Descriptive Essay

July 24, 2010

A Monday Stroll

I have spent many hours in my neighborhood of Little Italy, but until last Monday, I had not yet interviewed anyone in the area at all. I was nervous about it, as most people were, because it can be intimidating to just go up to people and solicit them for an interview. Fortunately, it all turned out to be much easier than I had expected when I went over there. Since we had a group activity in the morning, many of us stayed together with the intention of helping one another out with their interviews in each of the different neighborhoods. This proved to be more complicated than necessary and we eventually broke off on our own.

I was feeling a little under the weather that day, and had all morning. When I arrived at the opening of Mulberry Street, however, I forgot all about that and just took in the sights. As always, there were ornate decorations hanging from the buildings along with red, white, and green imagery everywhere, and tourists flooding the road. I think if I could change one thing about Little Italy, it would be to get rid of all the tourists, but then again, I guess I kind of am one too. I suppose that my goal is to change that somewhat through my engaging of the locals. Once you know someone’s story, you have become, in a sense, a participant in their life and a part of that neighborhood.

Possibly the most difficult part of scoring a terrific interview lies in figuring out who to ask in the first place. I looked around and walked down the street thinking about it. I passed gelato shops, pizza restaurants, and the museum at the corner. I finally decided to procrastinate a little bit more and buy food from one of those stands that you can see set up all over the city. In Little Italy, of course, they sell Italian Food, and it is actually pretty good. Business had been slow that day I guess, because the vendor started talking to me, asking where I was from and whatnot. And so began my first interview, without my even expecting it.

Ordinary is Extraordinary

My name is Bill Gentilotti. I may have an Italian name, but I was actually born over in Brooklyn, out by Rockaway. That was where I grew up as a child of the 70s. Back then, this city was a different place. Technically, it was worse by most measures: parts that are perfectly fine now were magnets of crime and drug use. But I have good memories from those times, as most of us do from when we were children. Although I did not immigrate here, my grandparents on my mother’s side were in fact from South-Central Italy, and my ancestors on my father’s side going back were from Ireland. So, I am Irish-Italian-American, which is a pretty common mix around here.

Today, I live near the Bowery with my wife and two children, who are eleven and nine years old. I actually only work over here on Mulberry street two days a week, with the rest spent helping to manage our family convenience store a few blocks away. I have lived over here in Manhattan since attending community college about twenty years ago, and have no plans to leave anytime soon. New York City has always been my home, although the island is much different from far out in Brooklyn. There was actually a time when Brooklyn was its own official city, if you can believe it. They even had their own baseball team when my parents were growing up there. It’s amazing how things can change so much over time.

I love Little Italy because it is so distinct from any other part of the city. We don’t really get Italian immigrants these days, so this is basically all we have left of Italian life in the city. Many of our older residents are immigrants, and we still have a few thousand true Italians here. Even among those who are not, some still have learned to speak the language and are greatly immersed in the culture. Of course, the neighborhood has shrunk so much that the vast majority of residents are neither Italian nor descended from Italians. But, we all love it here, especially for the food.

I consider myself to be a pretty ordinary guy. I work every day to support my family and while we are not poor, we don’t have a ton of money. But even though most people in Little Italy and in New York live ordinary lives, we are all different and unique in some way, and that is what makes this such an incredible place to live. I don’t think that I could ever not live in a city, because being in a diverse, urban environment is such a big part of my background and who I am. I lived in Philly for a year as a kid and in Chicago for a few months back when I was 22. Both cities reminded me a lot of here, but especially Chicago. So while New York is my favorite city for obvious reasons, I know that there are other great ones out there too.

I would say that most people you see milling about here do not actually live in Little Italy, or even near it. Most are tourists, or are walking through to get someplace else. But if you come in the middle of the day and walk through, you are sure to find some true old Italians sitting out and enjoying the sunshine. Even though Chinatown has been eating away at this neighborhood for years, we don’t resent them or anything like it. Most of us have a lot of Chinese friends, and we work with them to make the area safe and attractive to visitors.

Many older Italians have sold their property to Chinese and moved out. I just say, this is how it is. Things change, and you can’t always stop change. Nor should you. Most change is good, and just a part of what makes the world turn. If the change is bad, you can do things to make it good. I don’t know what will be left of Little Italy in twenty years, but I know plenty of people who have no plans to go anywhere. I think that we will be around for years to come.

Showman Fabrications

As I noted in my earlier posting this week, on monday we visited Showman Fabrications, a company in Queens that builds and designs various sets that are used in television shows and on broadway alike. For instance, they create booths for entertainers on game shows or floor designs for the Food Network. One of their most famous contracts is with Victoria’s Secret, where they have designed and built the catwalk in one of their annual shows for a number of years.

The man who gave us our tour opened the company about 25 years ago, shortly after graduating from college. In that time, they have grown exponentially and work on as many as fifty projects at a time with major companies all over the country, including Disney and CBS. As is the case with many businesses, the economic downturn has caused problems. The number of contracts is way down from this same time last year, but they are confident it will improve. One thing that amazed me about this visit was seeing just how adaptable the are to so many different things. There is a great diversity in the projects that come to them, and while they have declined offers before for various reasons, they are almost always accepted successfully. For example, in the presidential election six years ago Showman Fabrications helped to create the electoral map in the center of the Rockafellar Center skating rink for election night returns. Many projects are for rare special events and not ongoing.

