OLD_New York Stories of Interesting Places Fall 2011

TRANSCRIPT
Scott Curtis:
Driving a cab for me is… I find it to be very tiring. And being where I was earlier in my life to now, it is mental anguish. Compared to what I could be doing, compared to what I do now. Or what I could have been doing if I didn’t get my financial world turned upside down in the stock market.

I was a market maker for a firm on Wall Street, we made markets in the NASDAQ market. I made lots and lots of money, several million dollars. Upon till 2008, banks went under, I was ‘all inn’ and now I am driving a cab.

The biggest week I ever had was the week of my birthday in 1999. The week of my birthday in 1999 I made 540,000 dollars in one week. That was my biggest week ever. Now I have 1000 dollars a week, so… you live by the sword, you die by the sword. I died by the sword.

Ah… Wall Street guys.

I think the lesson I have learned most is that greed is not good and we all became very greedy. When money becomes so easy to make that you have got to sit back and look what is going on and review what is happening, because we came to a point that we were just printing money. I really should have sat back and said: ’what is going on here, because that just couldn’t continue’.

I knew it was going to a difficult situation to go back on Wall Street, so I thought the best way to do it was to go out there and market myself, hang a sign in my cab.

Hopefully, the right guy will get in my cab and I’ll get a job. But it is very discouraging that after 8 months … I really believed I would have a job. But as my grandfather used to say: ‘this too shall pass’…
And I hope very soon, because this sucks.

BACKGROUND OF THE STORY
According to New York State Comptroller Thomas Di Napoli, 32,000 people will have lost their jobs on Wall Street by the end of 2012. That makes 32,000 since the bank crisis began in 2008. Many people who have gotten fired, still don’t have a job. Scott Curtis is one of them. Curtis was a successful trader on Wall Street, made millions and millions of dollars and all of a sudden he lost everything he had: his money, his job, his house and his wife and kids. Curtis is now driving a cab in NYC, promoting himself, because that’s the way he hopes he will be back on Wall Street again: meeting the right people in his cab.
Scott Curtis worked almost 30 years on Wall Street, he had it all: a nice job, an apartment in NYC, a house in Miami and a luxury life. In 1999 when the company he worked for was taken over by Merrill Lynch, Curtis decided to go and work on his own. The sky was the limit, in the week of his birthday in 1999 he made 540,000 dollars. Years later, in 2008, the banks went under and like so many, Curtis’ company went under too. He had to move back to Miami, sold his house to pay his debts. His wife broke up with him. And now he is back in NYC, driving a cab, hoping for a better life.

THE STORY
NYC, night time. We are in the cab of former Wall Street trader Scott Curtis. Curtis always rides his cab at night because he makes more money then. Curtis talks about his life on Wall Street and explains why he chooses to ride a cab: he wants to promote himself. In his cab he hangs a sign where he talks about himself, how he lost his job on Wall Street. He hopes some big shot from Wall Street will get in in his car and offers him a job. It is already 8 months since he started doing this job and so far nobody has offered him a job.

BEHIND THE SCENES
When I heard about the story if Scott Curtis I immediately contacted Scott to ask him if he would work with me on this project. Without a doubt he said yes. Of course Scott wants to get his story out, but on the other hand, there was this immediate respect for each other. I spent several nights in his cab. Scott talked to me also about his children. How he is missing them. They are with their mother in Miami and every two weeks Scott is flying over there to see them. A lot of money he earns, he spends on his tickets. Scott hopes he get his life on track very soon. At this moment he is staying with his brother, he sleeps on the ground in the living room. Must not be easy for a man who once made million and million of dollars. A night, we went out for sushi, because Scott told me that is his favorite food, he used to eat it almost very day. Now it is too expensive. I took him out for diner, that is the least I could do. Thanks for having me in your cab, Scott. All the best!

LINKS
On Scott Curtis
nytimes.com/2011/10/16/nyregion/once-wall-streeters-and-now-cabbies.html?pagewanted=all

State comptroller predicts more job losses
online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203499704576625171943997128.html

Wall Street Crisis 2008 timeline
slideshare.net/sarzi/2008-wall-street-crisis-timeline-as-of-october-3-2008-presentation

Wall Street in crisis
online.wsj.com/public/page/wall-street-in-crisis.html

Deryck Nimblett: I started coming here, the same reason I wanted to work here: comic books. I love comic books.

It’s very family-ish. It’s like a brotherhood almost. Guys that work here almost seem the same as guys that don’t work here, ’cause everyone’s just —

Customer: [Interrupting] I don’t know what he’s talking about!

Deryck: pals around the entire time.

Will Caban: I recently moved from the Bronx to Brooklyn two years ago and ever since that time, I just casually happened to be walking by to get the bus, and I said “Oh! It’s a haven for me. It’s an actual real comic book store here.

The staff is very friendly. They know me by name, that’s a very, very good thing to say about them.

Chris: You know, have you read that first “Hulk” book?

Will: Yea

Chris: That looks good.

