From the Archive: Fat Cat Billiards

From October 2000 to May of 2004 I shot over 700 rolls of film for the Village Voice. I have a very haphazard system for filing all those pictures. I have stacks and stacks of negatives stored in envelopes, plastic bags, manilla folders and notebooks. Fortunately, the photo staff at the Voice took pretty good care of the film, sleeving it in archival Print File negative pages and labeling everying with at least a date and year (unfortunately, many of the sleeves are marked on, X-ed up, numbered, etc. as a result of editing). I've taken the additional step of categorizing everything by subject and year. For example, all my nightlife/bar/music pictures from 2002 are in one stack. So finding a picture isn't too painful. It helps that I have a good memory (and, of course, that I can search the Voice's archive online). Yesterday I wanted to take a look at the outtakes from a burlesque show I shot at the Knitting Factory in 2003, so I hunkered down and started digging. In doing so I came across two rolls of film I shot at Fat Cat Billiards that I had totally forgotten about.

I'd guess that about one out of every fifteen assignments I shoot ends up not getting published, for whatever reason. I still get paid, it's just that stories get killed sometimes. This shoot at Fat Cat was one of those assignments. Up on top of the two pages somebody had written "BTS," which I now remember means it was for the annual back-to-school issue of the Voice. I'm assuming it was part of some roundup of ideas for cheap entertainment, things to do if you're not 21, etc.

There really wasn't anything too great on the film. I got out my digital camera, put the negs on a lightbox and shot some pics of the negs and inverted the image into a negative so that you can see the frames as positives. This is the same technique I used to convert my 4x5 negs to digital files. Anyway, you can see what the place looks like. I'm definitely due for another visit soon. I did make a few scans as well. There was one picture (below) that I liked. It seemed to have the most depth. I really like the little detail of the cube of chalk that's fallen onto the table in the foreground.