Jeff Lautenberger

Tony Hawk soars above a vert ramp during a demo at the Columbia Skate Park in the Cosmopolitan Recreation Area.

Almost everyone seems to be tweeting these days, or at least knows what Twitter is. Tony Hawk has taken twittering to new heights.

For the past several months, in a new-media marketing blitz dubbed the “Tony Hawk Twitter Hunt,” or, in TwitterSpeak, “#THTH,” Hawk has been leaving prizes and freebies all over the world for his Twitter followers to find through location clues revealed on his Twitter page. I’m by no means the first person to blog or write about this, and I’m not going to go into a whole lot of details, so if you’re interested, Google it or follow him yourself @tonyhawk.

Hawk’s appearance in Columbia was also announced via Twitter clues. Even though I wasn’t following him at the time, I quickly found out through another friend’s tweet. Gotta love social networking. Officially, Hawk’s stop in Columbia was the first of the new “Birdhouse Live From the Road” tour, all in promotion of Birdhouse skaters and Tony Hawk’s new video game Tony Hawk Ride.

Click on for a photo slideshow. » Continue Reading…

Emergency officials take statements after an accident involving a scooter and a pedestrian at Rosemary Lane and College Ave.

Heard sirens right outside my apartment, walked outside and saw this. I haven’t had this many spot news photos in one day in, well, ever. I wonder what I’ll run into next?

A Watkins Roofing crane fell onto an downtown Columbia apartment building Friday morning.

While getting ready for my 11 a.m. Comm. Law class, I saw on Twitter that a crane had collapsed onto a building downtown. I ditched my plans for a shower, threw on some jeans and walked over to the reported site. As soon as I stepped outside, I felt a gust of wind, which immediately led me to suspect that weather might have been a factor in the accident. Upon arrival, Columbia Fire Department PIO Eric Hartman confirmed that suspicion, telling me a wind gust did send the crane toppling over and onto the roof of an apartment building at 920 Cherry Street around 9:59 a.m.

Nobody was hurt in the incident, and crews are working to remove the crane and examine the building’s structural stability.

If I had more time and didn’t have to rush to class, I would have explored different angles and perspectives, such as Columbia Daily Tribune photographer Parker Eshelman’s overhead shot, seen here.

Click on for a couple more shots from the scene. » Continue Reading…

A woman makes a charcoal imprint of fallen firefighter Michael Weinberg's name on the FDNY Memorial Wall.

On June 10, 2006, the four-year anniversary of the end of recovery operations at Ground Zero, I had the privilege of attending the unveiling of the FDNY Memorial Wall outside of the Engine Company 10/Ladder Company 10 house on Liberty Street in Lower Manhattan, just yards away from the World Trade Center site. The engraved bronze wall stretches 56 feet long and 6 feet high, and was built with donations collected by the Holland & Knight Charitable Foundation to honor firefighters and H&K partner and volunteer firefighter Glenn Winuk who died on Sept. 11.

Members of 10 House were literally the first responders on the scene at Ground Zero. Five firefighters from the house were among the 343 FDNY members who perished during rescue and recovery operations. This post is dedicated to the “343 Bravest” and all the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks.

“May we never forget.”

To view a panorama of the entire wall, click here.
To read more about the wall and the Engine Company 10/Ladder Company 10 station, click here.

The crowds are back inside Eastern Market

Eastern Market on Capitol Hill had its grand reopening this weekend, two years after a fire destroyed the historic market and shops. Produce, meat, seafood, flower and craft vendors moved back to the restored brick building to thousands of waiting (and hungry) customers packed shoulder-to-shoulder.

An artistic tribute along the Red Line

Above-ground sections of the D.C. Metro, particularly on the Red Line, are notorious for graffiti. It’s everywhere. Ranging from legitimate art to trashy expressions of gang symbols, the walls along the train tracks are essentially an ever-changing landscape of colored paint. With that in mind, I wasn’t at all surprised to discover a brand-new Michael Jackson tribute emblazoned on the inbound side of the Brookland-CUA station on Sunday, just two days after MJ’s death. While graffitists tend to paint over each other’s work periodically and public works crews work feverishly to sanitize surfaces, I have a feeling that this one, much like the Sean Taylor memorial on the other side of the platform, will remain untouched for quite some time.

Gov. Jay Nixon jokes with ABC Laboratories President and CEO Byron Hill during a tour of the facility. Nixon announced the Next-Generation Jobs Team, a federal stimulus program to match young Missourians with summer employment at high-tech firms.

Despite pitching this assignment to my photographers and making it sound really cool, no one picked it up. Fifteen minutes before the event was supposed to start, Outlook section editor Andrew Denney and I just decided to cover it ourselves. By the time we arrived at ABC Laboratories in the Discovery Ridge complex, the governor had already begun his tour of the bio-chemistry plant. Luckily, we were able to meet up with the rest of the press in the facility – after suiting up in white lab coats and goggles of course.