Will: I don’t know where they’re going with Banner’s direction

Chris: I like it!

Will: He look like a mad scientist, man! He’s like [gestures]

Will [interview]: They recognize their customers and their selection is very broad.

Hank Kwon: Ya know, women watch soap operas. Men like to read comic books because that’s their soap opera. And they all gather to comic book stores on Wednesday to buy the comics and they just geek out.

Adam Penza: I myself, I’ve been working here for about two and a half years. I can definitely say that a lot of people, as soon as they walk in, they start smiling and stuff. It’s a place to get your mind off things. It’s a really cool environment.

Deryck: No one’s not nerdy enough or too nerdy to come to the store. If you don’t know something, we’re happy to tell you or explain it to you. But there’s none of that elitist attitude that you get in some places. Everyone’s welcome.

For the staff and regulars at Bulletproof Comics, one word gets echoed a lot when talking about the store: community. Employees know customers by name, and many from around the neighborhood come in to hang out.

The store, located on Nostrand Avenue near Brooklyn College, has been giving comic book geeks their fix since 1992. Since then, the store has expanded into video games, collectible cards and skateboard equipment, a move said owner Hank Kwon, that has kept the store going all these years. He said that comic books today are fighting a losing battle against video games and the Internet for kids’ attention spans.

Still, Wednesdays – the day comics are released – are still one of Bulletproof’s busiest days. Customers pop in throughout the day, eager to get their hands on the latest issues of their favorite titles. But many linger. Predictably, they talk about story arcs and characters, but many simply hang out to chat about life, play a video games or to catch a glimpse of what’s playing on one of the two flatscreen TVs in the main area of the store.

Watch the video above, and step into the store to see what a typical Wednesday afternoon looks like.

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Bulletproof Comic’s website:
bulletproofcomix.com/

Comic Book Resources: comicbookresources.com/

The Comics Reporter:
comicsreporter.com/

The Beat: The News Blog of Comic Book Culture:
comicsbeat.com/

6) – One of the biggest challenges during filming was gathering all the customer interactions. At the store’s busiest points in the day, multiple conversations went on at once, making it hard to focus on one conversation, sound-wise. The volume of the TV screens in the front and the buses that rolled by outside didn’t make the task easier (even if I closed the door!).

As a result, I missed one of the coolest things I’ve heard in a long time: a customer used two of his comic books to buy a house.

He said that it was a first issue of Superman and Fantastic Four. Because of their value — another copy of the Superman issue set a world record when it was sold at auction for $1.5 million in 2010 — he paid a pretty penny for those books. But in time, their value accrued and when the bank asked for collateral, he showed them those two issues, and he got a new home.

Isn’t that incredible?! Where can I get me one of those?

Beautiful.

In some ways, it’s so simple. So shockingly simple that the most depraved criminal could do letterpress printing perfectly. You know, the cop takes his thumb and puts it in the ink: perfect. I’m basically the person who puts the ink on the paper.

My father made the mistake of sending me to college, really. Otherwise, if he hadn’t, I’d still be in his print shop in the South Side of Chicago. I fell into the hands of these philosophers and they kind of impressed upon my that your work is more than just your work. You know, it has, perhaps, a spiritual side to it.

Ok, let’s see what we have.

When you’re confronted with it, you get this deer-in-the-headlights look. You don’t know what’s going on, but your eyes are just zooming all over the page, having all this fun, and we’ve been deprived of it.

It’s inevitable that I’ll get a Kindle and be reading from screens. I mean, what’s not to like about reading from a backlit screen. But there’s something in our genes that has to do with books. I have no fear that they’re ever going away anytime soon.

Earl Kallemeyn insists that he is not a designer. He is not a businessman. He is not an artist or an engineer. He’s just the person who puts the ink on the paper.

Kallemeyn, 63, owns and operates a letterpress print shop inside a small mixed-use factory in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Letterpress, unlike the more common offset printing, applies ink to paper by rolling it over three-dimensional reliefs.

With his letterpress reputation firmly established in New York, Kallemeyn today uses his four German-made presses – direct descendents of Gutenberg’s 15th-century invention – to print jobs for a range of clients, including big names such as Chanel, the banker Jamie Dimon and the pop star Lady Gaga.

For most of his life, Kallemeyn’s hands have been ink stained.

He grew up on the far South Side of Chicago, where his father ran a community newspaper print shop, which used offset printing. Kallemeyn, the oldest of 10 children, helped out at the shop, but he considered such printing little more than a chore. When he was old enough, he went away to college to study English and philosophy.

After college, he discovered letterpress and his fascination with printing was rekindled. He bought his first letterpress machine when he was 26; about two decades later, in the 1990s, he opened his print shop in Brooklyn.

Today, he spends about 10 hours a day, six days a week in his shop preparing his presses in a process called “makeready,” and printing jobs that include note cards, business cards, invitations and posters. Kallemeyn charges $200 for the most basic job; complicated assignments cost many times that.

