Tiny Vipers

One thing I love about San Francisco is that the cup never seems to dry up when it comes to compelling locations to shoot at. I found myself on the same district as the David Bazan Take Away show (the Mission), hoping to catch that same spirit we found then, with Jesy Fortino and Ben Cissner of Tiny Vipers. After a day of trading text messages, we decided to meet at the Elbo Room off Valencia St. in the afternoon. We get there, Jesy crawls out of the van, grabs Ben and off we went.

Our first attempt was in a funeral parlor, but decided not to wake the dead, so we walked over to Dolores Park but grew bored of it. After wandering aimlessly Jesy finds a gate into the front yard of a few homes. To our pleasant surprise the alley was a beautiful location. Dark and quiet where we could hear every single bang! boom! clunk! from the nearby construction workers while it accompanies the sparse sounds from Jesy. Starting around 3:48 in the Tiger Mountain video, we get an abrupt screeching bus, halting to a stop in perfect dissonance. It’s in these nuances we get a glimpse of how songs, in every day life, are meant to be heard.

Continuing our theme of "break and entry", we found a crack in a wired fence leading to a naked steel building. With such an eerie feeling, we were trapped in Jesy’s silhouette, the sun glistened from the outside and we never got a real good look at her face. Did she ever exist, was it a ghost, was it part of my imagination?

Our last stop was on Mission street, an area never short of furniture stores with big window displays. We asked one owner if we could make something great around his window, to his reply he decline because too many people used his facilities to make movies...

Dear Mr. Furniture man, A simple "no" would have been fine, no reason to lie to us.

love, Nate

We then force our way into one, promising the owner that we would be swift and only take 5 minutes (the song by itself was 8 minutes long). I don’t remember listening for his reply, but I already sensed that it needed to happen there. I’m sure when the song ended, the owner wanted to invite us for tea because he loved it so much, but probably had too many customers to deal with or something. Of course, to end our little journey through the Mission District, one must not pass up the opportunity to eat burritos. So we ate extremely well.

Nate Chan - Cameraphonic