Ape Shall Never Kill Ape

It started with a hangover. But there's some other stuff you'll probably want to know first, so we'll get to the hangover in a minute.

Murder and mayhem is what I do. It pays my rent and puts food on the table. No I don't kill people. I take pictures for a living. The more blood, the more tears, the more fire, the more wreckage in it -- the better. In the media world, its technically called covering "spot" or "breaking" news. I call it covering the street.

New York City is my beat, and my home. I grew-up in the Bronx and, after being caught in a wave of what academics call "white flight" in the late1970s, Yonkers -- a first-ring suburb along the Bronx's northern border. After a long absence, I returned to the City in 2003 to finish college. On a gray day late last May, with the clouds spitting rain from the sky, I snatched my sheepskin from NYU and jumped into the fountain in Washington SquarePark..

I was triumphant, but the exulatation was short-lived: I couldn't find a job.

So my career as a shooter started with a hangover. But that story will have to wait, this entry is too long already.

Picture. Bronx, New York (Soundview): May 10, 2007, In Front of 1145 Noble Avenue, "Ape Shall Never Kill Ape," After Her Step-Father is Shot to Death, A Daughter Tries to Rush Past Police Lines as Her Step-Father's Body is Removed from the Scene and Loaded Into a Morgue Van, But She is Restrained by Kin, Whose T-Shirt Reads "Ape Shall Never Kill Ape."