But, Kallemeyn says, it isn’t money that drives him.

“I get to see the wet ink on the page,” he says. “It doesn’t get any better than that.”

In the video, Kallemeyn prepares a press for a job. This involves adjusting the registration and impression of the machine, evening the ink rollers and cutting and pasting strips of tissue paper that will help evenly distribute the pressure.

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Behind-the-Scenes Story

LINKS
Kallemeyn’s website (still in development): kallemeynpress.com/

A rich online guide to letterpress printing: fiveroses.org/intro.htm

Letterpress classes open to the public in New York City: thearmnyc.com/information/letterpress_classes

Transcript

… Oh, that’s gonna hurt a lot more when you stand up….

1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20 .. fuck

The point in your hands by the way, is to balance yourself, that’s why I have them out.
So we don’t have to have our arms out?
I mean if you have the balance and you can do that, then yeah.
Oh my god, I’m sorry, I have a small attention span, but do you see those birds?? The red ones they’re awesome!
FOCUS!

Push! Now push up! You got your chest on it.
Ah…
NO! I’m NOT GIVING UP!

Yeah, Yeah, Yeah…Come on climb up technique, yeah, right there, now push. Push push push, awww…
Ah what the fack?
Oh, are you alright?

Twist your hand. Exactly .
Whooo!
Yeah Brian!
Very nice.
Oh crap, I’m slipping.
Finish it!
You got it you got it.

This guy, I just met him yesterday. He invited me to his class, and look now.

Let go of fear, let it go. Don’t be afraid.

Fear is a powerful thing! Nobody can get over fear just like that. But with this guy’s help, I think it will be gone in a few weeks, maybe a few days.

See, it’s not that hard.

What the fack, yo? You go under?
It’s like washing a plate and hanging your coat on a rack….
… What? What are you talking about?
…in an expanse of time. Then, out of nowhere, out of nowhere, you know how to do parkour.
What?
That’s exactly what it is.

Yeah! Yes ! Exactly!
You’re like the Karate Kid.
I read about that, it’s like the Karate, the Karate Kid movie, the guy has to wash the car, right, in circles. And he’s like why am I doing this? I don’t know, I don’t know why, how this has anything to do with park… uh karate

Parfu!
Parkour, kung fu, parfu. Or Kungkour

Every Monday through Thursday, a group of young people gathers at a spot in idyllic Fort Tryon Park in Washington Heights to learn the art of parkour with their teacher, Vert.

Parkour is an iconoclastic sport that became popular in France, but has roots in West African traditions. It is strictly non-competitive. Where martial arts are the arts of fighting, parkour is like an art of fleeing, or moving. Practitioners are called traceurs. Traceurs train themselves to reject fear and to navigate the urban environment with every available human capability. With careful practice, a traceur can weave through any environment as quickly as possible.

This sometimes means scaling walls or leaping from the ledge of one rooftop to another… with one’s hands.

The aim of parkour is not perfection or form, but elegance and flow. For example, when jumping down from a higher platform to a lower one, a traceur would roll to preserve momentum and prevent injury.

In many ways, parkour is a sport of the mind. When Vert teaches his students the safest and most efficient ways of scaling walls or vaulting over obstacles, his instructions usually go beyond the physical.

“You need to let go of fear…”

“Your mind needs to be in the now…”

Most of the people that come to class are teenagers in the neighborhood, and Vert (neé José Jiminez) is only twenty. More men than women are interested in the sport, but all are certainly welcome. The class is free of charge (though donations are accepted).
——————
Vert’s profile on NYParkour.com: nyparkour.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=62:vert&catid=43:nypk-reps&Itemid=54

An NY Times Story about parkour in New York with a video about women’s issues with the sport:
nytimes.com/2008/10/12/sports/othersports/12parkour.html

Urban Freeflow, publisher of Jump magazine and international forum for parkour enthusiasts:urbanfreeflow.com/get-your-head-together-2

A suitable article for parkour neophytes: urbanfreeflow.com/get-your-head-together-2

I found Vert because I was chatting with a friend about how I used to attempt to practice parkour moves in Yamashita Park in Yokohama. There was a crew that met there to hang out and play on the walls, bars and platforms on the bay. She said that her friend recently interviewed a guy that runs a donation-only class. At first, I thought, I wish I had the time to get in shape and go to the class and the lightbulb clicked.
I went to a Parkour Jam on the Lower East Side on Halloween and met with Vert and some real pros. I took video, but I wanted to focus on the class because that is where the real discussion about the philosophy of the sport took place. Rodney also met Vert for the first time at the jam and he came the next day. Rodney was having trouble that day because his former teacher didn’t push him very hard. Though it was difficult at first, Rodney is pschyed to keep training, thanks to the supportive, non-competitive atmosphere.

Drinking a good cup of tea, it kind of opens you to another world, kind off. You start to see things a little bit different. It kind of relaxes you. It also helps you focus.

