you know the thing is, JMeyerowitz is dressed like a newyorker in the winter, all black. I've seen him around and he does dress like that normally. It may look weird but just stroll down Madison and you will know what I mean. And the gloves, well, it gets cold holding an M6 outside in the winter, I use one glove on the body and let the focus hand go free. Thing is, people dress however in ny and that is really not an issue.
But I did get the impression he was just doing it for the video. Hamming it up. It is impossible to work with someone filming you.
Jeff Mermelstein otoh I have seen working and that is what he looks like. Both of them are tall. Mermelstein is a little bit like frankenstein walking, even when he is not shooting, a strange physical presence. He was at the recent NY photo festival and his energy is definitely shy.
Bruce Gilden I have only met once, and he is a classic ny crank from the old school. I think we forget that ny is not what it used to be, remember how the other Bruce, -Davidson did Subway and essentially prepared himself for battle each day in camo fatigues as a way to claim some territory in the subway. What Gilden was doing I think has more to do with how the street was in ny in the 80's, you needed to assert more, today it is totally different, mostly 90% tourists.
Street is not one thing, it is a lot of things, and sometimes the best pictures are when the subject is aware of the photographer, while I don't like BG possibly giving old ladies heart attacks, he does try to find that aspect of ny, the freaks and geeks, the people that you think only exist in fiction, he creates his own cast with this technique. We all have to find our unique "population", we "cast" our own stories in photography sometimes. BG is no different.