Fundamentals of Interactive Journalism

On a recent evening, Kali Irwin tested her newest creation on the patrons of 67 Orange Street, a recently opened Harlem speakeasy where she serves as general manager and chief mixologist. She described as simply a “kind of a mulled wine,” before delivering its lengthy listing of ingredients: “red wine with chipotle, lemon juice, rum, a little simple syrup, and some all spice liqueur. We made quite a few of those.” Irwin considers this her culinary creative outlet. “I don’t really cook, so this [mixology] is my way of expressing myself through food and drink.”

The Washington Heights-born Irwin, 36, joined the nightlife industry full-time last year after working as a legal assistant and only occasionally dabbling in bartending. But proprietor Karl Williams, who brought her to 67 Orange, recognized her sense of innovation. Williams, owner of nearby Society Café, opened the bar in December 2008 in hopes of bringing downtown nightlife to northern Manhattan.

“I liked what he was trying to do,” says Irwin, “bringing a unique cocktail experience to Harlem that has been lacking here. I think he saw in me somebody who was innovative and was willing to take risks. We found it to be a good match.”

67 Orange was named the bar after the address of Almack’s Dance Hall, one of the city’s first successful black-owned bars (it was open in the Five Points section of Manhattan in the 1840s), so Irwin looked back in time for inspiration to create the menu, focusing on old-style cocktails and new ideas inspired by old New York and black history. She says she discovered an interesting historical fact that led her to the name for one of 67 Orange’s signatures, the Emancipation (a cucumber vodka-based cocktail). “Cucumber was something that slaves would actually sell to their masters. It was a very hot commodity in those days.”

New York Magazine has called Irwin “trailblazing” in her industry, but Irwin wonders if that comment speaks less to her abilities and more to her race and gender. “While you do definitely see female bartenders, it is a male-driven industry, [and] to be a black woman is even rarer,” she acknowledges. “[But] I’m glad to take that role on and hope that it does open doors for other people, other women, other black women in the industry.”

By Maya Pope-Chappell

Co-Editor Larry Smith reads excerpts from Six-Word Memoirs on Love & Heartbreak

Thought 140 words on Twitter was limiting? Try writing your story of love and heartbreak in six-words. Smith Magazine–an online magazine that focuses on personal narratives-presented the newest of the “Six-Word Memoirs” series, “Six-Word Memoirs on Love and Heartbreak.”

Though some of the books pages are graced by famous names like Mark Ecko, Janice Dickerson, and Dr. Drew Pinsky, the bulk of contributors are “obscures” which refer to readers of the magazine who post their own memoirs on the site.  In fact, the book has 800 total contributors, the most of any book.

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2009 is a big year for diversity in animation:

The Black Panther animated series.

The Cleveland Show.

Astro Boy Movie.

The Princess and the Frog – the new Disney movie where the lead princess is a black character.

5:04

2008: The Boondocks banned episode.

No token hero: Static Shock. Napolitano says that the character of Virgil defies tokenism and reminds us that the black lead’s white friend acts “even blacker.”

In 2000, Dora the Explorer hits Nickelodeon, one of the very few attempts to seriously represent the Latino community in children’s television.

5:03

Simpsons becomes the first cartoon to lend a serious ear to gay issues with its “Homerphobia” episode.

5:00

1969 Fat Albert appears on screen – Bill Cosby turns his childhood experiences into a cartoon. The cartoon addresses topics such as drugs, racism, peer pressure and the strains of urban life.

4:56

In 1963, Astroboy is born – the first anime. Animation took a huge step from vilifying the Japanese in comics to becoming voracious anime consumers.

All Negro Comics comes into being in 1947s during a brief spurt of the segregation gap breach with Jackie Robinson and Orrin C. Evans.

4:50

Something happens with the Napolitano’s mouth and he starts to lisp noticeably.

4:47

Walt Disney sent by USA to South America to try and reclaim America’s image against German propaganda. Saludos Amigos produced – the prototype for all the “Speedy Gonzalez” and “Chiquita Banana” characters.

4:38

Napolitano told three stories about Aunt Jemima, Uncle Remus and The Yellow Kid – fiction and cartoons representing blacks and immigrants respectively. Back then, animation companies liked to present different ethnicities as parodies of themselves.

