Que dices. It’s time to return to The City.
J.T.
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Ahora Los Angeles,
Nos Vemos Los Angeles
Entre la vida de otro pueblo, y agradecidamente. De aqui tambien venimos.
J.T.
De Regreso,
Con un nuevo pueblo en corazón.
J.T.
Never Alone: A Bird’s Flight Through Japan
Harajuku, Tokyo; Japan, Summer 2017
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Transit riders are like most people too. And they can also be literary writers! ^.^
Thank you Hiroko, Sachiko, Marie, Hitomi, Takeshi, Hayasi, Mei, Keiko and the family, and the rest of the gang throughout this incredible time together.
Thank you to every attendant who helped me find my way, and thank you to The People of Japan, whose kindness made me feel welcome at each turn.
There are far more pictures to share, and I will find a way to get them to you!
For now, however, courtesy of each one of the folks above, JIMBO TIMES spans from Los Angeles to Tokyo and even more places in between and beyond.
And I hear that Japan is even more beautiful during the Winter and Spring seasons.
Is that so?!
J.T.
What a Time
It’s a gorgeous morning in The City, and today feels like an especially good day to hang back and enjoy the breadth of the sky. It’s summertime, and we’re halfway through a year that’s felt much bigger than twelve months (in J.T. Time, that is).
This next August, JIMBO TIMES will enter its third year of production. It sounds wild, but it’s true! With each day that passes, the site gets bigger and better, and with everything that’s happened over the past two years, even the sky isn’t the limit during our next run under the sun!
Around this time last summer, I was getting ready to take a trip to Miami, and today I’m gearing up for another trip…this time to the city of Chicago in August!
I’d always wanted to spend some time in The Windy City, but had always found a way to postpone it, until the other day when a friend of mine just pushed me to finally book the damn thing, and I did!
Now, the L.A. Storyteller will know Chicago, and the people of J.T. are in for the ride, which I think is just the best celebration for our two-year anniversary.
The time before the trip, then, is a matter of organizing an amazing adventure there. I hope as many fans can support me in this, if not through direct ‘cheering on’, then through an organizing of their own trips out to somewhere new!
Each day the world surprises us somehow, so it’s only right for us to surprise the world right back.
And so, what are we waiting for then?! As we get another day today, let’s make it count, L.A!
J.T.
With Love
Today it’s my pleasure to celebrate a year of J.T. with the Beautiful Gate in Los Feliz, but for the fans who can’t make it, I’ve still got festivities in store! Last night I got to playing with the site, when it finally dawned on me that it was time for a little collage of memories over The L.A. Storyteller’s first spin around the world.
The result is a new page for people to enjoy at JIMBO TIMES: IN PICTURES.
Spanning from the first days of my return to Los Angeles from school at Davis, all the way up to my latest voyage to Miami and back again, the pictures capture a life continually on the road, enjoying new treasures at each turn. I hope others can enjoy these treasures as much as I do, and find inspiration from them to enjoy in their own time on the road.
In the meantime, I think I’ll be picking up my camera again soon. I’ve given it a break over the last month-and-a-half, just as I’ve gotten more into writing for the site, but after taking a look at the first year of photos for the site, I can’t help but want to make next year’s even better! And the work of improvement is work that always starts immediately.
I guess, then, I’ve got to get back on the road!
Until Next Time Everyone,
Jimmy “Jimbo” Recinos
Whooaahh
5:02 AM – 5: 56 AM in Baton Rouge, Louisiana:
At a rest stop before we hit the road again for New Orleans, and I realize that for the first time ever, I’m going to watch the sun rise in the South this morning.
Baton Rouge is beautiful, filled with houses amid shrubs through nearly every square block that I can see. The houses look old! Though not in a decrepit way, but in an historical, timeless way. And somehow, it’s as if the houses are smaller versions of the taller churches that make their mark not far from them, as if they’re in some sort of perfect harmony together.
In a moment, we’re on the highway again, but this time as I glance through the window, I see the blue hue of the morning almost wrestling with the nearly black clouds that are still lingering around, as if the latter refuse to give up the night without a fight.
But with each second that passes, more black clouds disappear, as the next day is set to take the stage. Now, in the distance I can see a white hue, accentuated by an orange glimmer underneath.
The sun is rising.
I’m in the South, and the South is already so distinct from the dirt trails of Texas that preceded it! Here the greenery is more than just grass, but it’s a lush mass of trees that make for more forestry than just mere decoration.
The sun continues to rise, and the white hue is now pulsing with orange radiance, like a cell awakened by new blood. At the same time, no longer as dark as before, the black clouds are becoming like still fossils of the night, the fingerprints of another time.
But they won’t be fossils for long. Soon the new sky transforms them, turning each cloud into a milky blue collection of scattered cells.
The sky now belongs to the morning, and just like that, I belong with it.
Can’t Stop; Won’t Stop
J.T.
Roger King: L.A. through the Decades
No matter how much I love my city, it’s often hard to trace its roots. This is because unlike most historical metropolises, L.A. is constantly remaking itself. On the one hand, this creates a frequent sense of loss for those of us who call it home, as if the environments we know in the city are only temporarily here before some reset button takes them away.
On the other hand, living in a city with minimal roots to point to makes the stories of the individuals here that much more precious; the city they know breathes inside of them, rather than just through a wall or some other still landmark.
L.A. native Roger King is precisely this kind of individual. Born in South Los Angeles in 1945 “[just] three days after the Battle of Iwo Jima”, the sixty-nine year old chess and boxing coach is one of those rare Angelenos who actually knows a thing or two about L.A. through the times.
I first met Roger after spotting a flyer for a local chess club at the Cahuenga library in East Hollywood this past summer, at a time when I was deeply focused on improving my chess game. The flyer stated that the club’s organizer was a former tournament competitor, and while this made me a bit nervous at the possibility that I might not be good enough to hang with more experienced players, it made me even more excited at the prospect of talking with others about strategy, technique, and some of the different philosophies to the game; the following Thursday, I returned to Cahuenga at 4:oo PM sharp, ready for war.
To my surprise, however, upon meeting the chess club at Cahuenga it became clear that my guard-up wouldn’t be needed, or at least not at the notch I initially thought it’d be; the community of chess players at the library was a small but friendly group comprised of players of all ages ranging from toddler to senior years. To make things better, the club’s organizer, “Coach Roger”, was a friendly, welcoming club leader rather than a hard-liner, as a former competitive player might be expected to be.
“I only have two rules…” I remember him telling me as I sat down to play with my first opponent, who was a polite young lady in her early twenties named Gohar.
“No timers, and no trash-talking.”
This sounded fair enough. And I guess the rest is history, as they say.
Melvin G: Winning with Calm
“I want to travel more than I want a car.”
In L.A., this is almost blasphemy. But Melvin means it. Just this past summer, he visited London and Paris on a getaway from life in East Hollywood, checking out everything from Stonehenge to The Louvre, Notre Dame, and more.
“I want to go back,” he tells me, “but for longer next time.”