Shabby Road

For the 50th anniversary of Abby Road I pulled out of my files a photo I took in 1996 to promote the Juggling stuff I sell at Lofty Pursuits.  

It made me appreciate the original cover photo more. I sited a location, College avenue in Tallahassee, in front of the recently opened Potbellys. It had the zebra stripes and the sight lines, then I noticed. The photographer, or at least the camera was above eye level. It was centered on the album cover to make the sight lines all meet in the middle like a one point perspective.  

My photo needed to be printed in a wide, not square format so I planned for that too.

I got my staff together. Mike had a white suit so he was John by default. I parked my mini van on the other side of the street facing the wrong way for the illusion and then a guy driving a VW Beetle came by, saw what we were doing and parked where the classic VW was in the original shot. So to get the angles right I set up a folding ladder in the intersection of Macomb and College avenues.  Every time a car was coming, someone would shout “Car” like we were playing stickball back in Brooklyn, and I would leave the ladder in the intersection and run to the curb. This shoot took longer than I’d like because I was trying to time the yo-yo and the diabolo to be at the same place when I hit the shudder. It seemed that every time I got the the shot right, the flames on the juggling torches went out. Of course this was shot on a film camera so I could not see if it worked until after the film was processed.  

Calling “Car” worked for a while, that was until the police chase happened ...

I’m sitting on the top of the ladder, taking photos, looking through the viewfinder of the camera and not around me. I hear a siren, but I can’t tell where it is. All of a sudden, whipping out from no where, down Macomb is a early 80’s Chevy sedan with one body part a different color from the rest of the car is heading right towards me, followed by police cars.  With no time to climb down I hold on to the ladder as the cars swerve around me. The wind lifts one leg of the ladder off the ground and the whole thing starts to rotate like a penny spinning slowly and wobbling quickly until it settled with me looking the wrong way down College Ave.  

Unfortunately Pobellys was not open yet to get a drink. I called it quits that day and later scanned in the photos and edited the photo with photoshop for one of the first times. I took out the capital building. Changed the license for the VW to 441 (A juggling pattern notation). I never did find out why the cops were chasing that car.

I love making things that are parodies, I need to do that more. Next time I’ll remember to get him to take his shoes off no matter how hot the asphalt is.