I'm Tony. I'm Eric. We are the sons of San Fernando. But we've been friends for over 40 years. And grew up together in the San Fernando Valley. These are the stories of our experiences as adventurous Gen X latchkey slackers from back in the day. And don't forget to hit the follow or subscribe button so you don't miss an episode. I don't really consider him. D-bag vibe? Yeah, no, I just- Listen, he doesn't consider you
either, so, or me. And he shouldn't. But I'll tell you, he was talking about how the cinema is dead because even if you shoot on film and then you project it digitally, it's not the same thing. And he said, Simen, Simena? Simen, Simen. Simena, as I know it, is dead. And I was thinking, what? douchebaggery thing to say, douchebagginess. Well, listen to all the douchebagginess. Right, so just because they like shoot on film and then you would wanna project it on film,
using, not to digital. They don't wanna digitize it and then project it digitally. You wanna, but it's like, okay, nostalgia is, although I will say, as you know, I've been getting back into film photography. I would say dabbling, but it's beyond dabble. Now it's beyond dabble. Yeah, what's the next? Not when you have three SLRs. What's the stage after dabbling? Oh, I was just gonna say maybe like dunking? No, you go dabble, you go like interest, dabble,
obsession. And I have already- You go right to obsession, yeah. I'm already in the obsession phase. I already have three SLRs. And you got them all in like a week. Basically, well they're so cheap! You can buy cameras for nothing, film cameras. Because nobody wants them. Because nobody wants film cameras because they cost so much money to use, not to buy. But here's the thing. The people that, like you, that are getting them, and the people that, or I should
say, the people that aren't using them, are fucking missing out. I think so. They are missing out because we have come into an age where you whoop out your phone. Excuse me. You just, excuse me while I whip this out. Yeah, and then you take a picture. Which is very nice. And you get instant satisfaction with your iPhone. And you see if you like the shot, and if you
don't, you take it again. Yeah, and if you do like it, but then you wanna fuck with it to the nth degree, you can like change somebody's head, or you can change the background, or you can add sparkles or confetti or whatever. And now you can do all that stuff to it and you can digitize it until it's dead. And you can make it perfect to the way, exactly the way you want it and then you know what it is? It's just not fucking fun anymore. It's just
too fucking- It's too, I think it's too buttoned up at that point. There's a reason. I think it's still fun. No, there's a reason, like, okay, oh, you can, you could argue, well, you can get the perfect, I don't know, wedding photo that way, right? It's perfect, you can see it on the wall, you see it in the photo album, if anybody has photo, nobody has photo albums.
Maybe for a wedding, people do that, yeah. Right, and it's perfect, but there was something that was great about the imperfect photos, because you would look at it and go, hey, there was. You know one of the groomsmen Johnny, you know, Johnny was always the guy who was making funny
faces Right photos and guess what? He's dead He's dead, but he makes it he in it even in death He makes you laugh because he was the one making the goofy photo faces during the photos And he can and nobody would know right and in the old days you couldn't Photoshop
out Johnny's goofy face. Now. Here's the thing I find something else very, this is why I got so interested again in film photography is because when I took my first experimental roll with that little camera from 1974 that I bought, the roll eye, when I took a roll of film with that and I developed it, I was like, oh, this looks completely different. And I had forgotten. what film looked like really. I didn't even, it's so obvious. The colors, the textures.