Like you are in a zone. Your worries are sort of behind you. You don’t feel those worries when you are making tea. You are infused into just what you are doing. So I think it’s a very good meditation

You can also smell the lid.

When I’m making tea, I want t0 put my kind of like, 100 percent of every part of my senses into making it.

From tea you meet friends. You’re able to meet interesting people through tea.

I have met a lot of people through this journey. Actually there are a lot of photographers; there are a lot of musicians. They are very particular. It’s like
This thing about timing or something. To me, when you take a photograph, developing a film, or everything else has to do with timing. Actually making tea is also very much about timing.

At the appointment only Tea Gallery, Wong conducts tea tastings, where he instructs on the finer points of brewing Chinese tea. One can have tea tastings and attend classes to learn about Chinese tea and culture. Wong specializes in the art of preparing Chiu Jao Gong Fu Cha, tea from Chui Jao province in China.

“Gongfu doesn’t mean martial art,” explains Wong. “Gong fu just means a lot of preparation and lots of practice.” “To make a good cup of gongfu tea is something that you really have to put an effort to it,” he says. Each step has a purpose in this ancient ceremony, with it’s arcane steps of heating the tea pot and cups with boiling water, to steeping tea leaves for a specific amount of time, and discarding the first brew designed to unlock the flavor of the leaves.

A tea ritual represents a meditation for Wong. “It feels like you are focused on doing just one thing,” says Wong who prefers silence so he can appreciate the sound of the water being poured or the tea leaves rustling. A perfect accompaniment to a tea ceremony would be the sound of nature and birds chirping or the gentle contemplative strains of a qin, a Chinese string instrument.

In making the above video, Wong goes through the process of brewing a roasted and unroasted Ti Kuan Yin, an oolong tea from China, named after the Chinese Goddess of Mercy. “The reason we like to use three seeping is because you want to appreciate the tea properly, “ he instructs. “You want to take small sips, rather than try to gulp down the tea in one go.”

Michael Wong and his wife, Winnie Lee, started their tea shop, The Tea Gallery, in 2004 and moved to their downtown location at 21 Howard Street in November 2010. Their tea venture, located at 21 Howard Street, sprung out of Wong’s family’s antique business, where they used to serve customers tea. Wong and Lee are Hong Kong expats who brought their appreciation of Chinese tea culture with them to America.

“I call myself a cultural ambassador,” explains Wong. “Or tea evangelizer.” He demurs that he is not a tea master. “Master of tea, or tea master is a word where anything that involves tea, you have to be good at,” Wong says. He elaborates that
“You might be able to make a good cup of tea, but there are other process, from picking tea leaves, to rolling the leaves, there are so many different parts of it” and “other people involved.”

The video above shows a method of making tea with a clay teapot and small cups designed to enhance the appreciation of each leaves taste and aroma. “A lot of times people would ask, why are you using these small cups,” chuckles Wong, who says the cups he uses are “almost restaurant size,” and considerably bigger than cups normally used in a traditional tea ceremony. The purpose of the size small cups are “to help you, while you drink you are not going to gulp. It makes you try to drink it by slurping and savoring it.”

As Wong brewed a roasted Ti Kuan Yin, and Chinese oolong translated as “Iron Goddess,” he instructs, that at the third seeping, “you will see how the aroma and the flavor will kind of like merge together as one.” The method used to brew tea, from the amount of leaves used to the temperature of the water creates various flavors. For the roasted tea, Wong points out that he uses much more leaves compared to the non-roasted batch, which is one of ways to drink this tea, “we make it very strong, almost like an espresso.”

———–

theteagallery.com/
theteagallery.blogspot.com/
flickr.com/photos/gongfucha/

Behind the Scenes:

I’ve always been interested in traditional Chinese and Japanese methods of preparing tea and the proper way to brew teas and make coffee. I searched for a tea “master” to instruct me, and was intrigued when Michael insisted that he wasn’t fit to be called a tea master, but preferred to think of himself as a tea “evangelizer” awakening people to the subtleties of different verities of tea.

Most of the footage for the tea preparing sequence was shot on the first day. When I returned the second day to talk more wide shots, and open the scene up with the intention to showcase the beautiful gallery, I was thrown off when Michael cut his chin length hair to a closely shorn crop! I also went the second time later in the afternoon, and the different lighting, coupled with the different hair meant that when I was editing I ended up using all the first day footage, but the interviews from the second visit.

transcript

Transcript : none provided

One of their chief concerns is inequality in the education system, which was put in place during the military dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet in the 1980s. The system prevents anyone from the lower class from receiving a true education, thus barring the nation’s poor students from advancing to better careers, better wages and a higher standard of living. Furthermore, high schools receive varying amounts of resources from the municipalities and those amounts are based on attendance. Thus, many rural schools receive far less funding and provide fewer resources for its students.

After 21 years of a “democracy,” Chileans are demanding for real representation at the education table. Some are also calling for a new Constitution, which was also put in place during Pinochet and has remained—even after the military man lost his amnesty and was tried in court for crimes against humanity. Now the education movement has grown so big that parents, professors and unions are all involved. The issue is now on the mind of every Chilean, including the tens of thousands participating in this November 5 march.

