An Evening Of Culture

Bernar'r Macfadden, eccentric fitness guru of the last century, was arguably the inventor of the culture of diet, exercise and weight loss for health that is so prevalent today. Before the actual health benefits were known, or even suspected by the mainstream medical community, Bernar'r promoted alternately vegetarianism and a predecessor of the Paleo diet (raw food, including red meats) as the natural diet of the human animal. This, combined with strenuous outdoor exercise, became the foundation of Physical Culture, and the beginning of a lucrative career for Macfadden as America's first fad-diet shiller. Promoting his Physical Culture, Macfadden created…

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And BOOM! Goes The Dynamite

St. Ann's Tower, the tallest building in Irondequoit, came down with implosion at 9:06 Saturday morning. Anna and I went on a bike ride as close as we could get to it, and pointed our cameras at the tower. Believe it or not, it was a very quiet process, from half a mile away we couldn't hear a thing from the falling building, and only a few dull thuds from the dynamite!

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Secret Base

With what's left of summer days, I will build a secret base A complete departure from what I normally do -- I actually took pictures of people! And why not, we actually got this thing off the ground again. Concrete Discussion Group is back, and better than ever! Our first adventure together brought us to Iola, a place where we've all spent too much time already, so we got a bit more creative. (Only capitalism was harmed in the production of these photos) Jake-- Anna--

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Fixing A Hole

Now that I've lived downtown for three months, it was only a matter of time until I started exploring my immediate surroundings at the Midtown hole. Thanks to a shitty economy and even worse planning, Midtown has hit bottom after a 30-year slide from innovative (one of the first indoor malls, and a thriving business district until the late 70s) into desolate (rising crime and falling population) to promising (new construction, or at least demolition of the old, closed mall), and finally to stagnant, in its present half demolished, completely unbuilt stage. This was Midtown (and the rest of the…

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Calm Before the Storm

I should be used to it now -- whenever anything is going well for me, it's only setting up for the collapse later on. I'd only meant to go for a quick early Saturday morning explore with Ian while Nate finished some bullshit at work, and we'd go off to the Catskills for the weekend, and by the time I was back my friends would be here for the semester, and we'd go spend a few days with them exploring everything and getting the rave space up and running again. At least, that's what I thought would happen. Of course…

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Ghost of the Blues

After a few pretty hopeless busts in a row, and still on edge from the end of the Tamarack, we gave up before dark and started looking for a campsite. Sure enough, right off exit 98 was a little resort we MISSED entirely! Of course we'd give it a chance when it's just sitting here. As is typical in these parts, the front door was wide open, inviting us in. The perfection of this place was astounding. It looked like it could have just closed last week, in places! After seeing a few rooms like these, we decided not to…

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