I See You

August 25, 2023

Originally from Zelienople, Pennsylvania, filmmaker Michael Casker has taken to preserving stories of everyday New Yorkers in his series of short documentaries, titled I See You. As someone who grew up in a small town, Casker has an ability to connect with people intimately, as if he and his given subject are the only two people in the room.

Thousands of New Yorkers spend their days in public spaces, very rarely interacting with other people. Casker's series subverts the individualism that pervades everyday interactions, while blending stunning visuals and genuine narration. He grants strangers the opportunity to share their stories, enabling them to connect with a wider audience.

His documentation reminds us of "the importance of empathy and understanding," which is central to his practice. The people in I See You will have you rethinking what you know about the faces you pass every day.

Text by Mariah Jolie
Film by Michael Casker

JOME

For the first installment, Jome, a poet from the Bronx, shares insight as to her career as a sex worker and how it’s allowed her to know herself in a way that nobody else will ever understand. Being vocal about her practice has relieved her of the shame that came with having a job stigmatized in the public eye.

NATHANIEL

Gracefully navigating through the stressors of being a pre-teen in New York City is 12 year-old Nathaniel, from the vibrant streets of East Broadway. He embraces his passion for dance and shares his affection for the art, ignited at the age of five. He says that he knows that people think it's weird that he's a boy that dances, but he doesn't care. For him its natural. It feels good to just "let things go" and dance.

Culture

Making an Impact: Joey Bada$$

January 16, 2025

The past few months have been big for Joey Bada$$. Between music, acting, fatherhood and recently being announced as the Artist-In-Residence for NYU’s Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music, the Brooklyn native has still continued his long tradition of supporting community, social impact, and philanthropy. Having been a mentor for Unlock Her Potential, a program founded by author and friend Sophia Chang that provides free mentorship for women of color, Joey knew he wanted to create ImpactMENtorship, a similar program for men of color who could benefit from the wisdom and experience of industry experts.

Launched at just 28 years old, Joey founded the program to create opportunities for all men of color across the country, providing guidance at every stage of life and career to help them ascend to the top levels of business. Setting the stage for mentees to come together and build meaningful connections across diverse industries, including music, fashion, culinary arts, sports, and activism, the program also addresses systemic challenges typically faced by men of color, such as high unemployment rates and underrepresentation in leadership roles. Amongst some of this year’s mentors are Denzel Curry, Ev Bravado, Cordae, Ghetto Gastro’s Jon Gray, Will Welch, and Kidsuper’s Colm Dillane.

To celebrate the program’s second year, we joined some of the mentors, mentees, and other special guests for dinner, after which we caught up with Joey to hear more about how he is leveraging his 12 years in the industry to uplift the next generation and beyond.

By Dylan Andrews
Photos by Spencer Stovell

Joey, how was your holiday?

Good, man. Happy New Year to you as well.

Happy New Year. And congratulations on everything you're doing with the program. I think it's so good to see people giving back.

Word up. Thank you, man. I appreciate that.

I feel like even from the start, in the early days, you guys were putting out positivity, spirituality, political awareness, but I also feel like we see so many people get to a point similar to where you are and kind of lose sight of where they came from. How do you keep your humility amongst everything you have going on?

Man, I got to give a lot of credit to the village around me, to the council, you know what I'm saying? They keep me grounded. They keep me in that state of mind where I'm able to be reminded of who I am every day, so I got to attribute a lot of that to them. But also, just my heart. These things aren't forced. These are just matters at the heart, things that I feel like are right and that should be done. I'm not doing this because I think everybody should do it. I'm doing it just because I think that I have the opportunity and that I should. That's it.

Do you feel a responsibility to give back?

I won't call it a responsibility, but I do feel an inclination. I don't think it's my responsibility to do for anyone. I don't think any one of us necessarily has a responsibility to people outside of our families. However, I do think that if you are in a position where you can help and you have the bandwidth, then you should absolutely do that. But yeah, I obviously would love to see more artists do it, but I don't think that we're necessarily obligated.

At the dinner, Cordae mentioned the importance of prioritizing community over competition. What does community mean to you, and do you also see importance in competition as well?

Yeah, I think both are important, and I think we could even have competition in the community, you know, healthy competition. I think competition is healthy because it challenges us, and as men especially, we're motivated by challenge. That fuels our growth a lot. But as far as community, I mean, community is just really a matter of having that tribe of like-minded individuals that you connect with. Because that's the other way that you grow, is by being in the presence of others who have similar intentions, similar motivations, desires, beliefs, dreams. You know what I'm saying? And it's very important to be in an ecosystem that could feed you internally.

These things aren't forced. These are just matters at the heart, things that I feel like are right and that should be done.

I feel like you're kind of separating yourself from being seen as just an entertainer. Is that something you intentionally want to do, pull away from just being someone that's on TV and making music?

I don't think I necessarily set my intention for that. I think I'm just more acting upon impulse of things that I think I should do or things that I think that are right. I don't think I really looked at it as like, Hey, I want to separate myself from just being an entertainer. I think it is more so, I have this ability, I have this platform, I'm in this unique position where I'm able to do X, Y, Z, and just having the willpower and the bandwidth to actually carry it out.

