Who remembers Brownie box cameras? Or Polaroids and the waving of the photo sheet with its curved edges, watching as the photo developed magically within a few minutes? Oh my god, and one’s first Minolta or Canon SLR and trying to figure out f-stops and the endless adjusting, never being absolutely sure it was clearly focused? Rolls of film – threading a roll onto the right sprocket? Taking the roll into…where did we take them to be developed? Wherever, but having to wait a week or two to have the roll of film transform into a pack of photos and then the excitement of seeing how they turned out…or being disappointed that half were blurred? and having to pay more for color photos.
The lagest collection of cameras ever was three floors above the photography exhibit at the Portugal Center for Photography.
As we finished the round of the photography exhibit, we noticed a sign indicating a Museo de Nucl…something. It was close enough to “nuclear” that I thought “that’s weird”. Up 3 flights was not some nuclear arsenal but room after room of cameras. Huge wooden box things that must have taken 2 or 3 people to lug around and set up, brownies, Polaroids, SLRs, tiny little ones, all manner of toy cameras.
How about these James Bond cameras?
That made us hungry for Italian. What do the Italians have to do with cameras? I don’t know. It’s just that we were aimlessly walking around after seeing the camera thing and happened upon an Italian place.
We both immediately decided on the Tagliatelle Mare e Mont. A tidy little heap of pasta mixed with shrimp, mussels, baby clams and delicate baby spears of asparagus all mixed in a savory-sweet marinara sauce. And all that remains is…a satisfied smile and empty shells and tails.
And then there was Grubb.
