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Every Sunday El Rastro is a frenetic, bustling entity. Stretching down from Metro Latina to the Grand Arch of the "Ronda de Toledo", the vast mass of browsing tourists, rickety stalls and hard bargaining locals sprawls so far in every direction that it seems a disservice to label it a street market. One can get quite literally anything here; from Moleskin Notebooks, replica football shirts, various "natural" cosmetics and questionably authentic antiques. The prices are on the right side of decent, but surprisingly it isn't the place to bargain. I picked up a military surplus jacket for 15 euro and though I attempted a fairly pathetic ploy of pretending I only had a tenner (if that stapel of British slang can be successfully applied to the euro), the stallholder would accept nothing less.

Pickpocketing a Pickpocket

James Taylor
2006-08-23 12:07:07

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I left my Father to investigate the shirts, while I attempted to take covert photos of the passing crowd. (BTW this is the ONLY way I can get good photos of people. I am too shy to just walk up to someone and ask for their photo, and this kind of destroys the candour of the moment. I also don't have the balls to just blatantly take pictures of a stranger, so I often have to attempt a covert shot. Most of the time, either the photo turns out awfully or the person spots me and I just look stupid. How do real photographers do it? I have no idea.)

A few seconds later I became aware of a disturbance in my peripheral vision.

In situations like this my brain seems to work extremley slowly, like it is stuck in glue, The neurons need time to fire or somethingFortunately time seems to slow down correspondingly, it's probably the adrenalin.

Me:

"Oh look, there's a disturbance of some kind over by that shirt stall".

"Some sleazy looking spanish guys are running around and shouting".

"They seem to be patting some poor guy's jeans with great vigour".

"That poor guy is my Father"

"Why are they patting his Jeans?"

"Fuck, this can't be good"

"Are they hurting him?"

"No, they aren't hurting him."

"They must be after his money"

"I should probably warn him. "

"I've heard about this kind of scam before somewhere".

"How the hell does
Reading on a Bench Full Image
it work again"

"The victim is distracted while someone else makes off with the wallet"

"So who's got the wallet?. "

"Shit, that guy with the sunglasses is holding a wallet behind his back."

"He hasn't seen me."

"I'll go for it"

(time speeds up again an everything seems to happen at once.)

I grab for the wallet and it comes ...