My Quiet Life

I am sure this is just going to wind up as another checkbox next to the “chris is an asshole” column in most people’s book, but I have something to rant about.

So, our new office is in Germantown, which, if you’ve ever been here, is largely very expensive historic houses without driveways or garages — hence for a lot of the neighborhoods, it’s mostly street parking. It’s also mixed zoning, so you have a lot of houses, apartment complexes, condoes, businesses and restaurants.

This week, I caught wind of people in our office scolding/reminding people about parking in a certain spot. I figured it was a fire lane, or a handicapped spot or something. But I asked, and apparently a woman that lives a few doors down with her husband and kids had complained about us parking in front of her house. I guess because it’s inconvenient for her to have to walk a few cars away. Maybe there’s more to the story, and I’ll happily rescind any judgement I’m about to spew forth if that’s the case. But seriously, folks? This is the weird sort of entitlement that drives me nuts.

Don’t get me wrong: I don’t have any problem being a good neighbor and not parking in front of her place as a favor. But for her to actually complain about it? It’s a full neighborhood and parking can be limited at times. If you want a convenient type house for your nuclear family where you can park right next to your house… move to a suburb. An urban historic neighborhood is probably not right for you. Germantown is a half-mil to $1mil house neighborhood, you can afford something in a neighborhood with driveways, I’m sure. Why would you ever move to a mixed-zone historic overlay neighborhood and then have the gall to complain about people parking on a public street in front of your house?

It reminds me of this guy I met a couple of months ago at a photography meetup. He asked where I lived and I pointed across the river and said “there”. He said he had just moved to 4th avenue in a condo downtown, as well. “Welcome to the neighborhood, how are you liking it so far?” I asked. “Not at all, actually,” was his reply — and he goes on to tell me how hard it is with his 7 year old daughter, especially with how much noise and foul language she is subjected to, and how she has to see all those homeless people, they should really do something about that, etc etc. I kinda stared at him and turned to my friend Christy (who is well-versed in my opinions about people downtown and the homeless) and basically did everything I could not to burst out laughing. Seriously, dude, you move downtown on 4th avenue with your 7 year old daughter and then complain about noise and hearing people swear? Have you … ever been to a big city before? Are you familiar with these thing scalled “people” that “exist” in them?

What planet are these people from that they feel compelled to move to an environment with very clear pros and cons, and then feel entitled to complain and try to change it to suit them, as if they’re the only person in the world?

I bitch all the time about harleys and club noise downtown, but I’d never be so stupid as to try to change it. I moved downtown. I’m not an idiot. I have ranted about this before regarding the smoking ban.

Feel free to call me an asshole in the comments below.

So, you probably won’t be surprised to learn I’m voting for Obama. The reasons why, though, are probably worth clarifying. A lot of people, for whatever reason, tend to believe I’m a fairly straightline liberal Democrat. I suppose I can maybe see why — if you read a lot of what I’ve written in the past about politics, I tend to align with the “american left” on a lot of issues of the day. Technically speaking, I’d consider myself a sortof “leftist libertarian”, a newer seemingly oxymoronic neologism that includes various anarcho-collectivists, mutualism, etc.

So while I have a dim view of the reigning administration in power at any given time — Democrat or Republican — I don’t take the traditional anarchist/libertarian approach of dismissing voting entirely, or advocating open rebellion against authority. The state isn’t going anywhere any time soon, so we may as well try to make it suck less while we work around it in our communities.

Anyways, I’m rambling. Traditionally, I’ve voted against Republicans on social justice/economic/financial lines.. Tax issues, economic policies, deregulation, etc. The Republican faux-”free market” deregulation, in my opinion, has a lot to do with the current mess we’re in. (You mean that if you remove all government supervision from previously regulated financial industries without also removing the state-sponsored guarantees of bailouts, those organizations will act irresponsibly?! I’m shocked, SHOCKED!!). While all those things are still a factor in this election, my main opposition to the Republican party candidate this time around is largely centered around foreign policy.

In the 2000, and 2004 elections, while I was opposed to Bush’s foreign policy, the war in Iraq, and his disastrous “war on terror”, it was largely domestic and economic issues that drove my vote. This time around, however, we’re dealing with a different situation. McCain is a scary guy on foreign policy to begin with. I’ve repeatedly pointed at this article as a great summary of why. This is a guy that considers his political idol to be Theodore Roosevelt, with no apparent hint of irony whatsoever. Seriously.

This article, in the American Conservative, of all places, succinctly describes my feelings on McCain, and why the idea of him in the white house scares the living crap out of me. And let’s not even get into the prospect of President Palin. But seriously, this is a guy that will bomb Iran. He joked about it. But not, like, “ha ha isn’t that a crazy idea” joke.

As much as I like to focus on domestic policy, I think World War III would really suck. There are plenty of other reasons, but this is foremost in my brain. McCain scares me.

