Michalska Street

We used to run a bar in this street called Zelezne Dvere. The entrance was in the passageway of the second building on the right. The white building. The first two windows on the first floor was my bedroom. Little Glenn and I rented a 200 square meter flat in that building. It was a huge party flat; we even built a bar in there. We had huge parties with really loud music and the cops could never figure out where it was coming from. Downstairs in the basement was the club. It was great for a while then one night someone got shot and killed down there. Then it was time to close. The full story's in the book. I keep you posted.

St Nicholas Church, Mala Strana

This image also in Raw format. Will do the plus minus HDR soon with it and then post the new photo.

This church was built by Christoph Dientzenhofer in the late 17th and early 18th, High Baroque.

Will be taking some pics from that tower also soon. My flat is just here on the left where you see the lamp shining.

One time I got into a fight just there at the foot of the church with 4 motherfuckers who had just trashed my bar. I won but it was a hard slog. The one guy must still be walking funny. It was ugly and I lost my Russian watch in the kerfuffle. A good offense is your best defense. Story in the book. I think, I hope, if it isn't I'll send you an email with the details.

Prague Castle

I had my tripod with me and was shooting in Raw format. I took a bunch of photos and have downloaded some HDRI software to process the files. Still gotta get someone over to show me how. Once I have mastered it then I will be posting some of the results. Fingers crossed.

Old Town Square

All those years I have lived here and never been up this tower. Cost 70 Kc and there's an elevator all the way up. I was out all day Saturday taking pictures and decided to start visiting all the main towers in town. This is the first one. the Orloj

U Zaveseneho Kafe

OK. This was in the summer of 94 or 95 and the whole bar had a party up the hill near the castle in U Zaveseneho Kafe (The Hanging Coffee) run by Jakub and Helena. It was a photo exhibit of Matt Pollitz. In this photo is at far left Swiss Jirka, Honza the Terrible in red, Kire of Macedonia in white shirt and suspenders, Mean Steve the boogy woogy piano player from Toronto drinking the beer, Matthew Healey sitting with long hair and purple shirt, Jo-Anne facing him, Peter and Michelle at top of steps and that's about all I can name. Oops, just below Jo-Anne is black-haired David Gross.

Jakub and Helena got run out of this location by some prick in the building and now have a new location a bit lower facing the orchards at the bottom of Uvoz.

If anyone knows any more names then leave a comment. Cheers

Bobby Herron

Here's an old shot of Bobby up at the castle in Krumlov in 94 or 95. He came over to Prague in 1992 and set up the mexican kitchen at Jo's. He set up the first mexican kitchen in Eastern Europe. We were making quesadillas, burritos and nachos when most other expats were still trying to find out where to buy toilet paper. Now he lives on Vancouver Island and plays music as he always did. Remember the B-Sides?

Here is his website for his new band Big Red Truck

www.bigredtruck.ca

Lomo Fisheye

I bought myself a little Lomo Fisheye camera the other day. They're not made in St. Petersburg any more. I think they're made now in Austria. On the box it says made by the Lomographic Society International. This is a picture of Wenceslas on his horse with the Museum in the background at the top of Wenceslas square. I shot off two rolls at Jitka's birthday party last night so hopefully tmrw I'll have some gems to put up of drunk silly people.

Chess Men

Roman Slepica (left) and Honza the Terrible lock horns on a summer day outside Jo's Bar on malostranske nam in 94 or 95

Billy-Bob

Its Billy Conway from Ballymena and Nicole in the background downstairs at Jo's Garaz. 1997?

Inside Nazi Factory

In the first pic you can see as we we squeeze though the hole in the heavy steel doors. Looks like somebody used some sort of heavy equipment to bend the door back like that because the doors were about 10 inches thick.
In the second pic you see that we have all made it in and now just about to go thru the next broken down barrier into the mine itself.

The last pic is some graffiti in German. It says "Wir sind wieder da!" which means: "We are there again!"

Repre Club

This must be mid 1994 when we first got the Repre club up and running. Its John-Bruce on the left, Joey Knuckles on the right and Marketa in the middle. Story in book coming soon

Honza "the Terrible" Král

Here is Prague's infamous Honza the Terrible when he was still sporting the eastern mustachio. He has been an air-traffic controller for thirty years now and not unlike all ATC's I have met, he doesn't half like his drink when he has time off. They called him the Terrible because he had a bad habit of showing young travellers and other unsuspecting innocents how to drink Becherovka. He would make people drink a few until they got super pissed and had to leave or puked or passed out or some combination of all the above. Then he would find another group of travelers and do it all over again. Ultimately he would be the last one standing, would sleep in the back room and then start at 11 am again when we opened. Iain, the Scottish barman once said, "Aye, its Honza the Terrrrible!" And the name stuck.

