A ghost town amongst the sprawling metropolis.
On the last day in his home John the Pastor stopped me while walking. He asked me where I was from, what I was doing in the neighborhood. John was rightly curious as he and his neighbor were some of the last remaining residents in the Yongsang Dong (administrative district).
Formerly one of the most ethnically diverse neighborhoods in Seoul, this was in large part due to the US military garrison adjacent to the neighborhood. The area was home to a population of roughly 12,000 inhabitants, those of which have been evicted in order to make way for a claimed much needed redevelopment, priced to the tune of $8.8 billion.
You’ve heard it all before, ai super future town to replace run down, albeit charming two and three story homes. I read that the basement apartment in the Korean breakout film Parasite was filmed here.
Scanned and Dev in Seoul at Whale Photolab.
@gorae_studio
Captain Cringe. This guy was walking up and down Market street in San Francisco with a gopro strapped to his head, what at the time was quite bizarre but now has become so normal for content creators to film constantly. His modus operandi was just getting girls phone numbers. I watched him approach a girl right after I asked to take his photo. She giggled and laughed and covered her mouth, all the things that told me she wasn’t threatened by the ocular protrusion from his headstrap, ultimately giving this what most would consider jabrone her number. It wasn’t until more recently, nearly 15 years later that this became a style of content creation, pointedly known as RIzz Cam. I think it was 2010, I was getting back into photography after a hiatus that led me to focus entirely on skateboarding and filming. I was winding my own black and white and hand processing it at a community computer hacker-space that had a darkroom. I was essentially the only one who used it. The space was open 24/7 and completely free to use as I wished.
Photo taken 20 years ago. Printed 2026.
Brendan was a shredder. Many of us had nicknames and his was Shekler, after Ryan Shekler; a young professional skateboarder at the time, because they bared a faint resemblance and somewhat insufurable personality traits. A nickname in skateboarding often starts as a joke or borderline insult to someone, usually because of the way they look or act, other times it can come from a singular life altering event. Sometimes if you end up embracing the name you become one of the crew, but not exclusively. Sometimes you are ostracized because of the nickname. You never choose your own nickname.
I never had one that stuck, Knox, Johnny Knoxville, Knoxville, dick budkis, and I think Jon Knox sucks cox were a few of mine.