4:30

The main speaker, Dan Napolitano opened the panel. A multicultural director at Alfred University introduced the “Art Force Five” – five young people representing the different art forms. They go into schools where some students may have been formerly incarcerated to talk about art.

Friday found me at the New York City Comic Con. The main space at the Javits Center dazzled with its array of colorful fiction but once you’ve seen one con, you have seen them all. What really interested me were the panels. I found one called “From panthers to princesses: diveristy in animation.” Intrigued, I came in just as the panel was about to start.

Re/Dress NYC Grand Opening Party
Boeurm Hill Brooklyn
February 4, 2009, 6pm-10pm

6:20 pm: I’ve returned to Re/Dress for the first time in almost a month and was greeted like a true friend of the shop. (I’ve covered the store for project in the past. Deb, the owner, knows me and says hi to me every time I’m here.) So far it looks like only a few people have streamed in. They’re as nice as all the other people I’ve encountered while I’ve been shopping and working (the latter more than the former) at the shop.

6:24 pm: I’ve already been offered champagne.

6:52 pm: Have decided to finally join the fold. It’s still in the “Ooh, pretty” part of this affair – that is, the shopping portion. I looked and skirts and found some things that were cool. My love of plaid was reaffirmed. The cookies are really good.

6:54 pm: Overhearing the conversations around. A designer I’ve heard of is supposedly in attendance. I’m on her mailing list in my civilian life. Her stuff is pretty cool. Perhaps she’s someone I can write about for a project. Having ideas is a good thing.

7:12 pm: So apparently Target has plus-size tights in bright colors. I learned this from a girl by the meat platter. She’s got some cool style. She was wearing a yellow cardigan and hot pink tights. You learn something new every day. (And there’s actually a Target down the way at the Atlantic Mall. Suddenly, I’m wondering if it’ll be open when this is over.)

7:43 pm: This place has gotten much more crowded since the beginning. I’ve met a few people that I’ve talked to. I flocked to these women with cameras. One works for a magazine for plus-sized women. I also chatted with a woman who runs “Goddess parties.” It’s a term I’ve heard before but I can’t exactly remember what they are. When I get home, I’ll have to look up both of those sites.

7:49 pm: Met the designer. She invited me to her store, which is right by school. Yes, I plan on e-mailing her.

8:05 pm: I got to use some of the information I gained from my previous project to pepper an interview. Also, there will be a floorshow in about twenty minutes. (All this and a floor show? Wait, what exactly is that call out line for the Rocky Horror Picture Show?) Also, I just heard someone utitlize the term “strum und drang” in everyday conversation. I find this cool, because I’m kind of a nerd.

8:24 pm: I stepped out for a minute for some air and then did another round of the store. Being here makes me wish I had disposable income again. I’m really into the vintage coats in the back of the store, the ones in bright colors with the fur collars. There’s one I give the eye to every time I’m here. It’s teal, a color I’m really a big fan of.

8:58 pm: We’re still waiting for the official floorshow. But so far, there’s someone I believe is a professional performer and some of the employees dancing to some techno music. The presumed performer is a dead ringer for one of the finalists on Australia’s Next Top Model. She’s wearing a red lame corset; it sort of matches her hair.

9:02 pm: And now, the floorshow.

9:09 pm: The first performer was a belly dancer. Her name was Myasia (though I’m not sure of the exact spelling), and she came all the way from D.C. It’s amazing how far the reach of this store has gone. It reminds me that I had previously talked to some who came from Portland. Which actually is way farther than D.C. I wonder if my cousin (who takes belly dance classes) has heard of her before.

9:12 pm: Borough President Markowitz has sent a representative with a proclamation for the store. Today has been declared Re/Dress NYC Day in Brooklyn. That’s a pretty cool honor. Now Deb just encouraged the women from the Borough President’s office to shop here now.

9:16 pm: Now we have a burlesque performance by the World Famous BOB. I am somewhat familiar with her name, thanks to my years of reading BUST Magazine. (Thank you, BUST Magazine.) Unfortunately, there have been some technical difficulties, music issues and the like, so the AusNTM doppelganger has taken to dancing and doing cartwheels for our amusement. Things should start up again momentarily.

9:23 pm: As we wait for things to get working again, the performers have been dancing to “Single Ladies” by Beyonce. That’s a songs I’ve probably been hearing too much of lately.

9:29 pm: I’m really getting involved now. My laptop might just save this party.

9:32 pm: But it unfortunately didn’t.

