Aug 3, 2016
Hello Bob,
My names Atilio and I’m a 24 year old living in Calgary Alberta up north in Canada! I’m a huge fan and have been following your art for the last few years. I've been into photography for a few years now and after lot of thought and inspiration from your work I've decided I want to branch off into anthropology as well.
Calgary has a few locations not too different from Union Square and I’m going to try and create a documentary about the people of these areas. I was hoping I could get some advice from you as your art has been a huge factor in my decision to start this project!
I've never created a doc and really have no idea what I’m doing! What kind of equipment do you use for your videos and any advise that would help make the locals more receptive to being recorded and photographed? i hope to hear back from you and id really appreciate your time.
Best wishes,
-Atilio
Hey Atilio,
I'm definitely pleased to hear that I've inspired you to do something similar to what I was doing at Union.
Interestingly enough, when I first found myself at the Square I had no plans at all about documenting it in any way. I just fell in love with that park the minute I saw it. It was such an amazing place for people watching. It's those two factors that made it a great documentary possibility. #1 Amazing people watching. #2 Falling in love with the place.
It wasn't until after a couple years into hanging out there I realized I had to have a camera to start filming what I was witnessing there. At first I bought cheap little cameras that didn't exceed $200 and took mediocre photos, and really crappy videos. Mind you, this was around 2004 before digital photography & HD videos got as popular and affordable as they are now. And I'd already had the online presence with Jesus Dressup so I was ready with a platform to showcase my work.
Looking back, the thing I had most in my favor in regards to making people receptive to being photographed, and/or simply allowing me to shoot what I wanted whenever I wanted, was seniority. The more time I spent at that park and the more years that passed, the more comfortable I felt, and the people there just got used to me always being there. They'd even approach me wanting to be interviewed. Then when it came to filming the eccentric regulars like Wendell, Signs or the crusty punks who'd normally shun photographers, I was able to develop a relationship with them before pulling out the camera at all. As time passed and I reached the 8 to 10 year mark I was permitted to film almost whatever I wanted because the people there simply knew who I was, what I was doing, and were even there to back me up if I looked like I might be getting a bit nosey to someone unfamiliar with me. Then it wasn't until probably 2012 or so that I really developed a skill for interviewing. Now that I think about it, that started with me interviewing Shaggy for Year In Reviews. That's probably when I discovered I could basically use the same method of getting information out of anyone.
It also didn't hurt making it all into a game on the postcards to get people involved. Having something tangible to show gave me credit of sorts when approaching strangers and getting them interested in being interviewed on camera.
Around 2008 or so, after the Amazing Strangers section of my site started to actually get noticed by making the Peepers famous I had a fan email me telling me to "Check your PO Box." When I got to the post office, inside waiting for me was a brand new $500 Canon Powershot SX50 HS. I asked the anonymous emailer why he got it for me and what he wanted in return for such an expensive gift. He simply replied "I'm sick of watching the crappy quality of your stuff, but I love what you're doing there." All I had to do was promise him I'd continue to document and upload NYC for him to see. That began my love for the Canon Powershot. And it's the 2012 model that I prefer most. It has the most dependable mic, the farthest zoom reach, and has lasted the longest of the followup models I bought later.
As for editing, I've always just preferred the iMovie program that came with my Mac. As long as I was able to move audio & video around easily, and maybe a few special effect options like slow motion and fading clips together I had all I needed. All of it I found easy to teach myself over the years.
Since I started the one thing I wish I would have invested in earlier would have to be external hard drives. I've lost plenty of photos and videos that I'd give anything to have back simply because I was a cheapskate and put off buying something to back everything up on. Now I have a stack of them, and I'm so pleased to have everything safely saved in several places. In my opinion getting something like a 3 terabyte Toshiba is easily affordable, will store years and years of footage, and could save you lots of heartache in the future.
