First and Fifteenth

A neighborhood in decline has always been an ideal place to work. Generally, you are only improving the situation with a little bit of paint, and the work tends to last longer than in the pricey precincts of the city. Now that I’m getting calls to help revitalize areas, its not irony, its people seeing my work they way I’ve always seen it, as an improvement. In Coney Island, Philadelphia, Syracuse and  Downtown Brooklyn, the work we made heralds the forthcoming development, but also testifies to the cherished aspects of the neighborhoods we worked in, aspects that may be lost as the neighborhoods change. In Coney, it was the raucous cacophony of signage, In Philly, it was the eradicated graffiti that ruled the rooftops for decades, in Syracuse it was the amazing bridges and the lumbering freight trains that rumbled across them, and finally in brooklyn, the native brooklynites that will probably be pushed out by rising rents.

Dave Villorente grew up right in the neighborhood, and I’ll go on record as saying he is the only person I know with more verbal game than me. I call him the Brooklyn Story repository, as he has an endless supply of first person accounts about growing up in Brooklyn and will spin them for you one after another with great clarity and detail. As part of that talent, He’s not good with dates, but has a remarkable faculty for recalling what song was big at the time, which is his way of  establishing chronology for the events in his life. His memory is failsafe, all the more interesting as he is a product of the 80′s NYC, and would be excused if he forgot it all. I wanted parts of Love Letter Brooklyn to reflect his life and times, and hoped he would take ownership of it, as communities had taken ownership of the work we did in Philly and Syracuse.

And although it was based on one, it speaks for many that have told me they grew up in the area and see themselves in the work. That is what they call representing. Happy to do it.