In Manhattan, one in two households are occupied by singletons. Have Carrie and her "Sex and the City" girl gang taken over? Or is some other social meme at work...
Feathers aren't just for costuming and fly fisherman anymore. The owner of The Feather Place in Midtown discusses her shop's success as the feather trend continues...
Stephen Ritz, who teaches in the South Bronx, has transformed the lives of his students with the "edible wall" of produce he built in his classroom. Photo courtesy of Green Bronx Machine.
“I am not a farmer. I’m a parent, a resident and a teacher,” I said at the opening of my presentation at the January TEDx Manhattan conference, “Changing the Way We Eat.” I didn’t need a pitchfork or overalls to explain how growing produce in my science classroom transformed the way my students treat their relationship to food, community and employment.
I am a special education teacher at the Discovery School in the South Bronx. Our students are the most marginalized and disenfranchised in New York City. They live in the poorest congressional district in America and the situation is not improving. They are getting fatter, sicker and poorer — they come to school hungrier and needier than ever.
Audrey Banks, 18, is the founder of Teen Art Gallery, a project that curates and displays the work of artists aged 12 to 19. Photo by Sam Williams.
Audrey Banks is barely 18 years old, but she’s already making moves in the art world. She’s the founder of Teen Art Gallery (T.A.G.), a project that curates and displays works by artists between the ages of 12 and 19. Although T.A.G. lacks a full-time brick-and-mortar location, in July of 2011 Banks and her friends curated 37 artworks from over 700 submissions for their debut show at the Open Center in Manhattan.
Author: Dave Isay Publisher: The Penguin Press Publication Date: Feb. 2012
StoryCorps is a nonprofit organization that records, preserves and broadcasts oral histories on public radio. Since launching in 2003, StoryCorps has collected over 40,000 stories from about 80,000 individuals. Until 2008, many of those stories were recorded in a booth in Grand Central Terminal.
Just in time for Valentine’s Day, the program’s founder, Dave Isay, published “All There Is,” a collection of StoryCorps’ most memorable love stories. MetroFocus spoke to him about love in New York City.
Q: What percentage of StoryCorps interviews would you classify as “love stories”?
A: I think that the theme of love comes up in every interview. I haven’t searched specifically but romantic love is probably in three-fourths of the interviews at least. People will talk about the most important things in their lives, such as their families and parents and kids and people who they’ve fallen in love with.
Q: Some of the greatest love stories ever told take place in New York, but we’ve also got subway rats and rude cabbies. What’s romantic about this city?
A: StoryCorps tells the story of everyday people and the romance is in the power and poetry of their words. New York is full of real people, full of great characters and that may be why we see a preponderance of New York stories in this book.
Q: Several of the New York stories from the book began as chance encounters on the street or subway…
A: That’s exactly right. There is a lot of serendipity in these love stories — a lot of surprises. It’s a hopeful book because there are a lot of stories of people who thought they would never find love and it just taps them on the back, when they least expect it.
Scott Wall and Isabel Sobozinsky met 20 years ago when Sobozinsky decided to celebrate New Year's Eve in New York instead of her native San Francisco. It was the beginning of a long distance relationship that involved the exchange of many audio love messages and ended in marriage. Photo courtesy of StoryCorps.
Q: In one of the stories from the book, a couple’s long distance relationship begins on New Year’s Eve in NYC 20 years ago. One of them lived here and one of them lived in San Francisco, and they began exchanging messages recorded on audio cassettes. What role did New York play in their love?
A: Scott Wall, the New York side of that relationship, started recording these sort of city soundscapes on places like the Brooklyn Bridge and sending them to his future wife Isabel Sobozinsky. He also sent his grandmother’s toaster across the country with a letter to her that read, “I hope one day we’ll make English muffins together.” New York City is a very creative place where people do things differently and are inspired by the beauty they see all around them. Creativity drives people to find others in unexpected ways.
Listen to the StoryCorps interview with Scott Wall and Isabel Sobozinsky-Wall, a couple who met in New York on New Year’s Eve 20 years ago.
Q: In another story, Granvilette Kestenbaum remembers her husband, Howard, who died in the World Trade Center attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. What does her story tell us about love in the wake of tragedy?
Granvilette Kestenbaum's husband, Howard, worked on the 103rd floor in the South Tower of the World Trade Center. He was 56-years-old when he died in the attacks on Sept. 11th, 2001. Granvilette (left), 63, told her friend Darlene Greggs, 76, about meeting her husband in college in 1969. Photo courtesy of StoryCorps.
A: I think that Gran’s story, one of the most powerful in the book, is also unbelievably funny. It’s the story of her getting together with Howard Kestenbaum, this goofy guy. When she was practically a kid, he did everything he could to try to win her over. He was a complete nerd and she wouldn’t have anything to do with him — and then she falls in love with him. It’s a gorgeous story.
