Last night I went to the night photography class in San Francisco (thus no journal entry for the 30th). It was held near 6th and Folsom streets at the RayKo South Photo Center which occupied the rambling top floor of a warehouse. I'd never heard of it before, but essentially it rents out darkrooms and studio space for those who need it, runs a number of photography classes including this one and is involved in putting together photography exhibits and shows throughout the city.

There were five of us in the class, two friends, Bob and Roy, a young woman who had driven all the way from Los Angeles that afternoon to attend the class named Cat, another young woman who did freelance work for ad agencies and the Sole Proprietor. We had two instructors, Tim Baskerville and Lance Keimig, both of them night photography fanatics in the finest sense, a passion that seemed to drive both of their lives as photographers. You might not want this in a house guest, but you definitely want this in an instructor.

We did an introduction all around and while we waited for the last two students to arrive, we went through a display of perhaps 30 night photography books provided by the instructors. With everyone in place, we watched a slide show of photographs of the miscellaneous masters in the field and then drove over to the new Yerba Buena Gardens near the Moscone Convention Center some six blocks distant, each of us with a parking pass signed by the Yerba Buena Gardens manager allowing us to park in a specified "cut out" (loading and unloading only, no parking) on Harrison along the edge of the Gardens. Pretty slick.

A little digression here. Every photographer has to grapple with the fact that on any given day someone would like to steal his or her cameras. These thoughts drifted through my mind as I found RayKo and then looked for a parking space. There was a parking lot down the street on the corner that cost $5.00, but it had a guard, so I popped the $5 and parked maybe three spaces from where the guard was sitting on a chair listening to her Walkman. I could have parked for nothing with a little looking around, but no guard and little security.

Having done that I picked up my camera bag, camera and tripod. Bag over the shoulder with the camera tucked into the side with my left forearm riding on top, the tripod in my right hand, nice and compact making a decent weapon. Not a nice neighborhood, getting dark on a Friday evening, people going in and out of bars, an X rated video store and who knew what else. It was a warehouse district, car repair shops now empty, and a place where you kept your eyes open.

Cat (or perhaps Kat for Katherine) driving all the way up from L.A. had evidently parked on the street and left her camera equipment and baggage in the car, whether in the back or in the trunk, I don't know. We learned when we arrived at Yerba Buena Gardens that someone had broken into her car and stolen everything.

I have two friends at work, both women, who have had all of their camera equipment stolen, both due to break ins while they were away from their homes. Both were avid photographers, both were insured, both quit photography as a result. I hope this doesn't happen to Cat. I understand what happens: you get all wound up in a hobby like this one and over time you have thousands and thousands of dollars invested in equipment and suddenly it's all gone and an insurance company has given you a check for a lot of money.

Maybe you'd been ready to move on to something else (photography can get more than a little obsessive and suddenly you've paddled yourself out into the middle of an Atlantic storm when you were really only thinking when you started about a turn around the pier with Eddie and a Cappucino) so you use the money for some other soon to be obsession or, less wonderfully, the rent, and hang up your tripod. Still, I hope Cat (I hope to hell she has insurance) doesn't quit over this. She was freaked, she was upset, she was, in a sense, raped last evening in San Francisco. I hope she learns that as time passes there are pictures to shoot. And parking lots with guards and Walkmans.