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One of our readers left us a link to the picture above on our Contribute page, along with this comment:
Can you start a campaign encouraging coke whores like these to leave the homeless alone? Or at least call out these stupid girls like peter bruanstein or the subway flasher.
Your wish is answered: we are calling these girls out to explain themselves. And come on-- to the nice people behind Last Night's Parties, pictures like this are just stupid and offensive. Homeless people in New York have enough problems without being used for a cheap laugh by nightlife photographers. Please return to taking pictures of Sophie Dahl and downtown chicks flashing their boobs. Thanks.
UPDATE: Some investigative commenters think that the "homeless guy" is actually another hipster from the party, and that he's lying on the ground wrapped in a blaNket in imitation of a homeless person. We'd like to go on record as saying that pretending to make fun of someone pretending to be a homeless person is still gross and insensitive.
UPDATE 2: Heidi, from the band Quarterslot, writes in one of the comments:
It really kills a joke when you have to explain it, but here goes:This staged picture is making fun of all the "Cobrasnake" graffiti in the LES. You'll notice it on the wall in the picture. The obvious concept of this shot is to make fun of the Cobrasnake's stereotypical work. Mark sometimes features the homeless (& I'm not just talking the homeless hipsters), and one wonders the statement he's making... perhaps as a contrast to his normal subjects, perhaps a lot of things. Probably nothing. Irregardless, the guy in the blanket is a bartender in the LES and a friend of the subjects and photographer.
It's a joke. And you overreacting lot are lame.
xo,
The dumb, cheap, ugly coked up strumpet on the right.
We stand behind our initial premise: making fun of the homeless is wrong, even if it's because you're really making fun of a photographer who victimizes the homeless, or something like that! In the future, can't we agree to not take pictures of hipsters smiling and pointing at people who appear to be homeless, whether they are or not? Is that so much to ask, people?
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Stupid? maybe. Offensive? probably not.
Funny? ABSOLUTELY.
i think the girl on the left lost her pants.
disgusting. come forth, ladies, and explain yourselves. is this staged? fake? even so, it's sick.
right on jake. if the photo is what it looks like, these girls need some serious perspective..
Looks to me like the guy's smiling a little bit. For all we know, he's awake and enjoying the view.
Abu Ghraib redux?
um. isn't our 'homeless' guy beginning to break a smile in that photograph? and nobody even in their wrong mind let's himself pass out or fall asleep in thin-templed designer glasses.
ugly on the inside. trashy on the out.
Are we sure this is a real homeless guy? Not just some sort of sick costume party?
The graf behind it says Cobra Snake, so I say: staged.
At a party in the east 80's a former friend was telling the story how she fell in love with her boyfriend.
This guy asked her out, he was handsome and an ambitious young investment banker so she accepted. Apparently he was the most dull dinner date she ever experienced and made up her mind over dessert that she wasn't going to go out on date #2 with him. He picked up on the vibe as he was walking her home in silence. Then the "he's the one" moment happened when in his simmering anger at the failed dinner, he saw a homeless man bent over looking into a trash can and he decided to kick the poor guy in the ass so hard that the man went head down into the trash ... you know, where the guy belonged. The girl couldn't believe how she misjudged her date's sense of adventure and humour and it was love ever since.
While that was a sad commentary on those two individuals, even sadder was that everyone at the party with the exception of me laughed and slapped the guy on the back..." good one dude!"
In case it is not clear, it was at that moment that I decided to drop her as a friend.
If you look the last pic (the girl showing her underwear) from Gawker's team party crash at Fat Baby, the girl on the left in the above photo appears to be one and the same. What a tool.
If you look the last pic (the girl showing her underwear) from Gawker's team party crash at Fat Baby, the girl on the left in the above photo appears to be one and the same. What a tool.
And I'm the asshole who posted twice.
Yup, that's Heidi. She's a Last Night's Party/Cobra Snake mainstay.
Pretty sad,
this is why I carry.
good for you, oki.
This girl is a lame joke. I'll make sure to avoid Piano's next time her fashion rock band is playing.
Wait... I avoid Piano's anyway.
It's sad, but funny. Funny because the two coked up strumpets look like the complete idiots.
Sad because the underwear showing gal on the left might end up smoking a soda can crack pipe if she lost daddy's credit card.
