Today I went to Central. I figured it would be easier to scope out the business district when nobody's doing business. But I forgot...when the businessmen aren't working on a Sunday, neither are their house keepers. Every place I went, every flat surface that could hold 4 to 5 people was being used as a picnic area for Filipino laborers, the wildly vast majority of whom were female. like, fifty women for every man. It was amazing. I had read about Filipino migrant workers using the open, if barren, business courtyards, atriums, whatever as meeting places, but I had no idea the scale would be so immense. Imagine if downtown Manhattan was about one and a half as big as it is now. Now imagine is every Mexican laborer showed up to chill in small groups of four to eight, for the entire day. It was actually really awesome. Everyone was laughing and playing card games, eating homemade food, some were getting their nails done (which I guess goes to show not everyone gets the day off), by city hall there was an amateur dance competition. It was really nice to see so many people bonding in such a public space. I could imagine some kind of future scenario where Americans could be doing something similar in some foreign place ("I for one welcome our new X overlords" [points if you know what I'm talking about]), feeling at home in some kind of distant community (I guess I'm in a better place to be sympathetic to immigrants). There's supposed to be an ethnography of these women, now I want to find it.
The rest of the day was pretty uneventful. I found a couple of examples, but I'm going to have to reshoot since I had lousy light and fucked up the examples at HSBC. Not to mention virtually all my photos have Filipino migrant workers in them. Not that I'm complaining about the Filipino-ness, its just distracting to have eighty people sitting in the street (yes the street) behind it. At least I eliminated a bunch of sites, there's actually fewer examples than I expected. I was going to back tomorrow for the peak anyway, I'll just get up a little earlier and see if I can correct myself.
I just feel like I walked a hell of a lot today and didn't get very far. Sigh, whatever, tomorrow is another day. I guess its leveling out for two good day before. Plus I'll get to see SoHo, so yay, Chinese art.
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