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On The Road To
America
Photographer Frank Hamrick Encounters
"Freedom! Freeeeeedom! Has anybody seen my
freedom? I can't go home until I find it." A man
named "Badger" told me at Music Midtown in
Atlanta earlier in the summer that he had heard
somebody say those words once at a gathering.
Badger said he has been roaming the country for
the past eight years that he is a sculptor and land
scaper by trade but resorts to those pursuits only
when he needs the money to get back on the road.
His passion is living as free as possible. Meeting
Badger influenced a trip I took shortly after across
the eastern half of the United States. Here is Part
One of some of the highlights of that journey.
Welcome to NYC
The first leg of my trip led me to New York City
with fellow photographer Justin Davis. We
stopped in South Carolina for some food. I have
long hair, and Justin has short hair, dyed orange.
Inside a Waffle House, conversations stopped and
everyone stared at us as we walked by. Justin and
I agreed that if we were born 50 years earlier, we
would have been seated in the “colored" section.
Justin and I drove 15 hours straight to
Queens, NY, and set up camp at a friend's house. I
was on a mission to get a ticket to a last-minute
Phish concert at the Roseland Ballroom. At the
house, I met a Phish fan fium South Carolina. She
knew how to get to the Roseland Ballroom, but
first wanted to stop at a hotel to pick up a friend.
We stopped at The New Yorker Hotel on
Manhattan Island. I entered a room full of people.
Everyone I met gave me a sincere handshake or
hug. They were all rolling on Ecstasy. The Phish
fan's friend was a drug dealer, and the rest of the
Scenes You Won’t See In TV Commercials
people in the room were his friends, so that they
could get hooked up with a little of whatever he
had. It was getting light outside, and everyone in
the room was still drinking, smoking, licking and
popping.
I left the hotel at 5 a.m. and started heading
for the Ballroom. Everyone I met along the way
tried to sell me something. "Hello. How are you?
How about a blowjob to start the morning?"
When I reached the Roseland Ballroom, I
found a couple thousand people camped out. I
stood in line for five hours and passed the time
talking with people from all over the country. A
guy from Oregon spoke to me about land sprawl
and how he saw Atlanta as a disaster. The line
moved up and there were only about 25 people
ahead of me when the box office sold out of
tickets. Oh well.
Later on that evening, the drug dealer friend
was arrested. (Apparently his Achilles heel was his
cell phone. "Big brother is watching you.") He was
standing around hoping to buy someone's extra
Phish ticket when the police approached him
about the contents of his
backoack. He had two
ounces of marijuana
divided up into sandwich
bags, 45 Ecstasy pills and
$600. This was enough to
put him away for a while,
but the police arrested so
many people that night
that everyone was given
the light sentence of a
night in jail plus two days
of community service.
Everyone received "mis
conduct" charges instead
of drug possession.
The drug dealer spent
a couple of nights at the house where we were
staying while he did his community service. Since
he had to stay in NY, so did his followers. The
house was more like a hostel, with a different cast
of people each night sleeping .n various places
while the phone constantly rang at the strangest
hours.
One day I took photos outside the Museum of
Modern Art as union workers were striking for con
tract negotiations. One of workers named Dalton
said t^at the museum was hiring strikebreakers,
which is illegal and firing anyone who didn't want
to break the strike, which is also illegal.
An old woman approached me about my
camera. "That must be an old camera. My uncle
had a camera like that when I was little. Where
did you get it?"
"I got it in Georgia."
"Oh well that makes sense. My uncle was from
Georgia. His name was Ty Cobb. Have you ever
heard of him?"
I spent a week in New York taking lots of
photos and visiting several galleries and museums.
I even visited a couple of friends that I haven't
seen in years. New York isn't for me, though.
Everyone is fighting for what little space they
have. There are fences around trees and locks on
garbage cans.
Heading West
I headed west on Memorial Day weekend. I had
been on the interstate for several hours when I
decided to travel on some back roads. Along the
way, I ran across a town named Freeland,
Pennsylvania. I figured there was no better place
to spend part of Memorial
Day weekend than in
Freeland.
The town was cele
brating with a street
party. American flags dec
orated every parking
meter. A teenage rock
band covered songs by
their modern rock radio
heroes while parents
videotaped the whole
thing. Young teenage
boys performed BMX bike
tricks, and small groups of
junior high girls paraded
up and down the block.
I was headed back to my car when I passed by
a mud-splattered Bronco. Four young people were
hanging out drinking cheap beer. A fairly plas
tered young woman asked me, "What are you
taking pictures of?"
"I'm just traveling across America taking pic
tures of everything."
"What are you doing in a place like Freeland?"
She didn't realize that there was no better
place to be than Freeland. Of course I'm sure it
sucks to live in Freeland during the rest of the
year. After all, the high school was boarded up,
and the basketball goal had fallen over.
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JULY 26, 2000