This is Mdian Jon. I was coming
home from the July Critical
Mass cycle demo and was passing by Camden Town Hall near King's Cross
when I saw that there was a Hare Krishna festival going on nearby. Jon
was sitting outside the hall in a doorway and I asked to take a pic of
him/her. I say "him/her" because Jon is a winkte
(Jon felt uncomfortable with the words "transexual" or "hermaphrodite"
as "...they don't adequately describe me as I am".) and Although Jon wears
a sari, you'll notice in the pics that he/she has Native American jewellery
(as Jon's part Asian, part Native American). In Native American culture,
winktes held a special place in local tribes as shamens
due to being of indeterminate gender. Jon gave me the name of a book on
the subject, but I lost the paper on which he wrote the title. I had an
interesting conversation with Jon (who incidentally works with people with
terminal illnesses, helping them on their way to whatever it is that lies
on the other side of death) and found out things I wouldn't usually know
about certain subjects.
Here's a rainbow on Holloway
Road. I got this pic on my way home from the festival
that was on Upper St. earlier in the day. I like how the rainbow's brightness
contrasts with the drabness of the street (note how bright the sky is inside
the rainbow, but grey and dank outside it).
Here's an old pic I took years
ago down of Chuck D and Flavor Flav of Public Enemy on the stage at Brixton
Academy, supporting Run-DMC (pre-Jason Nevins!) along with EPMD, Stetsasonic
plus Derek B (remember him?) and Pop Will Eat Itself from the UK (or "Pee
Wee", as I remember an American hip-hopper waiting outside the venue call
'em). Click on the pic to get a larger one to peek at.
Keeping with the musical theme,
I took a short cut through Highbury Fields coming home from work, when
I saw a group of outrageously dressed people with thick Welsh accents nearby.
I walked up to one of them and asked what was happening. it turned out
that they were all Manic Street Preachers fans
on a convention (I didn't anyone
there with "4 Real" carved into their arms mercifully!).
I got this pic when I saw trance
techno group Tribal Drift down Dingwalls in Camden a few weeks aback. I
discovered them by chance while looking through a pile of old 12" singles
in a charity shop and finding one of theirs amongst them and I quite liked
what I heard.
I got these pics coming
home from the Jagannath
Ratha Yatra festival down Battersea Park. The first one's of
some busking musicians in Trafalgalar Square, while the other one
is of some roller bladers leaping off ramps also in Trafalgar Square that
evening.
I got this pic in a park near Kensington Palace on the night before Princess
Di's funeral. I wasn't at all moved by events following her death (I cracked
a joke to an ex-girlfriend about Princess Di in a coffin while we on a
tube train during the "week of grief", and got threatening stares from
a man opposite us reading 'The Daily Telegraph' as a result), but I went
along all the same just to see what all the fuss was over. I personally
it found very disturbing to see people crying for someone they didn't really
know, but strangely curious at the same time too. Will the same scenes
be repeated when the Queen or her mother dies? I doubt it (and indeed, it wasn't).
If you're wondering what's written under the Queen of hearts card stuck on the tree, it said,
"To Di - pick of the pack! Rest in peace" (has she been so lucky? You decide!).