Party Crashing, Photographer Style
He's clearly not in the same league as Priyantha Silva, but there's a party crasher in town who's trying to get on various lists by posing as NYT photographer Bill Cunningham (pictured at right), as this publicist-cum-tipster reports:
Fake Bill called my office a few times about some really strange events in the Fall—things the NYTimes would never cover. Plus, the guy sounded like he was 10 years old. Bill's a little more ... mature. At the time, I remember thinking he was an idiot to try to crash parties as Bill Cunningham. If you are going to crash a party, the LAST person you should pretend to be is Bill Cunningham! Dude should have just pretended to be a wire photog...
Well, it appears that Fake Bill wised up.
Just got a call from a guy who sounded suspiciously like Fake Bill, same voice, same tone, same energetic "hey, you have an event tomorrow night; where's the after-party!" Just way too excited about it to be a real photog, and not even the standard inquiries that real wire photogs are usually concerned with. Anyway, now he says he is Robert Preston from Getty Images. So I turned him down and then called Getty—no Robert Preston there. I don't have Fake Bill's number anymore, and my caller ID said withheld.
