The Painted Landscape: Orange You Glad I Came Back?

Ever return to a place you once lived near, expecting change, only to find it frozen in a time warp, like it politely ignored the 21st century?

When I was a young teenager, my best friend’s parents owned a hole-in-the-wall bar tucked deep in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey. Back then, the area had a smattering of Go-Go bars hidden in the woods between Philly and the Jersey Shore, a convenient escape hatch for married men and guys “from the Mob” to drink, cut deals, and cheat in peace. Or so the grown-up gossip went. Who knows how true any of it was, but to my budding artist brain, it was like growing up in a cross between a sketchbook and a Scorsese film.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t hanging out with the real Bad Boys, no silver-haired Mafiosos in pastel track suits for me. I mean, I was fifteen, not trying to get whacked. We hung out with the younger crowd, guys in their early twenties who lived across the road in what can only be described as a campground-turned-real-estate experiment. A cluster of tiny A-frame homes popped up where tents once stood. Think: summer camp meets DIY suburbia. Except it wasn’t suburbia, it was the woods, pretending to have a zip code.

Those were wild days. My best friend was the gorgeous one, the kind of girl who could make a jukebox start playing by walking past it. That worked out perfectly for me, the introverted sidekick with a sketchpad in one hand and a guitar in the other. I was more of the “deep thinker with calluses on my fingers” type, and she made sure I was always dragged along for the ride during her adrenaline-fueled adventures.

At eighteen, I packed up and left to chase my life adventure: big cities, new places, different skies. I never looked back until I did.

Flash forward decades later, and there I was, back on Black Horse Pike. And would you believe it? Some of the same spots were still there, as if they’d hit pause right after I flew the coop. Sure, progress has crept in, about a half mile away in each direction, but some stubborn little zones refused to be gentrified.

One of those places? A building I now call The Painted Landscape. I’ve lost count of how many names it’s had over the years, each more forgettable than the last, but it now sports vibrant orange walls and a freshly asphalted parking lot like it’s screaming, “I’m still here! I’ve been dipped in traffic cone orange and I dare you to forget me!”

To most, it might just look like a flat-roofed, slightly suspicious roadside building. But to me? It’s a quirky little postcard from my past. I might be the only one laughing as I drive by, but in my head, that place still hums with neon memories and teenage mischief, framed in the loud, unapologetic orange brushstrokes of my youth.

So, photographers, don’t underestimate the places you think you’ve outgrown. Sometimes the best stories aren’t where you’re going, but where you’ve already been. Pack your camera. Go back. Look again. The past might still be there waiting to be seen in a whole new light (or color).