The Impossible Shot

Walking north on Bedford Avenue, a flash of lightning catches my eye, and I stop dead in my tracks. I wait and see another flash, and I realize the lightning comes not from Thor, but from a mere mortal.

A woman wearing a black top and frilly black-and-white checkerboard pants is walking north about two blocks ahead of me, and what I can only assume is a paparazzo is right in front of them. The photographer would race ten feet ahead, take a quick FLASH FLASH, let the subject catch up, then run forward and repeat this dance. 

The subject begins to walk faster, and you could just sense the annoyance from the body language. The photographer keeps pace, sprinting forward, turning around, and FLASH FLASH. She then crosses the street to the other side of Bedford, catching the pap flat-footed for an instant, but he quickly catches up, gets in front and FLASH FLASH. Finally the subject makes a right by Mugs Ale House, away from the pedestrians who were wondering what the hell was going on, and down a side street. The photographer dutifully follows. 

At one point, just for a second, they are side by side, and I wonder what kind of conversation they might be having. But he then runs in front again, and as they both go down the block, you could see little lightning bolts continue to FLASH FLASH, getting farther and farther away until finally disappearing off beyond the buildings and stoops of Brooklyn. 

I don't know how I ended up with the group that was bound for the FDR Drive. People just started moving, and I moved with them, first down Sixth Avenue, then across Houston Street. An interesting dynamic formed during the walk across Houston, as some protesters wanted to get the group to turn further south, first on Broadway, then on Elizabeth Street, while a second bunch (anecdotally, they seemed to include a lot of people who claimed to be SUNY students) were persistent in their wish to head to the FDR, and that second group won out. The front of the line had marchers with cardboard "shields;" the back of the line stretched out several blocks but by the time they hit the highway, everyone was tightly bunched together, and you could really get a sense of just how many people were out.

The crowd was eclectic. I saw some marchers with their dogs, some on bikes with GoPros on their helmets. One woman even bought her kid along, who couldn't have been more than about 8 years old. They were making a lot more noise, banging on pots and empty watercooler bottles. To me, the cops seemed pretty calm, although I heard some arrests did happen. At one point the crowd decided to rush past the officers at the front of the line, trying to get ahead of them, and I said to myself, "well, this can't be good," but the officers just let them pass.

The NYPD had cut off all northbound traffic, trying to keep the protesters off the southbound lanes, but the marchers decided to walk through traffic anyway. Traffic was at a standstill, so the drivers had nothing to do, so most of them whipped out their phones and started to document the march as it went by. Some of them honked horns in solidarity, eliciting whoops from the procession.