2001. I was a sophomore in college.
Some friends and I had started a breakdancing crew and would dance until the wee hours of the morning in the lounge of our dorm every Friday night. At our peak there were around 20 or so of us.
We called ourselves the “Hulkamaniaks.”
Sometimes we would even take our little show on the road and perform. I remember one time we put on a show at the First Presbyterian church in Spokane for an auditorium full of seniors.
Not college seniors.
Seniors. 75 (what we called it back then) seventy-five-year-olds.
It was an absolute blast. I think we even made the local newspaper.
I took plenty of pictures of us break dancing in the dorms on that old 35mm I bought a couple years earlier for my trip to New York.
Taking Pictures back then was an investment.
You couldn’t just delete the photo and take it again if you didn’t like it.
You had to pay to develop your film so each shot was worth literal “money.”
So we would each try to strike the coolest pose or hit the “dopest freeze” for the camera.
And then you just had to pray it turned out.
Here’s one I got of my best friend and roommate.
I remember seeing this one in the stack of pictures waiting in line at Costco and just going “duuuude!”
That is one of the little joys I miss about those times.
Picking up photos from the store and rifling through them, excited at the prospect of seeing the photos for the first time.
Like a little mini-Christmas.
Some of them didn’t turn out… but the ones that did…
Duuuuude…