This is it. I started with an idea I had two years ago of driving all of Route 66. I finally got my self organized in May and decided basically to try crowd fund a vacation. I figured if I made a zine or something out of the road trip I could get people to give me money and amazingly it worked. I raised some outside funds and took off on a 31 day road trip, the bulk of which were spent traveling Route 66.

I started out in Chicago and spent a day with Caprice Capone and then spent three days driving to St. Louis (a four hour drive if you take the highways) with one of my favorite models Sidney Scarlet. Once I got to St. Louis I spent the day hanging out with my girl Theresa Manchester, a St. Louis native. From there I flew in my muse of muses Charlotte Stokely and spent three days driving her to Oklahoma City, OK. I had lunch with my friend Heidi there and she ended up jumping in my car and going to Amarillo with me. In Amarillo I met Annalee Belle who I got to photograph in front of the famous Cadillac Ranch (as seen on the cover of my book!). I then took off towards Albuquerque, NM where I picked up the amazing Ash Hollywood and drove her to Vegas which is just two hours north of 66. In Vegas I spent two days in a nice hotel after a two weeks on the road and ran into Coco Velvett. She decided she could use a ride to LA and we drove back down to Route 66 and spent maybe 10 hours driving the short trip from Vegas to LA. Once I got to LA I only had one spot left to hit and I took Miss Crash down to the Santa Monica pier and photographed her naked on the ferris wheel.

The entire trip was life changing and I was so lucky to have such amazing models willing to get naked in public all across the country for basically nothing. When it was over I had coincidentally shot 66 rolls of film (well I shot 67 but one of them sadly got lost) and had a body of work I was truly proud of. Instead of just making a black and white photo copied zine I really stepped up my game and ended up spending a ton of money self publishing a limited edition book. It is hand numbered out of 250 copies. It is 85% color and 120 pages long. It really looks incredible. I am so happy with this thing and I can’t wait until you guys see it.

Originally I was going to plan a low key book release in NYC but I started thinking about how great it would be to do the release in LA where Route 66 ends. I was going to be out there in October anyway and I thought maybe I could throw something together last minute. I started texting some friends and Greg from Mishka got back to me immediately. I was thinking maybe I could do something small in their LA store since they do in store events in their Brooklyn store all the time. Turns out they just opened a new gallery above their LA Location and they were looking for an October show. He asked me if I could get a show together in time and I jumped on it.

So on October 11th I will be doing the book release in LA and there will be a huge photo show to go with it. I printed over 4o photos including 11 massive 20″ x 30″ prints. Not sure what I am going to hang until I get there but Mishka’s gallery is pretty big and I should have room to hang most of it. It’s going to be awesome. The book release is from 7-10 on the 11th but the photo show will be up for 6 weeks. There will be free Sailor Jerry rum and beer if you need a reason to go. There will also probably be a bunch of porn stars there if that’s your sort of thing… just saying.

There will also be a NYC event at Mishka’s 350 Broadway location as well but there won’t be a photo show. Just some free booze and an opportunity to buy the book.  I think the date is going to be October 17th but it’s not 100% confirmed yet. Just a heads up. Assuming they don’t all sell out (100 of them are already owed to crowd funders) the books will be available in late October.

I hope to see some of you in LA!

 

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