9:44 pm: It appears I have spoken too soon. Thanks to my trusty laptop, the music (whose low volume had been a problem before) can now be played at the proper volume.

9:45 pm: Maybe.

9:53 pm: The technology has brought the event back down to its chat session origins. But no one in attendance seems to mind, really. In other neither-here-nor-there news, I want that grey Gap dress that’s hanging on the front rack. It’s something I could wear to my internship – I’ve seen people there wearing dresses like that.

10:06 pm: Snoop Dogg is playing on the speakers (which seem be working okay – which now confounds me as to what happened before). The crowd has begun thinning out. I also wonder if it might be time for me to take my leave. And since the buying time, it will probably be empty-handed. Until next time, Re/Dress.

Postscript:
10:29 pm: I spoke too soon. By some strange serendipity, as I prepared to return to Manhattan, the show began again. Burlesque performers Della Dare, Dirty Martini, and (finally) the World Famous BOB (she’s a fuckin’ genius, according to the end of her song) strutted their stuff and bared nearly all to the delight of the remaining audience members. I also learned that there is a burlesque school, but that probably shouldn’t be surprising.

10:30 pm: Deb to audience: “This is my gift to you, and I love you”. A very fitting end to the evening.

The United Nations was eerily quiet on the night it rang in its 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on the east-side New York City headquarters. In one of the massive conference rooms decked with furnishings reminiscent of the Nuclear 50s, almost all the seats were empty.

A Universal Declaration without much fanfare. Photo by H'Rina DeTroy

But, instead of long, perfunctory speeches about promoting human rights, a screening of ten short films marked the 60th year of the Declaration. Perhaps the United Nations have hit upon a way to voice its good intentions as an instrument of diplomacy and accountability in global relations by relying on film makers to do what an entity like the UN can’t do as well — show instead of tell.

"A Water Tale" takes a place where there isn't any. Film by Francesco Jodice. Photo by H'Rina DeTroy

Obama’s victory is an example of how newer technologies can engage and fuel change. Here are a few ways to experience the UN Declaration with sound and visuals.

Afropop Worldwide collaborated with Amnesty International and others to present an hour-long online radio feature dedicated to the 60th year of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, featuring Femi Kuti of Nigeria and other World music artists.

“Read” the Declaration via Youtube, backed by a simple beat and melody:

John McWhorter sums up my position succinctly: “Calling attention to the fact that black nerds are often teased by black peers for “acting white” elicits predictable reactions, such as claims that the problem doesn’t exist.”

Yeah, the problem doesn’t exist.  Just by virtue of the fact that black people are inherently cool.  If there are nerds among us, they are anomalies, probably infected at birth by the same gene that makes white people smart, yet incredibly uncool.

Tongue in cheek, people.  Stay with me.

I’ve been listening to the unelected Black Nerd spokesman, McWhorter (and sometimes, Stanley Crouch), bitch about this “black nerds slammed for actin white” problem for what seems like a decade.  I didn’t even know that group needed representation.  I picture a whiny coven of old men plotting revenge over the ass whoopin’s and ego bruising they received as children.  Yeah.  Children are cruel (ever read Lord of the Flies?).  Get over it.  Stop turning your humiliation into a book, just because you have the nerd cred, i.e. degrees and media access, with which to do so.

Now that Barack Obama’s on the scene, McWhorter says black nerdiness is “in”–as if it were ever “out.”  If you grew up in a black neighborhood, “black” and “nerd” go together like no-name kicks, high water pants and coke bottle glasses. Like the cute girl with the pigtails who stayed behind after class to talk to the teacher.  Like the kid who the principal always singled out for good behavior.  Like every freshman class at Morehouse.  Like the kids who lived in fear of the 3pm bell.  And yes, like the kid who got jawned on for “actin’ white.”

Point is: this was a problem for a very specific group of black nerds.  So it is intriguing that McWhorter can push the angle that because black nerds were smart, they got jawned on for actin’ white and then get media play like it somehow indicates a problem for black America.  I mean, really?

I have another angle on McWhorter’s thesis. I came up in the prep school system and I distinctly remember thinking, about some of my peers, “I know we attend white schools but do you have to sound white, too?”

I never thought this about the few black kids who grew up on the UES or in the Village; I thought this about the kids who, like me, took trains, planes and automobiles home to working or middle class black neighborhoods but still managed to sound like the subculture who summered in East Hampton. I mean, really?

