OLD_2011 Spring New York Stories of Amazing People

Transcript to come

Phil Mortillaro has let plenty of people into their apartments when they’re locked out, but he has one rule: If the locked-out person can’t produce evidence — and quickly — that he actually lives there, Mortillaro will call the police and report it as a break-in. Pretty straight-shooting for a man who claims to have grown up surrounded by the old school Italian Mafia.

Mortillaro, 60, has been a locksmith for 46 years, and he says his skills — he claims that he can easily crack almost any lock or safe — bring him customers, but his ethical standards keep them loyal. He counts plenty of jewelers and gem dealers among his regulars.

Mortillaro has a shaggy gray hair, droopy blue eyes, and two ex-wives; he’s been a fixture behind the tiny counter at Greenwich Locksmiths for more than 30 years. He says school never held his attention — he dropped out before finished high school, and never attended much before then — but he’s always loved locksmithing and art.

A few years ago, he decided to combine his two loves and make a giant piece of art out of keys. He wanted to mount it on the front of Greenwich Locksmiths, to make the shop stand out as quirky and unique in the midst of the increasingly homogenized West Village. Tens of thousand of keys later, his interpretation of Van Gogh’s Starry Night causes pedestrian rubbernecking up and down his block of Seventh Avenue South.

On a recent weekday afternoon, one pedestrian leaned in close for a better view. “Huh,” he said, to no one in particular, “they really are all keys, aren’t they?”

José Reyes, a 48-year-old Dominican citizen and U.S. legal resident since 1991, was arrested for a local dispute on May 13 of 2009. Because of a drug possession misdemeanor offense he had in his record from 1997, he was taken from Rikers Island prison to Varick Detention Center and put in deportation proceedings. While in detention and because of lack of medical care in the facility, his kidney disease deteriorated severely. He saved his life when a pro-bono attorney got him out so he could go to a hospital.

He would still face deportation for a year.
Thanks to his medical release, the work of two pro-bono lawyers and the closure of his 1997 criminal case, he won his right to remain in the U.S. in June of 2010.

Currently, health and financial difficulties keep him struggling, but he has regained the custody of his 7 and 8-year-old daughters, who had ended up in foster care when he was in detention.

For an estimated 33.3 million people worldwide, every day living with HIV could be a life or death situation. But what’s it like to know you could die at any moment… and just keep living? And living. And living?

When Michelle Lopez and her newborn daughter contracted HIV in 1991, the AIDS virus was merciless. Whole neighborhoods in New York City were dying out. The government was so unresponsive to the pandemic that people threw the ashes of their dead loved ones on the White House lawn in protest.

When Michelle was diagnosed, the virus was widely known as a gay men’s disease–she didn’t know it was possible for women to contract HIV. Michelle was one of the first women to testify in front of congress that she was infected–her words helped get AIDS funding passed for women and children.

Michelle’s daughter Raven was HIV-positive at birth, and although there was a chance at the time she could reject her mother’s antibodies and sera-covert as a baby, she remained positive. Michelle sites that realization as her saddest moment.

Today, HIV medicines are advanced enough that nine out of 10 babies who are born positive sera-convert and become negative by age two.

Twenty years ago, Michelle thought life was ending for herself and her daughter. With proper care, treatment, and heart, they are both alive and kicking.

Michelle has worked in AIDS outreach for most of her career, and is the chair of the board of directors of the National Association for People with AIDS. This is one her many stories.

Sal Natale owns Pugsley Pizza, a beloved hang out for students at nearby Fordham University and neighborhood residents in the Belmont section of the Bronx.

Natale, who has been in business for over 40 years runs the pizza shop with the help of his wife, Pina, son Pietro and daughter Alessandra.

Though he says Pietro may eventually take over, Natale has no plans of giving up his business just yet. Pugsley’s is open seven days a week for lunch, dinner and late night snacking. On weekends and Tuesday nights (the day before which many Fordham students do not have class) the pizza joint is open until 4 a.m. to accommodate those coming back from a late night at the nearby bars. Natale can often be found serving slices at all hours of the day and night.

He frequently jokes around and is known to play the saxophone or trumpet and sing karaoke to his wife or with students in the middle of the pizza shop.

Pugsley’s has a reputation as a place where a customer can come in to talk about sports, share a funny story and engage in a discussion about the meaning of life and love – all on their lunch break.

Natale decorates his shop with inspirational quotes and sayings, but the one most frequently spotted is Pugsley’s slogan, “Pizza is Good, But Love Is It.”

