Re: [Leica] Leica Users digest V5 #7

["William H. Cassing" <wcassing@elkgrove.net>]

>I would like to hear some the the ways fellow luggers "make
>themselves invisible".

This may not really apply here, but I had an interesting experience in San
Francisco recently.

I was down by the wharf.  An older man was plying the crowd with a game of
Three Card Monte, moving along the street as needed to avoid the patrolling
police officers.  He had just taken a mark, a young man, for (according to
the mark) about $80.  The mark began yelling, demanding repayment and
generally making an obnoxious fool of himself.  When the crowd would not
support him (people told him that nobody had forced him to lay his money
down), he made the even more stupid mistake of grabbing the man running the
game.  He was immediately surrounded by three or four other people who
looked like they would have no qualms about ending the threat to their
friend in an extremely prejudicial manner.  A large gentleman stepped out of
the crowd with a Nikon F5 and began taking pictures of the "discussion"
between the parties.  He did so boldly, but in a non-threatening manner.
Seeing the camera, the card dealer and his friends disappeared.  An
undercover policeman appeared, pulled the mark aside and told him that the
gentleman with the camera had probably just saved his life.  I talked to the
photographer.  He told me that he had done what he needed to do with the
full knowledge that his actions put him in danger, but also with the
awareness that his overt action might well diffuse the situation.  A very
wise and a very brave man.  Maybe there's a lesson here somewhere.