Been crazy about tires from the beginning!
Still am.
Why?
No idea.
Fix Flats, Clint, Texas, 2024, photograph by James Yontrofsky
FIX FLATS
JEAN’S GAMS, EL PASO, TEXAS
Jean’s Gams, El Paso, Texas, 1975
Photo and Text by Bruce Berman
All the signs are gone, or gone to a hipster bar somewhere in America. The Funk is sanitized. Hosiery bar? Really? How un Gucci.
For me that era was a treasure chest waiting for me to open it and when I did… TREASURE!
You got anything to compare to this, now?
Somehow the Walmart Women’s section just doesn’t have the juice.
Is there anywhere on this planet now that isn’t manufactured?
I think there is.
Not sharing. Going. My soul needs authenticity. I guess everyone’s does. We’re on our own.
RAIN ON THE “A”
Rare rain in El Paso, Texas, November 16, 2022
DOG ON THE RUN
I-10 Dog, El Paso, Texas, 2011
TEXT AND PHOTOGRAPH BY BRUCE BERMAN
When I first got to El Paso, I ran into a guy and he told me, “El Paso is just a truck stop on I-10.”
He didn’t mention the desert, the border, the mountains, the river, Juárez, etc.
I’ve lived in El Paso for almost 45 years. It’s all those things I mentioned but, it’s also “… just a truck stop on I-10.”
It’s been fancied up lately. I’ve seen it here, before. Somebody makes out, but the fact is, if you want to be hip there’s hipper places. If you’re hip here, you really aren’t. Sorry.
But this faux hipness, which will inevitably lead to another failure, sandpapers over the very thing that is actually the cool thing about El Paso: it’s not “hip” at all! That’s its charm. That’s not pathetic. That’s genuine.
Mediocre hipness? Not cool. Genuine ruin and authenticity?
Seductive.
That allure is gone from here now. It’s crowded. The border is a mess. The hipsters are stunningly ordinary. The old folks are not of this land. They’re like the new highways, faster, less fun. Generations have passed. People that were of this land, that left, that came back, have now packaged the cultural past and have covered themselves in a cultural identity that is but a fabrication, an identity that was their grandparents, without the sweat and sabrosa.
Development. What a euphemism. [Hit there CONTINUE READING tab, below]
EXIT ZERO
Exit Zero, New Mexico/Texas Border, 2018
STREET GUY #51
Jesus, Street Guy series #51, 2018
EVIL EYE
Evil Eye (of Google), El Paso, Texas, 2018
If a dude you don’t know was in front of your casita taking pictures, wouldn’t you go out and ask him/her what they’re doing? Would you not feel righteous indignation (your home is your castle…. why is this cat snapping photos of my castle?)?
Why does Google have a right to drive up and down the streets of this world taking pictures of your home? Who made a law making that alright? Where does this end? Is there an X-Ray camera that can penetrate the outside of your home and looks at your inside? When does that machine get arms and legs and jump down and punishes you -inside or out- for what they think is a “transgression? Is that OK for Google to do? Or the Government? Or your worst enemy? Or the local pervert?
Who is this OK with?
THE GRID STARTS HERE
Exurbia 8. East El Paso, Texas, 2018
ONE NATION
One Nation. Memorial Day, Fabens, Texas, May 2018
FUNNEL CAKES
EL PASO LANDSCAPE
El Paso landscape #12 (Infrastructure series). El Paso, Texas, 2018 by Bruce Berman
REDOING THE CLOCK
Redoing The Clock. El Paso, Texas, 2018
It’s been 5:00 o’clock at The Clock on Dyer Street for as long as I’ve been in El Paso (43 years).
It’s reassuring that time does not change particularly after 43 years (if you know what I mean).
But even in a land where time stands still, once in awhile, roadside signs need to be renewed.
It’s an art form. The letters are made of rubbery plastic. You have to know what you’re doing and this phantom sign renewer does. Name? Withheld. Working for the restaurant? Not saying. Getting paid? Maybe.
It’s almost 5:00PM for this image. It’ll be almost 5:00AM in twelve hours.
Even a broken clock is right… twice a day.
CROWN OF CANUTILLO, TEXAS: RUMINATION ON FACTS
Text by Bruce Berman
Whatever this crown was announcing is long gone. A bar? A restaurant? A store? Probably a bar… but who knows?
The photograph of the Crown of Canutillo, Texas is what remains (and perhaps a memory here and there).
Who constructed it? Why a crown in this funky little town that’s on the border up against New Mexico? Was there dancing?
Who knows?
STRIPPED WHATABURGER
NO NET AMERICA
Migrant family on highway, California, 1937
Photograph by Dorothea Lange
Extended Caption: California at Last: Example of self-resettlement in California. Oklahoma farm family on highway between Blythe and Indio. Forced by the drought of 1936 to abandon their farm, they set out with their children to drive to California. Picking cotton in Arizona for a day or two at a time gave them enough for food and gas to continue. On this day, they were within a day’s travel of their destination, Bakersfield, California. Their car had broken down en route and was abandoned.