Don't Night Crawl Alone:

This is going to be one of those do as I say, not as I do, kind of moments. It's one thing to go out late at night in a place you call home or that you're familiar with. It's another to wander around one of the most well known cities in the world, by yourself, from midnight until 3:00AM. Don't get me wrong, I had lots of fun doing it but I probably will never do it again. Probably.

So let's just start with WHY I ran around Barcelona in the middle of the night, by myself, with my camera and my tripod. Well first off, I like taking long exposure shots. You get some interesting shots when you're taking pictures of empty places that are typically filled with humans. Occasionally someone does walk by and you get cool motion blur since the iris of your camera is generally open for fifteen to thirty seconds at a time. I've taken some of my favorite photographs at night.

There was another reason. I'm kind of obsessed with this street artist named Invader. If you've ever seen the documentary "Exit Through the Gift Shop" which features Banksy then you know who I'm talking about. Invader is the cousin of or somehow related to Mr. Brainwash (another street artist and the one who initially filmed this documentary). He does mosaics all around the world but mostly in Paris. He started by duplicating video game characters, as street art, from the old video game Space Invaders. This is what got him the name Invader. So I was out looking for a few of the pieces he had placed in Barcelona.

The final reason I was alone is that my friend Jeff, who happened to be in Barcelona with me, was sick. I don't know if it's me or something else but Jeff always seems to get sick when we travel together. It's really weird. I only had one night left before flying home so I wanted to make the most of it. With Jeff fast asleep, trying to recover, I sucked in some caffeine and headed out for the night. My night crawling adventures had begun!

Barcelona is a pretty cool town. The Gothic and Gaudi style architecture is breathtaking. It's another one of these places that you can just get lost in by wandering up and down streets. There are so many things to see, honestly, but my favorite thing to do is wander. Or go looking for Invader artwork which sometimes requires that you wander. Most the time though I have a Google map which some genius out there created that marks every location where you can find an Invader. So that's what I was doing. I was following this map, alone and at night, looking for street art.

After much walking I found one! Well really I just followed the Google map where it had been marked but still, I found it. You can barely see it in this photo. Towards the top, just to the right of the street sign, there is a very small blue mosaic of a typical pixelated 8-bit Space Invaders character. So first I took a picture of it with the app on my phone. Oh, yeah, there's an app on the phone. Did I mention that? It's basically a game where you find one, you take a picture of it, and then you get a score. I'm obsessed. There will be many more posts to come about Invader. I once took a trip to a random town in Italy JUST to find Invaders but I digress.

So I snap a photo with my phone, log it in the app and go to set up my tripod for a long exposure shot. As I'm doing this scooters are passing by, cars are squeezing down narrow alleys and some random creepy dude starts, well, creeping on me. One of the biggest warnings I've ever had when visiting a city is to keep an eye on pickpockets in Barcelona. If this guy was a pickpocket he wasn't very subtle. The dude looked like he wanted to molest me. I say that to be humorous but that's really how he looked and I'm actually not so sure he wouldn't have given the opportunity to do so.

One of the best things about my small travel tripod is it also seconds for a weapon! You see I carry it around on my shoulder or hang it down at my side, tripod head out, so that anyone who even thinks about messing with me sees I ain't playing around. If you come at me I won't even hesitate to lay that thing upside your head. I talk big but you should know I'm a huge baby and would cry myself to sleep if something like that ever happened.

So I'm crouched down framing up my shot and getting the settings locked in while this guy is slowly approaching me from behind. I see him. I take the picture and turn around looking right at him. That creepy grin he was shining is not making me feel warm and fuzzy. I take another photo and he takes one step closer. I look back at him again, his eyes lock with mine. I take one more photo because apparently I like dancing with the devil. This dude is still, ever so slowly, getting closer and closer to me. Photo finishes, I get up and throw that tripod right over my shoulder. I head straight down the nearest path and glare this guy down like he's just threatened my first newborn.

So at this point I definitely feel like my life had been endangered. Maybe I'm WAY over exaggerating. It's not like he pulled a knife on me or anything. Still, I felt like I had just escaped from a narrow situation that could have easily turned out not so good. Probably time to go home, right? WRONG! One more Invader to find before I can call it a night and I'm not giving up. When's the next time I'll be in Barcelona? No clue. So I need to find this thing tonight. Plus, one of the unfortunate realities about street art is that they don't last forever. Many of the pieces I've tried to find have been removed or torn down due to some building renovation. Barcelona alone had about 75% of the original Invaders removed. So I wasn't calling it a night until I had me some points in FlashInvaders (the app is called FlashInvaders, check it out).

Guess what? I'm a straight up G, dawg! I had to walk over a mile to get this one but eventually I found it. I couldn't believe it was still there. He had placed it at the foot of the entrance to one of the major museums in Barcelona. It was so embedded into the concrete I don't know how they'd even remove it. I don't know how he got it there! Doesn't matter though, I found it, got the points in FlashInvader and got myself a nice little picture of it. By this time my feet were killing me. I had literally walked from one side of the Gothic district to the other. It must have been 2:00AM at this point so I was pretty much ready to head home. The adventure was not over yet though!

I'm about to cross a road where the traffic had died off completely. Not a car in sight. I sometimes take these opportunities to get a shot of a road or a tunnel. Usually these spots are filled with cars but when they're not it's a unique moment and I like to capture it. So I'm about to cross the street when I hear a man screaming what I can only guess were obscenities. I don't know for sure though because I couldn't understand him. I look to my right and here comes a guy on a bike. It looks like he had just started peddling because not too far behind, chasing him, was this guy who was yelling in Spanish. To him he was just yelling but to me it could have been in Portuguese, I wouldn't know the difference.

Looking back on it I wish I had done something albeit I had no clue what was being said. Given the frantic nature of the man running and the intense look of the guy riding away from him, my first guess is that he had stolen this mans bike. I don't know though, I'm just watching all this go down with no frame of reference. My tripod could have easily been thrown into the bike spokes and sent him flying. Then again, it would have sent him flying and I didn't really know what was happening. I didn't have enough information to act. I would have loved to be this man's hero! Imagine, finally I am able to use my tripod as a weapon of sorts and for a very noble cause. Unfortunately though, having no clue what was happening, I couldn't risk injuring someone I didn't know and for no just cause.

I wish the ending of this story had a better finish! I wish it was more exciting but that was really it. These two sped passed me, one riding and the other chasing, and I watched them go. I took a photo of the empty street, looked at my watch and decided I needed to get some rest. If I recall correctly I had a very early taxi ride to the airport the next morning. In fact I don't even think I went to bed. I'm pretty sure I hightailed it back just so I could pack my bags. The lesson for me though is to drag along a friend. Get a buddy, someone who can watch your back while you crawl through the night. What would have happened if that dude had jumped me or I got into an altercation with a bike thief? I'm happy to report that neither of those things happened but playing it safe is always the right call.

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