This is a story about the absolute power of YouTube.
When this channel first started, I told a story about a disc camera and hashtagged it Ritz Camera, because in the very early 1980s I worked at the Ritz Camera in Falls Church, Virginia. Somebody out there searched that hashtag, found my video, and realized, wait a minute. I worked with you.
My old coworker John. We had not connected in over 40 years. Johnny boy, it was so good to hear from you.
And John says, tell the out of focus story. I said, the what? He goes, you sold a woman a camera, dropped her film before you sold it to her, joked about it being out of focus, and when she came back her prints were all out of focus and she blamed you.
Oh my God. It all came back. A Minolta X-700, I think, the whole kit and kaboodle, lens, bag, film. And yes, I dropped the film. And yes, I joked. And yes, she came back.
Watch the video for the full crime scene reconstruction. The lesson is that YouTube is a digital archive of everything we’ve ever done. Including the things we did at Ritz Camera in 1982 that we thought were safely buried. Nothing is buried. John found it.
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