That day was such an overwhelming tragedy and this story reminds us of what was lost. Howard is the type of guy everybody should have met. Everybody should hear this story — that’s the only way we can begin to understand the pain that people continue to feel over the loved ones they lost on 9/11.
Q: Any other great New York love stories?
A: There’s the story of Hunny and Bunny Feller, identical twin sisters who married Elliot and Danny Reiken, identical twin brothers. They recall taking separate subway cars out to Coney Island so people wouldn’t stare. Hunny and Elliot Reiken still live together in the Brooklyn house they bought with their identical twins 50 years ago.
But the greatest StoryCorps recording of a New York love story actually comes from a previous book. It’s the store of Danny and Annie Perasa, a Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, couple married for 27 years. Danny was a five-foot-tall off-track betting clerk who was bald, cross-eyed and one-toothed, but he was more romantic than any Hollywood actor. He loved his wife more than anything. They personify what StoryCorps is all about and what love is about. Danny has this line that “being married is like a color television set, you never want to go back to black and white.” You can’t make this sh*t up.
WATCH VIDEO:
Danny Perasa and his wife, Annie, were one of the earliest StoryCorps participants and their remarkable story was later animated. This recollection of their 27-year romance was recorded during Danny’s last days as he struggled with terminal cancer.
Q: Any New York stories of revenge or strife? Bitter New York divorces?
A: When I first started StoryCorps, I was concerned about this. Here’s this booth in Grand Central Terminal where anyone can walk in and tell a story, what the hell is going to happen? I was worried about a Jerry Springer moment — someone pulling out guns and shooting — but that never happened. People really interview people that they care about deeply. We don’t see people going after each other. Yes, some storytellers talk about unhappy marriages but most people are focused on events and people that help move them forward in life, as opposed to those that held them back.
Q: You grew up in the Tri-State area and went to college here. Do you have your own “New York Love Story”?
A: I actually grew up in New Haven, Conn. but moved to New York City when I was 15. My New York love story? I proposed to my wife at the Bowery Poetry Club under a picture of Nathan Smith, a man who was the proprietor of the Sunshine Hotel, one of the Bowery’s last flophouses. I had produced a radio documentary about Sunshine and Smith was one of the greatest men ever to walk God’s green earth. That may not be romantic for everybody but for me, it’s pure gold.
A view from where Stanley stands as he sets out in the morning for a walk in the park. Photo by Julee Whalin.
My walks with Stanley begin like any other with a dog and their owner in New York City. I get dressed, grab his giant poop bags and his giant leash, grab my keys, phone and we’re off.
The difference lies in the moment we step outside and meet another human being. I brace myself for how they will look at us, what they might say to us. Our walks are spent managing the reactions of people who ask why I’ve chosen to have a dog this big in the city. We live at the Clinton Hill/Bed-Stuy border in Brooklyn and folks here react just like anyone else in New York City. Someone once asked me what it was like to walk down the block with him; I liken it to what it must be like for Beyoncé to try to get down the block unnoticed.
Authors: Rob Sacher Publisher: Selena Press Publication Date: March 1, 2012
There are only a handful of rock nightclubs in the history of New York City where musicians actually took their art to extraordinary places — before almost anyone knew who they were, or what it was they were giving to us on stage. Among them was the highly regarded Luna Lounge, the Lower East Side club I was fortunate enough to co-own from 1995 to 2005. Another was CBGB, but I’ll address that club — and its rumored resurrection — a bit later.
Luna was, I believe, one place in a million, one place in time; a simple rectangular box bisected by a wall creating two rooms within one. And, within those rooms, people came to create and connect themselves among friends. Luna was also more than a club; it was a conduit to the consciousness of a certain generation of artists, musicians, comedians and painters who found a home running with a kindred spirit.
Several creative NYC residents are trying to making a living off YouTube. Composite image: Mister Chase, YouTube/MisterChase; JR Sport Brief, YouTube/JRSportBrief; Maangchi, YouTube/Maangchi; Rachel's English, YouTube/Rachel's English. Composite image by Karen Brazell for MetroFocus.
Want to make money off your hobby? How about taking your talents to YouTube?
MetroFocus recently spoke via email to Vahram Muratyan, the graphic designer behind the book “Paris versus New York,” about his images comparing these two most impressive (if we do say so ourselves) cities.
Q: Alright, let’s start with what everyone wants to know: If Amélie and “Sex and the City’s” Carrie Bradshaw got into a fight, who would win?
A: Amélie is cute and naïve, but she got herself involved in other people’s lives way too much. Carrie is self-centered and surrounded by a bunch of self-conscious, independent female friends — and men. She would kick Amélie’s ass.
Q: What made you so interested in the New York/Paris comparison?