I think the biggest challenge for you will be finding a place as easy to find subject matter as Union Square was for me. I've asked people from all over the world (who were visiting NYC) if they've ever seen a park like Union in their travels, and almost unanimously the response has been, "Nope. Not like this." But I'd be really interested to see what you can come up with there in Calgary Alberta, Canada. I've yet to see anyone else documenting a park like I have, and to me it seems like an obvious hobby for any filmographer out there.
Thank you for the compliments. I hope I answered your questions thoroughly enough!
Normal Bob
Thank you so much for the advice Bob! I was not expecting such a thorough reply I greatly appreciate it!
I hope to start this project soon after some more investigation into the different areas of my city. Luckily I have almost identical equipment to your own but I'll definitely be picking up a hard drive for back ups! It's awesome to hear about the gifted camera and doesn’t surprise me at all your works incredible and you have a lot of fans!
Once i get this whole thing kicked off I want you to know you’ll be credited in any video I produce and I’m absolutely honored to be mentioned on your site! thanks again for everything bob!
Best wishes,
-Atilio
It seems even when I’m far far away the Amazing Strangers continue on with their lives, and the drama of Union Square moves forward without even the slightest bit of nudging from yours truly.
Last Christmas I got a distressed email from the one and only Jolly Cathimself accusing me of slander for the videos I’d been posting of him over the years. He emailed me years prior about removing them and I politely obliged. But then he kept showing back up at the park and doing the exact same show for us again and again! So I put them back up. Then finally, back in December he sent me another email, and it went something exactly like this:
Hi Bob,
I noticed after you deleted my videos you posted them back up. This is slander and here is why. My characters actually bring lots of laughter and joy to many ppl and receive big applauses but on some days like when you caught me in the park ppl weren't laughing and I looked really bad. It is a false representation of what I do.
I am letting my manager know about this and if you don't delete all my videos he will contact you with the next steps we must take. I hope we can handle it now.
Sincerely, Vinny Hat in Cat
Dec 29, 2015
In response to this I decided that the videos weren’t all that important to me, so I took them down and replied:
Jolly Cat
Good to hear from you! I don't believe it's slander to show video of you not making people laugh. Maybe if you were making them laugh and I edited it so they weren't. But showing exactly what happened isn't lying, or slander, or any kind of deceit at all. It's showing what happened. There's nothing illegal or protected about showing video of public performances.
The problem is that you're blaming the audience instead of your act. I thought that was the joke? Apparently not.
Normal Bob
Dec 29, 2015
Despite all of this I granted his request.
Now, 6 months later, what do I see? Jolly Cat performing his trademarked act on America’s Got Talent with exactly the same results I witnessed every single time at the park. And here is that amazing video.
The way I found out about this AGT video was Shaggy calling me up frantically asking “Where are all your Hat in the Cat videos?!? I can’t find them!”
After explaining why I took them down Shaggy showed me Jolly Cat’s television debut. My jaw dropped, and then I put them all back up again.
I’m sure I’ll probably hear from him again, but none of what I filmed was edited or taken out of context. It’s what Shaggy, I and many others had to bare witness to when he chose to perform in front of us. So with great pleasure I bring you back to the Original Hat in the Cat, more famously known as “Jolly Cat” as we all know him from Union Square NYC!
And to Jolly Cat – I think the burden is on you (or better yet, your manager) to produce and distribute video of you making people laugh. It is not my responsibility. I mean, if I do not witness it, it is impossible for me to film it. Right? And portraying your show as something other than what I see would be committing High Perjury! Then I’d have to let my manager know about this so he could contact your manager about taking the next steps in regards to all of this. Anyhow I’m also happy to promote the video you asked me to promote in this video.
Jolly Cat’s “A Wacky Love Story” feature he promoted in the previous video.
And this is the first time I ever saw and recorded Jolly Cat back in Feb 2009.
I’m realizing I never fully explained why I left NYC. And it’s 7:30 Wednesday morning and I just woke up from a nightmare that reminded me of exactly that.
I dreamt I was back in Brooklyn and had just been told by my landlord we had to leave our apartment. The television was on, I had food cooking on the stove, and I even had my plans for the day to go to Union and work on art projects. The dream was so vividly real. Then suddenly the landlord was at the door.
