Once upon a time, I lived in Prague. I had a different camera. I walked along streets you can’t pronounce in English. It was a long time ago, but not that long ago. I’ll be back. I made promises to return, and to move on…elsewhere…farther away, where winter is like a Chicago thing, only without a lake and without wind, and where the streets are pronounced in Russian. Though I had some ideas of how to take nocturnal photographs, I didn’t have very much practice, and then—on a warm and somewhat boring night, I took my old camera along an old street and sought old buildings I could capture. I didn’t have a tripod. I lived on Biskupcova street: near a post office, an apothecary, and a Hi-Fi shop advertising the latest electronic gizmos with flashing, blue lights. On the night I made this photo, I took the Number 10 tram, bought a garlic-tinged sausage from a kiosk and shared banter with the Ukrainian twins who worked there. Good girls. Funny. One of them was celebrating her third or fourth birthday that month, and I recognized her routine—it was how she and her sister got tourists to pay money for the expensive shots, and I guess they got commissions for the shots. I wasn’t a tourist. They knew me by name, and so I wasn’t required to say “happy birthday” again that month. I was required to give an impromptu English lesson and to help one of the sisters (I can’t remember which one) to decide whether or not she wanted to go to Akropolis (a live music/nightclub venu) the next night. If I remember correctly, she went to Bunkr (the Bunker) instead. This photo isn’t about girls living in Prague. It just so happens that a duo of very blond, very bubbly, dangerously pretty, and shamelessly opportunistic Ukrainian girls had a lot to do with the events of the night I’d captured here. They were a bit bored with Prague (for the most part) but they did like the music scene and the free English lessons I traded in exchange for extra mustard on my sausage or not-so-much shredded, raw cabbage on those pork things known, locally, as hamburgers. This photo was taken about 7 streets away from that 80s-music-blasting kiosk. I took this shot with garlic and mustard on my breath, and the sweet burn of Becherovka warming my belly. In honor of a kiosk-girl’s third (fourth) birthday that week, I actually did buy a shot of the good stuff; actually I bought two and made her drink one so that the English tourists looking on would actually be convinced that it was her only birthday that month, and that they were scamming people at the other kiosks and not this one. Unfortunately, this photo isn’t about a kiosk. I’d decided (before the onset of artificial birthday celebrations at a sausage-vendor’s kiosk) to try my hand at night photography. I’d learned how to fiddle with camera settings and all of that good stuff. I’d learned how to use car fenders, rubbish bins, and sausage vendor’s kiosks as stabilizers, and as I meandered through a largely empty Old Town Square, I found a rubbish bin, mercifully clean (it had just been emptied by the truck now out of view of this shot.) I found this lurking in email I’d sent to Moscow and to Chicago, and though the picture is a bit small (resized for reasons I can’t remember) I think that since it’s my Very First night shot (taken long, long, long ago) it should be posted now. And now, as I look back at this image of Old Town Square, I can hear the remembered echo of tourist voices and voices in Czech, and as I remember the story of that night, I wonder how many more birthdays a particular Ukrainian girl had, in a flagrant attempt to separate tourists from their money. I suspect that week alone, she has at least two more. Or maybe three, if she was ambitious. As always, thank you for viewing, reading, and commenting and I hope you’re all having a fantastic, stressless week.