I recently watched a super-duper charming documentary about a former Wrong Side of the Camera all star, Bill Cunningham.  It was called “Bill Cunningham New York.”  When they make a similar documentary about me, it will be called “Wrong Side of the Camera Boston.”  Use my first and last name?  As if.

As if I wasn’t already jealous and fascinated by a man who has my dream job, but the documentary showed a lot more of him.  I mean he doesn’t exactly reveal a lot about himself, but who cares.  We have the images for that.  I was however interested to find out that he shoots with a small Nikon film camera with what looks like a wide angle on it.  I don’t know which part was more shocking. The fact that it was a Nikon, a film camera or for a person whose stock in trade is shooting people surreptitiously, he doesn’t have a camera that looks like a high powered bazooka.  I’m not criticizing the guy.  I own the junior sized version of that.

Bill Cunningham has a wonderful line in the movie where he says “the greatest fashion show is one on the street.  Always has been, always will be.”  I’ve long had a fascination with fashion and style and I notice a lot of the time what people wear.  Bill spends a lot of time on shape and line.  The guy does photograph all kinds of people wearing all of crazy things.  I photograph people wearing all kinds of crazy stuff.  He wears a blue coat everyday.  I wear a red coat sometimes.  I love photography, he loves photography.  We are almost the same.

I don’t know how Bill Cunningham would react to seeing the following:

This lady stands outside of the Park Street station every single day.  When I say every single day, I mean every single day of the year. I saw her all winter, wearing her trusty garbage bag.  I saw her all summer in this and other get ups from what appears to be her summer collection.  At this point, I am not even sure if she is human.

Next up, something whole hog from the Bill Cunningham play book:

This was highlight of the photo.  By the way, this from some kind of a large pro-pot event held today on Boston Common called Hemp Fest.  Worry not friends, I neither dislike pot nor do I particularly like it.  I was just there to get the images.

Now channeling the voice of my hero, Bill Cunningham, I noticed that the fishnet stockings, as the ones above were particularly in style, as were many hooded numbers:

As were the men’s tank top:

And t-shirts with all kinds of messages on them.  Well, one kind of message:

And many of the gents seemed to favor dreadlocks.  This guy I photographed was a particularly good example:

Now he is wearing two trends at once.  The wacky t-shirt and the dreads.  The whole place, which smelled of the mary jane, seems to have been infused with a fun atmosphere.  That is an overall trend.  Like this lady: