Guam Dossier, part 3 – Dive bars & Massage panoramas, 1996 – Dave Olson's Creative Life Archive

Guam Dossier, part 3 – Dive bars & Massage panoramas, 1996

My last night on the island of Guam I drove around rather aimlessly all night… to folks on the “outside” living on an island of this seemingly size might seem that there’s not much to drive around, but you can really meander through entirely different terrain, small villages, busy tourist strips, remote bays and cliffs, of course there’s many military bases and so on… in other words, you can really get lost… in all the best ways.

So, I was driving in a Geo Tracker jeep-type-thing with a broken top and non-working dash lights which meant I never knew at which speed I was travelling to add to the pleasant disorientation.

As sun was coming up, I found myself in an area between the “big navy” base and busy tourist area lined with dodgy warehouse-looking *massage parlours* and bars of dubious standing.

I pulled over, stood in the middle of the road to capture the rather surreal site of a few stragglers coming out after an all night bender blinking at the hazy morn, with a panorama camera. Years later developed the film, some years later scanned, and some years later “stitched” them together with software, pleasantly imprecise and strange. 

I suppose I could consult contemporary sources to concur that the scene is very different now but I will just let these stir my memory and for my own hazy perception.

Tip: Click em, save em, print em, remix em – lemme know if you want full size originals.

Note: At some point, I attempted a photos/oil pastel collage of all of these but was rather unsuccessful at my execution, was in those dark years.

See also: Starsand Beach Club & SS Neptune

Leave a Comment

Scroll to Top