Season Wrap Up
by Brenda Tredwell
Alley perched atop the cab of a truck at the Winter Harbor Lobster Boat Races during the “Master Baiter” showdown, a timed competition, with his video camera taloned to his shoulder like a trained hawk, gets footage of the 3 fastest sternmen baiting 10 bags, measuring and banding lobster.
Blake Alley’s “In the Sticks with Uncle Nick” is a You-Tube production of the finest kind, featuring Dylan Johnson and other fine young cannibals, going about their business of lobstering and hunting.
Alley, a 5th generation lobsterman from Steuben, fishes “HARD CORE”, works at a lobster pound, and his videos - cut through the daily @!%$X - while documenting working lives, the dysfunctional amusements that keep sternmen showing up at the dock at 5 am, and the weirdness that keeps people motivated. It’s everyday craziness that makes life worth showing up for, after burnt coffee, and runny eggs.
Hunting, farming, fishing…all the things the Fed’ral Gummin’t is intimidated by fly naked in the face of critics giving Blake Alley an instant 5-Star Rating for authenticity. In a culture of lame scripted ‘reality television’, it’s a relief seeing guys hitting ducks while hanging upside down from trees while clad in their undergarments. (Sears, not Calvin Klein). The internet age commentary is unfiltered, unvarnished.