March in San Francisco was rainy. I heard days were a mixture of rain and wind off the Bay but had no idea what to expect in terms of coldness. Coming from Colorado, though, right as the snow was at an end, we were prepared with plenty of clothing. I stocked up on cheap H&M garments. Any given day I was wearing the same pull-over navy blue sweater and an orange skull cap - perhaps some subliminal choice coming from Bronco territory.
We parked at a Motel 6 deep in the San Francisco city. I carted a heavy computer tower, bags of clothes, and Liz's belongings to a second-story hotel room. It was the same Motel 6 interior we had seen before in San Luis Obispo (SLO), and other stops along the way. Weirdly enough there is a hotel called the Madonna Inn, right off the 5 heading north to San Francisco from Los Angeles. No relation to the singer.
As I walked in to the Madonna to check on rooms, I took two steps and stopped. I had suddenly realized I was not in any ordinary place but one of pink extravagance. I felt like I was inside a magical wonderland, one you would find if you found its entrance inside Elton John's piano. The lobby felt small, and from what I can remember from the brief stop was pink sprawled across wooden walls and narrow doorways, with tiny rooms on the other side. Rooms were $170 a night. I quietly exited.
Motel 6 in SLO was nothing special but we scored a working hot tub. No such luck on the hot tub in San Fran.
The night we got in to SF, I sent texts to friends I had met (several blogs back, and a year prior) who only partly knew we were in town. I reached out to Andrew Braswell, a former roommate of Rambo, who I met on my first trip out to Oakland, among a myriad of other interesting friends/hosts. Coincidentally, the same day we arrived his roommate went away on a long trip for a month. He offered us a one month stay in Potrero Hill for $800.
We were sold and we were fortunate.
Potrero Hill was off the beaten path, but close enough to walk to the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit; underground metro) and had access to great local hangouts (Pops, Mission Street, etc). Having been such a dive-bar hopper in my Colorado days with bars like 92nd Tavern and Sweetwater, to name two, I needed to find a new hole-in-the-wall joint. Just down the hill from where we were staying was 24th street which was a blend of Mexican produce markets, hip boutiques, seedy dive bars and a great oyster spot tucked into a coffee shop. San Francisco was nice like that: every place felt like it harbored around some artistic or spiritual vibe, and at first it was intimidating to walk in anywhere, feeling like I was new.
Let me back up just a little.
As I was leaving Colorado, I was underneath a wing of confidence, perhaps even blinded by its shadow. I had a sense of invulnerability, finally breaking out of my financial roof from bar-tending and my day-job salary caps. I was booking Skype Photoshop tutorials, head-shots, family portraits, weddings, engagements and anything else at the time that was paying. I had successful shoots for the Suicide Girls website as well, tapping into some of their modeling talent in the Denver area (which was not a booming market, unfortunately).
Most of my work came from the portfolio I built around non-paying "test shoots" with models or friends. I struggled with self-confidence for a year doing test-shoots, trying to find my artistic eye while still learning the gear. I knew right away I needed to learn Photoshop and I needed to invest in prime lenses. I felt that calling. I didn't want to be limited with my work in terms of the digital development. I started with actions, as most people do, to get those vintage, romantic looking images. I'm not one, however, to be content with letting some automated process dictate my vision.
At that point, somewhere around 2010, a year into shooting, I reached out to an artist named Jaime Ibarra. He taught me--and still teaches to this day--his unique coloring style which helped me refine my own coloring process. His work continues to impress hundreds of thousands of people and early-on, he was my biggest influence. The one thing I was intrigued by and is surely something I related to on my path, is the fact that Jaime was self-taught, and really didn't seem to care much about his gear, but more about the process and the story.
The point of all this back-story is that I came into San Francisco with this knowledge and sense of presence from Colorado. Out here though, I was no one. Nobody knew me, except for a handful of friends spread between Oakland and San Fran. I had Liz and my computer. I would say I spent a majority of my first few weeks in San Francisco on my computer, searching for any escape, as I had done in my past.
The computer linked me to home. I could reach back to my friends there trying to pretend I was confident in this new venture. The reality was, I had no idea what to expect--at all. All I knew is that I had the security of weddings throughout the year, in case I couldn't find any work in San Francisco, or elsewhere, if we moved on. We had discussed the possibility of staying in Los Angeles, or going further north like Portland or Seattle. Anywhere seemed cheaper.
We struggled to find suitable places in San Francisco. Landlords didn't like renting to couples. Most craigslist ads read like angry foreign students who were sick of parties, or fed up with people who had friends over between the hours of 8-10 p.m., or even had friends at all. I only say that because of the strange broken English.
We went to spots that had open-houses and there were 5-10 people, cash-in-hand with applications filled out, ready to move in (were their cars outside with their belongings?). One place had an older Asian lady with a golf-visor on who questioned our intentions of being in San Francisco: Who are your friends? Are you in school? What do you do for a living? What are your interests? To reserve that place we needed rent plus two months deposit: $4500.
It was a studio.
I think my idea of leaving the little-big city of Denver on an adventure was miscalculated. We started weighing our options in one of the most expensive cities (in the world?) to live. I started weighing my decision to uproot my newly found business in Colorado to the west coast.