Nazi Underground Factory; Richard II

I found out about an abandonded underground Nazi factory just outside of Litomerice from Helmut Gaensel when I went out with a Canadian journalist to interview him. Gaensel has been up the Amazon interviewing old Nazis in hopes of tracking down the Amber Room and lost Nazi gold somewhere in Stechovice near Prague. Anyways after several reconnaissance trips on my own I finally found it and ended up goin up there with a group of Czech friends; from left: Petr, Patrik, Honza, Pavel and myself. We are standing in front of the main doors to the calcium mine which the Nazis converted into war production. Osram was the company in charge. We are only a few Km from Terezin concentration camp and the prisoners were marched up here each morning to build arms for the Germans. A big outbreak of some infectious deisease broke out at one time because of the horrible conditions and a couple thousand inmates died in a few days. We were told to be careful by the locals because maybe the tunnels were still infectious. We broke in anyways. I will post more photos from inside once I find them and scan them

Jo's early days 1994?

From right to left: Claire (RIP), Paulina, Francine, Pero, Neil (with cig), Tony Peneff?, Girl, Tom Gross?

Drag Night

Left to right: Gavin, Billy and Iain. I guess I don't really have to explain this much other than it was pretty damn funny. Jo's bar in about 95 I think. Those Scots love wearing skirts!

Double Numbers

So each building in this country has two numbers. One is the address and the other is a catalogue number of sorts. An ID number. It seems that the addresses run in order ascending or descending with odd numbers on one side of the street and even on the other (although not the rule). The other number seems to be chronological and refers to a whole list of other pertinent info about the building. Now I have had this explained to me many times by Czech people but to me it is still really stupid. It makes no sense at all. Because if that address on that street always refers to the same building then why do you need a second number? Even in elementary school you learn a fundamental proof that: if A=B then it is true that B=A. So what the hell is going on?

The Czechs; re-inventing the wheel again!

Balbin Poetry Pub

This Poetry pub in Balbinova street is a cool little place. They have live music and the interior is eclectic. The owner is an eccentric but friendly Czech guy with a bowler hat and a tux. We had a couple drinks in here on our way down into the center the other day. The owner mentioned about his political party. Sounded great to me; all about drinking, poetry and young women. I would vote for them. Anything is better than the gang of Banditos running the country now.

Jawa 350

This is the original Jawa 350 I bought off the Czech guy back in '92. Here it is parked in front of the bar covered in snow. It was all original and when it ran it was quite fun. Problem was that because of the sidecar it was like driving a car; you couldn't swerve around the cars. This posed a problem because that fuckin 2-stroke engine smoked like a cuban limo. Every time you got in traffic you would slowly asfixiate. Ended up just parking it in front of the bar as an attraction. Full story in book coming.

First Aid

This is a cool pawn shop. The owner stands behind the counter in a white medical coat with a stethoscope around his neck. The junkies come in and he asks "what are your symptoms?"
They always reply, "I need cash!"
He says, "what ya got?"
That's when the junkies start pulling out the recently stolen car radios, family jewellery, and if need be, the owner will get the pliers and pull out those gold teeth.
He also gets a lot of plain-clothes policemen coming in. They are dressed in civilians' because they think the owner doesn't know that they are cops; but he does. They are the ones selling stolen stolen goods. They steal it from the junkies and sell it themselves. It all goes around and everybody is happy.

Czech Lion

Above an entranceway to a building in Smichov

Venus of Vestonice

This is a copy of the oldest known piece of ceramics in the world. It comes from the time of the Mammoths in deep south Moravia from the middle to end of the last ice-age. The whole site is interesting because it seems to be a post iceage European meeting place. They even discovered the buried remains of a ritual killing of three people in a tryst. Two men and a woman. They are buried side by side. The man on her right is buried face down and has his hand in her crotch. The man on the left is buried face up and is holding her left hand. A stake is driven through the facedown mans hand which is in her crotch. It pierces both his hand and her pelvis. She has a string of wolf teeth sitting on a pile of red ocher on her forehead. What does it all mean master?

Good wine in the neighbourhood of Vestonice and great for mountain biking. Lots of beautiful little villages around with nice pensions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_of_Doln%C3%AD_V%C4%9Bstonice

U Vestonickeho Venuse

A nice comfortable little wine bar in the back of a block of flats just off Arbesovo nam. Draught wine and intimate interior with friendly staff. Good prices and interesting mix of locals. Especially good when the weather picks up. Named after the 25 thousand year old megalithic statue of Venus found in Vestonice in south Moravia

Whappen?

I know that the Heritage people (Pamatkary) stick their noses in when the owners of privately owned buildings start to reconsrtuct or refurbish. They will force the owner to use ultra expensive materials and paint colors that they do not desire. This happens especially if you don't kiss their asses or in some way bribe them. So what happened here? Did the Pamatkar really order them to paint this building this color? Usually, according to some historical template and in stride with what is already in the neighbourhood they will give the owner a range of colours to choose from. So here in this case something definitely went completely wrong. I mean really, come on!