No Turn On Red

Say you are a good photographer. You enjoy photography, you are good at it, and you decide to persue wedding photography as a freelance business. But you don’t realize - or underestimate - how much other stuff is involved in running a business; marketing, sales, business contracts, client relationships, and countless other details you never thought of. You may be good at photography, but eventually it may not matter how good you are at photography if you can’t get clients or if you can’t get bills paid on time.

This is why, I believe, a lot of businesses and freelancers fail: they just don’t realize the amount of work actually required in running a business.

I came across this article in today’s Asbury Park Press: Working Vacation. It is about a company that allows you to work alongside someone in a career or profession that you are interested in. From the article:

Skye Forbes, a contract administrator from Durham, N.C., recently took a little vacation at the Jersey Shore.

But she wasn’t here to check out the beaches or boardwalks. Instead, she spent two days at Ballroom Etc. in Wall, learning what it takes to open up a dance studio.

“It was only for two days, but there was a lot of information to be packed into two days,” said Forbes, 24.

The company, Vocation Vacations, lists a range of jobs that they offer this package for: from Dog Daycare Owner to Retail Buyer to Sword Maker. There are dozens of careers that you can look into and learn about. Although it is pricey (some of the packages run up to $1000 for two days), the article makes it sound very informative.

I think that this kind of information and training is great for someone who wants to make their hobby into a full time gig, leaving behind a career that they are no longer interested in. There are a lot of pitfalls to doing something like this, so the more information you have, the better idea you have of what you are getting in to. This allows you to make a more informed decision.

Say you are that photography who wants to quit their job and persue photography. Now you can work alongside a professional photographer for two days and they’ll show you not only how to take a photo, but maybe they will also show you a sample contract and tell you how to find clients and keep them. Now you are really aware of what goes into running a business and you can make a more informed decision about whether or not you want to quit your full time job and switch careers.

Of course, you’re not going to learn everything you need to know about a new field, but again, this gives you a great chance to learn something. Every bit counts, and before you invest a lot more money in additional schooling or training, maybe this counts as a minimal investment.

This is the kind of working vacation I can get behind.

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They finally imploded the C-8 building in Asbury Park, as I talked about last week. Here is the video I took, via youtube:

I took a ride down, getting down to Asbury Park before six this morning. It was a wild scene to watch unfold - a ton of people came out to watch, including a lot of the NYC news media and a few of the local radio stations. There was an eight block area blocked off, so I was in the grassy park area near Kingsley between Fifth and Sunset. I was able to get as close and they would allow and I had a good view of the implosion.

For those that aren’t familar with Asbury Park, this construction on this building started in the mid to late 80’s. After 12 of the 16 stories of the building were up, the developer went bankrupt and the land had sat in tax/governmental/political limbo until a few years ago. After the area near Cookman Ave and Main Street had undergone redevelopment, development finally began on the oceanfront area. However, this building still stood as a reminder of what the city once was and overshadowed all of the good going on in the area.

The implosion of the building is a very monumental step forward in the redevelopment. The eyesore is gone and I am very interested in how the city is going to unfold after this.

Here is a recent article from the Asbury Park Press talking about the past and future of the building. And here is another quick article on the Asbury Park Press website about today’s events.

And finally, here are photos I’d like to share. The first is a photo I found that I took on March 29, 2002 that shows how the C-8 building used to look. The rest of the photos are from today’s events.

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From the Asbury Park Press:

ASBURY PARK: The implosion of C-8, the abandoned steel skeleton high-rise that became the symbol of the failed redevelopment of the 1990s, is scheduled for 7 a.m. April 29, city officials said Wednesday.

Details of where the public will be allowed to gather to watch the demolition are still being worked out.

Metro Homes, a Hoboken-based developer, bought the site between Third and Fourth avenues on the waterfront and plans to begin construction of a 224-unit high-rise to be called the Esperanza.

Anyone who’s been to Asbury Park in the past decade knows what building this is. I remember seeing the Suicide Machines at the Warped Tour in 1996 and Jason Navarro pointed the building and asked, “When was the war and why the fuck wasn’t it on CNN?”

The implosion of this building will be a huge step in the redevelopment of Asbury Park. Besides that, it is just going to be fucking cool to see a building get imploded. I am going to do my best to be there.

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