The Holy Trinity of Photo Careers: Editorial, Advertising and Art ....and a story

Is it possible? Is it like the Loch Ness Monster or Big Foot, an urban myth? I want my cake and eat it too AND I want one of those free chocolates you get after desert at fancy restaurants.

We shot this guy for magazine in an alley in San Francisco. I found this location 15 years ago when I first moved to the city. My roommate worked in a restaurant on this street and I used to wait for him to get off work at the bar.

Years later after he moved away he called me to ask if I wanted to go out to dinner. My wife and I both liked him and had not seen him in a while so we heartily agreed. He and his girlfriend were traveling up and down the west coast on an eating and drinking bender. My friend is not destitute by any means but like all bachelors of a certain age is challenged in the money managing department. Needless to say we were a little surprised when he chose the only five star restaurant in San Francisco to meet. ( As I have recounted perviously on these pages when I was a bachelor I was working two jobs and making steady money but my wife, who was living on food stamps , was much more financially steady than I was.)

We had a terrible time at dinner. My friend's girlfriend (a surgeon as it turned out) was fantastically boring and brought along two equally uninteresting people. There were seven courses and a different wine with each course. We thought we were going to die and considered calling in bomb threat just to make the evening stop.

Finally the check the came and we recoiled from it as if it were on fire. We don't drink and had not signed up for this torture. My friend grabbed the check and I could see it was close to two thousand dollars . He opened his wallet under the table and said, "I got it" . I could see his wallet was completely empty. Not a lucky penny. Not even a library card.

His girlfriend protested and they went back and forth like that for a while. Eventually she of course won out and paid the check. I imagined this wrestling match repeated over and over from Spago's in LA to the French Laundry in the wine country- like a WWF pay per view event.