Big Truck Tacos

So, back when I was trying to start a city blog for okc, and at the same time still blogging here and doing my best imitation of a fish's drinking habits, I had a series that would have been titled "I love it here"- reviews of good shit here in OKC that would have been a regular feature if the blog had had more than three readers. Shows you how good I am at promotion.

The inside of the place is nicely decorated, with good seating.

I had a couple steak al carbon tacos, a mexican coke, and chips and salsa. The tacos were good, not too greasy, with corn tortillas and onions for flavor. About that flavor: I wish I could say it was on par with other places I've had tacos locally, (I'm looking at you, Iguana, with all your deliciousness) but there just wasn't enough. All I got was beef and onion, no spice. That said, they were good, and with the salsa, not bad at all. The chips and salsa were chips and salsa, good and fresh. A word on Mexican Coke: you should try it. They use real cane sugar to make it, which has a better flavor than high fructose bullshit. Really better than what you get out of the fountain. I think I paid 9 bucks for the meal, and I was pretty satisfied when I was done.

Any place with patio seating is a win in this town. We Okies like to dine al fresco.

Anyway, Big Truck Tacos would have been a natural fit for that series. They're a locally owned newish place, right in the middle of the part of 23rd street that I was betting would see development 6 months ago... and here we are, already a new restaurant. And they're good. Great patio seating, nice atmos inside, fast service, friendly staff, and that awesome location, they've got all the stuff they need lined up to be a success.

Not a food photographer. But doesn't this look good? Needs more seasoning to be perfect, though.

Definitely recommended, and you'll probably see me there trying out more menu items as the weeks progress.

My afterparty Shots

So yeah, despite having my camera stolen (borrowed, I guess) I did manage to take a ton of photos myself at that party. Yeah, I know, more drunk people. but they look good.

The Morning After

This is the last of the pics from last weekend. Man, that was epic. I'm basically doing two jobs, but only getting paid for one; I'm a lowly barista, and I'm a photographer, shooting all the time and editing when I can, around my social and work schedule. It's actually pretty fun, I just don't sleep a lot these days. Never did sleep much though.

That morning, though, I woke up and felt fine; six whole hours of sleep does wonders, even when there's half a bottle of rum involved. then we did brunch at Cafe do Brasil. They really have the best sunday brunch, and my favorite chorizo in town. Then onto sauced to hang out on the patio and soak up the sun on a gorgeous day. A fantastic end to a really great weekend.

Chelsea stretching. I love the lines in this one; odd parallels you don't expect take a second to resolve.

Again with Chelsea. Did I mention she's also gorgeous? Yeah. Now I have.

Pearl looking all stoic and really not hungover.

This puppy was cute as hell. And obviously sent by the devil to enslave us all.

See? It took Pearl right in with its pink belly.

Obviously Dangerous.

MYL Chelsea's After Party Photos

I first met Chelsea at the bike prom on friday- she seemed interesting in a "you're a person with interesting ideas" kind of way, then she showed up here in the city for Made You Look and the afterparty, and turns out we're into a lot of the same things, photography and journalism and documentary work, and we're getting along famously at the party when she asks to see my camera, and I hand it over (this is after several stout rum and cokes, mind), and she runs off taking pictures like there's no tomorrow. And I don't know, something about the way I can see she's concentrating, I let her keep going with it for a while.

I'm really glad I did because she's really good. Focus is on the money, compositionally interesting, good moments, the whole bit. I asked her later, after seeing the pictures, if she had any experience. "I just shoot everything I love. Always have," she tells me. And that's exactly it folks, what I've been saying for years: shoot what you love, the rest is just technicalities.

Made You Look

First off, a video:

B Boy Sequence II from Matt Mills on Vimeo.

.

Then, just a few stills not in that sequence. The battle was decent, but I missed most of it, jumped up on stage with Chelsea (who you'll be hearing a lot more about in a little bit) and squeezed a spot with a view of the dance floor. Kicked some dudes bag out of the way. It was good to see the little part that I saw; the show was so small this year I wondered why they bothered. The art was all pretty decent, but nothing stuck with me. There should have been more, in more space. Bricktown wasn;t the place to have it, people. Anyway, photos:










Up next will be photos of the afterparty, which was way more epic.

BIKE PROM

I was going to be all cool and separate thes out into three or four posts, but I realized there's no reason to do that, because I've got a ton more posts coming, including a review of big truck tacos, some fliks from made you look 09, and crazy sunday with puppies. So, without further delay, bikeprom (and yes, I'm being lazy by not adding captions, but most of these are self explanatory):

refreshokc at coco

driving around

I'm at a loss for subjects that aren't drunk people and aren't boring. This is all I've been able to come up with in the last couple days. Oh yeah, and some of sober people.

Nighttime, trying to get pictures of lightning. At least the signs look cool.

So there was a fire, and I drove around it trying to get closer, this is all I could do.





Not my shoes; issues.

The rest of the backlog

Random party

These are from a random party last week; I'm still working through the backlog. I'll probably post everything else sometime tonight.

Ran to the bar for shots, 'cause there was only 3.2 beers at the party.



Christa and KW- It was cool to see him out, even randomly.





