Photography by Kathy Tran.
At some point or another, you’ve likely been warned never to get into a stranger’s car, but Dave Ainley wants you to put that aside. At least, for the few minutes it takes to get your photo taken inside of his yellow Volkswagen bus-turned photo booth.
If the Eternal Sunshine Photobus is a circus, then Ainley is the ringmaster.
You may have seen Goldie, his bus, parked on Bishop Avenue in front of the restaurant Paradiso, but before you see Goldie, you likely hear Ainley. If he is in the middle of a session, Ainley’s yelling can be heard down the block.
“Three… Two… One…” he thunders, counting down until a camera flashes, capturing whatever moment is taking place inside of the van.
After that first photo, Ainley yells increasingly hectic and hilarious instructions to his customers. He may yell for a large group of people to rearrange seats, which, with only two seconds between photos and in the tight confines of the bus, often ends with at least one person’s rear end caught on film. Or, he may suddenly throw props — huge mascot heads or funky glasses — into the mix. Even when his bus is empty, Ainley’s presence is noticeable.
He stands outside Goldie in the rain, cold or beating sun with a smile on his face, greeting the people who walk up and down Bishop Avenue. Ainley says if he can just get someone walking by to glance at his bus, he has an opportunity to invite them into the chaos.
And that chaos, he says, is an integral part of the magic of the photobus.
“I want it to be anxiety driven, because that just is a part of it. What you create when you’re under pressure is so much better than when you’re not,” Ainley says.
BUILT UNDER PRESSURE
While Ainley loves Texas, everything for him goes back to Spokane, Washington, where he was born, raised and lived most of his life.
It was in Spokane, Washington, where he starterd his photography company, Dave Ainley Photography, and where he met his wife, Jill Paullin.
And it was in Spokane where he and Jill were photographing a wedding in 2005, when Jill commented on the growing number of freestanding photo booths she had noticed at the events.
“She said we should put a photo booth in a Volkswagen bus because I was driving one, and I was like, dude, that’s a brilliant idea,” Ainley says.
At the time though, Ainley was driving a bus he called Parker, and Parker was a “total beater” (although Ainley also admits he once told Jill she would have to bury him with the bus, he loved it so much).
Plus, the photography business was doing alright. So Jill’s idea for a photo booth bus floated freely for the next decade.
Ainley spent the next few years focusing on building up his business photographing weddings and senior portraits. But in 2011, his eldest daughter was born, and what he thought would be a quick break to be there for his family resulted in a significant hit to his clientele.
Then in 2017, Ainley and Paullin decided to move their family and photography business down to Dallas, but ultimately struggled to acclimate and “left with their tails between their legs” a year later.
But Ainley said that first move to Dallas, which someone less optimistic may have written off as an abject failure, was what got the Eternal Sunshine Photobus off the ground.
“The year of living in Dallas, seeing businesses pop up and fizzle out, I realized the thing that separates a business that makes it from a business that dies out is you bring something to the table that nobody else has, and you get people excited about it,” Ainley says.
In October 2018, back in Spokane with an orange bus named Clementine, Ainley and Paullin finally started the business they’d schemed up 13 years earlier.
“The idea of Eternal Sunshine — it’s uplifting, it’s a breath of fresh air. And that’s what I want when somebody comes to my bus. For them to have a breath of fresh air and say ‘Man, I just want to be a part of that,’” Ainley say
THE GOLDIE ERA
It was in 2021, after spending a year navigating small business ownership through the ever-changing regulations of COVID-19, that Ainley decided it was time to look back to Texas.
He and his family moved to Casa Linda in Dallas, Volkswagen in tow, and this time, it’s been nothing but sun, Ainley says.
“Dallas, Texas, is the promised land,” he says.
Ainley first brought the bus to Bishop Arts in December 2021 where he set up outside of the Tipsy Elf holiday bar. But what started as a holiday pop up has turned into a permanent home base.
The Eternal Sunshine Photobus is now a yellow bus named Goldie, and she is decked out with a bench and a fireplace with a camera on the mantle. Ainley sells T-shirts, hats, stickers and any other merchandise he can think of to his growing fanbase.
An experience in the photobus costs $20 and comes with two printed photostrips of three photos, a boomerang for your Instagram and a GIF.
Ainley also rents the photobus to private events like weddings, and is back in the photography business with Dave Ainley Photography.
But on Friday and Saturday evenings, Ainley and his bus can be found holding court on Bishop Avenue, waiting for the next person who is ready to experience the Eternal Sunshine.
“If you just are along for the ride, you’re just willing to have a good time, you’re gonna make magic,” Ainley says. “And I want them to remember that. Cut loose, let go and have fun.”
