Cortland, NY, Spring 1997

A week or so ago a few of us were discussing the prom, on Facebook, and Justin wondered if any of us still had any photos from our prom. I knew that I did somewhere, so I went digging through the closet in my storage bedroom for photo albums, and managed to locate a number of prom pictures. While I was looking, I located a number of other interesting photographs, and was struck by this set of black and white pictures.

I don't really have any context for them, but their placement in the albums suggests that I took them during the spring of my senior year of college. I was taking a lot of solitary walks around town at that point, brooding and being depressed, and I took a lot of pictures. Every once in a while I would buy a roll of black and white film instead of color, and what struck me about this set is how much they look like the pictures I still take today. I guess my aesthetic hasn't really changed, even if the camera has.

Here's what I scanned in:



I feel like this might have been on Otter Creek, but I'm not certain. I know it was on the back side of campus, near the Waterworks.



I have a vague idea that the darker colors of this house were green, and the lighter colors yellow. It was somewhere between campus and Main Street, I believe on the street where Spanky's (a bar that made delicious homemade lemonade spiked with vodka and served in mason jars) was.



Main Street in Cortland was a one-way street at the time. You had to circle around on side streets to get to the right end.



I think this woman was dancing. I remember seeing her downtown a lot, dancing on the sidewalks. Now that I think about it, she may have been mentally ill, but at the time I just thought she was a typical weird townie.



I ate pizza on the first floor of this building many, many times. The disco ball on top of my refrigerator is from a bar/club that was a few storefronts down from there, and I went there a lot as a student for a while. I read online that this building has since burned down, and I have no idea if it's been reconstructed.



This is taken from the sidewalk in front of Hayes Hall, where I was later a hall director. The building in the foreground is Randall Hall, where I was a resident assistant my senior year, and the taller building is Clark Hall, where I stayed for my freshman year orientation.



There's Randall and Clark again, and on the right is Alger Hall, where I lived as a freshman, stayed a couple of summers as an orientation assistant, and later was a hall director.

I might still scan in those prom pictures, at some point, but for now I think we've been down the memory hole enough for a little while.