11feb98
>after i split the bandshell to maybe meet my friends I paused to shoot last digi shot of a
>woman in hockey skates and head phones turning solitary circles on the painted road
>where the rollerdisco ring will be when the weather is warmer. We got to talking and I
>ended up shooting a roll of 400 of her as we talked about life and being happy today.
>Maybe you know her, she posed for the 98 Rb catalog--Ilena Adamos. Her body is the
>she-equivalent of Chet. Never seen anything like it. I'm going to shoot Chet and Ilena
>semi-nude all over manhattan. I have discussed it with both parties and both partires are
>amenable to the concept.
The above is from an email I sent to someone to describe the climax of my morning. I hope I haven't ruined today's story by divulging the end.
I actually had to be somewhere this morning--Central Park Boathouse, 8:30 am, to shoot ancillary photos at a marketing stunt where bigwigs were to be driven through the park in chartered buses as fashion automata skated, pedaled, ran, dribbled, sparred, and rode beautiful horses that kept shitting in the road. Due to dead batteries I was delayed, but so of course were the VIPs so I got there in plenty of time to photograph Central Park's bad boy dance skaters.

We saw
Kevin Bacon
inline skatin'
with a
big white
helmet on.
After some practice runs and a whole lot of standing around, the sports safari buses entered the compound and the menagerie performed on cue. Their recompense? $100 for what amounted to three hours' work, if you can call skating around an 18-year-old JVC Biphonic boombox  work.

The buses came, escorted by Park Police and a pack (pod? gaggle?) of bicycle riders who threw their arms up in the air as if they'd ALL just won the Tour de France, the skaters reciprocating. After the cyclists and speed skaters passed, the dancers (on inlines and quads in roughly equal numbers) weaved between the buses causing them to brake as delighted passengers smiled and pointed.
OVERHEARD
" Two production assistants outside the Central Park Boathouse reception hall after the VIPs had been off-loaded to attend breath-taking news of Tommy Hilfiger's new sports cologne, Active Ingredient:
"Somebody just decided Kareem Abdul Jabar needs a sweatshirt."
"I brought him an XL. That's as big as they come."
"Then what am I doing out here?"
Afterwards, over coffee, the dancers discussed broken promises and memory upgrades, Bill Gates's enormous wealth and the good news about the Roxy (10th Ave and 18th St; it used to be called 1018) bringing back its Tuesday night skate when for so long only Wednesdays were left for the best dance skaters in New York to strut their stuff. As usual, the New York talk turned to the allegedly inferior West Coast style.

I continued with Joey, Felix Santiago, and the inimitable Steve Kay to the Bandshell area above Bethesda Terrace, right at the end of Poets Row (which, incidentally, Chet tells me at the beginning of this century was a popular gay cruise known as VaselineTM Alley).
They skated around some, posed for tourists, and then Joey asked me how much it would cost to start a commercial foot fetish website b/c that is something he himself loves. I told him $1,500. What else could I say? 
And all this just prelude to what you already know--I met Ilena (ill-ya-nuh). I think I'll remember her some other time, like when I get back the pictures I made (as DoubleTake puts it) of her pirouetting in hockey skates and headphones on the painted road where when the weather is warmer boomin' sound systems and bongos