Search the Community

Screenshot 02-27-2026 08.42.311145×884 201 KB Over the years I bought a few photos from this seller for my archive. But it is just too $$ now. They keep raising the shipping to crazy prices. Shipping is almost the same as the price of the minimum bid. Add sales tax and you are in the low $40s for 1 photo. Now some photos may be worth it. But most of theirs are not worth that much to me. The last photo I got from them was an interesting glass plate with a bunch of people in an old general store that looked to be in Alaska, and they brought a horse into the store. I have to scan it sometime. Right now, been working digesting 4 -5 feet of old mags to breakdown. Usually not a big deal to scan things, but I have to pull out a special scanner that is in storage that can handle 8x10 glass plates. It would be nice to have an archive with equipment all set up and you walk up to it and can just do your work. Even have a mold room where you can work with moldy material like the toxic waste that it is. Some of the material an archive gets is moldy and sometimes it is just not replaceable. So, you deal with what you got when it comes to digitizing it. If you do have moldy material to digitize you can microwave it. But you have to be careful about burning it. I’ve done lots of work with it…moldy material seems to find me. All the old stores had crates, barrels, glass, ceramic and baskets for their food. No plastic back then. I don’t know if this is a display to sell fruit or just set up to take the photo. It doesn’t look too practical for customers to pick fruit. Although back then I think you asked for what you wanted and the storekeeper got it for you. I’ve seen a lot of old-time bananas. All the bananas I see in the photos look kinda nasty. The bananas have changed over the years due to varieties dying out from disease. The bananas we eat now are low quality compared to the bananas we had when I was a kid. They were tasty as hell back then. But that variety is no longer sold. It died out. I don’t know if it died out 100%, but it died out enough from disease to not be commercially sold. You check it out. <><><><> Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Archival Collection Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Small Gauge Film Archive Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Advertising Archive Daniel D. Teoli Jr. VHS Video Archive Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Popular Culture Archive Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Audio Archive Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Social Documentary Photography

I started foraging as a kid, but got into it more seriously about '07. I was looking for sources of more natural foods as the store bought produce had declined a lot in quality. All the peaches were picked green, had the fuzz buffed off them and were coated with anti fungals. Get a store bought peach, soak it in water and see a rainbow 'oil slick' of color on the water. So, I guess I first started to know about the decline in food when the peach fuzz disappeared. I never found any abandoned peach trees here. But I have found American persimmons, apples, paw-paws, pears, crab apple; mulberry, edible Kousa dogwood, chestnuts, black walnut and an abandoned apricot tree. Sadly, the apricot and some of the apples have died or been pulled out and people are not planting more trees to replace the abandoned ones. There are also lots of spring onions, dandelions and some wild blackberry. The deer seem to get the blackberry before they even ripen. I don't fool with mushrooms, although we got plenty. That is for some anal person that knows what they are doing. There is an old saying with mushroom foragers... There are old mushroom hunters and there are bold mushroom hunters...but there are no old, bold mushroom hunters. I cruise around in spring bloom to see what is what. Apples bloom in a certain time frame and I can drive around and see if anything blooming has potential, same with pears, etc. Store bought treated potato to stop sprouting vs. natural potato. Both stored in the dark for 6 months. My goal is to get some flat land, put up a decent size greenhouse and plant some fig trees in it and a warm weather persimmon or two. They don't grow well here, too cold. But lotto is not cooperating as usual. I grew up with fig trees, white and black figs. I remember picking apricots when walking home from school in an alley when I was in 3rd or 4th grade. Even the green apricots had flavor. Store bought apricots are like tasteless rubber...if you are lucky enough to even find them here. Yes, we got farmer's markets, but they only sell what they grow. Unless it is a phony farmer that buys peaches from Chile to sell there. And no one grows apricots, figs, cherimoyas or peaches. (A few may grow apricots or peaches, but they won't sell many, they keep any for themselves. Late spring frost usually kills the flower buds on them before they can set fruit here.) If you got some land...plant some fruit trees! You can get some nice tasting, healthy fruit. <><><><> Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Archival Collection Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Small Gauge Film Archive Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Advertising Archive Daniel D. Teoli Jr. VHS Video Archive Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Popular Culture Archive Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Audio Archive Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Social Documentary Photography

DDTJRAC May Day 2023 almost snuck by me this year. Too busy with things. When I was a kid I always looked forward to May. In 1960's L.A., around May / early June, apricots would be the first fruit in the store. Then peaches a little later and plums. The fruit had some taste and fragrance back then. Now all the stone fruit tastes like rubber, has no fragrance and rots before it ripens. The peaches have the fuzz buffed off them and are coated with anti-fungals. They are picked green and only need to last as long as it takes to ship and sell them. The bananas we eat taste nothing like the bananas we had back then. That variety died out because of a disease. And our current variety seems to be destined for the same fate, from what I've read.