The dude on the right was leaving the country (or was it his birthday?); it was his party, anyway.

Last Wednesday

Shoes.

Hipshot outside the 'note. Dude in the truck said "Hey Baby, come here," but she just kept walkin. Smart Girl.

Maeghan, Tommy and Deepak.

Tiffany.

Matty in his studio.

Matty took this outside while I was distracted/occupied inside.


Interesting what I came up with looking at the same person. Totally different pictures.

beginning at the beginning

So I have a huge pile of photos from the last week, and I've been procrastinating on posting them because of work and lazyness and such, but here, finally, on a coffee fueled sunday night, I've gotten them all out and will post them in blog-sized chunks until I get bored with them and post all the rest in a large-ish post sometime on tuesday.

Mom on her first day as a retiree. Lunch at Olive Garden.

This dude was sort of bewildered at the camera. Also, he took the next photo, of Christa and me. Bewildered by focus as well.

Yeah, that's me. A sight rarely seen on the internets, although there are really far too many pics of me out there at this point.

Cmay in her natural habitat.

Lambo outside of work. Did I mention I work at a nice place?

Morning

File this one under "up way too early for work."

Another Norman Saturday Night

I felt kinda really off shooting saturday, ended up dancing as much as photographing. That's what I get for eating a whole hot n ready sausage pizza.

This girl had everything I look for in a woman: 1. a camera 2. madness 3. the tendency to flip shit and run off.

Cameron, also late of BROQUEST, although he finished in a different place.

This was a complete accident. I like it.

This was completely on purpose. I like it as well.



The morning after... It's funny how few pictures I have of scenes like this, when it happens to me all the time. Expect that to change in the weeks to come.

Booze Cruise Meets BROQUEST

Or at least one of the members of BROQUEST was there. All in all, a fun night. I keep hearing that other people are doing booze cruise on saturdays now, if that's true could someone tell me? Chris? I just want to drink and ride bikes with people, and who cares what night it's on, right?

Anyway, between last week's illness, starting the new job, and all the things I was doing over the weekend, I've been neglecting all the backend stuff- editing, organizing, and blogging. It's tiring, and the list of things I need to get done tomorrow is a mile and a half long. May or may not do all/some of it.

Technical difficulties...

For those of you paying attention, there has been a little hiatus, a delay, a mini vacation even... Partly because of work, and the interruption to my sleep schedule, but also partly because it seems like I pick up every little bug that comes along since my accident. I felt like death for 48 hours, and I still have something of a sore throat, but I think I'm going to be all right.



These pics are from Monday; Lori texted me from work, asking me to get people up there, so I did; Christa and Jonathan came out and had drinks. It's sort of a hellish job, working in a karaoke bar; I hope Lori gets something else soon.



Anyway, I like my new job so far. It's actually challenging to steam milk. I still don't really have a grasp of what I'm really doing, but that will come in time.



And for those of you that have read this far down, a surprise: Booze cruise is happening this Friday, 9pm. The plan is to do two rounds at each bar, so we can keep some kind of momentum. Starting at the rooster, have a couple pitchers, then to the drunken fry, because I really want to try that truffle shit, and then to nancy's, so we can all get banned from yet another karaoke bar. I'm going to be annoying everyone in my phone/twitter followers about this too for the next couple days, hopefully enough people come out.

ISO 25,000

So this is crazy, really wild, I mean, talk about no light, some of these are taken in the reflected mirror ball light off a black wall, just insanely no light at all, but here are the pictures. This is going to be fun. I'm playing around at ISO 25k, which is just unheard of, it's so noisy it's an extra level of abstraction. Focus is "guess and get lucky sometimes," other times it's just blurry and that doesn't really hurt things because these pictures aren't about detail but about energy and tone and exploring places that heretofore were invisible to the camera, and a lot of times to the eye. These are places people go but not places that are easily seen unless you go there, at least until now. Enough ramble. The photos!

Outtakes...

These didn't really fit with the rest of the pictures I took last night, but I Like them anyway, and I think at least some people will like 'em. next post in 5...4...

Friday Booze Cruise

Mikey T and his epic dome.

The guy on the right, talking to KW, is originally from paris, but is more of a world traveler these days. Very cool dude.



I like how these guys got physically closer and closer as they talked, eventually ending up on the floor face to face.

This was kinda cute; She was trying to put the lip gloss on him and gave up.

See what I mean? There was a good hug soon after this too.



Yeah, two Kelsey portraits, but I like 'em both. Sue me.

Make-a-wish Has a Rock Show

Sometime Last week I found out that some of my friends from highschool were doing a benefit show for Make-a-Wish Foundation, and they needed a photographer. So, I ent and shot a few things, didn't stay the whole night. The first band was really shitty, the same three chords, all at the same tempo, and the same one note drone from the lead singer for every song. It was boring and shitty. then Hundresomethings came on, and well, they were better. They still lack a little edge, I don't know what they need, but it's not bad to hear live. Then I had to go. The good news: they raised over $2k last night.

OKCCOCO has an artshow

Lots of good stuff. Somehow I didn't shoot any of Kanaly's work, but he had some up as well. Anyway, Last night was crazy and photo filled, I've got two more posts in the pipeline for tonight.