There's something that looks like, and I've told you this, it looks like a memory. It looks like how you remember the moment. It looks like how we see things. And you know, we didn't have the option of digital photography. What was your first camera? Do you remember your, did you have a camera? When did you have your first camera that was yours? When I was, I think, four or five? You had a camera when you were four or five? Play school. You had a PlaySchool
camera? They had some little, like, I think it was PlaySchool. Really? Or Fisher Price. Really? Yeah. It was probably Fisher Price. Yeah, yeah. One of the old, like, plastic camera that was a kid's camera. Yeah. And you were filming it, loaded it, and it worked? No. You just had a view. It was fake. I was going to get excited and go on eBay and try to find one. No, no, no. That would be amazing. Give a kid a little Fisher-Price camera that you
could actually load with film and take pictures if it was totally possible. Actually, you know what I like? It has nothing to do with kids, but I like when people put those little cameras or GoPros on their cats. and then you see everything from the cat. And throw the cat out of a fourth story window to see how it lands. No, no, I wouldn't do that, no. Why not? That's what's interesting. Just the low view, the low grass view. Yeah, I don't give a shit about the low
view. But no, this camera didn't work. It was just pretending to like, because what I want to do is be like my dad. Okay, so what you was- Because my dad always had- He was a camera guy. He always had his Minolta. He always had his camera. Right, right, right. And so it was like- He had no SLR, beautiful Minolta. It was a way to be like dad at a young age. And we like pretend to take pictures. And I've seen some of your dad's pictures and they're
gorgeous from when you were a kid. Not you in the picture. I was gorgeous. You're a hideous. No, no, he made me look good. But the picture's gorgeous. No, he didn't. That's impossible. But the photo. is incredible. I was thinking about that one photo of you guys in the snow, you and Dave in the snow, but I was looking at that picture because I asked you to send it back to me because it's a shot on film. Oh, the one where I'm crying hysterically. That's
right! I hadn't zoomed in prior to looking at it, and then I looked at it and I'm like, Dave is kind of holding you, your aunt's like down on the ground with you, and you're crying hysterically. My aunt's smiling, she's smiling, yeah. She's smiling, Dave's like holding you back. It's a very, once you zoom in, it gets very sinister. It does, but if you took that with, you know, let's say digital. Existed back then it just wouldn't look the same. It doesn't have the
same Texture it doesn't have the same green. It's just completely different Why because now we've gotten to the point with digital well first when we first had digital cameras in the 90s into the early Well, I'm going back to like a point and shoot. Well, the point and shoots were still film but like oh, yes, right Yeah, they're really the early point.
Yeah, the early point shoots were and then later we had later We had digital cameras, but they were ass They were so bad and then they slowly got better and better and better and better and now They are better than reality. And that's not necessarily good. It just, I don't know, there's something about it that- No, it's definitely not good if you look like me, for example, and then you get a picture where it's like, it's reality of what I look like. I don't wanna
see, look, nobody wants to see that. You wanna see- the way we view things in our minds with all of the character and personality of the person, not the actual way they look. You know, it reminds me of when, like, when, okay, when HDTV first came out, it was mind-blowing because we went from, you know, regular old shit. Yeah, and we didn't want to see those fucking broadcasters so close up. Right, in HD, so many things looked great. Everybody got fired. Until you, right.
So it was, it was good for, like, nature shows. Yeah. like you know you could see a shark close up and that was awesome but you didn't want to see the newscasters then they went to 4k right and now it's like okay again for some things the clarity is amazing it's like looking through a window it's gorgeous but for too many things it's just not good and i feel like photography digital photography is that same way yes you get all the comforts and security of i took
the photo and i know what it looks like i got it i captured it but the glory of you have 24 exposures or 36 exposures in your old Nikon F series and that's what you get and you got to take time to make sure you make sure you're exposure You need your f-stop right. You gotta
get it all right. This is the beauty of it. What I've learned since I started taking pictures with a film camera again is that I can't waste this exposure, so you take so much time composing the shot and getting the exposure right that you end up with so many, like per shot, per times I pull the trigger on a digital camera versus the film camera, the percentage is so much higher that it's a good picture in the film camera than it is with my digital camera.
And people will say, and I understand this with digital, But with digital, you will never miss the shot. You can sit there and go brrrr and burst and take. And then you get that like killer shot. Whereas with something like film, you did like, you're gonna miss a lot of those shots. You just didn't, you just weren't gonna be able to get it. Yeah, maybe. I'm not sure that's necessarily true. But I think because you had to take time to compose and really