I’d encourage any of you that are concerned about the destruction of tent city to come out for this tomorrow afternoon:

WHO: CONCERNED CITIZENS FOR TENT CITY, cctcNashville@aol.com, 615-474-8390
WHAT: A RALLY TO SAVE TENT CITY
WHERE: THE STEPS OF THE METRO COURTHOUSE
WHEN: THIS FRIDAY, OCTOBER 24, FROM 3:00 PM TO 5:00PM
WHY: PROVIDING & IMPROVING A PLACE TO CALL HOME IS BETTER THAN DESTROYING IT.

Briefly, Tent City is an encampment of around 30 or so (I think — varying, as well) people that Metro PD is attempting to shut down due to recent increased visibility around a stabbing. They are citing “violence” and “public health” as factors for clearing the camp. I am not certain where they expect these people to go. There’s an article in the Tennessean and the Scene about the situation.

There’s some great info here about the role of these sorts of encampments using info from Seattle. Metro should be more engaging in finding a way to make this encampment legal and safer, not razing it.

Stop by and/or help spread the word.. Thanks!

So, this year the Tennesseean sponsored a pretty cool photo contest/project called Capture Music City. The idea is that they solicited local photographers to submit pictures of/from Nashville in various categories: Sports & Recreation, People, “Simply Nashville”, etc. These pictures were then displayed for voting, and the top winners were to be selected and published in a book, which was unveiled last week at a release party at Davis Kidd.

I think it was a pretty cool project done in good spirits. As I’ve mentioned before when I first signed up, you sometimes have to be wary of these sorts of “contests”, because it’s rarely as one-sided a blessing for the photographer as it may seem. After all, these organizations sponsoring the contests are getting a wealth of free pictures they can then use to make money. For the photographer, it has to be a decision of whether or not the resulting publicity is worth submitting for free or not. I decided it was, and the Tennessean was very good about crediting photographers for their work. So all in all a pretty good deal.

There is still one thing, however, that bothered me then and is still bothering me now: it doesn’t appear that they got model releases from some (possibly any) of the people in the pictures. I myself asked them how they planned on acquiring them and never really got a satisfactory answer, and indeed now that the book is published I am already running into people (in this photo, for example) who are surprised and confused to learn their picture has been published in a book for sale.

This is a somewhat complicated subject, because the details of whether or not it’s legal to sell a picture of someone are not at all set in stone or crystal clear. The wikipedia page covers it pretty well:

Publishing an identifiable photo of a person without a model release signed by that person can result in civil liability for whoever publishes the photograph.

…

Note that the photographer is typically not the publisher of the photograph, but sells the photograph to someone else to publish. Liability rests solely with the publisher, except under special conditions. It is typical for the photographer to obtain the model release because he is merely present at the time and can get it, but also because it gives him more opportunity to sell the photograph later to a party who wishes to publish it.

…

Note that the issue of model release forms and liability waivers is a legal area related to privacy and is separate from copyright.

This stands in pretty stark contradiction from the explanations I’ve gotten from the Tennessean. Their FAQ entry on the subject explains:

What about people photos and releases? Are famous people okay?

Photos of people in a public square are probably okay without any kind of release. Photos of family and friends are usually okay, but get their permission first. We probably can’t publish models and famous people in the book without their consent, but go ahead and post photos if you have them. Let us worry about the rights and such. If our lawyers feel we need to get in touch with the famous person or model, we will get ahold of you and make arrangements.

I am more than happy to let them worry about it (and the above wikipedia info about most jurisdictions seems to confirm that it is indeed their problem to worry about), but it doesn’t seem to me like they made any effort to get the release forms.

This is the e-mail exchange I had with them before the publication of the book and after it occurred to me that they might need to do this:

On May 13, 2008, at 7:25 AM, cwage@quietlife.net wrote:

=======================
From: cwage@quietlife.net
Project: Capture Music City
=======================

If you guys select pictures of people, how do you plan on getting model release forms from them to use their picture in the book?

The response I got from someone at pediment publishing:

Hi Chris,

We leave it up to the photographer to decide if the photo is okay to publish. We are trusting your interpretation of rights (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photography_and_the_law for some general guidelines). If you submit the photo, you are telling us you believe it’s okay to publish. If you don’t feel comfortable, or are unsure, then it’s better to err on the safe side and not submit it.

By the way, I love your photos! Keep ‘em coming!

I followed up with a standard IANAL disclaimer and then the explanation as I’ve offered above about how I don’t think that’s exactly right — the URL she links to concerns the legality of taking pictures, not publishing them — but I never got a response.

I am not raising this because I have any particular axe to grind — nor do I think that the capture music city book represents a cash cow that is taking advantage of poor models, but I do think it’s interesting and worth discussing.

