Jade Castrinos, a 19-year-old American Apparel employee and singer,
arrives at the office. Castrinos is one of Hunter's most recognizable
muses. His camera has captured her dancing, eating fast food, playing in
the ocean, jumping, kicking, brushing her teeth, climbing out of fair
rides, whipping her hair about and squeezing into a clothes dryer while
smoking a cigarette among other things.
In one picture, Castrinos is in a food aisle at a convenience store. She
is jumping high into the air, her legs tucked underneath her, her hair
an explosion. She is wearing tiny shorts and worn-down cowboy boots, the
very image of hip, rock 'n' roll bliss.
Hunter seems to feed off Castrinos' energy.
As the interview progresses, she sits against a wall with a giant piece
of bubble gum squeezed between her teeth. She pulls the ends of it down
away from the sides of her mouth to create a long stretchy glob of goo,
while Hunter goes behind a table to change into a pair of gleaming white
Diesel jeans, a gift.
"What are you doing?" Hunter asks flirtatiously.
"Science project," she manages to say through the gum.
"We got to take a picture of that," Hunter says, quickly snapping a few
pictures with one hand while adjusting his belt with the other.
*
On the Scene
The night starts at the Roosevelt Hotel for Mark "The Cobra Snake" Hunter.
He has parlayed connections to make it inside a Teen Vogue party,
poolside. There is a red carpet and paparazzi gantlet through which
Paris Hilton, Nicole Ritchie and other celebrities walk.
It's only 9 p.m., so the party is sparsely peopled. Castrinos has a Red
Bull and a cigarette. Hunter is surveying the scene. There are large
see-through beach balls floating on the pool. White leather ottomans are
spread about with glass cocktail tables propped up by glittery disco
balls.
Bored, Hunter decides to head to the Bloc Party concert at the
Palladium. He and Castrinos plan on returning to the Teen Vogue party
and then make it to Cinespace just as the night reaches its peak.
While mulling through this, he finds himself standing near a tall,
gorgeous woman who has turned away from her conversation with a pair of
men in dark jackets and is looking directly at Hunter.It seems obvious
that the woman wants her picture taken.
"I know," Hunter says, declining to lift his camera. "Sometimes I don't like giving in to that."
Although he hesitates to admit it, Hunter is in some way an arbiter of
fashion. He takes pictures of people who are extremely attractive,
extremely unattractive or extremely well dressed. They wear outfits that
look as though they belong in the fashion spreads of magazines like
Flaunt or Nylon, but seem far more natural and casually perfect.
"When I go to a club, I'm not telling people what they should wear,"
Hunter explains. "But I know for a fact various trend research companies
have been stealing my photos for presentations."
But it is more than what people are wearing that draws visitors to the
site. It is what the pictures represent, the life of the party, of the
seen and be seen, of being young, cool and intoxicated.
Hunter receives e-mails from people in far-off world cities, among them
Mexico City and Moscow, who plead with him to come party with them. He
gets messages from far less urbane American locales, including South
Carolina, expressing envy at his lifestyle.
"I was just wondering," writes a viewer on the website's "Hot Email
Action" section, "what are the qualifications to make it on your site?"
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