The Fukushima earthquake and Sit N Bull Saloon
Why I maxed out my cards to finally buy those lenses I'd always wanted.
In March of 2011 the news of the Fukushima earthquake rocked the world. Sometime in April my photog friend in Eugene, Oregon, named Lorin and a fellow diehard Nikon enthusiast, emailed me and told me the earthquake had destroyed Nikon’s lens factory.
This meant two things:
There wouldn’t be any new Nikon lenses for a few years; and
When there were, they would be more expensive.
I’d been lusting after Nikon’s 24-70 f/2.8 ED lens for years. I called Denver’s one professional photo store. They had one left. And also one of the Nikon 14-24 ultrawide lens that I’d been thinking about.
I looked at my credit card balance, and headed down to Denver. It maxed out my credit, but I finally had the lenses I’d lusted after for years.
So I set out to test the 14mm-24mm ultrawide.
Less than a block away from me was the Sit N Bull Saloon, the smallest and friendliest bar you’ll ever set foot in. Amber, Bob Hope's human, worked there. I hear tell that she owns the place now. Anyway, this place is tiny. The perfect place to test an ultra-wide-angle lens. I walked down there, camera in hand. Here’s what it looks like from the outside:
To the right is a deck they built when Colorado banned indoor smoking. There are more seats outside than inside. Here’s the view just inside the door:
And this, folks, is the ENTIRE place. Not including the deck, of course. All of the seats, all of the tables, though one booth is barely visible on the photo’s extreme left edge. There is an upstairs area behind the camera, but there are no seats, no tables up there: only a pool table, with barely enough room to work your cue stick. Behind the wall on the right is a full kitchen. They made pretty good food, except when the cook got too stoned and lost track of how long the meat had been on the grill.
Here’s another view from a couple of steps inside, with the then-owner Paul:
Here’s one more shot, taken about a month later out on the deck, not with either of the new lenses. It just captures the spirit of the place. Here’s a local biker giving his dog a drink from the same bottle he drank from:
And that pretty much characterizes the wild and crazy spirit of that place. People would come up from Denver just to hang out there.
And I lived less than a block away. I always walked. My landlord told me once that he suspected most of his tenants through the years were alcoholics, just so they wouldn’t have to drive home. More than once we hosted a friend for the night who had gotten too drunk to go home.
I miss that place. I still have and use the lenses.