Salton Sea: North Shore Yacht Club

Late in the summer of 2009 my friend Dave and I went on a road trip to Southern California. One of the highlights of the trip was traveling out to the Salton Sea to check out the rundown buildings and remnants left from the tourist boom that fizzled out in the late '70s and '80s because of the ecological state of the sea itself.

The North Short Yacht Club was once a million dollar resort facility that saw celebrities and tourists using the marina. Throughout the 1960's this place saw a lot of traffic, but as the salt levels in the water continued to rise the desirability of the location weakened. After several floods in the decades that followed, the marina was eventually unusable and the yacht club was finally closed.

Dave and I visited in August 2009 when renovations were just beginning - everything was still in a rough state and the yacht club was still very much abandoned. Today, however, the yacht club looks much like it did back in the 1960's (see the picture of the renovated facility below). Supposedly there's now a museum and community centre inside.

Recently renovated North Shore Yacht Club.

I wanted to post this because it has quickly dated the footage that I shot just last year. Check out my Salton Sea videos to see what the rundown building looked like for over a decade - sitting empty on the shore of the Salton Sea in California. For more on our experience and the entire road trip (labeled Indio Outio), you can read my full post about visiting North Shore here.

Yobi Film Again?

After finishing in 2nd place of the Yobi Filmmaking Competition this year with my short, The Geology Student I have had it in the back of my mind that I wanted to create a brand new short to try again. To my surprise however, I noticed in my junk email folder yesterday that Yobi had sent me a message stating that on Sunday night I was actually voted as a Top 3 weekly winner with The Gizmo Tree.

This comes as a big surprise not only because I had made the semi-finals with The Gizmo Tree in season 1 of Yobi Film, but because this time around I hadn't even made any mention or done any campaigning for votes. This season (#3) of the film competition has seen a change in the rules to try to get even more films into the mix - and potentially even more films into the finals and going for the top prize.

I haven't decided what my approach is going to be yet. With the new rules I can still lose this round and then submit something new again in the next one. As much as I'm proud of my past work I think I'll feel more charged if I come up with something completely new - a more polished narrative short of some kind.

I sometimes feel like I'm not creating new videos anymore and then I remember that I am - it's just for other people now. I don't want that to be an excuse to not still keep the personal projects going though. So I'm inadvertently a weekly winner again, but I'd still like to get something new in the running. You can see the original promo I made for the Gizmo Tree below, when I made the Yobi Film Semi-Finals back in early 2009.

Changes

For the last week everything has been on hold because of my move. I'm just glad I was organized. I've managed to completely pack, move, and unpack over the long weekend to the point that I'm comfortably easing into my new routine for the start of another work week. There's a lot to be said about moving within the city you're already living too - it was far easier than trying to fit everything into a single vehicle and driving for several hours like I did so many times throughout university.

Things feel significantly different already despite everything else remaining the same. My new loft feels more personal than any place I've lived so far - although the only competition was my parents' basement and the dorms - there's something about finally being in a position to pick the place I want to live, purchase the furniture I want have, and commit to something that seemed out of reach just a year or two ago. I can't deny that things have gone exceedingly well this year in so many big ways that I'm still fighting to try and soak everything in at once.

It's amazing how you can see your life transform so quickly sometimes - all the hard work, luck, and timing just sync up and it's like it was meant to happen this way all along. That student mentality of 'I want to be' is quickly being replaced with 'I am'.