When I was younger, I used to help build set designs for plays in the local community center. While those projects pale in comparison to anything like what Showman Fabrications does, it reminded me of that and how much fun I used to have doing it. The satisfaction of seeing all that hard work and time come together into a successful product is great, and this company has had a large number of these.

Interviews – Round One

On monday, we visited a place in Queens called Showman Fabrications, which builds set designs for various companies. I will write more about that later in the week. In the afternoon, we had a chance to visit our neighborhoods and conduct interviews of locals, which is a major part of our Ethnography project. Like pretty much everyone else in the program, I had put all this off until now, because it is an extremely difficult thing to do…that is, to go up to random people and ask for interviews.

We got this time on monday because it is useful to have a weekday when people are out at their jobs, and it is more likely that we will find good sources. Since many of us have neighborhoods that are close to each other, several of us went out together and simply helped each other with the interviews. Good moral support. I was actually feeling very sick all morning, and it got worse throughout the day, so I only got one interview before going back to my room and sleeping for what seemed like an eternity.

Anyway, it turned out to not be as difficult as I had expected. After seeing other people conduct their interviews and give advice and feedback as to how to go about it, I went over to my area, Little Italy, by myself and walked about for a while thinking about who to ask. Fortunately for me, the answer sort of fell into my lap: I was ordering food from one of those street vendors, and the guy started talking to me about life. Perfect. I told him that I was actually here as part of a program, and asked if he had five minutes to just tell me a little bit about his life here. I didn’t ask to record him or anything because I thought that it might sound weird…maybe next time.

However, it went very well and I was surprised at how comfortable I felt. The man, Mr. Gentilotti, was actually not from Italy despite his name and location in the neighborhood. However, he has lived in the area for twenty years, so I consider that to be just as good. I will talk more about him in future parts of my project, along with the other interviewees that I have yet to speak with. I get a day off from work on most fridays, so I plan on going back then. Overall, I was very pleased with how the day turned out, minus my being ill. I feel a lot better about conducting interviews, and am much better prepared for the rest of them.

Wicked

For our first show on our program, we all went and saw Wicked on tuesday night. My experience as far as plays/musicals go is somewhat limited. I think I have seen three others in my lifetime: Fame and The Producers in London, and Avenue Q when it was on broadway a few summers ago. All of them were great, but I think I liked Avenue Q the best. Maybe that just has something to do with my sense of humor.

We all remember seeing Wizard of Oz when we were kids. In fact, all of our grandparents probably do as well. It came out in 1939 and immediately transformed the film industry. Most movies didn’t start coming out in color until thirty years later, so Wizard of Oz was a pretty big deal. I should note that Wicked is not the Wizard of Oz in play form; rather, it is the story of what made the Wicked Witch of the West so wicked to begin with. The concept is intriguing and I had always wanted to see it. It is sort of like a prequel to the film.

I won’t go into details of what Wicked is about here, because that can easily be looked up and I don’t want to spoil it. However, it was my first show in a few years and I thought it was a great experience. I was captivated from beginning to end, and found myself really connecting with the characters. We all know what it is like to feel different or to be picked on, and this witch, for lack of a better term, really got the worst of it throughout her life. We can easily see what impact that had on her as a person, and this probably rings true in many real world situations as well.

The best part of the show though probably came afterwards, when we got a backstage tour from a former Elon alum who graduated about seven years ago, I believe. She gets to play the witch in some of the shows, and she showed us all the behind the scenes stuff: the set design, how everything is organized, and what the life of a broadway performer entails. It was a great night.

Broadway

When I was a kid, I used to design props and work the lights for shows at our local community center. Obviously, these plays were put on by kids, so they were not that intricate. Beyond all of that, I really have no experience in theater or anything of the sort, and know very little. However, I do know a great deal more than I did a week ago.

Our first big stop of the day was at the Metropolitan Opera. This is an incredible looking building, especially from the inside, that was built in 1966 and is located at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Below is a nighttime exterior image:

We were given a tour of the facility, where we got to see some of the ways in which props and such are constructed and prepared for shows. We saw a costume gallery as well. Following our time here, we travelled to Lower Manhattan where we visited an authentic costume design studio. The owner, William Ivey Long, has won awards for his work and is actually from North Carolina originally, as were several of the other designers there. Mr. Long is so famous apparently that he actually has his own extensive wikipedia page! Pretty cool if you ask me. Having such a thing automatically makes a person legit in my eyes.

Mr. Long has worked on many famous shows, including Hairspray and The Producers, which I actually saw in London a few years back. After meeting him, several of the people who worked there showed us how costumes are designed and planned out, and what kind of work goes into making them. Safe to say, it is much more extensive than I had ever imagined. Being flexible is very important, because plans can change in a second.

