A Daily Journal and To-Do list from Montgomery (Monty) Gabrys: Artist, Athiest, Gamehead, Balloonatic, Web Developer, and recently returned Bay Aryan (soda-cracker white - NOT white-power) who is trying to start a few businesses, or if some theories prove themselves - a minor empire? Basically doing what every other contractor does - with a hidden agenda.
11.09.2005
[The Story So Far]
I’ve been contracting since my last idiotic job in advertising imploded in 30 days. Can’t stand snooty creative directors anymore and couldn’t muster the faux enthusiasm they required. Been working 2.5 freelance-clients a day ever since. In the SF Bay Area, the Google explosion has caused a panic in the investor community and start-ups are popping up everywhere. The opening notes of Dot-Com 2.0. Of course they ALL need websites and marketing collateral, and every developer has a friend who needs a website mocked up for investors. All this is being done to provide the fuel for a canvas-based art project that’s been 2 years in the making.
[Today’s Dynamic Moment]
Gave a 17 inch computer monitor to a neighbor who is apparently involved on the SF special-event & party scene as well as a medical storefront in LA. I’m declining doing more than some quick-web work for the store in LA (instead of signage and additonal graphic design) - since I don’t have the bandwidth to deal with Southern California. Her affiliation with the Hyat Regency ballroom and the special event circut might be fun to develop websites for as well. Who knows. Her story could just turn out to be California-style bullshit, but her portfolio of event photos and the deposit-offer for the website work lends some credibility. We’ll see.
[Another sideline comes out of retirement]
Obviously with her party business, she was more than a little interested in my balloon services (balloonpop.com). They had a decorator previously scheduled for new-years-eve that fell through, so she seemed keen on setting up an appointment to check out the ballroom etc. Going to have to charge professional rates rather than the rates I’d charged for the perpetually-poor nightclub scenes in Denver and St. Louis. To date it’s just been a sideline that provides a nice shift in creative gears a handful of times a year.
Of course this kind of contract-work may increase since this city draws more than 1/3rd of it’s revenue stream from tourism and assorted forms of frolic. Going to show her my portfolio later and decorate her loft for an upcoming party as a demo. This is on the heels of the Holloween fete I flew some arches for - when I was drafted by another neighbor during a 3am courtyard smoke break.
[To Do List]
Get the place unpacked: finally got my crap out of storage a few weeks ago - then got sick so I didn’t do much for a week afterwards, then got busy with new client meetings and the like.
The canvases are slated to start production soon. The art’s been (pretty-much) in the can for over a year now. The subject models for the first two series have finally been located after 5 months of searching.
The second of the two models is being restored by an expert in Union City who keeps me apprised of his work every couple of days. When I say expert I mean - a person with a new home - that has two seperate garages - both devoted to not putting any cars into them in leu of his hobby.
The remainder of this month is devoted to getting the silk-screen masters created and locating a supllier of paints and canvas. Decided to push off the reseller tax ID until the things sell (filing taxes more often isn’t fun), so I won’t be paying whole-
sale for anything. At least not yet. The trademarks will also be sent to the feds and the names filed with Emeryville City Hall before the month’s end.
December will (hopefully) devoted to finding and hiring an assistant, putting down the background guides and throwing acrylic all over my loft. Decided to do 2 more canvases for future potential, so that brings the total up to 52. If it doesn’t take too long to make the extra canvases, then I might do another 2 and crop those out to make a total of 58. We’ll have to see what kind of fiscal-hit I get with 6×8 feet of canvas (per-master) and extra paint & silkscreen ink.
If I thought about all the technical and logistical crap involved just to frigging paint, I’d never get out of bed.
[End of Line Line]
Irony is intelligent design being promoted by a nation of morons.
Way to go Kansas!
11.10.05
[The Story So Far]
I’ve got 2.5 clients because when you’re paying as much rent as the usual loft-dweller it helps to have more than 1 iron in the fire. After juggling for a few months it can be nice having more than one office to go to on a daily basis. You meet more people to, which is critical in freelance since it’s all one big hustle. Compare this to a full-time gig where you basically fall off the face of the earth. This is a challenge for a friend who contract-works with Microsoft 9-10 months out of the year. They’re called Dash-Trash on Microsoft’s campus (the badge configuration). Every year he has to build his non-microsoft client network every year from ground zero when they reset his contract.
Working for more than 1 client daily does befuddle more than a few groups who think that you’ll take all the hours that they’ll give you, and ask for more. The biggest plus from freelance is that you’re a business, so they can’t make demands on you without mutual consensus. Well - they can and sometimes do - but these occasions usually boil down to:
Manager: “You HAVE to come in this weekend!”
