What’s that tickle in our collective noses? Could it be…allergy season? Yes: a glance at the calendar confirms it, the days get an hour longer this Sunday, and suddenly warm weather isn’t a freak occurrence, it’s something we can start expecting as our due.
But for now it still has a whiff of the special treat about it, so when the weatherfolk said it would hit the 70s this week — Fahrenheit, kids…the real 70s! — we all breathed a collective sigh and made a beeline for the park.
It’s that wonderful season where some people still have down parkas on and others not so much. Count us in the ‘not so much’ brigade. It feels so good to get those layers off, and not stop until there’s nothing left to get off.
Helping set the tone, we came bearing waffles from the nearest Wafels & Dinges truck, books ranging from the latest Quarry hit-man fare to Murakami, Eggers, Eco, Palahniuk, and Sapphire,
…and a bevy of picture-taking devices, including a Hasselblad with an instant-film back that yielded photos like these:
We weren’t the only ones who brought cameras to the park, of course. There was this fellow who was hiding behind a tree until he saw that, hey, we had cameras too, and we could point ours at him just as easily as he could point his at us. Wait — where are you going…?
And then there was this guy, who agreed that turnabout was fair play.
On the positive side, there was this woman from the UK who was working on a research project on body image and did things the right way (i.e., asked first):
But mostly people left us to our devices, and just enjoyed the day in their own fashion. It really couldn’t have been a nicer one. We were left with big smiles on our faces and hunger for more.
How about you? Would you like to be part of our grand adventure in body freedom? We welcome all bold, book-loving women in the New York area, whether residents or visitors, old hands at this sort of thing or first-timers whose boobs have never seen the sun. Picture Uncle Sam sticking his forefinger out of the screen and saying We Want You!, only it’s Aunt Sam and she’s not wearing a shirt. Or, you know, whatever it takes to get you to send us an email. The address is toplesspulpfiction@gmail.com. Operators are standing by. 🙂
nice
Forget Paris! Ah, to be in New York again. I hope you all aren’t risking colds by pushing the season a bit early.
And here in Brazil (South) it is quite cold. But I feel the Spring in your photos!
What do you like about Max Allen Collins? I know he is, or claims to be, Mickey Spillane’s heir, but the one Spillane manuscript he completed and I read was pretty limp. Can’t remember the title, but it involved a little girl witness to the crime now blind and living in Florida. I guess no one writes like Mickey Spillane except Mickey Spillane. It’s sort of tough guy pablum.
Anyway, that’s not the important thing. You all were gorgeous, as always. Thanks for sharing the images.
He’s a good writer? He writes entertaining books? What does anyone like about any writer?
The book you’re describing sounds like DEAD STREET, and I agree that that one wasn’t the greatest, maybe because (as we heard the story) Spillane wrote most of it toward the very end of his life, and Collins only got to work on the final chapters. The other one they did together, THE CONSUMMATA, was much better. And Collins’ QUARRY novels are really fun reads.
“Good writer” (whatever that means) and “entertaining books”? Those are certainly good reasons, although I was wondering if there was something special about him that you liked.
Early [Author X] so often is superior to late [Author X]. Witness Raymond Chandler and PLAYBACK, not to mention the partially written POODLE SPRINGS. Philip Marlowe married? Don’t think so.
Thanks.
Am working my way through Max Allan Collins’ The First Quarry. Very competent. Very readable. Much better than the Mickey Spillane collaboration.
I thought this might have been a sly homage by Collins to the Spillane / Hammer (they of the “breasts yearning to be free” stuff) fixation on boobs: “Her smallish breasts under the seater were doing a swell job, considering.”
My first thought was, what’s his problem with “smallish” breasts. Then I thought of you folks and realized perhaps he meant they were covered instead of bare …
Cheers,
Joe “Bondi” Beach
“
You folks had made Canadian news like a month back… I saw some little blurb on it. Then I was walking around that corner of the park talking on the phone to my wife back at home and saw you. I googled it today to find that old article to explain but found these pics and they’re from exactly the same time I was walking by… Even saw that old guy scurry away when you photographed him. Such a coincidence! I’m amazed you tougher it out even when that spot got shady. Enjoy the liberated reading!
