Scalpels, Shakira Concert, Hustlers, School Kids… Sixth and 31st

[audio:100921-3.mp3]

I want to talk about my new location. In the last two and a half months, I experimented with four different stores in four different locations.

I finally found my new home. My old home was Chinatown for about two and a half years, Canal and Greene. This new location is 6th Avenue and 31st Street.

It’s quite a combination, across the street there’s a 42 story hotel. On the other side of the street, there is a building that houses maybe 50 different schools for computers, for tractor-trailer drivers, for nurses, all these – I hate to call them flimflam schools but people pay so much money and they get some type of education in there. The people that go to the schools are interesting also.

So on my side, you have the Korean massage parlor, you have the Africans with the purses. I think two blocks away, there’s a high school. So, around from 3:30 to 4:30, the mixture of people is great. I’ll have a high school boy and a girl in uniform then there’ll be some African hustle somebody upstairs, then there’ll be some guy looking for the Korean massage parlor. I’m trying to do group shots of four or five people of people looking for different things. It’s not easy but I’m pretty much getting some shots.

I just feel bad that these stories aren’t matching up with the photos. Just to let everyone know, besides the 31,000 photographs on the site, there are about 5,000 photographs that I’m in the middle of editing that I shot the last three months that aren’t up yet. I just keep shooting and building them up on this disc and trying to edit them and get them on the site. One day it’ll be organized.

But after I shot all day today, something very funny happened. I was a half hour early for my train at Madison Square Garden and there was a big concert – her name I think is Shakira or Shaquille, I don’t even know. But all these people were dressed in these wild outfits are going to the concert. That wasn’t really the great photographs. The great photographs were the guys who sell the tickets – scalpers they call them.