think about it and know your stuff. Yeah. You just like. So you get a better photo. Well, I mean, I think it's possible to. It makes you think about it more. You can still waste the whole roll and be like, ge ge, but then you gotta pay another 10 whatever dollars for a roll of film. And you wanna develop. And developing it, yeah. If you wanna develop film and get scans back, now it's 20 bucks for one roll of film. So that's why I started developing my
own pictures. But okay, so what would, did you have a camera? What was your first actual camera that was your camera? When we were teenagers, we had cameras. But I think I think I would just maybe would have used whatever my brother had. So I can't I can't answer. No no when we were kids I think by the time my brother got to be a teenager I want to say he had if I'm not mistaken it was a Kodak an Instamatic like the 110. It looked like it was a size
like a no no. The, it wasn't poor. The Instamatic was still, you had to go develop it, right? Yeah, you said I had to go. It looked like a little chocolate bar. Ice cream sandwich. Yeah, an ice cream sandwich, exactly. It was an ice cream sandwich, and you could put the flash tree in it. That went, boom! Yeah, you could hear the boom. And then they burnt. Yeah, they burnt. They burnt that immediately. So you had like a tree of what, four? Four, five? That
was so weird. What a bizarre thing of those flashes. But it was just like holding a little ice cream sandwich and then you, the shutter, it was a, keek! What? It was the worst little. Yeah, it was a snake. It was so un- It was a chick. Satisfying. It was like, okay. Completely unsatisfying. It's not like the SLR. And then you're like. Chicka clack. And then you got your film advance, right? Right. Was there an advance or was it automatic? No, it wasn't
automatic. I know, this was film. This was film. No, I know it was film, but I mean, it wasn't an auto advance. It was a manual. It was manual. Shoot, shoot, shoot. Yeah, those were garbage. They were garbage. They were easy to stick in your pocket. I can't imagine. I kinda wanna look up online pictures from Instamatics and see if there's like a litany of people who have scanned those and put them up to see what they used to look like. But Oh yeah, okay,
so early Polaroids. Cause Polaroid, didn't you tell me they're coming back or they're bad, they've been back with a vengeance? Yeah, I think they're making new Polaroid cameras and then people who have vintage Polaroid cameras are refurbing them and selling them for like $350. Let me ask you something, did you ever shake it, shake it, shake it like a Polaroid picture? Absolutely, I shook every goddamn Polaroid that came out of the camera. always shook a
Polaroid. You always want to shake a Polaroid. I don't know if it works or doesn't. They say actually not to. Yeah, it's the worst idea probably. But you always wanted to shake a Polaroid. There was something about the southern fan of like being an Easter Sunday like garb with a hat in a hot church in the south fanning yourself with your Polaroid picture. I don't know why we did that. Like the extra 10 seconds you would have had to wait if you didn't. if you didn't
shake it. Did it make it develop faster? Did you look into this? I think that was the idea. So I know what I need to know. That was the idea. That was the idea, but I don't know if it made it develop. Let's look it up while we're talking. I'm like, we have a computer here, I'll look it up. I always shook my Polaroid. But that was, okay, so the thing about the Polaroid was that, you know. It was before digital, you had the instant, that was it. You knew
right away if you had it. You knew right away what you got. That was the first time it was sort of like a digital camera of today. Yeah, and you know what you do? You get like- And they were garbagey looking too. Oh, the resolution on those. Oh, God. And again, they had like that little flash bar at the top that fucking sucked. The original ones, didn't they fold down? Some did, like the old, old ones. They would fold down and they had the little accordion
leather on the sides. And then they'd boop and they'd flip up. Those are rad, now see, that's what I want to find. And it had the strap you carry around your old Polaroid. But then you had to buy Polaroid film. Special film, which wasn't cheap. It had a specific amount of exposures on it. It was like 12 or 24, some of them really small, yeah. I don't remember, I have no idea. And then you wind up taking like 12 of the same photos. You're like, nope, that one sucked,
take it again. And they were huge. It was a big, I mean, it looked very old-timey. Even in that time, it looked old. And what I'm learning is fun too, is not only taking pictures with the film camera, but then developing them yourself is very satisfying. I love sucking in toxic fumes and exposing myself to chemicals that will kill me quicker. Who doesn't? Who doesn't? I mean... I think there are people that don't, but I think they're missing out. Because I
think, you know, life is to be lived. I'm gonna start smoking while I do it, and I think that's gonna benefit the quality of the photos I produce. You know what I'm thinking about doing? I want to see if you're in with me on this. I want to open a photo mat. Oh, nice! And get a little kiosk! In a mini mall? Yes. Dude! Those were amazing! They're amazing, but I wanna take it up a notch. Because developing photos in that, I wanna develop photos in that kiosk,
so I wanna have a little dark room area that has a lot of chemicals. But then since it's a little kiosk, I also wanna sell cigarettes. See, I'm gonna do that and then sell hard drugs. Okay, no, I could be down for that too. Yeah, I'm like, yeah. Because if you're gonna, I mean, that's where you're really gonna make your money. Any snacks? Maybe, I mean, because you've dropped it off the film. Like chips? Like Doritos? Yeah, some salty. What is your favorite Dorito flavor?
