More new (old) photos

I recently scanned a bunch of old photos and have uploaded them to both the Flickr pool and the Facebook group. A lot of the people pictured aren’t identified (since I don’t know everyone), so please comment with people’s names where you can.

They’re mostly Schoolies, but not entirely. I have some more coming soon, when I have a couple days to upload : )

Some Schoolie photos

More archive photos have been posted to the BAA group on Flickr. These are mostly from a Gap protest in Los Gatos in March 2000.

Bush's Brazillian welcome

Schools Group grad David Harris lives in Brazil now, and here's a video he recently produced.

Edit: Current.com seems to have broken their embeded player, so here's the direct link.

David Smernoff, Olya Milenkaya, Mark Bult, and Talia Stoessel

Oh, how I do love to collect photos. I've undoubtedly got hundreds, maybe thousands of photos from my BAA days, mostly taken in the pre-digital days. Here are three that I scanned a while ago, part of an ongoing effort to make digital copies of all my print photos so I can store them offsite in case I ever suffer a fire or flood at home.



I had this photo with a bunch of others on my desk and someone saw it and asked "Who's this gentleman?" And I said, "That's not a gentleman, that's David Smernoff."

David Smernoff and a bear, that is. I used to have this one on my desk when I worked at Acterra, and David just loooved that. He was my boss at the time.

Good thing he's got a sense of humor. Well, he'd have to, right? Look at the picture for evidence.

I think this was around 1996, on the way to Nevada Beach. A group of BAA members went on a vacation/mountain bike trek near South Lake Tahoe. Photo by Mark Bult.



Velma Gentzsch took this shot of Olya Milenkaya and myself enjoying homemade fondue at Velma's house. Circa 2003 or '04.



Talia Stoessel was part of the High Schools Group after BAA moved to Mounatin View. This was in 2000 I believe, and Talia used to help Olya a lot in the office after school. I haven't seen her in years, but she went on to UC Santa Cruz and I heard she's doing well these days. Photo by Mark Bult.

Schoolie alumni update

My semi-regular roundup of Schoolies (members of Bay Area Action / Acterra's High Schools Group) I've heard from in the past few months/years.

I ran into Kristen Hayes in my neighborhood in San Francisco again, this time on Halloween night. We run into each other about every three or four months.

I was happy to see Carmen Ausserer for the first time in years at me and Velma's Hitchin'. It was great to see her, although everything that day went so fast I barely had time to say hello to her and her girlfriend Teg. Also in attendance at the Hitchin' were Schoolie alumni Will Satterthwaite, Olya Milenkaya, Aaron Zonka and Nyte aka Chris Couch, and Jenny Cade. I talked with Giovanna Coto briefly on Carmen's phone while at the Hitchin'. I guess she's in Santa Cruz just workin' these days, but it sounded like she was doing well.

Olya's in Australia again, and recently her hut blew away in a storm(!). She'll be back in about six months and might apply for grad school somewhere in the US.

Jenny's in Seattle working for the Northwest Environmental Education Council, where she's rockin' them with her PHP and CSS and HTML skillz.

Will (aka Dr. Willhelm von Monocleman) has been teaching collej students on the other side of those Santa Cruz mountains, where he's looking to find some land up in the hills he can rent/buy/squat, and helping local residents stave off a timber harvest plan filed by PG&E.

I was recently surprised to hear from Avi Emet (aka Avram Walden, as he's listed on Facebook) for the first time in years. Last I'd heard he was in Oregon, but apparently he's bay in the Bay Area now and has co-founded a company in Santa Cruz called Connor Technical that's doing R&D around lighting and energy conservation products.

I also found Daniel Weisfield on Facebook, thanks to a pointer from Yuliya Shmidt (who's at Yale for grad school). I think Daniel's at Yale too, or maybe he just graduated. Laura Hess also just graduated from Yale last year.

Liz Dietrich, who I haven't seen in person in way too long, is studying sociology and English at UC Berkeley and seeing/hearing a lot of music in SF. She and I have to commune face-to-face sometime soon. It's been too long since I saw her lovely smile.

Another Facebook find was Seb Chafe, who told me he's hanging in Palo Alto waiting to hear whether he gets accepted by the New School in NYC. Good luck Seb!

I haven't heard from Hilary Hulteen in a couple months but apparently she's been touring with Yard Dogs Road Show, honing her ever-improving photography skills. She's also apparently DJing down the street from my place on Fridays at Amnesia. I'll have to drop in there sometime in January if she's still around.

Brian "Meerkat" Calhoon is attending SF Conservatory of Music in percussion. I haven't seen him in a year or two, since I think Jenny's going away party. He's still really tall.

Last but not least, David Harris is leading an interesting global project called Global Lives, and there's a fundraiser for it tomorrow night in Palo Alto I think, but I don't think I can make it. Check out his project's website though. Velma and I ran into Dave at Pakwan (a restaurant) in my neighborhood a couple months ago. He'd been living in Brazil setting up this project, and I think he's heading back there again.