Derek Bridges

115 Articles

Derek Bridges lives in New Orleans, trading in words and pictures. A carpetbagger of long standing, he grew up in the top right corner of IL and later went to college in the middle cornfield part. He has also lived in MS and FL, for educational purposes only, and was diasporized for a time in TX.

REPLAY. PK5

Derek Bridges
3 Min Read

Note: This post originally appeared August 29, 2010. I thought it might be relevant to run again in light of the encroaching demise of the Times-Picayune.

We were supposed to have a garage sale on Sunday, August 28, 2005.   We had recently moved into a house we bought in Central City and had cleaned out our old Broadmoor apartment and planned to sell the odds and ends that didn’t make it to our new home.  It was to be the final hurrah of our move.  Suffice to say we evacuated the night before and the garage sale never happened.  I didn’t get back into town for another three weeks, but there on the second floor of our old apartment’s stoop was our last Times-Picayune, still in the plastic and dry.  I tossed the paper in the car and drove back to Houston.  I finally pulled that newspaper out of its plastic bag this weekend.

Derek Bridges, New Orleans

Extra

Derek Bridges
5 Min Read

I know a Mandingo warrior. Usually he does home repair and he’s got a catering thing, but for Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained currently in production in New Orleans, he became a Mandingo warrior for a day, fighting another Mandingo warrior no less, with the aid of three shots of tequila that folks on set downed before the scene. No idea if he’ll make it in the final cut.

Last Tuesday I was a NYC hipster circa 2008 for HBO’s Treme.  I’d registered with Caballero Casting hoping to score a role as an extra in the Treme shoot scheduled the second Sunday of Jazz Fest (Fais Do Do stage for an hour or so, then released to enjoy the Fest) but instead got called up for the NYC hipster circa 2008 group a few days post-Fest.

Derek Bridges, New Orleans

Hot Like Fire

Derek Bridges
1 Min Read

Check out this video my friend Trey Deark shot of the Hot 8 Brass Band circa 2002-03. If I remember correctly, the Hot 8 were playing at a party for someone in Mystical’s family. If you know the Hot 8, you know you’re going to dig these 6 minutes, 17 seconds. The rest of you, you’re invited to join the party.

Derek Bridges, Music, New Orleans

RetroReview: Stay out of the box

Derek Bridges
4 Min Read

What: A “Special Collector’s Edition” magazine called Oliver North: Portrait of an American Hero.

Where: Purchased in 1987 for $3.50 at an Eagle supermarket in northern Illinois.

Why?: Yes, it’s true, almost half of all Americans at one time were hot for Ollie North.

Huh?:  You didn’t answer the question: Why?: I bought it to prove that I’d seen it. I recently dug it out of a box I had in storage and …

 

Derek Bridges, Politics, Reviews

Information Wrangler: An Interview with Infrogmation

Derek Bridges
29 Min Read

A few years ago I started noticing many of my photos were getting uploaded to Wikimedia Commons–which was perfectly legit as I’d uploaded them to flickr using a Creative Commons license that allowed anyone to use my images so long as I received attribution. The Wikimedia uploads, mostly pictures of musicians, second line parades and politicians, were diligently attributed to me and increased the likelihood someone would see them. I liked the idea there was some guy out there who thought my photos were worth the effort–his effort, slight as it may have been.

At some point I finally connected that the guy uploading my pics to Wikimedia was one of my flickr contacts, Infrogmation. I poked around and found he was quite active in Wikimedia and Wikipedia, and judging by some of his photos, he seemed to play a little trombone. He didn’t shoot with a high end camera but he had a decent one (Canon PowerShot) and a patient eye and he covered a lot of ground (a good example of his dogged work is his series documenting Banksy’s graffiti art around New Orleans). He also uploaded photos he inherited of family members from the 1920s and 1930s and he had a good feel for oddball but revealing historical ephemera:

Derek Bridges, New Orleans, Profiles & Interviews
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