"What's a memory that you have of your grandmother?"
"Wow! Cookin' them lima beans! Down South, fresh. We'd pick 'em and she'd cook 'em and we'd eat 'em.  Wonderful. She was a great cook. And she raised me while my mom worked. I miss her a lot."

"My father once told me, 'The biggest guy couldn't hurt you as much as a woman.'"

"My grandson is thirteen years old. The kids at school gave him cookies with drogas--drugs--in them. Now he like to take drugs. It's very sad."

"I was 'punished' by the military and they sent me to Germany. They didn't like me 'cause I was sort of a rabble-rouser, so they were like, 'Here's a contract between me and you': I show up, I work, you feed me three good meals, let me have a place to sleep, and so on. Basically, they were crapping on everybody--it was a miserable base to be on. And almost everybody was on one drug or another, and I would have to escape on my motorcycle to breathe fresh air in the mountains of California. So, since I was such a problem for them, they decided to ship me to Germany, and it turned out to be so great to hitchhike around, sleep in the vineyards, eat some of the best food in the world. Almost every small German city had one excellent restaurant in it. This was in '78 and '79. I would go to Munich during Oktoberfest, carve my name in the table at one of the breweries, which was a common thing. There were thousands of names. I would steal liter beer glasses to send to my friends; they thought they were pitchers. I said, 'No, this is what we drink *real* beer out of!' I hitchhiked to Luxembourg and France--I didn't even have to rent hotels. People would just take me into their homes off the street--kidnap me--and show me their American records and their Levi's jeans."  

"There was this one time in elementary school that I was trying to show off to some friends, and I was jumping off a swing set. I tried to do this thing where I did a front flip backwards, and I broke my arm. The next day when I came to school with a cast, I got sick from eating something bad and so my mom picked me up from school, and as my friends are walking out, I'm like, outside of the school with a broken arm and throwing up all over. For some reason, my mom decided to pick me up and go, 'Having a nice day?' It was all super embarrassing." 

"What's the coolest thing that ever happened to you?"
"Desert Storm."
"Really? Why?"
"Twenty-two months, went over there, liberated Kuwait."
"What was the most difficult part of that?"
"Almost dying."

"What's one of the coolest things that's ever happened to you?"
"Some random guy taking my picture?"
"What's your philosophy of life?"
"Be kind to people. I smoke cigarettes. If somebody needs or wants a cigarette, I give 'em one." 

"A friend of mine bought Max (right) from Germany and it turned out that he had hip dysplasia and my friend didn't know how to deal with it. I had a German Shepherd a few years ago that had hip dysplasia, so I knew how to deal with it and I ended up with Max. Then, I found a pit bull tied up by the river to a pole, just abandoned, and I took her home and it turned out she wasn't fixed. Max and her had puppies. This one is Justice."

Raul, from Downtown Shoe Repair on Third Street:

"I started this business because of my father; it was passed on. I grew up with this until I was twenty--I'm a heating and cooling technician by trade. I came back to it because the economy was bad. This was flourishing and here I am."
"Any crazy shoe stories?"
"I'd rather not get into that. I've seen so many weird things. Anything that has leather on it, I have repaired, and I mean *anything*!"

Owners Chaz (left) and Tom (right) explain the opening of their art gallery and design studio, Brick + Mortar, 8 Centre Square:

Tom: "It was great opening up. This is an old building that hadn't seen life for a little while, but it's got a lot of history. It used  to be a restaurant, a nightclub, a bank, a lawyer's office, so it was nice to get into a historic building and kind of give it a new life here. This was something that we decided to do not long before we got into it, but it's become something with a lot of good community feedback. It feels good."
Chaz: "Yeah, it's like the art scene's growing and we're here to feed the scene."
Tom: "It's nice enough to be part of it, but to help shape it with a space that we can curate and show the work we want to show… It's a great space to do it: it's big and it affords us an opportunity to show a lot of different work."

"We were up in the Blue Ridge Mountains; that morning, I saw a double rainbow in the sky. Then we went up to the Blue Ridge and it was a triple rainbow, the most amazing thing I've ever seen in my life. We went to a peak point, and we look and you can see all the ridges, and there was mist across the ridges. And then as you looked above, the rainbow just arced, one, two, and three. It was almost like an enlightening epiphany of what creation is all about: the actual, natural beauty. And I thought about preservation--that was the key--we've got to preserve this."

Wedding watchers look on as photographer leads the bride and groom down Northampton Street. 7.3.15, 3:30 P.M.

"One of the coolest things is being here. I'm from Mexico and I've been here since Sunday; it's about work. They sent me here for training, and so right now I'm here enjoying the city. I'm an engineer."

It was new ink: "I just got this done today."

"I started doing this when Crayola came to town back in 1996. I thought it would be a good idea, a way to make some extra money."
"What did you do in your previous life?"
"Oh, I still do it. I have a full time job--I've got a nutritional company."

"I work for myself as a photographer. I get to do what I love every day."
"What gave you the courage to go into business for yourself?"
"It wasn't so much courage as 'That's the only thing I want to do.' So I just did it."