Like many musicians in New York City, singer-songwriter Luke Ryan has put his love for music above all other career pursuits. But unlike others who eventually give up their music dreams after struggling to break into the industry, Ryan, 59, chose to stick with music, despite the fact his main gig over the last three decades has been performing in the city’s parks and subway platforms.

Three days a week Ryan schleps from his apartment-office-recording studio in Astoria, Queens to his main performance space: the Shuttle Subway platform at Grand Central Station. He said he doesn’t drink liquids when he plays as it will cause him to go to the bathroom, which can be difficult to find and is bad for business. And then there’s the New York winter, which, when factoring in frigid conditions and an unhappy audience of hurried commuters, can make playing even less enticing.

Despite his less-than-posh life as a street busker, Ryan has managed to get by financially and is happy. Moreover, he says that playing on and under the streets of New York has allowed him to live a colorful and carefree life filled with friends, wild characters and some glitz, despite the lack of glamour.

“I got a glimpse into a world that would never have opened up to me unless I had brought my guitar out into the streets,” Ryan wrote recently on his MySpace blog.

Rick Kelly has been handcrafting guitars at his shop on 42 Carmine St. for more than
40 years. Painter, sculptor, he’s an artist who went to an art school when he was younger. He never learnt from someone else to build guitars the first time he did it, it was for a friend.

Then he started his own business in the West Village in 1968 when he built his own reputation among famous musicians as Bob Dylan or Patti Smith but also with regular guitarists.

His main speciality is to make handcraft guitar, sometimes customized, but in 200 hundred year-old pine wood he gets from the old timbers in New York.

He makes everybody really comfortable in this shop. Friends, customers or passer-by are allowed to play guitar even in the workshop in the back. Lots of them are friends now and stop by only to talk with Rick Kelly.

In 2009, he received an award from the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation for « for serving Village musicians and for the artistry and tradition of the owner ».

He is always calm but seems sometimes overwhelmed by all the orders he has to fill at the same time while he has to repair, restore and advise customers. That’s why, often you can see in the shop his retired mother who comes to help him.

At 61 years old, with no children or relatives musicians he does not know if someone will take over his shop because he does not even have the time to hire an apprentice to teach someone all his experience in wood and his savoir-faire.

Nonulio Wetela ‘s childhood was marked by civil war in Mozambique, but he still built a love for music. His father, who was once a DJ, would play records for Wetela and his sister. With dismal education prospects in Mozambique, he left for the United States at 21. He spent a year in English courses in New York before heading to the Midwest to work on his Bachelor’s degree. It was there that he became DJ Fresh Nunas and discovered that his love of music could support him through college.

Nunas returned to New York in search of better opportunity. And he found just that. Nunas enrolled in the graphic design program at the New York Institute of Technology and began DJing on the side to pay for school. One gig led to another and before he knew it, Nunas was turning jobs away, even in the peak of the financial crisis.

Then he met a young sound engineering student from Angola, Felipe Narisco. Narisco and Wetela just talked about music at first. They shared a language, the Portuguese colonized both countries, and a passion for beats.Those initial talks led to an idea. They wanted to bring Angolan and Mozambican artists and music to the world. AM Roots was born.

But before the record label could really get off the ground, Narisco had the leave the United States. His student visa expired and he had no job to sponsor him to stay in the country. So Narisco returned to Portugal where he had family and continued to work on AM Roots through weekly day-long Skype sessions. Progress was slow but eventually, Narisco and Wetela were invited to perform at the Winter Music Conference in Miami, a professional DJ conference. It was their first public performance together as AM Roots and the first time a Mozambican and Angolan were invited to the conference.

Sidiki Conde has survived civil up-rest in Guinea, has survived
immigrating to the United States when he didn’t know a word of
English, and has even survived living in one of the worst housing
projects in New York City. But what he is most proud of is surviving
without the use of his legs.

After loosing the ability to walk at the age of 14, due to a freak
accident, Sidiki learned to transport himself by using his hands.,
he learned to dance by using his upper body strength, and finally,
he learned to live by giving the gift of music to others.

Today, Sidiki is able to use his disability to show others with
similar physical challenges, how to live despite being disabled. He
is adamant about the fact that there is a huge difference between
being disabled and being handicapped.

Being disabled, according to Sidiki, means you may have a physical
disorder that might slow you down, but will not stop you from
attaining your wishes. Being handicapped means your physical
challenge also stops you from living the life you want.

Sidiki is disabled, he is not handicapped.

As a young rapper he wanted to fit in. Inspired by Eminem, Jay-Z, 50-cent, he rapped about what was popular – the mainstream – drugs, guns and girls. His life began to mimic his rap. He smoked weed. He drank. He was exposed to gangs and he even considered carrying a gun at one point.