I don't think its a Homeless guy. If you look towards the middle of the set of photos there's a guy wearing a blue jacket with glasses who looks just like the "homeless guy" who also happens to be wearing a blue jacket and glasses.
Staged or not, IMO, it's in very poor taste.
Example #718 why hipsters (or scenesters as they are want to be called) are absolutely a plague on society today.
Can we just round them all up and drop them off in Jersey already? There's room for them in Trenton and Camden...
Well, after reading Tim's note I checked and you know what. I think whoever id'ed the guy as a homeless guy is 100% wrong. Doesn't seem like the 'homeless' guy is homeless in any way. Looks more like a staged prank shot than anything else.
Evidence and case here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/picpatrol/69407302/
Well, after reading Tim's note I checked and you know what. I think whoever id'ed the guy as a homeless guy is 100% wrong. Doesn't seem like the 'homeless' guy is homeless in any way. Looks more like a staged prank shot than anything else.
Evidence and case here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/picpatrol/69407302/
why are we assuming he's homeless and not just a picture of three idiots having a fun night out? black people can be coked up hipsters too ya know!
fine -- assume that he is not homeless if you want to defend this picture.
if he is not homeless, does this picture not cater to some of the worst stereotypes? oh, you're right, the black guy could actually be a white guy in blackface. my bad.
These chicks look dumb, cheap and ugly anyway.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/picpatrol/69407302/
There you go, like i said before, not a homeless guy.
Aren't those the two girls that run the gawker.com website?
You go, picpatrol! Call Gothamist out for having the most sensationalistic articles this side of the Post. Sometimes you have to wonder about them. If it's something that offends Gothamist, they'll scream to high heaven. But something that offends others but is near and dear to their hearts like unsanctioned, vandalistic graffiti - excuse me, "street art" - they'll defend with their dying breath. Given the outraged tone of the write-up, this really should have been an Opinionist. (Or Opinionista, depending on how you feel about those pieces.) Maybe Gothamist should start a completely tongue-in-cheek feature and call it Onionist.
"We'd like to go on record as saying that pretending to make fun of someone pretending to be a homeless person is still gross and insensitive."
We at Commentist think your'd doing an odd job covering your Assist.
Yeah, I suppose it was staged, but still...
it's totally staged. those girls wouldn't touch a real homeless person, even for a good laugh.
Those girls tricked us!
why are you assuming "he" is wasted, or that those girls are his friends, or passed out, or that the person is a guy?
Merlin Bronques is a talentless hack whose sole claim to fame is getting wasted girls to show him their tits. Remove the Andy Warhol ripoff wig and the overpriced shades and you'll see him for the nerdy, insecure piece of shit he really is.
He went to my friend's houseparty and refused to take off the shades, even though it was well after dark and there were about 12 people at the whole event. What a maroon.
It really kills a joke when you have to explain it, but here goes:
This staged picture is making fun of all the "Cobrasnake" graffiti in the LES. You'll notice it on the wall in the picture. The obvious concept of this shot is to make fun of the Cobrasnake's stereotypical work. Mark sometimes features the homeless (& I'm not just talking the homeless hipsters), and one wonders the statement he's making... perhaps as a contrast to his normal subjects, perhaps a lot of things. Probably nothing. Irregardless, the guy in the blanket is a bartender in the LES and a friend of the subjects and photographer.
It's a joke. And you overreacting lot are lame.
xo,
The dumb, cheap, ugly coked up strumpet on the right.
I'm the girl on the right and all three of the people in the photo are friends with the photographer, including the fake homeless man. We were walking down the street with Bronques and he was about to take our picture, but then we saw the CobraSnake tag and that got us thinking about the similarities/differences between the two sites. We're all familiar with the titti-flash cliches of LastNightsParty but here is the list of CobraSnake cliches we came up with:
Hipsters interacting with and/or making fun of the homeless
Hipsters climbing up/over things, i.e. fences and trees
Pics of food and then people eating said food
Close-ups of tattoos
Skinny people adjusting their clothing w/ their heads out of frame
Very young looking girls with smeared eye-liner looking in any direction other than the camera
White guys making gangsta faces as though flashing gold teeth
And of course, the CobraSnake tag or cartoons of the CobraSnake
Well, we had the perfect background so we tried to imitate all of those cliches and the two pics Bronques posted were the ones that turned out the best. Btw, none of us were on coke.
where's the leash?