And sometimes, they pulled rank.  I remember one private school senior speaking down about her Bronx family members in front of a small assembly of tony Manhattanites and me. Her facial expression, tone of voice–both implied, with some show of shocked disgust, that her cousins treated her different because she valued education and they did not, she valued “proper English”, but they did not. I cringed in my seat.  “Ever think,” I wanted to say, “that you stand out among your family because y’all live in the South Bronx but you sound and act like a stereotypical Upper East Side JAP?”

I remember this incident though, because of the girl’s mother.  She’d sought me out after the panel, perhaps because I was the only other black person there and was a few years older than her daughter.  She was West Indian, like me, and spoke with a 24/7 Caribbean accent like my mum.  So I code-switched and inflected my speech with a little Caribbean dialect, too.  The woman’s eyes lit up and she said,  “Come meet my daughter!”

Her daughter was less than thrilled.  She didn’t need a mentor, which is what her mother was trying to force upon both of us in the parking lot of the school’s campus.  The meeting ended awkwardly.  I tried to get the mother to smile.  Her daughter’s first-class education–the thing for which she had undoubtedly sacrificed–formed the chasm that now separated them.  I understood that from my own life.  But how difficult it must have been for the mother to at once, feel pride to watch her daughter speaking on a panel but then, listen to her child denigrate their family in front of strangers.  Talk about an Imitation of Life moment.

McWhorter’s bully and my private school example represent two sides of the same coin.  They speak from the same bleak landscape of low self worth in that they both equate “being educated” with the race to which they do not belong*.  Now, why doesn’t McWhorter make that point?

* I write this, recognizing that race is socially, not biologically, real.

An elderly community sees its roles reverse as a young child hands them candy for a change

The holiday celebrates a miraculous victory, where a revolt led by religious Jewish rebels defeated a Syrian-Greek king and his allies, briefly reestablishing an independent Jewish state, before the Romans finally extinguished the ancient Judean state a century later. A tiny isle of victory in a stormy sea of persecutions. (more…)

I neglected to mention that I saw Madonna in concert this past fall, at Madison Square Garden.

A friend of mine had a couple of extra tickets and my partner and I decided that when tickets for Madonna fall in your lap, you take them. Neither of us were motivated enough to go through the hassle of buying them ourselves but couldn’t resist an opportunity to see Madge live.

The show was a spectacle – as her shows usually are. Big video screens dominated the stage – both as set pieces and as a means to see her in the cavernous MSG arena. At times, it was hard not to look to the monitors instead of the actual live show right in front of me. Even with great seats, I’m not a big fan of this type of venue – it’s just too big.

But, as a cultural experience, I had a great time. It’s kind of the urban, gay version of those mega-churches you find in Texas. Everyone at the concert was a member of the cult of Madonna and wanted to see and hear her message to the world. Some of them young enough not to know a world without her. Others old enough to be attending with their teenage kids.

For me, seeing Madonna is a lot like Christmas. It’s always a lot of fun but it’s probably a lot more fun when you’re younger.

On a recent trip down Wall Street, I came upon a fabulous group called [untitled] Walk Project. This is why I love New York – unexpected discoveries of different thinking.

For anyone heading down to New Orleans, I have three suggestions for some good eating.

Breakfast: There’s a great spot on St. Louis Street called Petunia’s Restaurant. Located in a 19th century Creole townhouse, you’ll find a warm & cozy spot for brunch. I had their absolutely delicious French Toast – which I highly recommend. The service was terrific. They were friendly, fast and attentive to empty coffee cups. Get there early if you want to avoid a line out the door.

Lunch: Take a drive, stroll or bike ride down Magazine Street for nice selection of shopping and dining. When you get to State Street, stop and try some of Reginelli’s tasty pizzas and salads. They have other locations throughout the city but I love the vibe of this area. I felt like I was in the East Village. And the staff is mellow and polite. 

Dinner: When you’re looking for a more upscale option, I recommend a trip back to the French Quarter for Bayona. Give yourself some time to browse the extensive wine options. Their menu changes daily and my only criticism is one that applies to all the restaurants of New Orleans – not enough vegetarian options. But if you do fish, there’s always some delicious blackened something or other. Dinner for two will set you back at least $100 – depending on your appetizer and wine choices. This is the place to splurge.

Bon Appetit!