Curve & Swerve, Crockett, California, 2008
I used to spend a lot of time hanging out beneath freeways with my camera and tripod. I publically confessed once to this before was while giving a photo presentation to a class. The feedback was mostly sympathetic to my plight with overtones of derision here and there. Anyway, I used to hang out alone under freeways a lot. There is a world down there worth investigating, of modern archeological - the future already came and took the automobile up way above overhead. Living in the east of the San Francisco Bay I was spoilt for choice of freeways to hang out underneath. The Oakland Maze dealing out it's wares to the Interstate 80, 580, 980, Hwy 24 East to West, or the I-80 / 580 split, and on ramps, off ramps, etc, etc.. Big, mighty moulded elevated concrete structures built to stand the severest of earthquakes (although they still do fall down under extreme circumstances). It is odd to be under The Maze always feels so disconnected from my daily passage along it's topside. The geography, landscape, reference points and ultimately the experience markedly different despite sharing the same coordinates on the map. Underneath the freeway is a land time has forgotten; quiet; still, always the graveyard shift. Meanwhile millions of cars and the people in them pour overhead on their way, to / from, coming or going, in transit between destinations. Energy abuzz and the dead space beneath.
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