Category: Photography

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…and sadness.

From the AZ Central Archives, 12 March 2010:

When Circles Records & Tapes closes its doors Saturday, a sentimental chapter in the lives of many Valley residents will also come to an end.

For 38 years, Circles has stood at Central Avenue and McKinley Street in downtown Phoenix. The neighborhood may have changed, but the store always remained devoted to pleasing people who cared about music.

“Record stores almost used to be kind of a cult thing,” said Angela Singer, who started the store in 1972 with her husband, Leonard. “People would go in and look at the album covers and read the liner notes. They would come in and just browse, which doesn’t seem to be what people want to do today.”

The world has changed since the Singers first got into the record-store business. The couple’s entry into the world of music happened in a roundabout way. Leonard owned Associated Distributors, a wholesale company that sold automobile accessories.

In the mid-1960s, that included tape decks, though few were manufacturing tapes. Leonard stepped in, signing deals with such labels as Motown and Atlantic to produce cassettes and 8-tracks.

By 1968, Associated Distributors boasted more than $2 million in annual sales. Circles opened as not only a record store, but as a way to distribute the Singers’ products.

“People were excited when we opened because there really wasn’t anything like this in Phoenix,” Leonard said. “It was something different.”

Tower Records had yet to arrive. Mass-merchandisers such as Borders and Best Buy didn’t exist. Circles, with its knowledgeable staff, deep catalog and late hours, was unusual and exciting.

“This was a music lover’s paradise,” said Rick Nuhn, who worked at the store when it opened. “At the time, this was the only place where you could pick up a lot of the records we were selling.”

The Singers staffed the store with people who knew music. It was Nuhn’s first job after graduating from Washington High School. He now lives in Los Angeles, where he hosts a syndicated radio show and works as senior director of promotion for the Concord Music Group.

“The ’70s were a different culture,” he said. “You’d go to Circles and talk to someone that you thought was cool to find out about cool music. “People can do that today through blogs and the Internet, but it’s not the same kind of connection.”

Industry leader

Circles gained local prominence and became an industry leader. In the days before Nielsen SoundScan tallied music sales, a select group of record stores would report top sellers to Billboard to form the magazine’s charts. Circles’ weekly reports tallied Phoenix’s hottest hits.

Recording artists often visited to sign their latest albums. One-hit wonders like Redbone (“Come and Get Your Love”) stopped there as did country stars like George Strait and Lyle Lovett. Angela Singer remembers a vivacious young Bette Midler meeting fans. Barry Manilow was there, as was Arthur Fiedler.

So many celebrities appeared that the Singers can’t remember them all. They used to have artists sign a door, but it was removed a long time ago – now tucked away in an upstairs storage room. It bears signatures of such acts as the Isley Brothers, Eddie Rabbitt, Michael Franks and David Gates from Bread. Bruce Springsteen’s signature also stands out.

“Oh, yes!” Angela exclaimed, her memory jogged. “He was here. He was quite pleasant, as I recall.”

Valley disc jockey Steve Goddard recalled escorting Natalie Cole to the store in 1988, when she was riding high the on the charts with “Pink Cadillac.”

“She was just delightful,” he said. “But that’s the thing with Circles: I’ve got so many memories there. Some are big ones like that, and some are just me getting excited at finding something there I couldn’t get anywhere else.”

One of Goddard’s favorite parts of the store was the “Wall of Hits,” in which every record that was on the Billboard Hot 100 occupied a spot.

“I’d go in there once a week with my list from Billboard, and I’d get every record that I was missing,” Goddard said. “It was awesome.”

All genres welcome

The building, a sprawling 36,000 square feet, is as distinctive today as when it was built in 1947 as an auto dealership. A huge front window curves around the side of the building, a reminder of days when it revealed the latest Studebakers.

Life-size posters used to fill the window; in the ’70s, one could see images of a beaming Helen Reddy or a brooding Patti Smith.