Peanut butter and banana. Were you a fan of the chili cheese Fritos? Chili cheese Fritos? No. I was a flaming hot guy. I like the original crunchy Cheetos and then I went I like the hot ones but are you interested in a puff or a hard Cheeto? I like the hard Cheeto. The family, growing up, the family, my mom bought the puffs. You were not puffs? No, my mom bought the puffs. Oh, your mom bought cheese puffs? Yeah, but I was the rebel. I was one of the crunchy. You wanted the crunchy,
you were not into a puff. Here's the thing about a puff. I would never sell a puff at my photo mat fucking kiosk. I would sell a puff and let me tell you why. Well, a puff or a puff? You can gum a puff. Yeah, you can gum a puff. You can put the puffs in your mouth and just suck them down to nothing. And they just sort of disappear into cheese powder, wet cheese powder in your mouth without ever masticating. I'm just gonna sell wet cheese powder. as my snack
in my photo booth. That's a good idea. Along with hard drugs. And then you can just pour it in like you did with Fundip. Like Fundip. I love Fundip. The fact that we both went to Fundip at the exact same time. New Fundip, chili cheese flavor. That's a good episode, by the way, is it was candy. Candy, oh yeah. We gotta go back to candy. Okay, but, but. The kiosk was a genius thing. And they were in every single mini mall in the Sanford goddamn Mando Valley.
Because it was an easy way to drop off your film and go back. So it was in, the kiosk would be where there would be a supermarket or, you know. Or super cuts is more where there would be than a supermarket. You would have a super cuts, a donut in, a print shop. Or donut out. Nails. Nail salon, yeah. Nail salon, right? Which was a front. And Alan Ed's. For something else. Autosound. And then a kiosk. Alan Ed's autosound. Or there was maybe a federated group
in there somewhere. And then at the kiosk, you would drive by, you didn't have to get out of your car. No, you could drive up to the window. You didn't have to get out of the car. Yeah. and you would hand them your roll of film or multiple rolls of film, they would put it in a bag, put your name on it and a telephone number and you'd come back a week later and get your film. Not a cell phone number, your landline because there was no cell phone. Did you opt
for double prints back in the day or single prints? I was double printing. You always wanted double prints. You know what? Because what if somebody wanted one of the prints? Yeah, you'd have to be able to wing it. You're not going to take the goddamn negatives and go back and get them reprinted. And they made it price. They made it price. You made it affordable, is that what you're saying? Yeah. Affordable? Yeah, but I like the way I said it better.
Price effective. They made it price effective. Yes. It was, because it was like up-sizing. It was like, you know, you're not gonna get the medium Coke at McDonald's when the large is ten cents more. Yeah. Even though it's 65 ounces more that I don't need of Coke, it's only ten cents. That was the great thing about double prints too, is you get double prints... And again, it was film, so you didn't know what you were getting. You didn't know what you
were getting. And so you got, you know, 36 exposures, you got, you know, 72 photos. And of those, you generally only gave out like four or five double prints. Cause all the rest of them sucked. All the rest of them sucked. So you'd have this pile of double prints. Crappy photos. And they were like all black, all white. A leave. A thumb. A thumb. Something that looked like a thumb
that wasn't a thumb because if somebody took your camera. And that brings up the real question is that if you were working in a film lab back in the day, what must you have seen on, because there was no digital photography. So either you were developing at home if you were a pornographer. I wonder how many times they called the cops. Well, there's that too. Yeah, like mutilated.
People, the serial killers are taking pictures of, I mean just imagine in the 70s when serial killers were running wild in the San Fernando Valley and you had Richard Ramirez and people, people like that, they used cameras. And you know what, that's why you couldn't get a job as a photo mad employee because nobody ever wanted to quit because they saw all the stuff. Dude, they saw it. They saw it. The drugs that they saw. The pornography. The dead bodies.