He came to explain it was too nice of an apartment for us and he’d been offered more money for it. He told me we could move into the studio apartment that was there adjacent to ours, but we had to be out of this one in 2 weeks. So I began moving all the furniture trying to make it fit into a place 1/4 the size.
The dream concluded with me standing in between the two separate living quarters in a cold sweat, realizing there was no way this could work, and I had to tell my roommates. I was asking myself “how did I get myself into this situation again?” I was looking out the window at the city skyline contemplating going out to wander the streets, but instead I had this nightmare to deal with, again!
When I woke up, which was about 20 minutes ago now, I was in that cold sweat and thanking Christ Jesus it was all just a dream. I thought maybe I could go back to sleep, but no dice. I was haunted. So I might as well write what happened.
My last 8 years in NYC (2007 – 2015) is the window of time it took place in. It was in ’07 that I was leaving a loft apartment I had with roommates in Williamsburg and moving to this nice 3 bedroom apartment in Bushwick. I found two new roommates, and over the course of 7 years I made that place a home. It was the first place I’d ever lived where I actually painted the walls, hung cookware above the stove, bought sofas & furniture and really settled in to stay. Business was good, I liked who I was living with, and I had an amazing view out my bedroom window. We were on the 3rd floor of this building, and my window pointed east, looking out over the roofs and steeples of Brooklyn. I loved this place.
Livingroom – Xmas 2010
Then in October of 2013, just around Halloween, we were told the building was being sold and we all had to be out by New Years Day. It completely broke my heart. What hurt even more is it wasn’t a typical landlord/tenant relationship. He was a friend who’d hired me to do freelance work for him in the past. He owned this building, which is how & why I moved in in the first place, and now it made being treated like a number even more spirit-breaking.
In NYC you don’t start looking for a place a month or two in advance to weigh your options, then pack, arrange movers, and simply have the normal difficulties that come with moving. No. In New York moving happens in a panic, and you don’t find the place you’re going to live until a week before your move out date. And when you’re packing you’re forced to pare down to the bare minimum because it’s thousands of dollars to hire movers. Flat out, we were told to cancel Christmas and that’s what we had to do. Looking back I now realize this was the beginning of the end for me.
The three of us ended up finding a new place together, deeper into Brooklyn, slightly smaller, same cost. Not long after we moved in we realized we had a terrible landlord. It was a building owned by a place called “Management Solutions” and they had letterhead with a different name on it “Rental Solutions NY,” and their phone number wasn’t included on documents, and other shady warning signs. Being rude to their tenants was a normality, and when we’d complain about anything they had no problem responding “Hey, I forgot. When is your lease up?”
The place started accumulating, at first roaches, then mice, and my last week there we had maggots crawling up through the cracks in the kitchen floor. I discovered later we were literally weeks away from bedbugs when we finally left. We found out talking to a cleanup crew in our building that the neighbors below us had them in the ceilings. In this new environment we started to each get depressed and on each others nerves.
We’d signed a year and a half lease New Years Day 2014. So when June of 2015 rolled around and we were asked to sign another lease, reality hit. My trips to visit my folks in Michigan had increased over the last year and a half to escape these surroundings. I used to come visit 2 or 3 times a year for a week at a time. Then it started to become 4 or 5 times a year for a couple weeks each visit. In 2015 I was visiting every other month with plans to stay for two months this winter. That’s when I realized I no longer loved living in New York and it was time to leave.
I made very good use of that city in the 13 years I was there. I was productive, adventurous, made a name for myself, and accomplished things I never could’ve if I hadn’t. I met some wonderful people and made friends I was lucky to even meet. But fact is I have nightmares about it now. And when I wake up not there I am relieved.
I’m very content here helping out my folks, and building up my Jesus Dressup fridge magnet empire again and prove it can indeed be a thriving business. I’m quite confident I can do that and have the freedom to pick where next I should go when I’m ready. I’m not sure how long it will take me to get over my NYC-PTSD and feel like visiting again, but I know at the moment it’s not in the books.
