June 1983, color negatives ~

In 1983 there were three photography stores in Iowa City:  Henry Louis, The F Stop, and University Camera.  Henry Louis sold Leica and Hasselblad to the physicians.  The F Stop bumbled through selling consumer cameras and photographic supplies.  And then there was University Camera.

U Camera sold consumer cameras and photographic supplies, but it also had most of the photographic contracts with the various University accounts.  Most of the professors teaching photography in journalism, art, and science sent their students to U Camera.  U Camera hired some of the best photographers in town.  We were a family, but a very dysfunctional family.

These photos are of an after-hours party.  I don’t remember the occasion.  Was Joel retiring as general manager to take a job as regional rep for Nikon in the Bay Area?  Was it just a June day and time to party?  These are photos of some of the people who worked at U Camera and people who spent a lot of time there.  It was an amazing crew of people.  Vicki called it a store of sociopaths, for sociopaths.

After a few months working there I took over the job of running repairs.  People would bring in their cameras and ask to have them repaired.  At the time, 1983, it would cost about $80 for a repair place to diagnose the problem, with that money payable for the solution.  We had a client who brought in a camera for repair, but was unwilling to pay for the diagnosis.  He just abandoned the broken camera.

In my free time at the store, I disassembled the camera, a single-lens reflex Pentax.  I removed all the screws until it was a set of parts.  Then I put those parts back together without the screws.  The camera was together, but loosely.  I took the camera back out front and approached the manager, Joel.  I asked him to take a look at this camera, and as I was handing it to him, I let it drop just as it touched his hand.  It fell to the ground and exploded into hundreds of pieces.  Everyone laughed.  It was funny.  Joel talked me into reassembling the pieces.  He performed the exact same joke with one of our best customers, whose name I forget.  Steve?  He owned the VW dealership and later bought U Camera.  Anyway, the joke went over even better with more people in the audience.  Steve persuaded me to put the pieces together again.

He had it ready for the owner of the shop who came in to visit his store about once a month.  Steve said he wanted to show the owner something about a camera.  The owner walked into the store.  Steve tossed the camera to him.  The owner jumped out of the way, and the camera went through the front door window.