That was another thing about Circles: It didn’t matter what kind of music you liked. The store aimed to make everybody feel welcome.

“That was intentional,” said Nuhn, who once got an autograph from pianist Van Cliburn during a visit. “It wasn’t someplace that was trying to be hip. It was just about music. It didn’t matter what you liked. We would help you.”

The store stocked Latin albums in the ’70s, before they were easy to find. It carried polka music, religious tunes and became known as a haven for R&B fans. The selection of classical and jazz discs was equally extensive.

“Going to Circles was one of my favorite things to do,” said Sonia Moreno, a federal employee who shopped at the store since it opened its doors. “If you loved music, it was the place to be. You could find anything there, and if by some odd chance you couldn’t, they would order it for you.”

A digital demise

In recent years, the music industry has undergone massive changes. Tapes disappeared, and vinyl was turned into a cultish item when the compact disc took over. Now, CDs are giving way to digital downloads as chains such as Tower and Virgin have disappeared.

“We probably should have closed a long time ago,” Angela said. “It was just hard. We had employees that had been with us for years. You know people depend on you, and you don’t want to say goodbye.”

The Singers, who own the building, are hoping to sell it. The building will be vacant until it is sold.

The store remained devoted to its original goal. It sold a few music DVDs and some accessories as CD wallets, but it never strayed far from the original concept. It didn’t sell books or magazines or paraphernalia; it was always centered on music.

But as popular discs could be had cheaply at Walmart or Target, as well as online, it became harder to compete. And if you didn’t feel like getting dressed, you could download any number of songs to your computer. Circles became a dinosaur in the world of music retailers.

“Most music stores today do not sell exclusively music,” said James Donio, president of the National Association of Record Merchandisers, an industry group. “Because of the sheer dint of economic realities, they began diversifying more than a decade ago into doing other things.”

Revolver Records, just blocks from Circles, opened in downtown Phoenix last year. Co-owner TJ Jordan said the store has a different mission from Circles.

“I really love Circles because you could go in there and browse,” Jordan said. “But, if you deal with younger kids, these aren’t people that are used to going in and browsing. They have it all at their fingertips.”

That’s why Revolver emphasizes vinyl albums and used CDs and DVDs and relies heavily on social media like Facebook and Twitter. Circles didn’t focus on used products and never had a Web site.

“In reality, as great as Circles is, it’s just hard to have a record store like that in this day and age,” Jordan said. “It was more like something you’d see in the 1990s.”

The Singers seem to see the truth in that. Leonard said that once the store sells, the two plan to travel. Angela is active in the local arts scene. But he said their days in the music business are behind him.

“The business is so different than it used to be,” Leonard said.

“We sort of stumbled into this industry,” Angela added. “But, all the way through, we loved what we were doing.”

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Mid-century realness—no doubt facing the wrecking ball at some point to make room for more overpriced paid-for-by-mommy-and-daddy student condos as ASU/UofA press ever northward from downtown.

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Taking advantage of the clear skies tonight…

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We drove out to Boyce Thompson Arboretum State Park today.

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 June 1993

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Ben’s aunt takes a lot of pictures, so I wanted to get her something photo-related for the upcoming non-denominational winter holiday. I don’t know if Jody was even aware of the technique, but something I have always been intrigued with was infrared photography. I first ran across some examples of it it as a kid in the owner’s manual of my mom’s old Kodak Tourist Camera, and the white foliage and nearly-black skies fired my imagination. But back in the days of film, I never had the wherewithal to actually find the film, buy the necessary filters, and then locate a shop that could develop it. The results could be stunning, but seemed more trouble than they were actually worth.

All that changed with the advent of digital photography, requiring little more than a special filter and engaging the manual settings on the camera.

So I went ahead and ordered the filter for her, thinking it would be a fun diversion for her photos. It arrived today. It’s not the size my camera needs, but I decided to test it out as much as I could to see just how involved the whole process would be. No use giving a gift that would be too much trouble to actually use.