Greetings from Quito, Ecuador where we’re on a two week tour. Temps are in the 70s here year round.
I’m not a lawyer, and not 100% certain on this, perhaps one of you other fans can clarify. But I think you could expose yourself to issues by including recognizable children in the photo of the woman entering the park. Please try to find out the fair use issues on this topic, I for one would hate to see all your efforts get nullified.
I’m also not a lawyer but can’t imagine that posting a photograph of a crowd of people in a public park could possibly cause a problem. We’re not selling the image as a poster or printing it on t-shirts, or using it as an advertisement. We’re just posting it as an image of something we saw in the park one day. Newspapers run photos shot in various public places all the time. News broadcasts do the same thing, shooting their reporters talking to a camera as random people pass in the background. It really shouldn’t be an issue.
Except for those doggone boobs … [That’s a joke] Remember, this is America, and we don’t take boobs lightly ’round here. [That’s another joke]
Okay, understood. But sometimes folks with children can get wigged out. Best to you always.
If we catered to every person with children who might get wigged out, we’d never meet topless outdoors in the park at all. It’s their park to use and it is ours, and we all can coexist in peace and harmony.
Very cool, such beautiful weather!
Also you guys should check out this naked comedy event! https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-naked-show-tickets-22423378930
We have much work to do in bringing nudity and liberty to mainstream acceptance. Those presenting these ideals are so to be admired and supported.
Looks like you are having fun. What I don’t understand is the comment about doing things the “right” way and asking permission first. Ummm . . . there is no “right” way to do street photography. If you are in public it is perfectly OK for someone to take photos of you. It might feel “creepy.” It might violate social norms, but it is completely legal and that person is within his/her rights to do so. The photographer can even make huge prints and hang them in a museum ala Nussenzwig vs DiCorcia.
My lawyer tells me that one major cause of liability is “painting someone in a false light.” If I take a picture of a guy and I publish it with the caption, “Felon sits in park” and it turns out that the guy is not a felon I may possibly be liable for defamation.
I don’t do much street photography. I do a fair amount of street portraiture where I ask for permission. The difference between the two is like night and day to me. They are two very different disciplines that are both important for documenting society and keeping an eye on the powers. (No, Mr Police Officer, no matter what you say you don’t have any reasonable expectation of privacy while walking your beat.)
Look, any simple response is bound to be facile, and that doesn’t help anyone. Just labeling something “right” or “wrong” is misleading. As in all ethical matters, there are gradations and subtleties. If you’re out in public, of course people have the right to photograph you. We take photos of ourselves in the park, and random strangers wind up in the background of our photos, and we don’t ask them for their permission. So are we total hypocrites, or what?
But there’s a difference between incidental or casual inclusion of some random person in a random photograph of a random scene — a face in the crowd kind of thing — and deliberately and intrusively training your cell phone on a topless girl from ten feet away (sometimes less) and filming and filming and filming until you’re called out on it. It’s impolite. It’s obnoxious. Want to snap a quick photo of your day in Central Park and we’re one of the sights you capture? Fine. Go for it. But if you want to make a fucking photo study of us and fill an album with close-ups and 10-minute videos, at least do us the courtesy of asking us first. And I’d say the same thing whether we’re topless or fully nude or fully clothed. Would you follow the cop on the beat for 20 blocks, tailing him from a few feet away, snapping every step he takes? Probably not. And even if you did — he’s a public servant, and armed, and there’s a journalistic/political dimension to documenting his behavior, it’s different from shooting hours of footage of a private citizen who’s just trying to read a book or chat with her friends.
Anyway, those are some of the nuances that come readily to mind. I’m sure there are plenty of others, probably pointing in both directions. The bottom line is, we know we’ve been photographed, probably thousands of times by thousands of people, and that’s fine, we’re not insane, we understand what it means to be out in public. But there’s a difference between that and what some of these assholes in the park do. The horny guys capturing spank-bank material may be on legally solid grounds but morally they’re creeps, and we’re not going to stop calling them out for it.