On Monday the 12th, Lionel, Chris and Shane our organizers, went to Parow to go arrange a load of guys to photograph with Whity the white gangster who lives in Woodstock area near town. All was arranged and Whity was really excited to make some money in exchange for arranging these guys. Lionel arranged to pick him up in Parow
On Tuesday morning which was yesterday and then together they would drive to Woodstock to arrange the gangsters. Lionel waited in parow for about 1 hour and then got a message that Whity had drank to much the night before and no one could find him.
I was really disappointed because we only had 3 days left of shooting and we still need around 80 gangsters. It was also a beautiful sunny day and i know that the weather forecast mentioned rain on its way. Lionel then spoke to one of his old friends who happens to be a drug dealer in Cape Town and he said that he can get us hundreds of guys, and that at 1pm he would call Lionel to arrange a meeting point. We were super excited but i wasnt convinced, because we have been let down day after day by guys and i was really stressed about our end target amounts and dates. We all gathered at Charlie's Bakery for an hour while we waited. Then Lionel got a call from his friend who said he didnt have time to see people until 2 pm. So we waited for another hour. Then Lionel tried phoning him again and he didnt pick up, typical i thought, another disappointment once again.
Lionel's phone rang and to my surprise it was Pella, the organizer ! He told us that Kaptein ( pella's partener ) will be arranging all the guys for us. We collected him and we drove straight out to the taxi station just before the N1 freeway, which is a usual group point for gangsters, we arrived and there was no one there, still disappointed and watching my watch as the day ticked by, we arrived in Athlone, and thats where the magic power of connections took place.
Kaptein saw gangsters on the side of the road and told them that they are taking pictures and thats it. He seemed to have a really high authority over these guys. Whenever another gangster was talking shit he would walk right up to them, and tell them to fuck off. We managed to get some real characters that day. After shooting 8 guys in Athlone within 30 min, we moved onto Hanover park where he pulled 2 guys from a group .
We then headed back to his house in Woodstock where we did portraits of him up against a really cool graffiti wall. I was really impressed with Lionel's new contact.
We spoke about shooting today, and they said they were taking us to the dodgy location of Lavendar Hill, which was recently on TV for being a really dangerous area. But these guys that we are with are very well connected in that area so its no problem. They worked out that they can arrange about 80-100 gangsters. I was over the moon.
So today, we woke up at 6am and after i switched off my alarm, i heard the sound of cars driving through water outside. I checked out the window and honestly after 3 weeks of sunshine our second last day of shooting is rained out! Its cold, its windy and pissing with rain! FUCK! But even though it was pissing down, Lionel and Pella were determined to shoot. So we got a call at around 11 am telling us to come down to Essex Road in Woodstock asap to start shooting. We arrived and started shooting while it was still raining, we managed to get a female gangster as well, which was a bonus. We then moved to such a dodgy location, probably the worst so far. It was down by beach road near the Armoury Building in Woodstock. We drove through a couple of gates and saw a group of black foreigners ( bonga boys - Somalians i think) standing around a tyre burning, that they were using for warmth. This was actually the Heroin area, where they deal with Heroin. The guys we were with are so high up that when one of the Somalians tried to come near us, the other Somalian grabbed him and said to leave these people alone because our Gang were more powerful in that area.
We gathered a great group of gangsters and one extra chick gangster as well. Then the rain became to heavy and we were soaking wet and forced to stop shooting. As we got in the car one of the guys ran up to my window getting angry because our organizer had only paid him a small amount and he wanted more, within seconds our organizer was by my window and smashed the other gangsters to the ground. The rain was so bad we could hardly get out of the location because of all the mud.
We then went home and got a call about 2 hours later, rushing us to yet another loaction for a few more guys. We went to another shack kind of area in Woodstock where we managed to shoot a general of one of the gangs. We also managed to shoot a gangster with a axe, i love when they pull out there weapons as it just adds so much character to our shoot. Once we finished there we traveled to another location in Salt River, through a set of gates, inside the area was a building that had about 20 gangsters (Jukkie's ) in that were hiding out with a large stash of drugs, waiting for pickup. After that location we headed to another area in Woodstock, that use to be filled with gangsters, but since the head rasta died a few months ago the area has become quite quiet. We headed inside and its a bricked out area with brick panel walls where the leftover gangsters sleep. There were 2 chick gangsters, the one was an american. They seemed as hard as rocks . The one explained that she pulled out her front teeth because she gives blowjobs as a business. The other one was a white woman with blue eyes, which looked as if she had done way to many drugs in the past and probably still does.
We also managed to get a shot of a gangster with his puppy, Tyson.
So even though today was the day that we had the worst weather and rain, we managed to pull strings and shot a total of 30 gangsters. Tomorrow we are going into Lavendar hill ! so good luck to us ! Tomorrow will be our second last day i think.
