Face of the night in Co-Op City

Click image to enlarge and visit the archive for more faces of the night.

Posted by Martin Fuchs at 10:31 PM | Comments (5)

Memorial Day Service in Co-Op City

I started my day off by calling my girlfriend to wish her a happy birthday! We've been talking for a while and finally used our webcam for the first time. These services suck! Calling using Skype works pretty well. As soon as you want to use another service like Yahoo Mesenger to use a webcam as well everything gets a mess. But still funny to see the other one on a small window on your screen even if it's most of the time like a tableau.

I attended the Memorial Day Service in Co-Op's City veterans memorial park later. Memorial Day is a patriotic holiday in the United States. A day to honor and remember Americans who gave their lives while serving the U.S. in a war.
Kind of strange for me to see how people celebrate the fallen soldiers, to hear different kinds of hymns and battle songs, to hear speeches where people talk about their heros, about the brave men and women who serve their country. Speeches where they talk about freedom and democracy, where they state that freedom is not free...
Rather strange and way too much patriotism in my European eyes. But as far as things are not only black and white, as always there is another side as well.

I met Mrs. Carmen Raquel Natal at the Memorial service, an elderly woman living in Co-Op City. She was visibly touched by the ceremony. I started to talk to her and she told me that her grandson who can be seen on the photo standing together with his father and herself is in Iraq at the moment. Efraim Luis Natal is 23 years old. He has been in Iraq for one and a half years already, intermitted by one vacation at home. He got a two months old daughter he didn't yet see because she was born while he was away.
I guess it's hard to form an opinion about something like these patriotic acts as long as there are people like Mrs. Natal who have a beloved one in a war or who lost a family member there. Who knows how I'd act if I came into such a situation myself.

Posted by Martin Fuchs at 11:51 PM | Comments (2)

Election day in Co-Op City

Today was the long awaited election day in Co-Op City. There are 5 people to be elected for the Co-Op City Board of Directors. Every Co-Op City resident is allowed to vote for his or her favourite candidate in a voting booth located in the lobby. There is one voting booth in all 35 buildings of Co-Op City. And they look really weired, seem to be from the 70ties... To make sure the elections are held correctly there must be an election worker from both parties, from the Democrats as well as from the Republicans, present at all time.

It's a day for which I've already been waiting since I arrived in New York. The special thing about these elections are the election campaigns held in the forefield. Never saw such dirty and shallow campaigns full of attacks. The campaign flyers which have always been shoved under the appartments door did not only attack the competitive political party but they attacked certain persons personally in a very uneloquent way. I kept all these flyers I got for future references... :-) I don't yet know who did it, but I've been told that this is not really important since things never change.

Posted by Martin Fuchs at 06:58 PM | Comments (1)

Arrival in New York City

I'm in New York City finally! I arrived on Wednesday at about 1:30 pm after a 10 hours flight from Vienna to London and to New York. The flight was alright although I didn't have a chance to get a seat near the emergency exit which would have been great because of the extra space for my feet. Anyway, after having my fingerprints and photo taken by an officer of the Homeland Security I got my travelling bag and headed out of the airport building to get a cab. About 20 minutes later I arrived in Co-Op City. So there is this European guy standing in the middle of Co-Op City at the northeast end of the Bronx with his camera bag and a big travelling bag.
After putting my stuff into the apartment of Victor - the guy I will be staying with for the next couple of months - I went down to the supermarket to get some sort of sore throat pastilles. But... They didn't help me (what else should I have expected).

So I came to New York after quite a few months of preparations and I am starting my stay with a rather bad cold. I am sniffing, I got a cough and I got sore throat. It seems to get worse from hour to hour. I guess the stress in the last weeks and the airconditioning on board the airplane, in the cab and on the subway have been to much for me. Well and since I forgot the plug adapter for my cameras batteries I went to Manhatten by train to get one. And of course it just started raining rather heavily when I came out of the station on 33rd Street.
To be honest, this situation peeved me quite heavily. I've been awake for about 50 hours, I am starting to get a cold just a few days before I start to work and now I am getting wet as well... Anyway - I got my cable and Victor who is working at the Brooklyn Academy of Music picked me up from Manhatten and drove me back to Co-Op City. We had pizza and a bottle of wine together this evening but I had to go to bed early. I just haven't been able to stay up longer.

I haven't been doing much yesterday. Wanted to make a day off, relaxing and sleeping a bit. So I've just been sitting and lying around, went to the "Bravo" supermarket where I already got my first customer card and went for a walk through Co-Op City...

Co-Op City is a rather interesting place to be from my point of view. It's completly different to what Manhattan stands for. Constructions for this apartment complex began in 1968 and up to now there are about 15.300 units in 35 buildings. As the name might already tell, it's kind of a city within the city. There are schools, shops, sports fields and a museum around here. Co-Op City does even have their own police force, the CCPD. As far as I can estimate that, the community in this part of the Bronx seems rather well build. Everyone is friendly, people seem to know each other more or less.

I am a guy from Austria who has been to New York City for two weeks last year. So a lot of the things I know about this city or rather belive to know come from TV. As everybody knows there are lot's of movies and series around which take place in the Bronx. Drug Dealers, murders and rapers do live there... At least in those movies. So I am full of prejudices because that's what I have learnt within the last 25 years. So living in the Bronx, seeing that there is a good ethnical mixture of people living here side by side is rather interesting. I feel very comfortable around here and I am looking forward on taking a deeper look into Co-Op City and the different sides of the Bronx.

Enough for now. I'll be heading towards Manhattan to meet the guys of Magnum Photos for the first time this afternoon. I am anxious to meet those people in person and to enter this significant bureau in which so many of the most influential photographs of the last 50 years are stored on 151 West 25th Street.

Posted by Martin Fuchs at 02:28 PM | Comments (12)