Spanish Harlem
June-July, 2024
I returned to New York for the first time since the pandemic. I had two interiors shoots on the Upper East Side and a commercial shoot in a woodshop in Connecticut. I stayed for two months in a former elementary school that had been converted to subsidized housing for artists in East Harlem. I wanted to feel out the city, and maybe see about moving back. I walked 250 miles in successive heat waves, saw old friends, heard their stories, listened in the evenings to a lone guitarist in Tompkins Sqaure, watched the fireflys, stepped on a rat on e10th, read The Great Gatsby at Veniero’s, drank bustelo and scribbled aimlessly on my neon green Strat, trashed my diet, and consumed no alcohol. In the end, the best day was when I rented a surfboard on Rockaway Beach for $25 on an unusually good summer swell and surfed lefts off the jetty. At sundown, I caught Real Young & Lazy Horse playing Neil Young covers on the boardwalk at Rippers and remembered why I moved back to California in the first place, years ago. I suspect I have entered into a bicoastal phase, another member of the Creative Diaspora in the new normal.
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Logo illustration by Matt Huynh. Photo by Ella Rose Ledyard.