Leo: Okay, working from home is probably the most lonely thing in the world to do, because it’s just you in your thoughts.

So, there’s always these issues that you need to bounce off of someone else, and you really can’t do it in your own four walls.

Overheard: Hey what’s up man, welcome back!

Leo: Here, developers are next to fashion people, and they all speak the same language, and it’s kind of a beautiful thing.

Overheard: Oh, that’s right, right, right

Tony: Human beings are social animals, you know, and the irony of the Internet is that it lets us do things online away from each other, but it also frees us to find new ways to interact with each other in person. So what’s great is that you can do work here, alongside other people who want to around like minded folks.

Overheard: Oh there we go, here it is.

Blake Jenelle: New Work City is great because, no matter what your sort of optimal work schedule is, it kind of like, you can make it work here. No one’s, there’s no expectations, and no one is sort of in your way.

Tony: You know, we’re here to support each other, and the beauty of that is that we don’t have anyone telling us what to do. And we can do really great things here; we can experiment with things, and what we have here is people who are working in a new way, a way that millions of other people are going to be embarking on for the first time over the course of the next several years.

Blake: We just get creative energy here, and from being around the people here, and the ambition level you see in the best projects here is inspiring and pulls you up. And we wanted to be able to be riding a wave that pulled us forward, rather than feel like we were pulling ourselves forward.

“Working from home is great, until your cat wants to get in all your things,” said Leo Newball, a web developer who knew it was time to find a new space to let his ideas and business grow.

Leo found New Work City, a coworking office community just off Canal Street in Manhattan, where entrepreneurs and small business owners like Leo could rent space and be more free to work on their own projects, but more importantly, with others.

NWC, as it’s more affectionately called, is the brainchild of Tony Bacigalupo, who after being involved in the New York Internet scene for the past five years, realized that people who could now work anywhere thanks to technology need a place to build a community too.

NWC not only offers desk space and a constant Internet connection, but instructional classes, private meeting rooms and a place to meet with others who have completely different skill sets or backgrounds, but who could also lend a helping hand.

Additional Links:
New Work City’s home page: nwc.co/about/
Businessweek profile on coworking spaces:businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/feb2007/sb20070226_761145.htm
Meetup group for NYC-based coworkers: meetup.com/coworking-nyc/

—————-

One of the coolest things about NWC is the lectures and lessons that the space offers, which is how I learned about the space. They hold at least one or two a week, ranging from building an online buzz or tips to win a business negotiation, to WordPress help and coding classes. You can find more info about the classes here: nwc.co/edu/

Full Transcript: Speaker is Brooklyn resident Peter Colen

I mean, I’m just very interested in birds and I love shootin…er..photographing them. It’s kind of like hunting without any harm. And all you capture is an image.

I’ve been coming…I started this summer and I was involved this summer with…we didn’t want the geese to be killed again in Prospect Park and there was worry about….well, they killed a lot of geese. They slaughtered geese. The USDA did. All around the city. It was like a couple thousand this year and last year it was a bunch. So, I just came out here to see how many geese were out here and what the situation was. That was the first time I came out here.

Basically, this is a very concentrated place where all kinds of birds stop on their journies, y’know, migrating. Some birds actually migrate anymore because they have enough food here.

It’s just an amazing place to see birds. And it’s an amazing place just to hang out, really.

I see an amazing bird right now…over there…what the hell is it?! Some kind of stork, it looks like a heron, see it?

It’s a brown heron with a snake in its mouth! Look at that it has a snake in its mouth. Somebody told me that…So you would not see that in the streets in Brooklyn. Not that heron. I’ve never seen…

So, that’s pretty exciting, right?! It was like all of a sudden, I’m talking about the place, and all of a sudden, look at that! Holy crap, look at that! That was amazing. I wish I could have, like, changed my exposure.

Though often a tranquil respite, the unexpected encounter with a Giant Brown Herron with a snake in its mouth proves to Mr. Colen that there are plenty of exciting surprises in store for the park’s visitors.

The film begins by cutting between the dizzy pace of Manhattan and the tranquil setting of Jamaica Bay Wildlife Preserve in order to highlight the diametric difference in pace.

Once in, we are led on brief tour of one of New York city’s most underutilized recreation areas by one of its newest patrons.

Though well within the confines of the city limits, the federally-funded wildlife preserve is known to just a small percentage of New Yorkers. It is soon to undergo a dramatic redesign and expansion, so we take this opportunity to experience some of the natural beauty of the original park’s unspoiled raw beauty.

———

gawker.com/5585496/400-canada-geese-killed-in-prospect-park

nytimes.com/2010/07/13/nyregion/13geese.html

nyharborparks.org/visit/jaba.html

nps.gov/gate/planyourvisit/thingstodojamaciabay.htm

Malini Srinivasam – I think the Indian dance world both in India and in the west tends to be…each school is the domain of the teacher, so you don’t tend to have schools with multiple styles and multiple teachers.

