Author: JUAN DIEGO RAMIREZ

 

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Skateboarding is a male dominated speaker. Brujas along other women skateboarding crews want to change that. They have centered themselves around the sport and are not afraid to take up space. Unlike other women skateboarding crews, Brujas are also political. They are for the abolishment of prisons and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency or ICE. I will follow them for a day to see how they want to impact sport and why their approach is has gotten so much attention.

New Yorkers are no strangers to the limelight. As one of the most famous cities in the world, New York has been featured in films, books, and probably on your favorite podcast. However, there are some neighborhoods in the city that have kept their distance from the media. A short train ride away north of Manhattan into the South Bronx, a predominantly Latino and Black working-class neighborhood has become an overnight attraction. People in Highbridge are finding themselves split over what has become known as the “Joker Stairs” as fans of the new film flock to the location en masse. 

After its opening at the box office as one of the top 10 highest-grossing films of 2019, the Joker has made Highbridge a new tourist attraction. In this new adaptation of DC’s villain the Joker–Arthur Fleck–portrayed by Joaquin Phoenix–is a failed clown with mental illness who lives on the outskirts of Gotham City–a fictional city that resembles New York. In the film, Fleck ascends a long narrow set of stairs located between two old apartment buildings just to get home after long days. In what is one of the most iconic scenes in the film, Fleck–now dressed as the Joker in a red suit, green hair, and clown makeup– is seen dancing down the stairs. 

Word of the location of this scene spread quickly through social media and fans from all over have started showing up. Ana de Leon tells me that she finds this trend strange. “This is a form of transportation for me to get to the train, people coming here to take a picture it’s strange,” she says. De Leon, is divided on her opinion about the Joker Stairs. “I think it could be a good thing, because of a movie and where it was filmed everybody is interested in where we live it could be a good thing for the neighborhood,” she adds.

Aidibell Feliciano, another resident of Highbridge tells me that this new wave of tourism gives the neighborhood character. “It will probably bring more productions to the neighborhood and a lot of recognition and finally because this was a famous neighborhood and it’s been put behind. People are afraid to come this way but we are all nice and welcoming,” she tells me. But Cris Yanes–a teenager who traveled with his family from Queens to visit the stairs is not one of those peoples who are afraid to shoe up to the Bronx. “I heard about it since the movie came out since the trailer. I wanted to know where the stair where and I wanted to do the dance. I searched up on google because I wanted to know where it was. I knew it was somewhere in New York. I got excited when I found it was close, so we came,” he says. Yanes reenacted the dance in costume as the Joker—but came as another, also an iconic version of the character. “I wanted to make it more original, so I went with a bit of Heath look. I wanted to go with a more original idea when dancing down the stairs.”

Other tourists like Aidan Hubbard and Ryan Martin, fans of the film also used Google to find the location of the joker stairs. It was the first time they came to this neighborhood. “He actually googled it and it was popping everywhere from the movie,” says Martin while pointing at Hubbard. “I’ve been to a couple of Yankee games before and I’ve kind of explored a little bit passed 169th st but otherwise this area I mean, it looks like any part of the city but now it’s kind of a little icon up here in the South Bronx,” says Hubbard. 

On social media, Joel Martinez, a comedian mostly commonly known as Mero the Kid from Showtime’s Desus & Mero, tweeted a sarcastic message to his followers telling them to show up with expensive electronics and cash at hand as The Bronx suffers from high crime rates, according to the New York Police Department. In aviral video posted on social media, an angry man is seen throwing eggs at visitors. You can hear the man say, “Y’all not spending no money in my store, but come here to take a picture, Yankees Stadium is where the tourist go.”

This has become a well-known sentiment among local business owners. Tourists are not contributing to the local economy. Fatima and Kevin Reyes workers at Shakespeare Deli Grocery, say that despite all these new faces in their neighborhood, their business has not had the economic impact they expected. “Honestly, we haven’t seen anything different. There are more people coming for the stairs, but we haven’t seen any uptake in our business,” says Fatima. “We thought that when people came here to film they would be doing good things for the neighborhood. We should’ve seen better opportunities in business or a better quality of life for everyone who lives in this location. But we don’t see any changes,” she adds. Kevins tells me that when there are too many people outside, many of our customers prefer to shop elsewhere instead of dealing with tourists. “It’s affecting our business. What Can do?” he says.