A: I’m a Parisian and I’ve been obsessed with New York since I was a child. Since then, I’ve managed to come here often. I spent a few months living in New York in 2010 and I started to count all those little things that made my two beloved cities so special. You can find the differences in the small details.
Q: What was your first memory of New York City?
A: My first souvenir was a meter of snow. And the seemingly endless perspectives created by the streets…When you were a child, it’s even more impressive.
A lot of songs have been written over the years about work — from Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5” to The Who’s “Dirty Jobs” to Rose Royce’s “Car Wash.” But Elliot Shapiro works in a field that does not exactly lend itself to song: he’s a criminal defense lawyer in the Bronx.
Shapiro, 67, grew up in Queens but often visited the Bronx to see his grandparents, and after law school he landed a job working in the Bronx District Attorney’s Office.
Kickstarter is a Lower East Side-based startup that helps creative people “crowd-fund” their projects.
MetroFocus regularly highlights local projects that seem to make the best use of this platform and have the potential to leave a lasting impression on the New York area.
New York seems to have an abundance of almost everything (except cheap rent) but often that “you can get anything here” feeling can be overwhelming. In different ways, this week’s Kickstarter projects are about curating the city, making urban life just a little bit more manageable by appreciating the little things that get lost in the shuffle.
At the annual Play Revolution party, members of the women-only social club Mice at Play practiced drumming. Photo courtesy of Mice at Play.
Once upon a time, the idea of a women’s social club brought to mind tea, sandwiches, socialites and social causes. More recently, some female-only groups revolved around moms and their children. But now, at a time when the number of women in the work force may soon surpass the number of men, more adventurous — and fun — clubs catering to those with two X chromosomes are popping up all over New York City.
Freelance workers are increasingly using not just cafés but also bars as offices. Would this guy, who is hard at work in a Chelsea café, be smiling if he had a caipirinha or a beer instead of that iced cappuccino? MetroFocus/Laura van Straaten
A new trend has emerged in local dining establishments: the coffice. The term coffice, coined by hipster-friendly blog Brooklyn Based, refers to MacBook-filled coffee shops where freelance workers congregate for hours on end, satisfying both their need for WiFi and caffeine in one convenient location.
The Freelancers Union in New York State has 100,000 members and there are undoubtedly tens (if not hundreds) of thousands more non-union freelance workers in the city (in total, there are more than 42 million independent contractors in the U.S.), many of whom work from laptops in lieu of traditional work spaces. And of course, anyone whose employer believes in the open floor plan knows that sometimes, you have to get away to get anything done.
Did you have a good day at the boffice, hon?
But WiFi is available in more places than just cafés. And some of us need something a little stronger than espresso to get it all done before the deadline. Thus, the boffice. Bar + office = boffice.
Living in New York City — not exactly the Amazon rainforest or the Great White North (though occasionally, depending on the season, it can feel like either) — we sometimes forget that science is all around us. At The Story Collider, the city’s only science storytelling show, we aim to remind everyone that it is here – and not just when we’re avoiding germs on the subway or mentally calculating the velocity of approaching cabs.
Every month we invite six guests — ranging from scientists and educators to comedians and burlesque dancers — to tell stories about a time when science affected their lives. These are true, personal stories, not lectures. (Part of my job as producer, co-host and resident non-scientist is to prevent anything educational from worming its way into the show. Not on my watch, folks.) Instead, The Story Collider is all about making science real and entertaining for everyone.
Early in the morning on Nov. 10, 2011, three cars along Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn were found ablaze with anti-Semitic slurs scrawled on them. Police now believe that the incident was an insurance scam rather than a real hate crime. VINNews.com/Shimon Gifter
Author: Teresa Carpenter Publisher: Modern Library Publication Date: Jan. 2012
I’ve been keeping a nightly diary for more than 30 years. It started as one of those line-a-day books in which weepy teenage girls used to opine about crushes and friends — but only to themselves in ballpoint. It occurred to me, as I moved past my teens, that penning this juvenilia may not have left a compelling social record, but it had, at least, developed some mental discipline. And if one aspires to become a writer, then one should write something every day.
That diary, or rather the stack of black and red volumes in the back of my closet, remained a purely personal matter until I married. My husband, who knew better than to peek at those pages, nonetheless recognized my fondness for them; on my birthday in 1987 he gave me “The Faber Book of Diaries,” 400 years of British diary-keeping edited by the mystery writer, Simon Brett. It was a splendid and illuminating work. I placed the book on my bedside table where it has remained, ever since.
MetroFocus is made possible by James and Merryl Tisch, the Cheryl and Philip Milstein Family, Josh and Judy Weston, Jody and John Arnhold, The Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation and Jean and Ralph Baruch. Corporate funding is provided by Mutual of America.