Anamika Navatman is very unique in Manhattan because it brings together different styles, different art forms under the same roof.

Sahasra Sambamoorthi – So, our vision for this place is pretty extensive, but we have three branches we started to achieve our goals. The goal is simultaneously create opportunities for artists and create high quality content for the public here.

Byron is 14 months old and we thought, we’re going to do the trial class and he loved it. The teacher she’s very good, she tells the kids a story and he gets to a window into another culture.

Malini – This dance is rupa maduchi and it’s dedicated to Shiva and the words mean, when I see your form, I feel love, come to me.

Sahasra – Traditionally you have a system called gurushushiya where there’s one student and one teacher and that teacher is your everything. Here we do things a little differently, we’re just as loving of our students and work really hard for them but instead of one person you have a whole group of people.

Justine Chen – Honestly the reason I starte taking group classes is because my teacher started teaching at Anamik and that’s how I started going to Anamika.

I have no background in this so I’m just wondering when my body’s going to absorb that information. But it’s great because it’s easier to progress when you’re with people who know it so well, it’s in their bodies.

In India classical dance and music, the artists are solo artists 99% of the time. It’s rare for us to come together to create something like this. This place is not about me and Shritha, it’s not about any one artist, it’s about us coming together and creating something that’s greater than all of us and that’s here to kind of change classical dance and music and the way we view it today.

Sridhar Shanmugam and Sahasra Sambamoorthi have raised money and sunk their hearts into a dream – a South Asian performing arts project just open this year. Sambamoorthi, only 25-years-old, says that the space called Anamika Navatman intends to bring together the artists of India, and share traditional Indian dance and music with an ever eager public.

India is a place where artist’s styles are as divided as their stark regions. Very few dance schools there or in the entire country offer such a variety of dance and music styles. In addition, Anamika Navatman offers music, children’s classes and interactive performances.

The open space and open feeling have enticed students from a variety of nationalities and backgrounds and the school hopes to offer more and more classes as it grows.
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Meet Sahasra – artandculture.com/feature/1501
The New York Times and the IAAC Downtown Dance Festival – nytimes.com/2009/08/22/arts/dance/22borders.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=navatman&st=cse
India Khana – indiankhanamadeeasy.com/2011/02/our-first-anniversary.html

Drop the Needle
(Pressing a Record, from Start to Finish)

The record industry ain’t what it used to be.

Compact discs continue to sell fewer and fewer copies, bands have found cheaper ways to market their own music and listeners have found shadier ways to listen to it. But in all of this, there’s one surprising success story over the last few years: vinyl.

In 2010, vinyl sales increased for the third straight year, and are on pace to do so again in 2011. While digital media still rules, vinyl is the only other format that’s growing, and BrooklynPhono, a record pressing plant in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, has been capitalizing on that trend, mastering, pressing, printing, plating and shipping records for ten years.

But BrooklynPhono co-owner Tom Bernich doesn’t do it for the money. He says he’s always run with a crowd that was in to vinyl: friends who were collectors, DJs, music writers and musicians. Bernich always wanted his own niche. So, being good with his hands, and after taking a tour of a record pressing plant in Long Island City, Bernich decided to throw his hat into the ring creating vinyl.

It wasn’t easy at first – the machinery alone cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, a rude awakening for Bernich – but through hard work and loyal customers BrooklynPhono has built a following.

(Music: “My Cutie’s Due From Two to Two Today.”)

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brooklynphono.com/
eachnotesecure.com/music-industry-continues-to-die-a-slow-painful-death/
returntovinyl.com/

Behind the Scenes:
Apparently these guys get bad plates all the time. So, they’ll be pressing a record (say, Belle and Sebastian) go to listen to it, and hear a completely different band (e.g. Lou Reed.) Makes for some interesting listening. One guy told me about a classical album whose Side B was all house music.

SOUND OF BRIDGE SANDING

SOUND OF RUBENDALL BLOWING THE SAWDUST OFF THE BRIDGE

SOUND OF RUBENDALL BRUSHING OF THE SAWDUST WITH A PUTTY ERASER

SOUND OF SANDING

RUBENDALL: This is actually what most of guitar making is. Boring, tedious, tiny physical labor.

SOUND OF SANDING

RUBENDALL: And it’s sort of, it’s a little mesmerizing, it’s ah, it’s sort of meditational I guess. It’s fun to focus on something. You gotta really like chiseling small pieces of wood.

SOUND OF POLISHING

RUBENDALL: I mean, I don’t even play guitar anymore. It just became too much, with the guitar making, and then hanging around musicians, you know, it just, became too much to do. But I still obsess about the instruments, but I don’t play them, which is very odd. It’s a whole nother, you know, my passion to do this comes from a whole other thing besides just actually, using it.

