NODDING OUT ON SMACK CHRISTMAS MORNING & STEROID ADDICT

SKINNY
Is it wrong for me to do documentary filming? OK, this IS depressing, sorry: I was walking the dog about 9 or 10 am Christmas morning on 2nd street between ave. B & C and from far away I saw some poor young man clearly nodding out on heroin. Avenue C and 3rd street used to be the spot to score - I'd like to say back in the day, but it wasn't that long ago. The needle exchange was on C between 3rd and 4th. This neighborhood's radical facelift and present astronomical rents and spoiled young white tenants have made it so that you would never see any reminder of what the Lower East Side (formerly Alphabet City) used to be like. I rarely see all out junkies in Manhattan anymore. I saw this kid from far away and I always have my camera prepared and ready to shoot in my left pocket, set with a fast option of either still or film, so I just hit film and walked towards him. You can't see his face. After I passed him he got up and tried to walk and looked like he would injure himself and I was going to go try and help him, but I might not have been able to and just left it alone. I did feel badly for him. I mean it was Christmas morning.

MUSCLED
Perhaps it's the fast pace of the camera moving towards the person that makes it look so exploitive, but it's just me walking towards a person. I made a similar video this summer following this guy on 14th street. He was electric red and on so much crystal and steroids that I thought he was going to pop. Waiting for the light he could not keep still and was breathing like an asthmatic dragon. So I just followed him a little and filmed him. You can't really see how puffed he was from behind or how much his gait was distorted in the video, but I entitled it "Man On Steroids Tries To Walk". I love that he makes it by a traffic cone. Some steroid fan with a twisted pro steroid site in Croatia posted it and it got tons of hits. 7,000 hits later I have hateful comments from roid heads either defending him, hating on me, being homophobic towards me and/or saying that the guy would "destroy me" (?!) or that I was out of shape and jealous (as if!). Once again you can't see the guys face. I don't think either of these videos are so insidious.