Welcome Gridskippers!
Two big-city publications have recently come out with their top photobooth picks, Time Out New York covering the Big Apple in their weekly guide in print and online, and Gridskipper highlighting Los Angeles with all of their online Google Map-mashuppy goodness. Gridskipper’s piece, to be more accurate, is actually Photobooth.net’s top photobooth picks in L.A., as editor Helen Jupiter was kind enough to solicit our thoughts on the matter. Rachel Sokol also asked us our take on New York booths for her Time Out piece, so we’re feeling loved again after getting ripped off in print (paragraphs 9 and 10 sound familiar?) and insulted for taking the paper to task for it last month.
The Time Out piece, titled “Strip mining,” lists a dozen photobooths around the five boroughs, including a few digital booths but hitting the mainstays of the Manhattan/Brooklyn dip-and-dunk scene like Otto’s, Lakeside, Bubby’s, and the Bushwick Country Club.
Last week, continuing its long-standing interest in photobooths, Gridskipper has adapted the Time Out New York piece into a booths and booze list that dumps the non-alcoholic locations and narrows the selection to places where you can pose with a drink in your hand, or on your head.
So maybe we were a little premature in remarking about the photobooth/tattoo shop connection: looks like when push comes to shove, the photobooth’s got to go for L.A. Ink’s Kat Von D. According to a post on the Kat Von D Fanclub website, she’s selling her booth on eBay.
I know I know… It’s sad.. but I am re-doing the skate ramp in the front of the shop and it’s gonna take up too much room, SO! the photo booth must go.…
I’ll be sad to see it go, but hopefully someone rad who will love it will take good care of it too!
The booth sits just inside the door of the shop, and is decorated with posters of Kat and a giant Lisa Simpson sitting on top. I have yet to visit the shop when the booth is functioning, but here’s hoping I get a chance before the auction ends.
Who knew photobooths and tattoos went so well together? As the first season of L.A. Ink hums along and we watch tattoo artist Kat Von D pose with her friends and customers in her photobooth, we have news of another photobooth connection coming up across the ocean in London.
A Press Association report about a series of “urban landmarks; set up to promote Discovery’s new series London Ink mentions a photobooth sculpture:
A new urban landmark is being unveiled in the form of a giant statue of a man swimming through the pavement.
…
A week later, a similar statue will be installed on the concourse at Victoria Station, featuring a giant woman trying to squeeze into a photo booth. Her top rides up to reveal a tattoo of a pigeon.
The statues will remain in place for a few weeks before being moved to different locations across the UK.
We look forward to seeing what the piece looks like; send a photo our way if you see the statue.
UPDATE: Some Flickr photos of the woman in the booth — wow!
Troubled times at Photo-Me International: yesterday saw a news report about the mounting pressure from shareholders on Photo-Me’s bosses to resign; apparently, the pressure was too much for chairman Vernon Sankey and chief executive Serge Crasnianski to bear, and today, they have been forced to resign.
According to the BBC, two of the investment companies that own a sufficient chunk of the company have been unhappy with management for some time.
…Principle Capital and Cycladic said they felt that progress with the sale and other aspects of a strategic review launched last year was insufficient.
They accused Mr Sankey and Mr Crasnianski of “operational mismanagement” and noted a “long history of poorly managing investor expectations.”
As we’ve said before, time will tell what effect these changes have on the world of public photobooths, which are just one aspect of Photo-Me’s business.
It’s not clear what impact this news will have on the world of photobooths, but it seems that Photo-Me Intl. has found “sufficient interest in its vending division” to continue with the process of unloading the division on the highest bidder, says Reuters.
The BBC is a behemoth of an organization, so we can’t expect their opinions to be uniform across their various arms, as we learned this week.
Last year, we were called on by BBC4 to be subject experts in their story on the state of the photobooth. Last week, we were chosen by the BBC technology show “Click,” as one of three sites profiled during their brief tour of the web called “Webscapes.” This time, though, they called us a “very silly” and “weird little blog.”
Admittedly, they had a few nice things to say, describing it as “great fun” and having “a wealth of information,” but the tone of the report came off as just a little condescending. But we shouldn’t be too worried, I suppose; who can take a technology show seriously that uses Internet Explorer to demonstrate the sites they’re profiling? Come on BBC, get with the program!
This is a weird little blog dedicated to the humble photo booth. While you may think there would be very little to say about these photographic relics, this blog surprises with its breadth of knowledge and humour.
[snip]
This is wonderfully pointless site, but the enthusiasm which has gone into its construction makes it a fun way to while away some spare time.
We’d like to think that for those who visit, we’re the exact opposite of pointless, but who are we to say… Read the online version of the text and watch the segment in their video archive.
Thanks to Paul for the tip.
In the premiere episode of TLC’s L.A. Ink, which aired last week, we were introduced to Kat von D and her crew of tattoo artists as Kat oversaw the construction of her new shop. The opening credits feature the entire cast posing in a nicely decorated photobooth in her shop, and as we watched the shop come together, the only bit of furnishing yet in the shop was a generic gray Photo-Me booth, waiting to be put in its place.
When I visited Lucas Echo Park in March, I was informed that their photobooth was gone and had been sold to a woman for her tattoo shop; now it all makes sense. Kat’s shop, called High Voltage, turns out to be two blocks from Photobooth.net’s western HQ. It looks like the shop will feature the photobooth as an added touch, like the skate-ramp Kat requested in this episode. We’ll be keeping tabs on the show to see what develops.
In this week’s ‘arts online’ column on the website of the Times of London, Photobooth.net gets top billing:
PHOTO FIT
Modern digital photo booths have taken the romance out of the self-portrait process (as exemplified in the film Amélie). No longer do we get those four separate attempts to look good. This community site aims to harness the power of its users to locate every last old-style ‘dip and dunk’ booth left on the planet, while inviting everyone to contribute their pictures and stories. There are also sections on artists who used the photo-strip style, including Andy Warhol. www.photobooth.net
Photobooth Friday, the weekly online collaboration begun by Andrea and now with its own Flickr group, has of course caught our attention before.
Now Andrea’s local paper, the Portland Oregonian, has published a story on the group, which ought to lead to a whole lot of new interest and more submissions for the weekly pool. The article is online now, but will probably be gone soon, so you can check out the archived version here. Photobooth.net even gets a mention and a quote. Perhaps Andrea could share a scan or a PDF of the article so we can see the photo, as well — and see if all of those ellipses in the online version are really there?
American Photobooth, an upcoming book by Nakki Goranin, has made its way to Amazon and is now available for pre-order. The book is being published by W.W. Norton and will be available on February 18, 2008.
Nakki has been hard at work on this book for many years, and we are very excited to see the final product. If the cover is any indication, we are in for a treat. The book deals with the history and art of the photobooth. We will keep you posted with any developments.
