1 pm, Friday, June 7th, 1996, I went to the CVS a few doors to the left of the store I was working at – Copi’s 1 hr. Photo Service & Camera Store in Medway. I bought a 16-oz bottle of Sprite, and on the walk back to the shop, I twisted the cap. Coca-Cola was having a contest, and I won a Sprite-branded basketball. Oh yeah, and an hour later, I bought Copi’s. The Copithorne Brothers and I drove to the lawyer’s office, signed some papers, and went back to the store. It was mine; I was a business owner at 22, with a brand-new basketball that had yet to be mailed to me. Here we are on June 7th, 2026, 30 yrs to the day… I don’t have the store, but I do have the basketball.
I do have photos, though. I took a roll that day, 12 exposures, Fuji 200, they are still in an envelope simply titled ‘Before.’ It was the first roll to go through the C-41 machine… when I owned the machine. So technically, I lost money on them. My family came by, we took some photos, celebrated, we went to dinner next door at Szechuan Gardens, then they all went home, and I went back to the store and started the ‘After’. I reprocessed/rescanned them today, in my new negative setup.
Now the dailypic has been around so long, this is not the first time I have acknowledged the anniversary. If you want to see photos that show how young I was when I bought it, you can read the 20th-anniversary post here.
This anniversary hits different, with me fully immersed back in the world of film and my film-heavy road trip only 11 days away. I went to pay respect to the spot today, fitting the old memory in the best I could. Though the shop did not last as long as I had planned re: digital cameras, but I am not where I am today without it.
RIP Jimmy
tr/trp
