NO. 20 West Twentieth Street looks like an ordinary office building, but go down to the basement and you’ll hear an unusual sound—gunshots, frequent and close. On a recent evening, a group of around a dozen creative types—funky jewelry, high-minded tote bags—arrived at Westside Rifle & Pistol Range and nervously milled about as they waited to shoot at blown-up blackand- white photographs of themselves, in the name of art. The majority of them had never touched a gun before.
“We’re virgins,” Juliana Patiño, who works in advertising, said, gesturing toward her friend Josh Silberberg.
“I build for startups,” Silberberg said. They giggled at a novelty target on the wall featuring a cartoon zombie holding a box of pizza.
Their portrait targets were made by the artist Bayeté Ross Smith, who had earlier photographed…
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The New Yorker (Digital) - 1 Issue, January 30, 2017