Hanoi’s Beer Street with a Broken Ricoh GR1v

Beer Street, Hanoi. As the name suggests, yes – you can drink beer here. Many beers, in fact, a feat I had evidently achieved this particular evening.

Along with inhaling nitrous – legal in bars in this area – the result was a street photo shoot that took Daido Moriyama’s are, bure, boke to a literal level, and one that attempted to capture the city’s unbridled urban charm on my Ricoh GR1v.

Hanoi exudes frenetic energy: a cacophony of motorcycle engines punctuated by persistent horns, street sellers’ shouting, footpaths onto which merchandise of every kind spills, faux leather belts, fake wallets, tourist t-shirts and kitsch communist collectables.

As the capital of north Vietnam, and the heart of Ho Chi Minh’s fight against French and US imperialism, Commie-Wear remains in vogue with the older generation of ex-revolutionaries.

Akin to Wu-Wear of the mid-90’s, rather than baggy tracksuits and doo-rags, these hardened homies shred Hanoi’s streets on 120cc motorbikes wearing cheap mirrored aviators, cammo army jackets and NVA helmets.

The north Vietnamese specialty pork noodle soup Bún chả and thick, strong egg coffee cà phê trứng are just two Hanoi specialties on offer at any roadside café, replete with those tiny blue-and-red plastic chairs and tables.

Enter Beer Street: a narrow corridor typical of Hanoi’s inner city streets, Beer Street is lined with outdoor seating and small, narrow pubs and clubs, featuring food, booze and nitrous oxide balloons.

For those unfamiliar with nitrous oxide, inhalation of the substance produces a short term high typified by celestial dizziness, euphoric exaltation and acute loss of balance.

Nitrous is known as ‘nangs’ in my home country (Australia), a colloquialism for the sound one hears reverberating through the skull as it is inhaled from whipped cream cannisters purchased from the local grocery store – nang, nang, nang!

In fact, ‘smashing some nangs’ has long been considered an integral part of any Australian youth’s coming of age, despite the dubious legality of the activity.

In Hanoi, however, rather than discreetly purchasing whipped cream cannisters, it is possible to simply order a large balloon filled with nitrous along with your pint of Bia Hơi at any number of bars along Beer Street.

So, with a handful of expired Ilford and Kodak film, I set about the task of documenting this vibrant street photographer’s paradise, albeit under the increasingly inebriating influence of booze and balloons.

For those unaware, I am a comrade in an expired film shooters collective, Los Expiralos, who revel in the haphazard (some say serendipitous) results expired film will generate.

While not expired film purists, our collective does have a penchant for experimentation while also saving a few bucks using old film stock: as our Comandante Martin Misiak always reminds us with a bark: It’s not out of date, it’s vintage!

Beer Street proved an intoxicating photographic experience. With so much noise, movement and flair, it was so overwhelming the aperture dial of my coveted Ricoh GR1v broke off halfway through my shoot.

That my film was not only expired but had been blitzed by more radiation than Bruce Banner in the security X-Ray at Melbourne airport before I left, and the results were going to be anyone’s guess.

Yet this is how we at Los Expiralos roll: wild-card gunslingers, riding high and shooting frames from the hip with unflinching instinct, the Shaolin Monks of Silver Halide.

See more: www.alimc.com.au @alimcphotos

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