Exclusive cameraphone images of the Bernie Madoff courthouse scrum

The Supreme Court of the State of New York, New York County, Civil Branch didn't need any new jurors today. So those of us who weren't assigned to trials all got out at 11:30, and now we don't have to go back for six years. Sweet! I was seriously considering just playing hookey for the afternoon and not telling anybody about it, but then I remembered: Madoff!

I headed down Pearl Street toward the Daniel Patrick Moynihan United States Court House, where Bernie Madoff had pleaded guilty guilty guilty (I should write it 11 times, but that seems excessive) about an hour before. A guy headed the other direction was saying, in a high-pitched whine (he was clearly mimicking somebody he'd just heard). "He took all my money!"

When I got to the courthouse's Pearl Street entrance, this is what I saw:

That's about 10 reporters standing around someone who had just emerged from the courthouse (the lady in the red coat) and asking her questions. Her connection to the Madoff case must have been pretty tenuous, because they let her go after about 30 seconds. There was another, slightly smaller scrum just to the right surrounding someone else, but that was it. I was shocked and amazed at how small the media presence was until I heard a reporter say that the main entrance was around the corner, but there was "a lot more competitition there."

So I walked around the corner to Worth Street, where I saw this:

That was just one side of the street. The other side was packed too. It was also a lot less dark and blurry in person. My cameraphone artistry has been criticized before—to the point where regular commenter harryfox (my brother) even bought me a book on how to take better cameraphone photos. In response, I began carrying around an actual camera in my backpack. But I had read that while they'd stopped confiscating the cameraphones of those on jury duty, they still confiscated cameras. So I left my camera at home.

Then I had an idea. Maybe if I wiped some of the grime off the lens, the cameraphone pictures would look better. Sure enough:

That's view from across Worth Street, through the bars of a playground. Madoff. Prison. Bars. Deep, huh?

It's interesting to see that American media organizations, even as they lay people off by the thousands, still find the wherewithal to send hundreds of their reporters and camerapeople to stand around together outside a courtroom while a guy inside does exactly what everybody expected him to do (don't you worry, TIME's Alex Altman was there too). To be fair, a good number of the TV crews were foreign, and this was one of the great symbolic moments of the financial crisis that you really almost have to cover. But it was nonetheless staggering to see the long, long line of TV trucks parked (illegally) along Worth Street and contemplate how much it was probably costing to have them all there. My lens didn't have a wide enough angle to do the truck line justice, so I gave them the Dr. Toothy treatment:

Then I went to Ping's on Mott Street for some dim sum. By the time I came back outside, Bernie was headed to his cell and the scrum was breaking up:

Backs were patted. Farewells were said. See y'all at the Walter Noel trial!