5 days a week for 8 weeks for 13 years. That's how much time I spent at the camp currently known an Silver Gan Izzy. Previously known as Camp Gan Israel of Long Beach. Then it moved to Westminster. A few years later they figured that although the property was in Westminster, the actual address (the street in front) was in Huntington Beach. Now, while it may be true that Westminster is an "all American City", winning the prestigious (ummm, maybe) award in 1996 (when I was a wee lad of 12. Probably winning because that's the year I left to New York), Huntington Beach is a much cooler, hipper, prettier, and richer city (it's actually the richest of the largest 100 cities in America (for all my Canadian readers, when I say America I mean the USA. Don't get insulted, I love you guys, your mountains, and your beer (not the exported kinds though))). <<<< yes I just did that. So the address, letterhead, and promotional material were all changed to reflect this fact. More to the point, I spent a large chunk of my life at this joint. 10 years as a camper and 3 as a counselor. Being that I lived there as a counselor, the 520 number may be a bit off (I spent my Sunday's there as well), on the other hand one year I had a ruptured appendix, another I broke my arm (and on the day I had my cast removed I broke my pinkie finger (is that real word? Pinkie?) on the other finger and had I get a full arm cast), and in another I broke my jaw. From a hockey puck. So I may have missed some days...
I also met my wife there. She was a a counselor from the Southern part of town. It's an interesting story (the first time I saw her I was walking on my hands in Knott's Berry Farm (I recently tried that. We had just finished an intense game of soccer (the average age was like 4), and feeling gung-ho after outrunning and out kicking a bunch of little kids I figured I was just as in shape as I used to be. I couldn't hold myself up for even a second, and crashed right down on my back. On a better note, earlier in the day we had family races with 3 of my siblings, and I won! Yay me!)) but one I'll have to share another time.
My kids aren't yet in camp, but I figured I'd take my oldest loin fruit, Zevi, there for a day or two and walk around taking photos. Well it turns out that Zevi wasn't too keen on being left with some strangers (he's never done that before), so he ended up following me around. Which was fun, but I couldn't really spend my time getting the shots I wanted. Lesson learned (I learnt (spelled such to placate my Canadian friends, who live in North America, but are strangely not America) a whole cackle of lessons in the past week. But being a professional photographer I'm not supposed to divulge my human tendencies to be quite far from perfect).
And after all that useless (yet oddly entertaining) preamble, here are the photos from a few hours spent over two days in the good ole Silver Gan Izzy.