Fridge magnet sales are rolling in & reminding me that I’m still the manager of a website. Those orders are being shipped out next day despite my lagging on all other activities on the site. I am however at the lowest selection I’ve had for a long time.
Here’s what I’ve got.
Officially I have 4 sets of Jesus magnets available: BDSM, Final Justice, Halloween & Lady Gaga Jesus. I also have Mohammed dress up games as well. And if you wanna know the facts, sales for these are indeed coming in, from Europe mostly. So anyhow, that’s 5 – Officially.
Unofficially I also have special sets available. Like for instance the first print of Final Justice Jesus from 2006. This has always been my personal favorite, and I have one and a half boxes left of these. They are for sale until I feel like I don’t want to lose any more of them.
This is the last year for Christmas JDU because now, after ten years, they’re starting to “brown.” The muddiness is most noticeable in the yellow part of the cross.
The Christmas Jesus Dressups are beginning to “brown.” They’re just not looking as bright as they did in 2005 when they first arrived at my door, and I’m not even offering them to the stores I sell to any more. That means this’ll be their last year. Same thing happened to my last boxes of the Original sets, so they had to be tossed as well. But if you can deal with their slight aging (see sample) they’re just $10. And if you email me after you’ve purchased them and request I fit as many as I can into your Flat Rate envelope (about 4 or 5 I think) I’ll happily do so for no additional cost, because I will never produce these ones again. Too limited of a sales window!
I’ve still got the “All 7 for $77” offer up that includes many of the unavailable sets. I was reminded of this when someone a couple days ago purchased it, and I had to come to grips with what I had available. So as it turns out, if you put in that order I’ll just dip into the sets I’ve got tucked away in my lockbox to fulfill it. You heard right.
I have plans after the holidays to start restocking with new selections. Immediately I’ll be getting both Batman & Star Wars sets made. I’m quite excited. Now that I’m out of NYC and where I am I have more space for storage so I’m able to begin building up this aspect of my business again. It’s a beautiful & satisfying process.
Jesus Dressup App
I’ve been given another shot at making the Jesus Dressup app. This’ll be the 4th attempt at making it! The three that failed before this all stopped short for a different reason each time.
The first time it got made was a guy who after it was complete and Apple posted it for people to purchase, decided to not hand it over to me and just keep the profits for himself. I had to threaten him to take it down.
The second one (read about it in left sidebar) I paid a guy to make, and he did a beautiful job with it, but this time Apple rejected it because it was offensive content. That really killed my spirit on trying to make it again.
The third time was from another person who said they’d make it for no charge, and after a year passed he realized it was too big a job and bailed.
So a couple weeks ago a guy in Italy said he’d do a Droid app for free as long as his name was in the credits for making it. I’ve agreed, and he’s already shown me samples of how it might play, and it looks sharp! But I also have a grasp on the plausibility of it.
Amazing Strangers
As for the Amazing Strangers of Union Square videos, I think those’ll just have to wait. I’ve tried several times to go in and start putting together some of the unused videos I’ve got stored away, but my heart’s not in it. And quite honestly, the best footage has been posted. If I were to start posting the stuff you’ve never seen before your first thought would be “Yeah, I can see why he didn’t post this before.”
Normal Bob answers question about God outside Verb Coffee in Bedford Mall
In 2003 when Neil Abramson came out and filmed me for his Bob Smith USA movie, he interviewed Shaggy & I and followed us around the city with his camera, then never used the footage. I realized that when I finally do put together this Union Square movie (or whatever it’s going to be) including that footage of Neil’s is my dream. It just has to be there. I’ve sent him a couple requests, but I also know he’s a busy man, and that footage is buried somewhere. Anyhow, that’s the goal, and until then, I am just not feelin’ it.
My plans
As for what I’m planning to do from here? That has yet to be determined. I know what I want and what I don’t want but I have no idea where this place exists. For now I’m completely content here in Michigan looking forward to a country Christmas winter, playing with the dog, helping my folks in their daily lives… and just a little bit of Grand Theft Auto V.
