I was vacationing in Manhattan a few weeks ago while my friend was out of town. Pushing down the street with a camera in my hand thinking to myself, "Somethings got to happen, surely there has to be something in this city I want to photograph" and sure enough just as that thought scrambled through my head Mark Gonzalez fly's by me on his skateboard, skitching on the back of his girlfriends bicycle. Baffled by the spectacle I dropped the ball. The enjoyment I get out of photography is sometimes based wholly on the things I missed. One time I was skating down Broadway going to the old Zoo York office and ten tinted Denali's cruise by. Oprah Winfrey? Who could it be. I skate along with them and look into the windows and can't see a thing and then all cars stop right out front a ritzy hotel and George Bush's wife gets out, whatever her name, y'know, the First Lady, with the daughter who just got married. I go to grab my camera out of my bag at record speed and get tackled by a whole bunch of secret service who thought I was up to some John Wilkes Booth. So I heavily lamented the fact, for some reason that I did not get a polaroid of Georgies wife. If that hurt for a week, then the missing Gonz skitch polaroid was gonna burn for a month, maybe longer. The next day I was walking down Houston, once again playing the part of a Manhattanite while crashing at my friends. Gonz walks by again, this time with a baby on his shoulders. Stumbling again I missed my moment. Some people you can recognize from a block away, I'd recognize Tom Cruise from a block away, except Mission Impossible sucked, and I watched Video Days so much the bootleg VHS should have exploded.
And then there's this photo. I think it bothered me so much that I missed the skitching photo that I didn't even realize I jumped in front of his face and took this like a jerk until the moment was already over. Maybe I'll be forgiven a little bit for having a Krooked Board in my hand while saying "Sorry, dude" and then riding away before he even knew what happened. Nonetheless it's one photo that I didn't let get away from me.