How has fatherhood changed your mindset when it comes to providing opportunities such as the mentorship program?

Fatherhood has matured me greatly. Fatherhood has done wonders for me, man. It's awesome. It also gives you a lot of structure to your life. Like, who knows where I'd be if it wasn't for fatherhood? I mean, I damn sure don't think I'd be in New York. I think I would've definitely left or whatever. But it has definitely given me a lot of structure and it has forced me to find a particular balance in my life that I wasn't privy to before it. Even when the pandemic hit, that was the first time in my adult life that I just sat in one space for six months and I was able to really just put things in perspective. Because when you on the move and when you on the go, you miss a lot of shit. You know what I'm saying? You miss a lot of details, and I think fatherhood has given me that anchor where I'm able to be grounded on a weekly basis. For a moment where I'm able to slow down and really put things into perspective, but also to be a leader and a role model. Because it's one thing in the eyes of the world, but it's another thing when it comes to your kids.

There's such a wide range of mentors in the program from so many different disciplines and crafts. Knowing that you did acting in school and then having succeeded in music, you're back acting, I wanted to ask what the approach is with mentees in terms of either encouraging them to take one route or explore different avenues?

Well... that's a good question, and that's one of the main reasons why we don't have a ceiling for age in our program. You could literally be 75 and apply for ImpactMENtorship, and the reason why that was important to me is because people change professions, right, or sometimes people work for a long time in one direction, but maybe they were always feeling like an internal pull, a magnetic pull to a different direction, or maybe in 10 years they just feel inspired to go another way. So we definitely wanted to provide the opportunity for those type of people. Because there’s a beauty in being a baby at something, and a lot of the time we need that confidence, just like with a baby, right? Mom and daddy are encouraging the baby to take those steps. It's like, he starts crawling and then he stands up and it's like there's all this excitement, but he might get discouraged without it. You know what I'm saying? And you need those people around you who's cheering you on, like, “Nah, you could do it. Keep going.” And that's pretty much what ImpactMENtorship is.

In what ways do you see the program growing and evolving and possibly even changing over time?

Man, my vision is in 10, 15, 20, 30 years from now, to be able to look back and to see leaders of tomorrow, pioneers of the future, to have been direct descendants out of this program. To see somebody on the New York Knicks like, ‘Oh, he was an Impact.’ Or to see somebody on the hottest TV show or to see somebody opening up the hottest restaurant. That's really the mission, just creating pathways for more people who look like us. It's like, once we make it over the fence, I think it's extremely important for us to find ways to pull more people up.

Culture

Dimes Square by Matthew Gasda

January 08, 2025

Dimes Square had its first run in 2022. An “underground hit,” according to The Times. Vulture dubbed its playwright, Matthew Gasda, "Dramatist of the Scene." The performance marked, to some, the return of indie theater, as young New Yorkers snapped up seats in a friend of the playwright’s Greenpoint loft.

The show I attended was staged in Tribeca—another high-ceilinged residence, big windows, paintings stacked in the corners. As he introduced it, Gasda said this move was to get closer to Dimes Square’s Manhattan origins. He cracked the window (“because there’s smoking in the play”), warned they hadn’t fully tested the lights nor the sound, and encouraged us to laugh at the jokes. The scrappiness gave off a kind of confidence.

Text by Morgan Becker
Photography by Nick Dove

The show has mostly shed its original cast, save for the literary critic Christian Lorentzen and writer-actor Bob Laine; they play a pair of aging novelists (Dave and Chris, respectively), welcomed with open arms by a group of downtown twentysomethings, mostly for their willingness to share a lot of coke. Dimes Square is anchored by its living-room set; the ensemble comes and goes—up to the roof, into an Uber, down to the bodega for a pack of cigarettes—but the couch and the coffee table stay put. Stefan (played by Dan Blick), a young, hot author with a Netflix deal, offers up the apartment as his circle’s home base. A constant stream of media types filter in to snort lines, talk shop, drink Fernet, monologue, flirt, gossip, and so on.

The other characters are Nate (Nick Walther), a recently-cancelled musician grappling with the dissolution of his relationship with Iris (Sadie Parker). Iris is perhaps an aspiring poet. Klay (Malcolm Callender) is a social-climbing, flirtatious magazine editor. Rosie (Anastasia Wolfe), a bisexual painter who feels above it all. Ashley (Colette Gsell) is Stefan’s undergrad girlfriend. Olivia (Cosima Gardey), his cousin and the daughter of a famous novelist. (Side note: On Dimes Square’s first run, Fernanda Amis took on this part—the daughter of Martin Amis.) Finally, there’s the filmmaking duo Bora (Asli Mumtas) and Terry (Sean Lynch), suffering from the legitimate success of their debut feature. Bora did the camera work; Terry wrote and directed.