SOUND OF POLISHING

RUBENDALL: But you know, you take something, and you, you know, you go to a lumberyard and a couple months later, you know, it turns out to be a guitar.

At 25 he took a very bare-bones course in the skill, and for the past 15 years he has been working on guitars. Every piece he works on, he says, he learns something new, from making little mistakes.

“Some of them are things that only I would notice,” he said. “You have to be a little anal in this business.”

Indeed. He spends his days in a cramped workspace in an old manufacturing warehouse in Red Hook, Brooklyn, sharing a floor with a number of other artists. They put up walls to divide the space, which they get at a super-cheap $1.15 per square foot.

“The only problem is transportation,” said Rubendall, who rides his bike to work every day, loath to depend on the B61.

It takes him about two and a half months to finish a guitar, and he works on roughly three at a time, making 10-12 guitars per year. At $5,500 per guitar, it’s not exactly a lucrative business. But the local jazz musicians for whom he makes his classical, nylon-stringed guitars are willing to pay top dollar for the handmade pieces, given that there are very few luthiers in the city.

****

Red Hook is such a curious neighborhood, slow to gentrify and inhabited by some lifelong residents who are attached to its unique, artsy character. Neighborhood dive bars like Moonshine and Sonny’s are institutions to the place, and the industrial flavor of the area is not quite lost yet.

My favorite part of the old, abandoned factory where Matt Rubendall works, just steps from the water and the new Fairway and Ikea at Red Hook, is the vast common space that he and the other artists there share.

One of the lesser-known buildings, right next to Rubendall’s building, is home to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, another little secret that not many New Yorkers know. RUbendall told me that often when he takes breaks in the common room, the only place in the building where he gets cell reception, he looks out the window onto the pack patio of the ATF office, trying to catch a peek inside the place.
Usually, it’s no dice. But not always.

“The day after Osama bin Laden was killed, they all had a cookout,” said Rubendall with a wry smile.

TranscriptWillets Point is like a small town. In this country this a is unique place like this. You can’t find similar place in this country. This is a mix of different cultures from Latin America and other countries, too. You can find people from everywhere in the world.

We have sixty, seventy years in this place. And the people are working in terrible conditions because the city never put the basic service for us. They never clean the snow. They never put water, they never put electricity or gas. We are living like the third world.

They take the land and they don’t give nothing for us. Nothing. They take the land and push us out like garbage. This is very very oppositional to human rights in New York.

But we have to work. We know how to do and we are surviving for the last 40 years in Willets Point. And we love this place.

Sergio Aguirre is a volunteer with the Willets Point Defense Fund. He is working to mobilize tenants and workers against city plans to redevelop the neighborhood. Because the city already owns almost all the land by this point, he’s fighting a losing battle. But the fight has now moved to getting the city to financing an off-site relocation so many of the businesses can be concentrated in another neighborhood.

By 2013, demolition will have begun and the city will be starting construction of a huge housing, retail center with a convention center.

Links: bit.ly/vmHB5W – The New York City Economic Development Corporation, which is managing the plan, has a full site with renderings and plans for the neighborhood.

willetspoint.org/ – Willets Point United is a collection of businesses opposed to the demolition. They are staunchly anti-Bloomberg and have sued the city to stop the plan.

nyti.ms/tQbX2E – Interesting NYTimes article from October about a makeshift soccer stadium framed by metal parts.

Blog Back Story: I originally scheduled an interview with a business owner, which didn’t work out when I got to the point. So, wandering around, I met Aguirre by accident. He was in one of the only cafes in the area and was good enough to sit and talk with me and tour some of the closed businesses.

I love to be the center of attention, to have the mic in my hand, and to host these things. It makes me feel like, oh, it goes my way…this is how it go because this is my floor. Not to be cocky or anything, but it’s just I love that—I love the fame and everybody knowing who I am, and I don’t know who they are. It’s actually kind of fun. Because people also walk to you and they’re like hey, and you’re like who is this?

I sung in church my whole life, so singing and commentating to me is about the same thing. My friend threw a ball—one of my close friends threw a ball and was, like, you should do it, you should host it. I’m, like, you sure? And I had seen it so many times before hosting, so I know how it works and how it’s done. So I said okay and I did it, and people was actually like oh, yeah! You should do this more often, and so from there on until now is what I do. It’s commentating and hosting these balls.

Back in the day…vogueing battles—two people battling against each other—can be a way of handling situations a better way than fighting. Also, just expressing your talent of what you can do as far as walking a fashion category in costumes, or vogueing in a special costume, or even selling face, which is nice bone structures and stuff like that. Basically, just a place to have fun for the LGBTQ community—a place where we feel safe and where we can have fun.

It’s an explore, I say. I big explore. I feel like it’s a new world to me—to see these people and to see everything that we do in our everyday lives and to even spend a night with these people, it just feels in a different world. And before I came here, I had no clue. And now I feel like I’ve started a new life and have so many new friends, and yeah, it’s definitely a new world—definitely a new place. So it’s an explore to come see all these different things and to see so many different talents and attitudes and so much spices from each people—you explore so much in the community.