Do I think that the Tennessean/Pediment publishing went out of their way to screw unwitting models? No.

Do I think that it’s worth anyone in the book to sue someone? No. (Especially given the army of lawyers that Gannett, et al. likely has at their disposal versus the relative merit.)

Do I think that they played loose and fast with privacy law out of laziness/convenience to avoid getting the model release forms? Yes, and I think that principle is important.

Thoughts?

I added a fancy flash interface that will play my icecast radio stream — see it in the sidebar to the right, or click “Pop out” to get a handy separate window. Or click it here:

I take no responsibility for what may play when I don’t have a playlist queued up (read: muppets’ specials, star wars christmas specials, or this american life on repeat. it could be worse)

My favorite story from the weekend was from last night. When we saw Angel Island on fire, we headed to Yerba Buena and drove around until we could find a good vantage point, which we did, and I proceeded to take pics. At some point, I had to pee, so I ambled up a hill and let loose on an innocent tree. As I looked around, I realized I was basically in someone’s backyard. All of a sudden, a dog comes out of nowhere and is barking at me in a not-so-friendly way. So, I’m thinking, “oh, shit, some dude just totally loosed the hounds on me.” Before I have a chance to stop peeing, I hear the owner bellow out from his deck, “COCO! COCO NO!! No. GET IN HERE!! Get. In. Here.” The dog sheepishly puts his tail between his legs and heads back to the house, and the dude yells out “Sorry about that.”

I, still peeing, reply “Uhh.. oh, no problem.”

It goes without saying that around here I would have wound up with an ass full of birdshot if the dog didn’t get me first. Instead, this guy apologized to me for his dog bothering me while I peed in his backyard.

California is awesome.

I left my heart lens cap in San Francisco.

I finally took a vacation. I’ve given up hopes the last couple of years of finding time to do the “lay in the surf like a beached whale” beach trip, so I’ve instead been trying to work days off strategically around weekends to visit friends over yonder. This last weekend: SF. And now for no real reason other than rubbing your nose in it, a brief recap of my trip:

Thursday: flew in late, met my friend Chris and Melissa for microbrew beer and pizza at some place in Berkeley that had a really good Pilsner. We then headed to a bar called the Albatross that was cozy.. Looked like a good romantic date location. You know, if you’re into that sort of thing.

Sea life!

On Friday, we woke up early and grabbed bagel sandwiches and walked around some piers looking at boats. Spent some time drooling at this boat and a few others that were docked for fleet week. One of the others was named “In Ocean” — proof that people buying yachts are still not of the generation that would consider the googleability of their yacht’s name. Go ahead, try to find info about their boat, I dare you. I don’t know a lot about boats, but it’s pretty easy to spot the Really Nice Ones. They tend to have lots of polished surfaces, and lots of unusually good-looking people on deck polishing them. We asked if they were there for fleet week, but no, just cruising on a trip from Alaska to Hawaii and a few other places, they just happened to be there. Ah, to be rich.

After a brief sojourn checkin’ out some science at the California Academy of Sciences, we headed to dinner at Sotto Mare, where we had risotto, cioppino, and sea scallops. One of the better Italian meals I’ve ever had. Followed up with drinks at 15 Romolo, which is run by a friend-of-friends who bartends there, and makes some of the best drinks I’ve had in a while.

Sea food!

Saturday started off with dim sum at Pearl City in chinatown, which was excellent, and I somehow managed to not totally stuff myself. Then walked up north to the shore to watch fleet week craziness, and then had a few beers at a place near the Presidio. Always weird to be drinking beer while hearing and seeing F16s randomly fly by. I imagine that’s pretty much what I’ll be doing whenever World War III erupts (vote mccain ‘08!!!). Wandered around in the presidio to a national cemetery and then a cool pet cemetery, and then walked all the way back, since fleet week traffic made mass transit pointless. Probably around 7 miles of walking altogether. Dinner was fancy french food at Le Charm. Pretty delicious — started with mussels and pate maison (i think?) and I had the bouillabaisse, which was excellent.

Sunday was what I was really looking forward to, and it didn’t disappoint. Early morning we rendezvoused and all drove up north to a place called Hog Island, where we proceeded to stuff ourselves silly with Oysters. I think we went through near a even gross of Oysters and a few dozen clams, complemented with sopresseta, brie, crackers, champagne and Belgian beer that we brought. Total cost per person? $15. Yep.

After we were done eating, we drove north to a place near Point Reyes, where we went to a slightly hidden area with a firepit and hung out by the beach for the sunset drinking beer and eating hot dogs (because a dozen dozen oysters just really isn’t enough).

Had a leisurely drive back, dropped Chris off in the east bay, just in time to notice on the way back that Angel Island was on fire. I of course took picture after picture, despite the people in the car falling asleep waiting on me.

Great trip, A+, would visit again!!!!!