NY2005

Jul 22, 2020

Run and Gun on the road (and then edit)

July 2019. After more than a weeklong wait in Amman, I finally get my visa and air ticket to go the capital of Yemen, Sana'a, which I had not been able to visit in prior trip to the country. There is just one catch: the local authorities (the "rebels" known as Houthis, who had ousted the internationally recognized government in 2015) are categorical: no photographic equipment allowed in. When I get the news my head goes into a tailspin. Based on my mission to Yemen a year prior, I had come up with a well thought-out list of items to bring with me, which would allow me to "run-and-gun" without sacrificing production value.

Now, not only I'd have to leave everything behind, but the local authorities ban on any form of electronic equipment (with the exception of laptops and smartphones) is like a sentence on my mission, which would later take me to the South of Yemen (controlled by the legitimate government) and Saudi Arabia - for both of which the respective authorities had already cleared my gear. After a few hours of frantic phone calls with colleagues in and out of Yemen (should I smuggle stuff in? should I ship it at least to my following destinations? should I at least carry a small camera and pretend it's just a personal belonging?) the breakthrough comes when a friend of a friend who works at the UN offers me to use her Sony A7R, which she had managed to bring in without running into trouble at customs. I did have to hide in my toiletries a cheap wired lav mic and a mini shot-gun mic, and a couple of memory cards. That's how far I went into not abiding by the stringent ban.

Nov 10, 2013

Hasta la bodega siempre

Aug 3, 2012

3am Overkill

Ahead of my 7th anniversary in the city - which will mark the amount of time many say actually makes one a newyorker - I hit an indisputable Big Apple benchmark. Dealing with mice in the apartment. It had been a week since this little fucker had been driving me nuts, keeping me up at night with the creepy noises of his teeth sinking deep into various cookies, pasta and rice bags, avoiding spring traps and poison, to then disappear every single time it was in sight. In my rare visual encounters with it I was left speechless by its speed. I assure you, you get the feeling of a presence, almost like a hungry ghost who has the urge, every night, to mess around with your food and leaving weird black shit all over your counter space. Then finally, last night, the moment I hear it again, this time fooling around on a kitchen shelf, I arm myself with a mop stick. It is still a mistery how it could climb up there and I have a long way to go to seal potential points of entry. I knew that the odds of catching it and kill it myself without the help of traps were going to be slim. But last night was different: I was more exasperated, and it got too reckless. It ended up being cornered, looking right at me while pointing the mop towards it. And then - thump - a single motion jerk with the head of the mop stick, like I am playing pool. I was faster than it thought I could be, hell, let's face it, faster than I thought I could be, and it falls on the side. I think it's getting away, but I have actually hit it real good, because it's not getting up. For a couple of seconds its tiny ears shake like it's having a seizure or something, and I almost feel pity for it. But hey, it's brief. I feel all cocky about it, texting the picture around like a trophy, and can barely get any sleep afterwards.