Snookie Lanore (née Lawrence Taylor), 18, chose to name himself after the “Jersey Shore” star for her spunk and fun-loving personality. And with these same personal attributes, Snookie enlivens his own audience at the balls that he hosts. But instead of traditional ballroom events, Snookie’s feature drag runway battles, vogue dance-offs, and beauty contests.

These types of balls aren’t new. They’ve been held by lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender communities of color for almost 50 years to provide a safe, judgment-free space for self expression, even a neutral space for conflict resolution. They’ve also been made popular by several documentaries: Paris Is Burning, a 1990 film, stands out as an example. But those are the major leagues, meant for older followers. Snookie represents the “Kiki” scene—a ballroom subculture that traditionally caters to participants under the age of 18—whose events have recently grown in frequency and popularity, even among older fans from the major leagues.

Here in New York, these Kiki balls generally take place twice monthly, which makes Snookie a very busy teen. Since starting two years ago, Snookie has hosted over 40 of these events, and he sees many more on the horizon. He first got his start when a friend asked him to host a ball that he threw. At first, Snookie said, he didn’t think he could, but then this life-long Church singer found a new way to show his talents. Moreover, he became the life of the party.

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Behind-the-Scenes Story

Vincent Trivett and I met Snookie while getting kicked out of a ball hosted by Alfred Hammonds—our previous video subject—at The Door, a youth center downtown. Both Vincent and I felt livid by the inconvenience, and I guess our sentiments were visible. Snookie approached us, told us that he hosts these events regularly, and recommended that we stay in touch about one he would host just a few weeks down the line, which we could report for our person project. We accepted his offer. While reporting that night, I thought about reporting these vogue balls—moreover the young man who makes them possible—for my place piece. I fell in love with the ballroom energy, the music, the impromptu performances, the kind people involved, and felt that these would all lend themselves well to video. The following week, the folks at Gay Men’s Health Crisis allowed me to film and report their Halloween Ball, which Snookie also hosted. Again, such a lively crowd at a great gathering. I’m glad I got introduced to this culture through my first Video Storytelling project. This is certainly a story that I’ll continue to pursue, not just through video, but through long-form narrative writing as well.

Links

Snookie vogueing (1:34-1:58): youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=kioZ5kcq8rA

newyorker.com/arts/reviews/film/paris_is_burning_livingston

dancejam.com/dances/vogue

I think this is probably the coldest it’s ever been. It’s certainly the first time we’ve ever had to move it.

Snips today is dressed as Andy Barkhol, famous dog artist.

This is Bean. And deep down, she’s a fairy princess, and that’s why I got her this costume. This is really her idea.

She’s good with the dress, and she’s good with the bows, but the hat took a little convincing.

You know, you’ve gotta use what your dog has, and that’s, that’s important. He may be missing a leg, but he’s got a lot of personality. And it comes out with the costumes.

We were at a pet store and she actually picked the outfit out. So we felt like we couln’t deny her the outfit and we had to find an occasion for it, so…

I hate to say it, but I feel like she maybe is getting a little bit tortured right now. But it’s for art. And what is good art without a tortured artist.

Anything we want to do, he looks at us like, ‘I know you think this is important, but it’s just really crazy.’

I’ve sacrificed a lot for my dog, and I love him very much, and I wouldn’t have it any other way, but one day a year? Yeah, it’s OK. He can pay me back.

Fun Fact:
While it seems like dressing up your dog is a labor of love, the tools for the job are actually available almost anywhere. While some costumes represented handmade labors of love, just as many were off-the-rack ensembles originating from pet stores – and retail giants like Target. If you were looking for a sure sign that dressing up your dog like a gladiator has hit the big time, seek ye no further.

Just a few of the over 60 contestants in this years Great Pupkin event. The 12th dog Halloween Costume Contest had to reschedule following a freak October snowstorm – the earliest on record – that closed Fort Greene Park.

But that didn’t stop hundreds of attendees from around the neighborhood to bring their families – human and canine out for the event a few blocks away on Clinton Street.

The cold did seem to keep some people at home – while over 60 dogs competed for the day’s best-dressed honors, that’s just more than half of the more than over 120 pooches who were on hand for last year’s Great Pupkin event.

The day’s dogs were dressed to the nines, and many of them for the first time – new dog owners were out in force. And for many, the impetus behind getting a new dog was – at least in part – a chance ot make their hound a contender in the costume contest. ‘We came last year, and we’d been thinking about getting a dog, so now we’re back this year competing,’ was a common refrain from new puppy parents.

Links
Past Great Pupkin Events – fortgreenepups.org/site_2009/php/fgp.php?page=photo&item=pupkin
Want to dress up your pet? Try here – costumecraze.com/Traditional-Costumes-Halloween-Costumes-Halloween-Costumes-for-Pets.html
There is a Tumblr for Everything – dogsinclothes.tumblr.com/.