Entries Tagged 'New York City' ↓

Shot this today out my window.

Spring On The Avenue from Shawn Chittle on Vimeo.

The first nice day of 2010, Lower East Side, New York City

Not photoshopped. Real. Try it yourself.

I love this new band I’m working for, Fall On Your Sword. I can’t stop playing this song or video! It’s my entire late 70’s/early 80’s childhood in ONE SONG AND VIDEO!

I’m a New York transplant, first got to NYC 13 years ago, been here off and on, but now a longtime permanent downtown Manhattan resident. Perhaps this will sound a little odd, but I go out of my way to befriend native New Yorkers (I’m giving one such native a hard time in the photo, with the typical
“Why me?!?!” response). New York natives are the reason why I moved here in the first place. There is just something about them that makes NYC, well, more authentic NYC. New York-specific accents that don’t seem to be going away:

1. Hil-LARRY-ous
2. Hiz-TARA-cul
3. Shtreet instead of street
4. Waiting on line instead of in line (I once asked someone if they were on line and they said, after a puzzled look, yes and that I could go in front of them if I wanted! (It was a long line too).
5. Train instead of subway
6. Even Manhattan itself is said MunHATTAN

I’ve noticed that if I turn on the accent (it’s easy), and add a little Bayside, Queens Italian shoulder shrug here and there, adopt a little Brooklyn Jewish animation, I find that the city makes room for me: on the train, in restaurants, and in general, people automatically give me respect… strange as it sounds, it’s absolutely the truth. I turn the accent off and revert to my native nasally Michigan accent, and I’m trampled upon in every way possible. I might as well be invisible.

HOW you say things here in NYC – from my observations – can absolutely alter the kind of experience you have in the city.

I was a bit too young to understand or appreciate Jean-Michel Basquiat; he died when I was 16 years old and living in Flint, Michigan, about as far from the neo-expressionist art scene as you can get.

But shortly after I moved to the Lower East Side of Manhattan, it was impossible to not hear stories about Basquiat, his work, and what a great scene the East Village had back in the early 80’s. The Julian Schnabel movie about him had just come out. It got my foot in the door.

After seeing some of his work up close and personal, and watching Downtown 81, I finally ”got it.” I found out he slept – homeless – in Tompkins Square Park about a block from where I live. He walked the same neighborhood streets I did, although in the early 80’s he had much more to worry about than I ever will. I felt I made some kind of connection to him, as cliched as that sounds. I retraced his steps from Downtown 81, and while most of it is unrecognizable, there are a few places that are exactly the same. There is something magical about walking out of your apartment and into the frame of a movie you just watched.

In August of 2008 I placed flowers at his apt doorstep (which is a few blocks from my apt) to mark the 20th anniversary of his death. I was the only one to do so, but it was early morning and I don’t know if anyone else did (I hope so). The more I read about him, the more I miss him. His work is just beyond belief. I can stare at his paintings for what seems like hours and never get bored. That’s art!

And now I’ve just read there is a new (long-overdue) documentary coming out shortly. Can’t wait to see it, and hope you will join me in celebrating one of the greatest artists in our modern era.

Long live Jean-Michel Basquiat!

I work for a large electronics retailer in Manhattan and have been wanting to get the company into more social media. We do thousands of customers a day in the store, and millions of unique visitors on the web.

Photographers naturally gravitate to the web and as mobile professionals, social media is a good fit for them, and us. It’s a tough sell, however as my employer is a very shy company… however I got them to agree to let me try some tricks to increase our numbers, and the results were nothing short of astonishing. For the last year or so we’ve only had about 1,700 “fans,” which is pretty bad. I was able to skyrocket our numbers twenty-fold in no time at all. As of this writing, there are over 20,000.

The time difference between the screenshots below is less than one week!

How To Get to LaGuardia (LGA) for $2.25 from Shawn Chittle on Vimeo.

If you need to get to LaGuardia (LGA) and you want to do it cheap and in under an hour, this video explains it all. We show you shortcuts that few people know about!