Looking for the heart of Saturday night...
Is the crack of the poolballs, neon buzzin? | Telephone's ringin'; it's your second cousin | And the barmaid is smilin' from the corner of her eye | Magic of the melancholy tear in your eye.
I think I found it. The heart of Saturday night, that is. Having followed Farrago's lead and opened an album, I decided to try out my camera on a rain-slick Main Road glowing neon under the light of the night. I tried out various shots and angles, was almost run down several times, and settled for a quiet picture.
While I was fiddling about with my camera, mindful of muggers, a whore was giving a client hell at the gas station across the road. Not being a natural-born business type, I paid her no mind. Eventually, cursing to the clouds and the night, she marched off down Main Road. She was promptly stopped by a cop van and, keeping my distance, I shot off a couple of photographs of the ensuing animated discussion.
In the minute following midnight on New Years' Eve, a pedestrian went through the windscreen of a car at the same spot. Had I a camera back then, I'd have filed a story for the local citizen's rag. Take the shots, get the facts, put them together and mail it off by sunrise on the first day of another year in Circus City.
The police left the whore, made a U-turn and headed my way. Two cops, a male and a female, climbed out of the van and aggressively asked me what I thought I was doing, invading their privacy. I could have explained something of the law to them, but opted for decorum and politeness instead.
"I'm just trying out this camera, Inspector," I offered in response. "I've been taking pictures for about half-an-hour."
"Ja, well, you can't. It's an invasion of privacy. You must ask permission first."
Remembering New Year, I answered, "Well, not really. I mean, were I a reporter filing a story..."
"Ja, that doesn't matter. Even if you want to put this in the newspaper, you must ask our permission."
You argue with these buggers at your peril. You explain basic law to them at great cost. I didn't want to lose the camera or spend the rest of the weekend in the local holding cells.
"Listen, I've no intention of putting any pictures in the paper. I'm just trying out this camera." I proceeded to cycle through earlier shots, showing him the results.
"Ja, you see? There you have pictures of us."
"They're what I'm showing you," I muttered, reiterating the blindingly obvious. Perking up, I explained, "You see how that one's blurred? It's because I'm not using a flash and get some camera shake."
I continued in that vein. "You widen the aperture and slow the shutter speed—you can see the effect in the display; let me just click this..."
He fast started to lose interest. Before giving me up as a lost cause, though, his sidekick asked me my name and address and they left, having given me a verbal warning.
On Thursday...
Shoppers ran for their lives when bloody warfare between two rival Cape Flats gangs spilled over into a crowded Wynberg shopping mall. The confrontation, between members of rival Hanover Park gangs the Ghetto Kids and the Americans, began outside the magistrate's court where a gang leader was appearing on Thursday. It then spilled into the streets and the busy Maynard Mall.The Magistrates' Courts, a short way down the road from us, are teeming with cops. None stopped the battle.
Three men were stabbed. They were identified only as "Pa" - stabbed six times along his spine and now in a critical condition in hospital - and "Ernie" and "Kleintjie", who were admitted to hospital after being treated by paramedics at the scene of the battle.Adjacent to Kenilworth Centre, Access Park is a local discount or factory shop complex. I dropped my daughter and her boyfriend off there early this morning. Leafy suburbia gets to see it all these days.
All three were members of the notorious Ghetto Kids gang, who, with fellow gang members, had attended a Wynberg magistrate's court hearing. Mogamat Wasiem Dollie, 23, of Salt River, a leader of the Ghetto Kids, was in court in connection with the gunning down of Americans leader Gavin Atkins at Access Park in Kenilworth.
Police raced to the scene as the three Ghetto gang members fled towards the nearby Main Road. Witnesses say gangsters caught up with the man named as "Pa" close to the court, stabbing him six times in the back. They then chased after the other two, catching up with "Kleintjie" in Main Road and stabbing him in the chest.Our cops are understaffed, underpaid and under-trained. But when they start hassling me for taking photographs outside my home, it really pisses me off. If I walked the mile from here to Claremont, I could probably score you hash, crack, heroin and a handgun without working up a sweat.
The third man, "Ernie", managed to run into the mall and called for help from the shopping centre's security guards before running into a shop, the Crazy Store, and slamming the door shut behind him, according to a witness. But his pursuers forced open the door and chased him through the shop, where they stabbed him as he cowered in one of the aisles.
I'd probably have to do it twice, because some josters would probably relieve me of the first load within twenty minutes.
Okay, this might sound like the bleating of an old man. It is and it isn't. Even were the cops just checking up on me, they were bloody aggressive. More to the point, I had cause to report serious crime to them in the past, and they did bugger all about it. I mean that. Bugger all.
When they do take a case to court, as in the Zuma case, the complainant is treated abysmally and stripped of whatever dignity she might have had left to her. Short-staffed the police and justice system may be, but when they're bloody rude for no reason at all, I'm going to get pissed off at them.
A bit of peace and quiet is all I ask from the heart of Saturday night.
Makes it kind of special down in the core | And you're dreamin' of them Saturdays that came before | It's found you stumblin' | Stumblin' onto the heart of Saturday night | And you're stumblin' | Stumblin onto the heart of Saturday night
Tom Waits | (Looking For) The Heart of Saturday Night
Note: The photograph album now attached to this blog is a really nifty innovation. I'll add a permanent link to it shortly. Hmm... it reminds me of something I read over at Mark Woods's blog the other day:
"All of our inventions and progress seem to result in endowing material forces with intellectual life, and stultifying human life into a material force."
I'll be 40 percent dumber by Tuesday. Thanks to Karl Marx. Mind you, Yann Martel says:
"Words, processed, become images; images, processed, become words. A neat, essential balance, whose fulcrum is the versatile eye."
Sheez... who can you trust these days?