It was a lot of trial and error, but I finally got a decent shot. I had to set the camera to record in black and white (if I didn’t want pink-tinged photos), manually set the exposure time and aperture, and then use a tripod since the required exposure lengths were well beyond the hand-held, point-and-shoot range—making it completely unacceptable as a gift for Jody.

But I’ll have to admit the results were certainly interesting!

So I’ll be returning this one for a general-use polarizer (something she also doesn’t have) and then get my own IR filter to experiment with further.

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You were expecting pictures of Walmart?

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…of mid-century multi-family residential building in the entire valley, Phoenix Towers.

My mom’s long-time employer owned one of these condos from the 1960s until her death. I’d only visited once, but I was impressed by the design as well as the incredible view she had.

I’d been itching to get out and take some photos, and since the weather has been gorgeous lately I had no excuse to stay home. I also wanted to check out the camera on my new phone (since it was basically the only reason I upgraded) to see if I’m at the point yet where I can ditch the DSLR.

The results? Damn good, I will admit. Perfect for 90% of the things I photograph. But am I ready to ditch the DSLR yet? Not yet, but I think we’re getting close.

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As a child who grew up in the 1960s and being enthralled with the Apollo moon landings even then, I think I just orgasmed.

NASA has made their entire raw, unprocessed Hasselblad Apollo image archive available to Flickr. Conspiracy theorists and alien artifact hunters are undoubtedly going to have a field day. As for me, I just think they’re beautiful.

A small sampling of the hundreds of photos posted (warning: some of them are quite large so be patient while they load):

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I needed to get out of the house today, so in my infinite wisdom I headed downtown to make some photos.

It’s still too damn hot to be running around outside for any length of time, so after an hour or so in the sun, I headed to our home-away-from home for a cold beverage.

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Michael Collins, the astronaut who took this photo in 1969, is the only human at that time—alive or dead—who isn’t in the frame of this picture.

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Overnighting in Gallup. So close to home I can almost taste it.

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New Mexico really needs to change its state motto from Land of Enchantment to Land of Endless Road Construction.

I can’t recall a single trip through the state over the last fifteen years where we didn’t run into major road construction of one type or another. The place is obviously mainlining federal highway funds.

That being said, the place is still incredibly beautiful.

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Via NASA.

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Our final morning in Columbia was spent at the Riverbank Zoo and Garden.

It was still very pretty…

We didn’t spend a lot of time at the zoo. It was spring break and the place was crawling with kids. By the time we’d gotten through the reptile exhibit I was ready to bolt for fresh air and open skies. Thankfully, we actually did need to be on our way back to Atlanta.

And as they say, a good time was had by all.

Before we left Columbia, John asked if I’d ever done any technical writing. Nothing officially, I said, but I’d done a lot of documentation not only at my job in Phoenix, but also at my first job in Denver. The reason he asked is that his company might be needing someone with that skill set; a position that could be easily worked from home.

Right now I’m trying to track down the documentation I did for my last job. I’m going to tweak my resume a bit to add that skill, and then send it (and samples of that writing) off to him tomorrow.

We got back to Atlanta just in time for Ben’s cousin’s home-made tacos. They were just as delicious as they were the last time I had them at his parent’s house in New Mexico. Another early night and we were packed and on our way to the airport the morning.

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The next day found us dodging raindrops on our drive over to Columbia on I-2o. We splurged on a nice hotel directly across the street from John’s “Fancy Apartment in the Sky,” as he calls it, since we knew we’d be doing a bit of walking.

John took the afternoon off work and showed us around a bit of the University of South Carolina and then a short tour of downtown. I miss living somewhere that there’s an interesting urban landscape.

With our downtown tour finished, we headed back to the hotel and then met up with John and his friend Chuck for dinner at The Liberty Tap Room. A brief stop at Starbucks afterward (because, natch), and back to the hotel for the night.

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It took us a year to have a reception after Ben and I got married. Why shouldn’t it take an additional six months beyond that to go on our honeymoon?

