Walking up Chrystie Street from the bridge yesterday I passed by a park full of naked people wearing white hats. I'm not sure what they were doing. Far be it for me to condemn publicly nudity, given the frequency with which I'm told I used to (I don't actually remember this) jokingly propose that the UOC run around chasing Richard Levin with our extremities exposed, or do unclothed building occupations or whatever, more the product of ADD/romanticization of the situationists than any actual desire to do any of these things (well, naked, at least.) I'd be interested to learn why these folks were doing what they were doing - was it part of taht art parade in soho? Was that dude who photographs public nudity doing a photoshoot? Was it something political?
I keep thinking of the Ray Bradbury short story "Shadows and Light" about a town in Baja California where some fashion photographers from the US come to exploit indigenous folkiness and are rebuffed by an angry resident who drops trow whenever they try to pose the models anywhere and thus prevents the fashion photographers from reducing his life to exotic backdrop. Given the fraught history of gentrification on the LES, i wonder what kind of relationship to space is being suggested by a mass of nude white bodies standing around in a public park in what was fifteen years ago a working class neighborhood populated largely by people of color.
But I really don't know enough about what was going on to reach any conclusions, and I feel like I'm being extremely essentialist, so enough about this.
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