Me: “Have?”
Manger:”We’d LIKE you to come in this weekend!”
I’m amazed at other contractors who let themselves get jerked around like they’re working full-time. If they’re paying for my medical insurance - fine. But my client’s aren’t - and with multiple customers - when push comes to shove, the one client will be more than happy to take the other client’s hours. This is unspoken but obvious. The goal - which is progressing nicely - is to reduce the hours and raise the rates. Eventually I want no more than 30-35 hours a week to paint as much as possible, and to do that I need to churn clients to uptick my rates. This is what I’ve been doing for the last 5 months and it’s been progressing as planned.
[Today’s Dynamic Moment]
My afternoon client is a group that is in stealth mode so I can’t elaborate too much on their specifics, but they green-lit my services after nearly a month of rough sketches to not only doing their product site, but also their PR site, marketing support, and some ancillary product support (editing and redesigning product screens in the client) etc. This was originally assumed to be a 3-4 month affair at best, but has expanded to at least a year, so at least my afternoons are firm for a while and I can concentrate on other things.
[Another Sideline Comes Out of Retirement]
The new new-year’s-eve potential hasn’t been in touch yet, so I’ve decided to take a risk and continue with my initial target which is a gallery and entertainment space in SOMA (South of Market). They’re going to be cut-rate since I may pitch some “demo-art” to them at a later date. So it’s a foundation builder for the canvas-side as much as an outlet for the balloon-side. Their previous special-event coordinator went back to New Zealand, and aside from being hard to talk to - he was a bit high-strung. The new contact is a far better communicator. I’ll be sending isometric renderings of the space and three price-tiers of ideas. I need to get them out by the end of next week though if I’m going to order the stuff in time. Here’s hoping my supplier in Utah won’t let me down, although I have backups in SF and Kansas City if required.
The risk is I may end up doing two gigs. The gallery is closed early in the week however, so a lot of work can be done in advance if necessary. Haven’t done two gigs at once before. It would be nice to design and produce two parties for a change. At least fun to try.
[To Do List]
The checks cleared on the second of the two models I’m going to paint, so I own them. The bugger still needs to send me a receipt for tax purposes though. If worse comes to worse his emails discussing the price can function as a receipt, but I’d rather have something more polished for my files. Also may check on a handyman neighbor to construct a stretcher that can immobilize a canvas because silkscreening before stretching mega-sized works is common and the dupes are going to be cut up so I need an easel that will clamp and secure the canvas in an un-stretched manner. He did a hell of a job on a dog kennel for the next door neighbor and has a ton of handyman tools and seems to have the skills.
Got a logo concept for the Russian’s site (my morning client), now just need to wireframe up a layout and get approvals before slapping content into them. He only got the name of his business yesterday. Now THAT’S a start-up!
[End of Line Line]
My father a semi-retired aerospace contractor scored a flight operations manual to a F16 fighter jet. Seems reasonable enough since they buzz the house about 80 times a day. He can add it to the pile of 150 boxes of paperwork and airframe specifications taking up room in the rented storage space. My dad the geek.
11.30.2005
[The Story So Far]
Been noticing more articles every week about the Bay Area tech wave heating up. Some figures that have come-in include 2.05 billion for the last quarter from the VC community. This represents nearly 40% of all VC dollars invested in new companies nationwide, with New York being second at 12%. The New York Times also had an article on “Web 2.0″ and some of the signs of stability this go-around. Probably the biggest change is the IPO craze has been replaced by the acquisition position. Like minded services are now hoping to cash out by selling themselves to larger groups. In the meantime most start-ups I’ve been involved with have been keeping their budgets tighter than the previous go-around so who knows. The investment numbers are already approaching the last bubble’s peak - and time-wise this wave is only getting started. But then considering Google’s ROI blew Netscape’s to shame that’s not too surprising. Google broke 400 and now has a cap of 120 billion. That’s bigger than GM, McDonald’s and DuPont combined. Google is building a fleet of trucks - “with frickken laser beams on them” - to scan neighborhoods in 3D for street level views for Google Earth. Watch for them in your town soon.
[Today’s Dynamic Moment]
Wired magazine is going to print a short rant-reply of mine. It’s odd. I’ve only written 4 letters in the last 5 years to paper publications and every one of them has been printed. Perhaps something from the Denver Press Club rubbed off on me, or perhaps I found the tone that career-alcoholic journalists take notice of. Meh.
