The Gallery

Out on a Wednesday night.

Feb 12, 2026

In 2020, I grabbed an old Minolta out of a box, bought some 35mm film, and began shooting without knowing what I was doing. The hobby made it out of the pandemic and I’ve acquired a few more cameras since that summer. Part of naming my Substack “Sitting with Figs” came with it the intention that this would be a space where I would not pigeonhole myself into one particular niche—I’ve done that plenty in my life. I have been trying to figure out where photography and writing can merge for me and I’ve decided it’s in writing brief scenes about places and people I encounter and photograph.

(Taken on a Fuji XT-4 with a 27mm lens. The Continental Gallery. 28 Jan. 2026.)

I had to be coaxed into going out on a Wednesday evening. The roads had only just defrosted from the winter storm the weekend prior, small patches of ice still hiding beneath business awnings and highway turnarounds. We’d been stuck inside for days, and I knew my normal bargaining chips had been spent when my husband texted me that no one was there. A plea to support the musician playing The Gallery that evening. I left the overpriced orange soda (a non-alcoholic spritz!) I’d just poured into my wine glass on the counter and grabbed my car keys.

The venue was easy to miss, an unsuspecting door wedged between a tattoo parlor and alleyway at the base of a steep flight of stairs. If the sandwich board hadn’t been there, I would have walked right past.

I stepped into the landing, barely large enough to hold me and the man working the door. Right past his shoulder, tucked into the oversized windowsill behind the banister, was a long-haired tabby kitten in a kennel. He and the man had the same orange speckled hair. I bent over, my face level with the cat, and without looking up asked, “How old?”

“He’s five months. Name’s Charlie.”

The kitten yawned. I took a step backward, stood up. “That’s a good name.”

Up the stairs and into the venue, I found my husband sitting on a couch adjacent to the stage. The room was small, a bar attached to a living room. I sat next to him, looked around.

“A few more people showed up,” he said, anticipating that I was counting the number of patrons. I was.

He went to grab me a drink and by the time he came back, I was sitting with my head cocked toward the stage, engrossed in the conversation happening to the left of me. I took the old fashioned from his hand and we sat in silence, listening.

It feels incorrect to call this a conversation that we were eavesdropping on. The man in his 20s—my husband and I would debate his age on the drive home, over the phone from our separate cars, judging him on a gradient of how young he was and how much he should have known better—talked at the woman about to take the stage. He sat at the far end of our couch, as she stood above him, in his pressed navy slacks, fidgeting with this pinky ring, talking about his art. I assumed film, though I realize now he never explicitly said this. He went on about living an artist’s existence, tapping his black leather lace-up oxfords against the couch’s edge, waxing poetic about the nobility of having just enough money for food and rent. I listened to her say, “It’s a privilege” and get bulldozed by his anecdote enough times to know that he was trying to convince himself more than her. I mean, you’re doing it, he said to her in admiration. She was playing on a Wednesday night, for no cover, and I could feel that communicated in her stare, even as I tried to avert my gaze to not give my eavesdropping away.

I knew he wanted to fuck her when he started telling her that he listened to her music after leaving the David Lynch birthday party they had been at together. It was when he wouldn’t stop talking about how he was trying to quit weed and that one to two glasses of wine was the sweet spot that I knew he probably wasn’t going to.

And in a great mercy offered, she exited the man’s lecture with more grace than the guy deserved and as soon as she stepped onto the stage, the crowd fell to a hush.

(Taken on a Fuji XT-4 with a 27mm lens. Not the man from the couch. 28 Jan. 2026.)

Thanks for reading Sitting with Figs. If you could, take the time to share this piece or “heart” it below, it helps other people find my work and it’s also a very nice ego boost. Our attention is a hot commodity, constantly pulled at from all directions, and I’m grateful for a piece of yours today. I don’t take that privilege lightly.