365-134 The street artist

This storefront used to be a radio and electronics store. I remember buying tubes for my guitar amplifier there back in the early eighties. Had I known better at the time I would have bought out his whole inventory of tubes because NOS (New Old Stock) USA made tubes go for a hefty sum today because of availability and the TONE that they add to tube amplifiers. Not the only “should have” moment I’ve had about my early guitar gear days :-(.  Anyhow, the older gentleman that ran it always painted scenes on the front of it, especially in his later years. If I’m not mistaken this was the last thing he painted before he passed away, quite a few years ago. I used to always like driving by and spotting something new that he painted. Sometimes it was topical and related to current events, other times it was simply a scene or an animal painting (he seemed to like horses).

After the store closed he would sometimes set up his paintings on the street in town and try to sell them. I have a few Kodachrome slides around somewhere of him sitting by his paintings. I had an old Konica rangefinder camera and asked if I could take his picture next to his work. He obliged and then took an interest to my camera, asking me what kind it was.  I used to buy old rangefinder cameras back then at camera shows because they were cheap and cool, yet delivered great results. He told me about using Speed Graphic cameras “back in the old days” and told me to continue enjoying taking photos. Well that was about 20 years ago and I still am!

Last Days

© David Guidas