dust of the city’s plains gets under the skin.
I’ll remain, forever a tourist, as I’m from “up north,” as I frequently drawl. Doesn’t stop my sense of wonder and a no small amount of awe as cultures clash, then meld into an organic TexMex compound much stronger than its original state.
I’ve pointed this out before, but on the side of the Sheriff’s department vehicles, it says, “Bexar County, established 1731.”
Vibrant sense of self and place. Governments come and go, but the land – and its people’s – remain.