Saying good bye to EZ

Having been a patron at Old Europe for a while now, I have met a lot of fun people sitting at the bar in front of my computer. One day, I met two lovely women, a mother and daughter named Bev and Lisa. for those of you that follow my flickr site, you may remember the photo I shot of them.


Well, the other half of the story was Bev's Husband. People called him Easy. Easy was such a nice man. He was a Biker at heart. A kind soul and a great listener. He would sit at the bar and talk with whoever was there, and not in an intrusive way.... he was just ... well, Easy.

Over the last couple of weeks, I saw Bev and Easy at the restaurant a few times, and Bev always greeted me warmly, and Easy would just give me a firm handshake and look me deep in the eyes and I knew that things were ok in the world.

Those two were so in love, Easy would always say that Bev was his angel, and they would laugh together in such a way that you could tell they were life partners at it's finest example.

We found out on Tuesday that after some minor surgery, Easy had some complications and passed away.
It was really shocking. We all had just seen Easy the week before and you never expected to lose him.

Yesterday was Easy's funeral service, and this morning his friends and family hopped on their Harley's and took a ride.
This afternoon there was a going away party for Easy at the Folsom Hotel, Bar and Saloon.
This was not a yuppie crowd, it was almost a scene out of a movie. The guests had leather chaps, jackets, and black boots. The sound of their V-twin engines announced their arrivals.

There was a wall of photos of Easy including a picture of him standing next to a statue of Jack Daniels, that after drinking pretty heavily one night at some bar, Easy walked out with the statue over his shoulder and ran down Sutter St with the statue and wouldn't return it until the next day. Seeing this man in these photos made you smile and brought a tear to your eye.

There were about 50 people that showed up at the Hotel, and after a while, they showed a video that someone had created with more photos of Easy and all his friends. It was great to see these photos put to music. As the video played, there was not a dry eye in the house. It was heart breaking to see Bev and Lisa sitting in the front laughing and cheering when they saw photos of Easy making funny faces, or posing next to good old Jack Daniels, and then weeping un-ashamedly during the rest of the video.

I went outside and took a photo of Easy's Harley which was parked outside the hotel, and this will be the photo of the day.
I will miss Easy, and I am glad that I had just a few moments in my life to be touched by this man and his kind spirit.

the bumpit

Sitting at home tonight on April 23 in the year 2009.... thats right.. 2009
I saw this commercial. It is so 1980's I just had to share it.

Ab's bar

I shot Ab's bar yesterday afternoon, and the owner was very happy with the images I shot.
We bought him a domain and I built a little template website.
We worked out a little deal and now... I have another satisfied customer!

A photo Gig... it's like Deja Vous

The Ravine Restaurant was one of the first restaurants that I shot. Since then, the owners have gone out of business, and a new owner has just opened the doors again.
These are a couple of shots from the Ravine.






The new place is called Ab'bar or Abbar.. or something like that.
I went into today and met the new guy, and tomorrow I am going to go in and shoot photos for him.
I am kind of excited to see if I can come up with something fresh and new while shooting the same restaurant.

The Denver Marriot

I took a couple of shots in the hotel lobby this afternoon.
This is the Denver Marriot City Center.

Denver

I got on the plane in sunny Sacramento, and landed in rainy Denver. The temp was about 36 degrees, and by the time I got about 10 minutes from the airport in the cab, it was snowing like mad. Visibility went really down, and the hotel sidewalks were covered and being shoveled about every 10 minutes. After about 3 hours of that kind of snow, it stopped and then turned to a bit of freezing rain. Denver didn't get the amount of snow that they thought, but there were places around the foothills that got about 41 inches of the white stuff.
Townsend and I went for dinner at the Rocky Mountain diner and I had a plate of ribs. Yumm!



We started at 8:00 this morning and are pretty much ready for the show now at 11:00 am.
The meeting starts at 6:00 pm tonight and goes till 9:00. I am not sure what we are going to do all day, but at least we are ready!

A new chapter

I finally set up an account to sell my photography online.
This is pretty exciting for me!
I worked on this before and couldn't figure out how to set the price so that my images were not for sale for about 10 bucks.
Having figured that out, I am happy to announce my new web address of

http://stevelarosenc.imagekind.com/

Take a look... Buy 20 or 30... ya know... support the starving AV/Photographer guy.
Just kidding.. hope you enjoy.

Steve

Sunday night Wine and Dine at the Rotary Club

Old Europe was participating in a wine and dine event and I suggested to Allen that he bring over the 40" LCD screen and throw up images of the restaurant on it. He asked me if I wanted to help out and I wasn't doing anything else, so I agreed.
Next thing you know, there was 500 people in the room, and We were getting slammed! Tomas was serving roasted pork, home-made meatloaf, and home-made sausage over sauerkraut. I was slinging Pilsner Urquell like mad, and Allen was schmoozing like crazy. We rocked it out, and I think it was a good event for the restaurant.

Almost Home

I met Evan this morning around 9:30 and we took a cab to the airport. I stood in line for almost 40 minutes to check in, and then through Passport Control, and then off to the gate.
The flight was smooth. I had an aisle seat and I slept a lot. I think I can stay mostly awake for the flight from Atlanta to Sacramento and then it will be a good nights sleep in my own bed.
I have no battery life left on the Mac, so after this post, I am pretty much done.

This is the view from my seat at the gate.

Good bye Madrid

The show went well, We had a really nice night out last night, and went to the Yacht club to give the bartender a print of the picture that we took. He didn't speak English and we didn't speak Spanish but somehow, it all worked out.
It was really fun giving a stranger a little gift and seeing him show it around to the other members of the staff.


Here is the shot.


We walked back to the hotel, sad that we would have to say goodbye to Horst until the next time we are in Europe. I took a quick shot of the little place we hung out in all week.



So, in case you didn't see it on Flickr, here is a shot of the meeting room that we worked in and setup.