Tony Buba’s Short Films, Growing Up Aspen, And WTF REI?

I have said this before, I mine the past for my work, but I choose not to live there.

Like so many generations before us we are losing our past. People and places that were important to us growing up are long gone. I’m not saying things were better then, they were different. People were different.

Last week I was on Kanopy looking for something to watch and under documentaries I stumbled across a bunch of short films by Tony Buba. I first met Tony back in the 80’s when the Northwest Film Center showed a bunch of his films. Over the years I’ve seen him a few times, but I wouldn’t say we’re friends. He seems like a great guy.

Tony makes documentaries focusing on working class communities and social issues in his hometown of Braddock, PA. These early short films are known as the Braddock Chronicles. (https://www.kanopy.com/en/wccls/video/11737858)

Tony Buba

This collection of black and white films is a time capsule going back to the early eighties. Tony introduces us to some real characters talking about real issues they are dealing with in a small town that is in decline. A lot of communities went through similar things during the Reagan Era.

One fellow, J. Roy, is ever optimistic about his businesses in Braddock, a used car dealership and a flea market. He knows prosperity will be happening for him soon. He’s expecting a huge crowd for his big grand opening, Will the crowd show up?

Sweet Sal

Tony profiles his Uncle Sal, in Sweet Sal, and I’m still not sure how Sal supports himself, but boy is he a smooth character. The kind we don’t see anymore. Fascinating.

A couple of Tony’s films are shot in local bars featuring their patrons, all of whom have lived pretty tough lives and they appear to be okay with that. Watching these characters on screen reminds me of so many people, and their parents, that I grew up with in Portland.

At a town hall we meet independent truck drivers who are going broke. They are striking because of the fuel prices, they can’t make a living. Does this sound familiar?

There is a wonderful sequence in Peabody and Friends, that turns into an amazing music video featuring a fellow playing Jumping Jack Flash on his accordion. This video starts small and ends up featuring a parade and a marching band. I loved watching this piece grow from a small profile of a couple of people to something that involves most of the town. Plus, if you have never heard Jumping Jack Flash played on an accordion, you are in for a treat.This is a really wild film.

My travels have taken me to small towns in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and so many other palces that are built around a single industry. When that industry starts shutting down the rest of the town suffers.

Tony’s films preserve a way of life, and introduce us to people and places that don’t exist anymore. The small town bars, restaurants, and community centers. The residents coming to grips with being left behind is sobering. Shooting in black and white gives these films an historical feel. Plus back in the day is was cheaper to shoot in black and white.

Seeing these films again after all of these years, I still loved them. They seem so personal. I know I’m looking back on a time and a place that no longer exists.

Recently my friend, filmmaker Andy Collen, gave me a book that he had written with three of his friends, Growing Up Aspen, Adventures of the Unsupervised (https://www.twistandturnpress.com/product-page/growing-up-aspen).

Andy and his friends grew up in Aspen, Colorado in the seventies and eighties, when it was still a small community. This was before all of the millionaires and billionaires took over. At the time, Aspen’s two leading citizens were John Denver and Hunter Thompson. Now that alone is an interesting combination. I need to ask Andy if those two guys were friends? Can you imagine? “Mom. Dad. We’re gonna go hang out at Hunter’s place and shoot guns with John Denver…”

This book is a lovely reminiscence of growing up in a small town and all of the fun kids could have when their parents had no clue what they were doing all day. The kids knew all of the store owners, the cops, and all of the people who lived in their town. They had daily adventures that didn’t seem like adventures at the time. It was jut growing up.

Once Aspen developed that way of life was gone. Their book is loaded with colorful characters. People who lived the lives they wanted to. Sometimes they operated on the other side of the law. They all loved their small town and living lives in the outdoors. Skiing and snow boarding brought a lot of these people together. Some were considered “ski bums”. These are people who’s lives revolve around skiing in the winter. They work shit jobs and live cheaply so they can spend as much time as possible on the slopes. There used to be towns all over the west, where people could work enough to survive and enjoy their lives.

The writers of Growing Up Aspen point out, that after the invasion of all of the wealth, many people who grew up there couldn’t afford to stay. They were priced out of their home town. I believe that only one of the writers still lives there, but I might be incorrect about that.

Which brings me to a piece I’ve been working on that is part of my new book, Blowtorch Nachos And Other Bad Decisions, (coming this Fall, hopefully).

The Old Neighborhood is about the part of Portland I grew up in, and it too, is long gone. Northwest Portland was taken over by money in the late eighties and nineties. The old houses are incredibly expensive and the neighborhood is full of high end restaurants and shops.

Growing up it was more of a working class neighborhood. Many of our neighbors working at the ESCO foundry, drove for Consolidated Freightways, worked on the docks as longshoremen, or other blue collar jobs. Yes, there were some neighbors who did have office jobs, but most of the ones I remember did blue collar work.

All of that changed. To my knowledge there are only a few kids I grew up with that still live in the neighborhood. The rest of us got priced out.

Back then we knew all of the kids in the area. There were parks, wooded areas, creeks, and trails all over. As kids we would disappear all day going places and doing stuff our parents would have freaked out about if they knew.

One memory was being in fourth or fifth grade and taking the bus downtown by ourselves where we’d hang out all day. We never had much money to buy stuff but we went down there anyway. It was on one of these trips that I witnessed a woman getting hit by a van as she attempted to cross the street against the light. A picture I can still see in my mind, sixty plus years later. And no, she did not survive.

The summer between eight grade and high school my buddy Earl and I rode our Schwinn ten speeds to Mt Hood and to the coast. It was two different rides a month apart. These were long rides, (fifty and one hundred miles) with no means of communication. No phones, no nothing. We both had our backpacks with snacks and not nearly enough water. What parent in their right mind would allow this today?

I think it’s really important to look back and see where we came from. Remember people and places from our past. Celebrate some of them, but certainly not all of them.

Please take a look at Tony’s films, or read Growing Up Aspen. Think about your own past and the people and places that are no longer here, but don’t dwell on it.

As I age, I look back on these days with fondness. Not that I want to go back to that time. I am one of those people that truly believes that the best time in one’s life didn’t occur in the past. The best times of our lives are still in front of us. Whether that is true or not doesn’t really matter. Get up every morning thinking about the great day ahead. Live your life that way.

THE ANGRY FILMMAKER RANTS

WTF REI!

I joined the REI Co-op in 1976, back when it was a bunch of hippies and outdoors people. I joined right after they opened a store out at the Jantzen Beach mall. The people who worked there were so knowledgeable when it came to outdoor gear. I was doing a decent amount of hiking and some back packing. I had an old Kelty backpack and a decent pair of hiking boots, the brand I forget at this point.

REI started in 1938 as a way for climbers to get together and get good prices on great outdoor gear. And it was founded as a Co-op.

One of the great things about belonging to the REI Co-op is at the end of the year members would get a check back based on the amount they had spent that year. Which I usually used to buy more stuff from them.

REI was always a shining example of an organization that cared. Apparently at some point that changed. They now have a CEO and a board of directors that are more interested in the bottom line and profit, than they are the welfare of their employees.

REI has not been bargaining in good faith with their unionized workers. They are cutting wages and hours and have hired a legal firm that supposedly has expertise in breaking unions. The employees are calling for a boycott of the big anniversary sale happening this month.

It’s really sad it has come to this. I am tired of all of the non-union bullshit going on in this country right now.

I’m supporting the workers. I will not be shopping at REI until they get serious and bargain with the union in good faith. This is a fucking Co-op and the members are the owners! Treat your workers fairly.

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