They were solving crimes left and right. Yeah. At the photo mat. Is the photo mat an actual name of an actual photo lab? No, no, it was the photo mat. That was the place, the- I only remember ever going- Kiosk. The kiosk were called photo mat? The kiosk, yeah. And now all those kiosks are cigarette and- Or they're raised to the ground. Or they, yeah, but the ones that are still around are like, they either make keys- Right, keys. Actually- A lot of
them turned, and there's one right over here. Yeah, they still, and that's the thing, the photo mat probably made keys at the same day. There is a key making kiosk that I'm sure- was a photo mat back in the day. And you know, I just remember it was Eastman Kodak. And I remember reading an article way, way long ago about they're just, they're like, no. Way, way long ago? Way, way long ago. Way, way long ago was a great bass player. Yeah, and what
band did he play in? Did Jigsaw Puzzles? Yes, that's exactly right. Yes, they put out that record. Why can't we stop eating our own toes? Uh, you, that wasn't the one I was thinking of, but that was a good record too. That was the follow up. Yeah. That was the follow up to, uh, to, uh, these pieces aren't made for putting together. These pieces are stuck in my asshole was the one I really liked. That was the original title. No, they, yeah, the,
uh, the label wouldn't let them keep getting stuck in my asshole. You know, it's funny because There's that Seinfeld where Frank Costanza gets Fusili Jerry stuck in his butthole and it was an accident because he fell on it and they have to release it and he keeps saying million to one shot doc. But I guess that's based on the reality because Zoe was telling me that somebody that she knows works in an emergency room was saying that happens all the time. That people
come in, don't know how this happened, total accident. Total accident, my ass. I don't know how this happened but I have these gigantic reels of film stuck up my butthole. I tripped. They need like surgery to get them out. Well, what did they think was gonna happen? They were either gonna show a movie out their ass. That's probably what they want. But Eastman Kodak, I remember saying, they said something like, you know, digital's not, like everybody's,
film's not gonna go away. And film hasn't gone away. Well, it went away. It did for a while. And now it's coming back. And they, well, didn't they go bankrupt because of that? Oh yeah, well Kodak, yeah. I mean, well yeah, I mean, it was a weird, you know. But now it is, I think it's coming back, just like vinyl has come back. Yeah, like that. That's how it's coming back as a niche thing. Yeah. It's not coming back as a major commercial. Which is
why you can go out and you bought. Because I'm niche. Yeah, you're niche. You're niche. You know what I am? I'm you-niche. Like unique, but with a little twist. Did you just make a new word? I'm you-niche. Yeah, I'm you-niche. Oh my god. I think you need to call Webster right fucking now. I've invented many words. That's one of many words and other inventions
that I've come up with that other people have used. I invented the little thing that you put on your keys that will, if you leave the button on your refrigerator, it's like a magnet, you leave it on your refrigerator, and then you put a little hook thing on your keys that has a little transmitter in it, and when you lose your keys, you go to your refrigerator. and you press the button on your refrigerator and your keys will beep wherever they are.
They'll start beeping. It's now called, find your iPhone. Yeah, right. But I invented it! Okay, it was yours first, but you can't prove it. But to that point, now that's the thing. I'm not making any money off find my iPhone. No, not a bit. You got zero. Yeah, I got zero. I got zero and you like it. I think that's one of a million inventions, Eric. One! But that, speaking of the iPhone. I fended none of them. And the phone camera, your Galaxy camera and
whatever other, you know, whoever, Huawei, who makes the phone camera. Huawei? Huawei. Who's Huawei? You don't know Huawei? He was the guitar player in the band, the Jigsaw Puzzles. Yeah, yeah. But they're also phone manufacturer, or electronics manufacturer. I did not know that. They make phones. But that's the phone, if you're not a professional photographer who is either shooting film or shooting digital and has like a whatever, what do they make now, the D5,
the decent, whatever, the fancy cameras, everybody is- I call them fancy cams. Fancy cams. Yeah. It's like a handy cam but fancier. Fancy cams, yes. Everybody is using their phone. Everybody's using their phone. Because they just keep coming out with better and better and better and better and better. The best selling camera in the entire world is the iPhone. Yeah. By far and away. Because it's already there on your device with everything else. You got it there. It's with
you all the time. And you know what? It's more than good enough for almost everybody. You see, that's why everything is documented. Everything in the world is now documented. They are lying. Why are they lying? How about their megapixels? Dude, motherfuckers. Yeah, they say that it's 48 megapixels is 12. Mega pickles? Mega pickles. I love a mega pickle. Who does? Because you have you know those little tiny cocktail pickles? The really small ones that are like garnishes?
The cornucons! Yeah. So those just annoy me because that's not of it. That's just like somebody that's like honey I shrunk the pickle. I love a cornucon. It's too small. It's not enough. It's just a little pickle. You have 12 of them! Okay, but then you go up to like a Kloss and you get like a kosher dill or like... Is that the mega pickle? No, that's a regular pickle! I'm picturing a megapickle is the size of like, I don't know, like a telephone pole.
That's a megapickle. No, that's a monster pickle. Monster pickle, what? Between a Clawson and a Monster, there's a megapickle. Okay, so what would be the equivalent size? And I want a camera with 48 megapickles. Mega pickles. Thanks for listening to the Sons of San Fernando. Don't forget to hit that subscribe or follow button in your favorite podcast app so you don't miss an episode. Drop us a review, we'd love
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