[Another Sideline Comes Out of Retirement]
Started laying down voice tracks for some new animations that I’m going to produce for the web - and for television. There’s a new network in the Bay Area called Current TV. Al Gore’s one of the founders and has been noted in the society pages for his frequent appearances in SF. I interviewed there months ago and was later told that the position was filled. 2 months later it was open again. Either the job market is doing too well for some people, or my suspicions on working full time in a broadcast environ was correct. Those suspicions being, full-time TV employment resembles the 11 level of hell. The animation I’m doing only takes 2-4 hours to produce 30 second to 1.5 minute snippits which is what Current TV is promoting. Short attention-span video. But the residual payment options beats SAG all to hell - so it’s worth a shot. That and I wanted a third trademark to apply for. Got the domain name already and have the logo 50% done for the end-cards on the animations. I’ll disclose the name once the trademarks are applied for.
[To Do List]
Get the trademarks off to the California Gov., and contact that cybersqatting prick in Los Angeles whose sitting on 20 thousand plus dot-com names for a BS affiliate link site and tell him to get off my frigging business name (or one of them anyway). Get the helium tank ordered for the gallery gig that was greenlit. The dot-com launch parties have started again in his space (at a cost of 10 grand for rental) and I’m hoping some of his renters show at the NYE party for future gigs. Budget sucks so it’s going to be a break-even gig if I want to keep the “wow” factor intact. Still - free PR with my logo going onto the advertising collateral etc., and I know someone in Oakland who could use some extra cash helping me set-up. Also gets my head out of the monitors. Got a lead on an expert in large-format silk-screens. He moved from SF to way the heck up north - but should have the best leads on who I’m looking for to produce the masters. Small format shops have shown on the radar to date. The 2nd painting and PR model is coming along in restoration work. Going to take some pictures of it this weekend when heading down to an auction in San Jose Saturday. There’s also a techno-fete (in Silicon Valley?) going on at the Moscone Center Friday through Sunday which I’ll need to check out.
[End of Line Line]
Less than 30 days till the folks visit and I still need to get my apartment in order. Ikea awaits, fear the Swedes.
01.24.2006
[The Story So Far]
The Bay Area is back in the public eye on more than a daily basis. The money taps are on full-bore - and yet the startups aren’t taking it in as much as they used to. Google is making daily headlines - even if they only manage to make on-stage asses of themselves at the CES, and Steve Jobs is freaking out people like it’s 1996. Am working with 2 internet start-ups via my contracting business, 2 internet side-projects, an animation project, special-event decorating (ongoing), and of course the grand experiment in fine-art. That’s 5 businesses that are in some stage of happening at present. One startup client flaked out this week - but I put meatballs in the contract so hey - I got my meatballs by gum!
[Today’s Dynamic Moment]
Today’s bay area bombshell was Pixar selling itself to Disney. Although the popular press isn’t commenting much on how things progressed after NeXT was “purchased” by Apple - mostly because the outcome was so bizarre - it’s not unfathomable that the Pixar - Disney deal might have far fetched implications. It’s just this kind of thing that is great to see up close. In my case, it’s having to get around news vans from San Jose to SF and assorted media in my neighborhood shooting establishment shots of Pixar’s studios a scant 3 blocks from my street. At least they didn’t block the side-streets I use to get into the city for my afternoon freelance.
[Another Sideline Comes Out of Retirement]
When I got the last of the apartment organized I found my brother’s old condenser mic - so I can now re-record all my previous voice tracks with something decent. That saved me a few hundred. New Years went excellent. I have carte-blanche at the gallery insofar that I can scurry downstairs to avail myself of the helium remaining when I want to on the occasional friday. The owner was pretty amped since he’d never seen a balloon drop let alone pulled one. There were two of them present of course. The crowd was also refreshing insofar that they weren’t the usual vomit on the bathroom floor folks. In any case, I think either future deorating work will come together in that space or it will be available for future art-demos when I get my art out of the starting gate. Did some more decorating balloon-style with my loft for guests and possible clients on my birthday. Also tested some lighting effects that I didn’t have time or 100% safety assurance for on New Year’s. They worked pretty good - xmas lights embedded within airfilled swags.
[To Do List]
Check on the recommended silkscreen people that I’ve been refered to. I’ve narrowed it down to two places so I should have the masters rolled off by the time the second model that I’m painting emerges from Union City. The specialist and friend sent me new photos of the refurbishement yesterday and it’s coming along better than expected.
[End of Line Line]
Steve Jobs - selling out? Or setting up shop? Should be a woosh of a year for Disney in any case.
