To Catch a Peeping Tom in Union Square
Normal Bob Smith is the Margaret Mead of Union Square Park. He is an artist who lives in Bushwick and comes to the park everyday to document the vagrants, drifters, street preachers, and free-hug-givers who hang out there. In the process, he has put together an extraordinarily extensive guide to the Square's peeping toms, upon whom he meta-peeps while they are ogling innocent ladies' panties. Above, an old guy pretends to be a confused tourist preoccupied with his phone, while wandering the park with a video-enabled camera held at crotch level.
In peeping the peepers, Normal Bob becomes tinged with a halo creepiness, the unwitting antecedent to some sort of "First they peeped the peepers, but I was not a peeper so I did not freak out" parable. (He's doing a public service documenting the peepers' methods, but he's also tacitly observing multi-hour peep sessions, watching unknowing victims come and go.) On that note, Inside Edition will soon air an episode where they collaborate with Normal Bob to confront the Union Square peepers, To Catch a Predator-style. But who will peep on the peepers of peeper peepers?! Somewhere, the National Enquirer is reading its To Catch a Chris Hansen crew. Peep. [Cityroom, Amazing Strangers]