But one night in 2005, Mike, then 19, was in the car with friends as they rolled to an after-hours party, smoking and drinking. Everything was cool until he felt things blur. He went to feel his face but felt nothing. He couldn’t speak, he felt his heartbeat slow, he felt like his body temperature dropped 40 degrees, and then – POW – a painful jab to his heart. It was primal fear, as he felt his heart stop.

He asked God forgiveness – he would be a better person in order to get to heaven, but now was not the time. He pleaded. And God gave him strength. He says it was the Lord who allowed him to live that night.

Now Mike raps with a new message. He raps about the Lord. He raps for church youth-groups. This video is the story of Mike, aka Brother Michael, his rhymes and his message.

Boryana Rossa’s is an artist known for self-inflicted pain, yet her gentle demeanor would never give this away. The petite Bulgarian is an avant-garde performance artist and wife of Russian artist Oleg Mavromatti, forced into exile in Bulgaria .

Together, they make up a team that has traveled the world to convey strong social and political messages through self-inflicted pain art. They use their own bodies as canvas to express their dissatisfaction with classical ideals in their iconic piece, Vitruvian Body (2009), a play on DaVinci’s Vitruvian Man. Apart, they try and collaborate on pieces electronically, but it’s just not the same, especially since this separation is against their will.

Oleg is stuck in Boryana’s native Bulgaria hiding from Russian Authorities because of a 10-year-old crime of a self-crucifixion he performed in his own film. Recently, Oleg put his life up to an online vote, in an electric chair to draw attention to his situation. He has applied for refugee status in Bulgaria, but this could take years. Right now all they have is Skype and photos of the performances to remind each other of the other. The video will reveal Boryana in a vulnerable moment as she soldiers on to complete her doctorate by 2012, and the fate of her husband weighs in the balance.

For years, Terence Taylor has spent his life writing for television shows that educate and entertain children. Now he’s pursuing another career writing horror stories to scare the pants out of those kids who grew up to be adults. The author of the “Vampire Testament” series horror novels spoke for this video at his Park Slope loft, which was filled with toys and action figure from Pee Wee’s Playhouse doll to Buddy Jesus figure from the movie Dogma.
The former screenwriter for popular children shows like “1-2-3 Contact,” “Livewire,” and “You Can’t Do That on Television,” talked about moving back from Los Angles to Manhattan after becoming disillusioned with how children’s television industry was developing. While in New York City, he finished a novel he had been working on for years and found that there was a writing community that help him feel at home.
This video gives you a look at Terence Taylor’s large toy collection and a snap shots of as a young writer in Los Angles during the 90s. You are also given a glimpse of what it’s like to hang out with the science fiction and horror writing community in New York City.
However, Terence Taylor’s life story that is told here is more than that. It’s about how taking a terrifying leap to change your life then finding you can still fulfill your dream and have a home. Even while writing horror, Terence life story can still find a way to comfort his readers today.

Alissa Salvatore always knew she wanted to be in the starlight. The third child born in a family of five, the Bronx born girl would sing and dance for her parents from a young age. She said it just came normal.

Her first encounter with stardom came in high school after her friends heard Salvatore sing. They pressured her to try out for the play Rent, and she got the part. Being on stage in front of the crowed Salvatore said she was able to create an alter ego character and embrace a different side of herself. She was hooked.

If for some reason Salvatore had to pick a new career, she said she would delve into the culinary arts. She described food as being very similar to acting. The ability to make other people happy though creating something individual is what she feels fulfilled doing.

“I’m Italian so I know good food, and I know how to eat” said Salvatore. “Even though the business I’m in influences my diet and lifestyle, I’m not skipping out on any meals for anything. Food is beautiful, food is sensual and food is a part of our soul”

Though she viewed college as a setback in pursuing her acting and singing career, she would hardly call it a waste of time. Just knowing that she graduated with a B.A. in English, and that she has something to rely on is a real comfort she said.

“I don’t want to sound dorky, but I’m a big fan of Shakespeare,” said Salvatore. “His prose are beautiful and his themes are everlasting. Reading is an escape for me. I can enter a story and not have to worry about anything else.”

Because training with acting classes, voice lessons and going to auditions is so time consuming, Salvatore has had to cut out other parts of her life. She admits relationships have suffered and friendships have been tested. People can’t always understand that just because you can’t make time for them, you can still care about them.

“I’ve had to let people go because they were too jealous, and people have had to let me go because they couldn’t handle my lifestyle,” said Salvatore. “In the end the business I’m in is about making sacrifices. I’m going to be successful because I’m willing to make those sacrifices. I’m on the pursuit of happiness.”