If those are "cobrasnake" cliches, which I know nothing about nor care to.
It would of been more funny if you had the black guy point a gun at you girls and you refuse to hand over your belongings. Well, you know what happened next.
For some reason, You ny'ers think bullets don't kill.
My apologies to 'MD' and 'Anonymous' for my perpetuating the coke addled line as I jumped on the bandwagon like evertone else. My bad on that indeed. But at least I did point out the error on my Flickr page and pointed out the staged aspect of the shot. Hopefully my karma was balanced a bit by both acts.
But strumpet is a cute turn of phrase; coke or coke-less.
Best comment-thread ever!
strumpet is most definitely a cute turn of phrase.
and thanks for the explanation, strumpet on the right. it was clearly quite necessary.
everyone else who continues to harp on this (and it's been quite entertaining): remember that this photo was not taken to be posted on gothamist for all of y'all to see. it was taken for people who would get the irony of it or whatever, so give them a fucking break.
Having to explain the joke doesn't kill it... it just means the joke wasn't very good in the first place.
i think someone has probably already noted that the concept was not in any way "obvious" -- as evidenced by the very existence of this blog entry -- but someone has got to mention that the obvious-joke-explaining non-coke-whore on the right used the non-word "irregardless" in her comment. i guess that someone is me.
Heidi, lead singer of Quarterslot, is me (formerly anonymous) and my friend Megan was the one who left the other comment. When I said right I meant stage right (sorry, I'm a former actress).
not to be the PC person here, cause PC people smoke crack, but i hope those bitches end up homeless themselves.
last nights party and the cobra snake should use flickr style tags so viewers know when they're trying to make a joke.
what's cobra snake?
seriously.
Take a look at
1. His spiffy glasses
2. His freshly cut hair
3. No stains or rips in the clothing
So just because the guy's black, he's supposed to be homeless?
no, he looks homeless because he's lying on the street in the middle of the night, wrapped in a blanket, pretending to be asleep. it's not about race- and if you read the girl's comments above, you'll see that pretending to be homeless was exactly what he was doing. mission accomplished!
"he's lying on the ground wrapped in a blacket in imitation of a homeless person"
A blacket? Paging Dr. Freud....
What I find interesting is the fact that hipsters acting like douchebags is even a news item. Yeah, this is tasteless and pathetic. Is anyone surprised? Come on...Bronques is a dirty middle-aged man who takes pictures of young drunk girls like these for a living. Why waste media on this trustfund trash?
how can you see how spiffy his glasses are, or freshly cut his hair is? you definitely can't see his clothing UNDERNEATH a blanket.
If you're that concerned with race's role in this situation, why don't you ask the guy why he's pretending to be homeless? was it because white girls can't be homeless?
Wrapped in a blacket? Yow! That's one way to not be offensive!
New site idea: Gothamisms!
Now if you excuse me I need to jew my food, clean my kitchen (to make it all spic and spanish) and make sure the guy down the street is jamaking the beef patties.
And Heidi, "irregardless" isn't an actual work, since you mean regardless - without regard.
Feh
This is too funny!
Bleach-er... I think you meant word...
Oh, and Heidi... nice ass...
Funny? Not to me, but whatever floats your boat.
I do, however, think it's funny that one could argue that the "homeless" man was labeled as such because he's black. If you look closely at the photo, he actually looks rather un-homeless.
Actually, John and Feh, "irregardless" is a word, albeit a nonstandard usage. It means the same thing as "regardless," and according to Encarta is "probably a blend of irrespective + regardless." So, putting aside for a moment the issue of whether or not the joke was funny or appropriate, let's cut our "obvious-joke-explaining non-coke-whore on the right" a break. At least on that philological count.
What I found surprising is that, while I concur wholeheartedly with Gothamist that "Homeless people in New York have enough problems without being used for a cheap laugh by nightlife photographers," and applaud the expression of that view, if the goal of the post was to take a stand against such exploitation, Gothamist, by reposting the photo only increased our "homeless" man's potential exposure to humiliation. Unintentionally perhaps, but in a very tangible manner. Yet 50+ comments in, no one has even thought to mention that. The very issue that provoked all this controversy in the first place, the supposed public humiliation of someone less fortunate , seems to have become an afterthought.
