The Black and White Project: Days 200-201: October 15, 2011 - October 16, 2011
I couldn’t get myself together early enough to catch the Occupy Wall Street protestors in Times Square, and to be honest watching a live stream of the events, it seemed as though things could have gotten ugly — fast. I also have seen footage of NYPD officers roughing kids up and seemingly arresting people at will, and it was honestly quite frightening. But I went down to Times Square first with the hopes that I would see some protestors hanging around. And if I didn’t see them around, I knew that I would probably see something interesting; after all, the neighborhood still occasionally attracts some of the strangest people.
Right outside the 49th Street N,R and Q train station, this artist delighted a crowd of curious onlookers by quickly creating pieces with spray paint. I saw at least two other spray paint artists within about 4 blocks of this man, but he had the largest crowd of them all.
Yes, this man was born without most of his arms and yes, he’s actually playing the drums. And he was actually quite impressive.
Black Israelites proselytizing and preaching on the corner of West 46th Street and Broadway. Most of their arguments will probably strike most people as being inflammatory, ridiculous, ill-informed, insensitive, homophobic, racist and in some way kind of hilarious. Indeed like all religious maniacs, every current event from political unrest, war, famine, genocide, and countless others are all signs of the imminent apocalypse.
Interestingly, they did discuss their thoughts of the Occupy Wall Street protests but they put it around race and the Bible. Uhmm yeah, if you say so, I guess.
Three NYPD officers responding to some incident a few blocks away. With the protests there were roughly small groups of three to four cops near every intersection.
These two drummers at 42nd Street and Seventh Avenue attracted a fairly large crowd of curious onlookers. They were selling CDs as well but I don’t know if many people were buying them — but the duo did receive a fair amount of spare change.
These stormtroopers were standing in front of the Toys ‘R Us on West 45th Street and Seventh Avenue. They were more than happy to pose for the photo. Perhaps even stormtroopers need some time to hang out, right?
Speaking of the Occupy Wall Street protests, these discarded signs were from those demonstrations.
After spending some time at the regular bar, I got on the subway at Second Avenue. Seeing signs informing commuters of some kind of weekend service interruption isn’t out of the ordinary; however, what made this sign interesting was the fact that someone scribbled numbers to the NYPD’s Internal Affairs Department, the MTA Police Internal Affairs and other anti-corruption and ethics related phone numbers.
For these photos and the rest of the photos of the project, up to date, check out the Flickr set here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/yankee32879/sets/72157626259696549/