Gasda joked that Dimes Square would transport us all the way back to 2021—a period piece, he called it, evoking recent history. The show’s debut coincided with the general moment people got sick of hearing about those few blocks between Allen Street and Seward Park. Too many thinkpieces! Clout-chasing in the name of art! Freeform made that scoffed-at TV show, The Come Up, following Gen Zers as they chased their dreams down Canal, protecting their dignity as best they could as they scanned for a seat outside Clandestino.

Whatever. Today, it’s just as cringe to hate Dimes Square as it is to really love it. Gasda’s play is cynical toward the scene in, I think, an original and generous way. He comes at it as an insider-outsider, but mostly as an insider: a writer who drinks Fernet and wears scarves inside, a contrarian amongst contrarians. Its comedy was solid—referential without going overboard, amusingly true-to-life—as was the flow of the dialogue, especially for rowdier scenes in which everyone spoke at once.

In 2022, the critical consensus was that Dimes Square dealt in the universal—and that rang true for this run, too. Though the characters (intentionally) verge on caricature, and though their era is niche and almost too recent to look back on even-handedly, it all comes together to paint a poignant, candid, relatable picture of “making it” as a young person in a city like New York, where optics get rewarded before passion. The bigger question than whether it held up, was why resuscitate it now?

“I wasn’t sure that I would ever do Dimes again,” answered Gasda. “But I was meeting so many people who said they moved to New York after the original run closed who wanted to see it. At first I dismissed it, but then I realized those requests were genuine, that the play was a phenomenon, that it’s part of the lore—and that people should get what they want, in a way. He went on:

I’m not directing a play that feels like it’s part of the scene anymore, but one that’s outside of it. One that we can approach artistically and professionally. I think Dimes Square should be assessed as a work of theater and not as a work of scene mythography.

Something Dimes Square has undoubtedly achieved: new dialogue about new theater. Gasda makes being an “audience-member” uniquely accessible, ushering the uninitiated toward his other plays (like the upcoming Vanya on Huron Street, which Laine and Mumtas star in) and toward the other artists he supports via BCTR, his dedicated performance space in Greenpoint. Beyond that, he casts from his own community. He makes art about right now, against an era of nostalgia. And at the end of every show, he leads the charge to a nearby bar, staff and cast and ticket-holders welcome. It’s an interesting contrast to the vapidity or the exclusiveness of the stereotypical scene—a pessimistic play, within an optimistic project.

Culture

Mowalola x Miss Sixty Launch with H. Lorenzo

I swing my legs over the ropes that guard the VIP entrance. Always over (I’m 5’10), never under. I’m late to the H. Lorenzo x Mowalola event, and the line wraps around the block. I don’t want to be an asshole, but I hate waiting in lines; it just ruins everything.

“Hey, my friend is DJing right now. My name should be down,” I say.

The youngish security guard looks me up and down. I have made an adventurous choice for this type of crowd. Neon pink hoodie, bright orange vest, my Raimundo jeans, and Jeremy Scott animal print sneakers. I let him take me in and look over his shoulder. Hmmm… I will be swathed in darkness when he lets me in. Dark night, dark clothes, dark makeup, furs, hoods, leather accessories, and sunglasses. I don’t recognize anyone, but it’s hard to tell who anyone is because I can’t see after 8 pm without my glasses. Night blindness. I can still catch a vibe though.

“She’s in the bathroom,” Mr. Guard says, interrupting my squinting.

“Who?” I ask.

“The woman in charge of the list.”

That’s a drag. I want to dance. Lately, I’m going out in the name of music.

“So…can I go in?” I ask.

“Just wait for her to get back.”

That sounds fine. I wait. The outdoor smoking area is packed. I hope the inside mirrors this, maybe with people dancing instead of blowing smoke in each other’s eyes.

“You got instagram?” The guard asks me after about ten minutes of flirting.

“Can I go in?” I said.

He laughs. He lets me in the event without a wristband.

Inside, I understand why the other guard was gone for so long. I make a mental note to not drink too much liquid; the bathroom line is almost as long as the line to get in. The party is popping, far from a flop.

I push through the crowd solo, following the speakers to the DJ booth. The immersive visuals provide me with enough light to make out Mowalola in a gold bikini and her low rise denim. My pulse races like the horse printed on the front of her coochie. That’s the point of the collection, obviously.

I spend a good thirty minutes grinding my hips before swaying to the open bar. I smile to myself, noting that it’s a mezcal forward menu. I see a drink that disgusts me, so I order it without hesitation. It’s a mezcal coffee concoction. My heart ’s ran through already, why not go all in? I hear Shigecki’s set start so I head back to dance. I’m jumping around, sweating, and I yelp when I pause for a beat. Strippers have materialized and are working poles opposite and behind the DJ booth. Good. Events should be sexy.

I end the night smoking my friend’s Korean strawberry cigarettes taking in the air of cool- when a man comes up to me wild-eyed exclaiming that we look just like one another. I look at him- no, not at all. I turn slowly, remembering what I should be doing: listening to DJ G2G’s set. Back inside, she is playing reggaeton type beats with lasers beaming out of her headphones (I want these). A rave in it of herself.

Too bad all the events end at 2 am in LA.