The Joker stairs have started a conversation among residents of the area. Ana de Leon says that to the neighborhood just to take pictures. “sometimes it could take away from the actual place we call home because they want to post it online and be apart of something,” she says. Arthur Fleck has transcended the screen and cause a rift in the real world. There are neighbors who welcome the change and others who oppose it. For now, this neighborhood in the Bronx will have to deal with the masses of Joker fans. 

 

Showtime musicians. I want to follow the story of a few subway musicians throughout the day. I’ve been following a few musicians on the subway who play music for a living. Some of these musicians are older in age and often only work certain hours of the day due to that. There is a group of musicians on the C and A train who play the same music and have created a small community. I will be focusing on 3 musicians who have more than 30 years of experience put together. I will dive into the work they do, the music they prefer to play, how much money they earn, and conflicts that occur to them as street performers. The piece will include ambient sounds (trains, crowds, subway announcements, etc) and live music.

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I visited Photoville on two occasions. The first time I, the professor introduced us to Ryan Jones, a photojournalist who has worked with the New York Times. Ryan has been covering the opioid epidemic for several years. His installation focused on his recent work in New York City. He talked about how to approach the story without exploiting the people in his images.

Pictures with people shooting up drugs and or under the influence can sometimes feel like exploitation. His pictures depict serene moments of compassion, regret, and accomplishments. Ryan also talked about journalism language that surrounds stories. he was careful not calling people, subjects or even using the word “shot” when it came down to snap pictures. He respected the wishes of the people he was covering. He mentioned that one person didn’t want their name attached to his pictures because she feared that in the age of the internet she would have trouble finding a job in the future once she got cleaned.

Another exhibition I enjoyed was the Negev Coexistence Forum for Civil Equality. This nonprofit advocacy organization wants to shine a light to the human rights violations and displacement of the Arab-Bedouin in Palestine. This project consisted of pictures taken the Arab-Bedouin woman.

Maryam Abu Al-Qian is one of the few women photographers who were able to attend this event due to the current immigration laws in the United States and Israel. She says that there are too many hurdles for people like her to travel abroad. Even if they are educated like her. Aside from the pictures, there is a video of a scuffle between Israeli forces and her community playing on repeat. She mentions is the day her cousin was murdered by an Israeli soldier. It becomes too hard for her to watch so we step out. All she can do is pray her village does not get displaced in the near future.

Tal Avrech is Jewish Israeli and one of the organizers of the project. She says that it is important for her a woman with a privilege to bring attention to this subject. Tal was surprised to find out this was happening in her country. Israeli education or the government don’t mention these type of incidents. It wasn’t until she traveled abroad that she learns about the huma rights violations that are happening in her native country. She hopes this gallery serves as a means to educate other Israeli Jews living in New York City as it did to her.

The second and last time I went to Photoville was to see “For Sama”, a documentary film about the war in Syria. This film was produced in 2016 as Donald Trump was taking office. The film follows Waad Al-Kateab, a freelance journalist and her husband, who happens to be one of the last doctors during the uprising in Aleppo.

At the end of the film, Lucy Wescott with the Committee to Protect Journalist(CPJ) conducted a Q&A with journalist and activist writing about Syria. This might have been the highlight of Photoville for me. It was a powerful film and an amazing panel. I hope to catch Photoville next year as these projects have raised the bar for my journalism career.

Notable Mentions: The Bronx Documentary Center.

Seven years ago I would run into a duo of street performers daily for two years straight. Every morning we would get on the same train, around the same time, at the same station. The duo was composed of a man and a woman who walked around the subway car with a cap asking for tips while the played his guitar. After her rounds she would join him with a scrapper—a latin percussion— to enrich the sounds of their songs. What stood them apart for me aside from their age, was the style of music they were playing—Rancheras. Rancheras are considered Mexican folk music. Think of country music if it was mixed with gangster rap without the hip-hop rhythm. This type of music is unusual to be heard on that specific side of the city. When you think of the Latinx music of Up-Town Manhattan, merengue, bachata, or even salsa music come to mind. Music that is representative of that Latinx community. Rancheras are not rhythmically rich as Caribbean music.  They focus is more on the lyrics. So, to have Rascheras street performers roaming the train cars of Up-Town Manhattan in cowboy attire in contrast with the audience should make for a compelling story.