I only call it a honeymoon because we used money we got as wedding gifts to pay for it. I view it as a much-needed respite from the absolute insanity both of us are dealing with at work. And Denver. Oh yes, a very overdue escape from this hellhole.

Our original plan was to simply fly to Atlanta for a few days and visit Ben’s cousin and his husband. When we realized how close we were to Columbia, South Carolina, the plan changed a bit because we realized we could drive over and visit our friend John, whom we hadn’t seen since we were in Arkansas a couple years ago when both he and I were getting inked by Erik.

The flight over was uneventful, save for the asshole who paid for priority boarding for himself, but then proceeded to save three additional seats for his family members who boarded later. I hate people.

We arrived at Ben’s cousin’s house after briefly getting lost (Thanks, Waze) and were treated to a delicious dinner at The Red Snapper. I guess we were both exhausted, because by the time we got back from dinner we both crawled upstairs and immediately fell asleep at the Denver equivalent of 6:30 pm. (I was falling asleep in the car, truth be told.)

An old house, a wonderfully chilly room, and a toasty electric blanket made for some very restful sleep. We were surprised when we woke up at 9:30 the next morning, having clocked more than 12 hours asleep.

Our plans for the day were to visit the Atlanta Botanical Garden. Lots of pictures to follow.

Done at the Garden, we then grabbed lunch and headed downtown.

We toured The World of Coca Cola. It reminded me of the Walmart Museum, but on a much larger scale.

I was kind of disappointed that while we got to sample some of their more bizarre brands from around the world, we didn’t get to taste actual Coke from anywhere other than the US. Ben’s cousin told us African Coke was a very different taste experience but it simply wasn’t available.

 

 

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And Jupiter too!
(click to embiggen)

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Click to embiggen.

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Last night Ben and I attended Chihuly at Night at the Denver Botanic Gardens. I was really torn as to whether or not to take my DSLR or just my new iPhone 6 to photograph the exhibit.

I decided on the iPhone to put it through its paces and see if it really lived up to all the shooting-in-low-level-light hype.

It didn’t. I was sorely disappointed. The evening wasn’t a waste and I had a good time (it’s been far too long since Ben and I had a date night), but I really wish I’d brought my DSLR along because the iPhone camera simply wasn’t up to the challenge.

In addition, Ben also had issues with the flash on his 6 Plus washing out entire scenes.

Granted, Chihuly at Night is a difficult subject to photograph even with the best equipment. But it seemed I got much better results with my DSLR when the exhibition was in Phoenix several years ago.

Thankfully, the exhibit continues in Denver through the end of November, and we’ve already purchased tickets to return. This time I’ll bring the DSLR and a tripod…

All that being said, out of approximately 80 shots, I did manage to capture of a few decent—not good, but merely decent—pictures:

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I was looking at my Flickr page the other day and realized it’s been quite a while since I got out and did any photography. I think that’s partially because I’m at the point with Denver that I really don’t want any more reminders of this place. All I know is that every time I take my camera out with me I find no inspiration anywhere.

But photography is an itch I need to scratch every so often, and yesterday I really wanted to go somewhere and capture images of something. Unfortunately the weather wasn’t looking cooperative.

Ben suggested we head west and drive to the top of Mt. Evans.

I was less than enthused at the idea. Yeah, maybe if the sun was shining and dark rain clouds weren’t threatening in the west, but not with the way things were looking when he first proposed the idea.

After lunch the sun was starting to peek out in places, and he convinced me that we at least needed to get out of the apartment and go somewhere other than Starbucks. And since Sammy hadn’t yet been on a road trip with us, it might be a good chance to see how he’d react.

I agreed with the proviso that if my camera battery wasn’t charged all bets were off.

Amazingly, the battery in my camera was fully charged, so we set out on our little adventure, and I’m so glad we did.

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Something along the lines of Mad Men. I’m thinking Vegas ’55. Can you imagine the costumes?

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San Francisco, August 2000

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