My most recent The Photo I Didn’t Take:
I’m talking to my wife, Kerrilynn, and Xan Cassavettes yesterday evening at the store when Xan turns around mid sentence and says “holy shit, what’s that?” Directly across the street, curtains are on fire in a ground floor apartment. Like a real fire fire. I run to the building next to the fire and yell “the building next door is on fire.” This building is a police station and everyone inside pretty much takes notice of that immediately. I run out and start banging the window of the apartment on fire as loud as I can. The room is already completely engulfed in orange flames and the window is very very warm to the touch. Note: an air conditioner on fire sounds terrifying. To avoid having my face melted off by exploding freon I run into the vestibule followed by a cop in a spandex shirt whose abs I later notice are so insane they look like a prosthesis. I start hitting all the call buttons to alert the tenants. No one answers. I try kicking the door in. No luck. The super-abs cop yells at other cops, who have now gathered, to start breaking windows. With what I wonder? This is about 60 seconds after Xan first noticed the flames. I run into the store to grab a crow bar out of the tool box but realize the tool box with crow bars in it is downstairs. I try to find something useful. I am running out the front door, back to window, and a cop is smashing the window with either a gun or a walkie talkie. At this point I look down and realize the tool I was going to use to smash the window is the skateboard I am holding. It would have been hilarious if it wasn’t terrifying standing there in the middle of 10th street looking at shit loads of smoke and flames.
The police are breaking windows and shouting for people to stand back as the air conditioner, loudly popping, sounds like it’s gonna blow. Jimmy the super, whom I’ve always wanted to make a portrait of, stumbles out. He’s in his mid 70s and looks like he’s been either napping or hitting the Jameson or possibly both. With a cigarette dangling from his mouth, rumpled clothes askew, he stands in the middle of the street turns his head to the blazing fire and tumbling black smoke 15 feet behind him and pauses for just a second, takes a drag and keeps walking.
I really really really wish I had captured the moment he turned his head.