Oy Canada!

The day after the Dirty Show, we needed to wait until 3:00 to pick up the unsold pieces, so Andi and I were just driving around Detroit trying to find an interesting diversion when right by the General Motors HQ building, we saw the signs that said "Tunnel to Canada." As a joke, one or the other of us suggested we go to Canada for a couple hours, and it turns out that Andi had never been to Canada. It seemed like as good a time as any for her to expand her horizons a bit, so I doubled back and we got in the line to pay the toll. Dumb move.

At the Canadian customs booth thing, the lady cop apparently didn't like my explanation that we were just going to look around Windsor since we had a couple hours to kill, and that we didn't have birth certificates, and decided to have me pull into the area for a vehicle inspection. Two inspectors had us get out of the car while they "tossed" the contents, going through every nook and cranny of the interior (the least they could do is vacuum while they're at it) and everything in the trunk. They didn't seem to like the fact that I had my lighting equipment in the trunk and asked a bunch of questions, and they found a bag with a cigarette holder I'd bought months ago as a prop for a photo shoot with Barbie (see photo), so they gave me a dirty look for that once I explained what it was. After a while, they handed me a yellow sheet of paper and told me to go in and talk to immigration, who stamped the form after another batch of questions about why a photographer might be carrying photo equipment. Finally they decided that we weren't a threat, and let us proceed. So, we actually get into Windsor, saw a couple Tim Horton's and a really boring looking casino and basic generic downtown buildings, but by this time I decide that we'd better not spend a dime in Windsor or risk having to declare and go through the whole thing again on the return trip. We'd seen the line of cars for entry INTO the US stretched well back into the tunnel, so we basically just tried to turn around and cross back over, not knowing how long it would take, but suspecting it would take even longer. But there was a game going on downtown, and some sort of logjam at the booths, and it took us forever to even get into the line to get into the tunnel to go back across the border. Finally we get into the tunnel, and through the tunnel and into the area with the US customs booths, so we picked a line (the slow one, of course) and waited for a repeat of the hassles we got from the Canadian side.

Sure enough, the guy didn't seem to like that we hadn't brought birth certificates with us, so he made me open the trunk and get out of the car, at which point I mentioned that I'm a photographer and had photo gear in there. He makes me stand aside and starts looking through the trunk a bit, and he pulls a little portfolio book out of my bag -- it was all art nudes that I'd assembled to take to the Dirty Show. I didn't know how he was going to react, but he opens it up and starts flipping through it. He says "You take these pictures?" and I said I did, then he smiles, puts it back in my bag and closes the trunk and says "Ok, you folks go on and have a nice day." I guess having a portfolio full of nude female models is ONE way of proving you're not a Muslim fundamentalist.

As I'm writing this, I'm realizing that in my prop bag was also the gun used in these shots of Barbie... while it's only a toy pellet gun, I did color the orange tip black for the shoot, which is a no-no. Not to mention the handcuffs from the shoot with Sativa... and it wouldn't surprise me if Andi didn't have an X-acto knife, needles, scissors and such in her "magic bag" of crafty stuff. Luckily, for once, being a "nudie" photographer actually kept me OUT of trouble.