Bearing in mind that Gothamist's heart clearly seems to be in the right place, I'd humbly submit that next time around it might make more sense to blur, or in some similar fashion, make the "homeless" guy's face unrecognizable, thus making the same point in general, but protecting the specific individual. In this instance, of course, that would have obscured the telltale smile and the designer glasses, but, still, the point remains. After all, not all "homeless" people posted online will turn out to be imposters.
This is the most publicity Quarterslot is ever going to get.
Raphie, are you serious?
Let's fix the problem, by not talking about it! Maybe if we ignore it, it will go away!
Let's blur out the "homeless" man's face! Then we can focus on the stupid hipsters pointing at the anonymous dude!
There's no way anyone would recognize that guy, from that angle.
I meant the misuse of a word when correcting someone for misuing a word. The photo "joke" died a long time ago.
Unless I'm missing something here, OT, the original post was about the uncoolness of people making fun of those less fortunate than themselves, both those who make fun of such people and those who photograph the people making fun of such people. And I agree with that premise 100%.
"Let's fix the problem, by not talking about it!" What problem are you talking about? The homeless problem? The problem of people making fun of people? Or the problem of one individual living on the street?
As for the first two problems, what purpose on earth does it serve to show the face of a "homeless" person were that person actually to be homeless? That won't make homelesssness go away and it won't stop people from being mean. It only extends the potential humiliation of that one individual to an additional 75,000 people or so, which might not make a difference to you, but certainly might make a difference to the individual in question. So, yes, blurring the photo certainly does no harm and would be consistent with the stated goal of the piece, while not blurring it may or may not do harm.
As for the person being unrecognizable "from that angle"? It's a full profile, OT. Maybe try turning your head 90 degrees to the left or your computer screen 90 degrees to the right?
Never mind about that wankery, the real deal is some intern at VICE making a rumor blog about the inner office shenanigans.
http://vicerumormule.blogspot.com/
Apologies to Gothamist for straying a bit off-topic here, but I couldn't resist responding to you Mike. Ignore the absurdity of the multinegative? Granted, "irregardless" is perhaps enough the self-contradictory portmanteau as to verge on solecism. Still, that's awfully prescriptive of you. I mean, like, what, you're going to be all French about the English language? No, no, no. For myself, I stand fast by my lexical defense of that woman on the right, as I cleave myself somewhat irreligiously, but with great anxiousness, to a more organic and descriptive view of linguistic usage. I feel relatively confident that history will redeem her for such minor deprecations of the English language, as I believe it will forgive me, hopefully at least, for my usage in this paragraph of the exquisitely banal "I mean, like," two autoantonyms (fast & cleave), and at least six words of which I'm aware that merit the disputed usage label. Cheers.
http://www.answers.com/topic/list-of-english-words-with-disputed-usage
Lets see: It doesnt matter if you are taking pictures of the homeless. No matter where it is the party scene is so self-involved and superficial its almost like they are mocking the homeless anyway with their apathy. I feel like Mark's photography is more of an art form than Bronques. I remember when Bronques was first starting out and the pictures were horrid. For people who do not know about Mark's aritistic backing, Shepard Fairey was mentoring him in the beginning you fuck faces. My ex (an artist)is friends with him and Shepard and they are both incredibly offensive but incredibly brilliant artists. That is part of the genius. Neither of them is kicking homeless people, because thats not the point. The point is to make an ass out of everyone. And everyone does it so well! You can only see the decadence and apathy when coupled against homelessness. This is partly a nod to low brow art but also a general disregard for all of humanity. Which I think is fucking brilliant. Not that I like my ex, but I respect their work and I like Mark and I think that you are taking his photography the wrong way. Political correctness is always in danger of destroying art. Something has been terribly altered in its translation across America. Save the criticism for Bronques, because his side of the game obviously doesnt understand the art. And I will put my fucking name on here because Im sticking by my word.
To get things straight Mark runs Cobrasnake,com used to be polaroidscene.com He lives in LA and sometimes gets paid to travel a shitload of places taking his pictures, unlike Bronques. Bronques started a few years after Mark, 3 or 4 (*not sure). Bronques however is not a creepy middle-aged man, as someone described. He runs lastnightsparty.com He is based in New York. They are both just as decent as you and me when you or me is coked up or drunk as fuck.
"Irregardless" isn't a word. And you"joke" isn't funny.
"Irregardless" isn't a word. And your "joke" isn't funny.
not funny
Homeless people are just like us without the home.
homeless people suck dick for free