"The Week In 'Out Here'" is an ongoing series in which young, reckless, blogging superstar Noah Emrich teaches you how to be fully "out here." What's "out here," you ask? According to Noah, "Basically, when you are 'out here', you are doing things, making luxurious movements and, hopefully, profiting from all these things." Word.
So this week we were out here enjoying life, as if we haven't been doing that for the last 3 weeks, but whatever. The other day I was riding through my hood on my fixed gear bike with a few friends running some errands. And when I say "hood," I mean real Bushwick, a half block from from the projects. (So far I have only been mugged once, so that's good.) And when I say fixed gear, I actually mean fixed gear, which is ironic because I skipped out on the oh so rough and tumble "east Williamsburg," which we all know is a gimmick anyway, in favor of moving straight to the block. While we are on the topic of Brooklyn, hip things and general "outhered'ness," I'm going to include a photo from a recent evening when I set on a bench at Berry and N9th, just a block from the heart of the lovely Williamsburg/Bedford Ave area. I watched police put up crime scene tape because there had just been a shooting. This is a serious thing, no doubt, but what was interesting to me was to sit on the Cafe Colette bench and watch residents of the area try to evade officers by going under the tape and running towards their front doors. If you know the area, you can image how ridiculous it was to watch fellow white people act tough about ducking under some yellow tape, tying to make it look like a movie or something. They we're going all slow-mo like Denzel when he gets angry during Inside Man and ducks under some crime scene tape.
So anyways, we were just headed out to the bank or something, and I had my shiny brand spanking new/used camera in my pocket. I pulled it out while we cut across a cross street to take an picture of my friend in front of me, and as I snapped the shot I hit a pot hole and flew over my handlebars and hit the pavement. And when I say that what I really mean is I sort of crumbled over my handlebars and kinda just rolled over onto the ground. Obviously the camera took a nice little blow. In case it wasn't already clear enough, I went over the bars because I was using both hands to hold a camera over my face and, consequently, did not see the pothole. It's difficult to hold yourself stable when your hands are covering your face. This is why I can't have nice things, so please don't let me have any more lest I destroy some shit. As you can tell by the photos above, this was not worth it. Unless you like them, in which case, you're welcome for taking one for the team—the art team.
Oh yeah, and the fashun. For the last couple weeks every major online web shop has had their sales going. I really only every buy clothes when they are on sale, and I've been out here with such a large presence lately that I haven't had time to worry about my bow ties and OCBDs. However I did buy this Japanese cut-and-sew-loop-wheel-10000%-authentic-raw-cotton-thick-sweatshirt-material-3/4-sleeve-shirt with this Native American/drug rug/nomad type feel. Obviously when I was biking over potholes and covering my face with my new expensive camera I was also wearing my steeply discounted overpriced sweatshirt and fucked that up too. The shirt is really dirty now and there is definitely some blood stains and some road marks. I have no idea if they will come out because I still have to ask my mom what she thinks. Despite all that I generally enjoyed the whole event as an "experience" young people who live in NYC are supposed to have and blog about so their uncool friends from home can feel jealous.
This week's fashion tip: buy expensive clothing pieces that make you look homeless, but only when they're on sale. Then go have some fun or something else inspirational that ultimately yields bloggable "experiences."
*Special edition* life tip of the week: select photos from this week's post are part of a large series I just finished. See it here: Summer '12 Vol. 12.
Noah Emrich is a photographer living in New York City. See more of his photography here and follow him on Twitter here.
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