I have friends back home and at Elon who are heavily involved with this type of thing and I never really understood or cared much about any of it to be honest, but our visits really taught me a lot more about the industry. I’m glad that I can now go back home and back to school and have conversations about these things, and when I go to shows, which I do periodically, I will have a much greater understanding of how everything came together. Musicals and similar performances take an unbelievable amount of dedication, vision, creativity, and hard work, and I never really appreciated all of that until now.

Little Italy – 7/11

For this assignment, I went down to Little Italy in the early afternoon, took some pictures, did some shopping, and then came back to take more just before sunset. Since I edited the pictures anyway, none of this may matter, but I think I got a few good shots.

Here, you can see Mulberry Street in all its glory. It was less crowded than I expected. This is the main road in Little Italy and one of few remaining.

One of the many restaurants in the neighborhood. I didn’t eat at any that day, but I have many times before. Always delicious.

This one isn’t anything significant, but I thought it looked cool and brought out the atmosphere of Little Italy. I’m not sure why the corners are rounded…must have messed up something in photo editor. Its nice anyway.

I just liked this one because you could see the Empire State Building off in the distance, which I didn’t know you could see from Mulberry Street. I think it adds a nice atmosphere.

The people at this place were all speaking some foreign language…not Italian. I wonder what it could be.

Everything in Little Italy seems to be painted red white and green…even the fire hydrants.

Gelato = self-explanatory.

The end of my day…still beautiful out. This was my first time actually spending a whole afternoon in my neighborhood and it was a lot of fun.

New York’s New Plate

Anybody who follows the news knows that New York State is facing some major economic problems. Likewise, all who drive should be familiar with New York’s current license plate, which has been in use for about ten years. Now, in an effort to help the state dig out of the mess that it is in, Governor Paterson has introduced a brand new license plate design that all drivers must purchase, regardless of whether or not they actually need a new one. I heard that they will cost $25 each, but that may have changed. Either way, here are the old and new designs:

OLD:

NEW:

Personally, I think that the older one is much better. In fact, I was rather fond of the plate that existed before that one, when I was a kid:

Why is this all important, you might ask? Well, as we have been learning, logos and branding are very important for a company’s success. Similarly, when a state designs a license plate, it is plastering them on millions of cars, which turn into traveling advertisements for the state in question. Bright neon orange and navy may look nice on a NYC taxicab, but it really won’t work on many cars. Also, while the old plate displayed the NYC skyline and Niagara Falls, the new one has nothing.

I do not live in New York, so I won’t have to purchase this sheet of orange metal. Unfortunately, each one will stick out as an eyesore on America’s roads. But hey, maybe some people like the new design. As for Governor Paterson, he is on his way out anyway, so don’t expect him to invent too many more creative ways to raise income for the Empire State.

Madison Avenue Project

Little Italy/Mulberry Street
Marketing Analysis
Steven Morris
July 4, 2010

SWOT Analysis
– Strengths:
– World-class restaurants, ideal location in lower Manhattan, safe,
friendly atmosphere, provides excellent cultural experiences.
– Weaknesses:
– Very touristy; may turn off some people, real Italian
population is shrinking in size, traffic quality can be very
poor, tends to be crowded.
– Opportunities:
– Ability to get a great meal, proximity to Chinatown and other
exciting neighborhoods, museums can be great destinations for school groups and other visitors.
– Threats:
– Large crowds, borders are largely undefined and being eaten up by surrounding neighborhoods, can be a place for random theft although not particularly dangerous in general.

Target Audience
– Pretty much everyone, especially those who live in New York, already knows what Little Italy is. It has existed for over a century and has become a major tourist destination more recently. Therefore, there are several groups of people that I think would be ideal to target: tourists who are already in the city, for starters, may be reminded to visit Little Italy if they see advertisements around town. Little explaining will be necessary. Schools would be good to focus on as well, because of the cultural and educational experience that students could get from visiting the neighborhood on field trips. Also, it may be useful to push the whole food aspect, because people visiting New York love to have a great dining experience, and there are plenty of places to do that in Little Italy.

Competition
– This one seems difficult at first, because Little Italy is known for its uniqueness. There is really no other place comparable to it. However, if we look at our demographic targets from the last paragraph, it is obvious that competition can arise. New York is a huge city, and everything that exists in Little Italy can be found elsewhere to some extent. Museums, restaurants, and even Italian food are not limited to Mulberry Street. This is why it is important to market Little Italy in a way that makes it seems like the best option for an individual who wants to try some authentic Mediterranean dishes, or for a teacher who wants to educate her students on the history of immigration in America. Competition here isn’t about having exclusive attractions and products; rather, it is about being unique and standing out to attract visitors.

Unique Selling Point
– Every part of New York City is unique in some way. In the case of Little Italy, it is, as most of us know, the center of Italian Immigration in America. Millions of Americans today can trace their roots back to ancestors who came through Ellis Island and lived in lower Manhattan. While there are obviously other places that Italian Americans lived, particularly in the Northeast, no specific neighborhood can even come close to Little Italy. Therefore, its selling point is its authenticity, because the neighborhood was created by true Italian immigrants, many of whom still live there today. Having a lasagna at an Italian restaurant in midtown is not quite the same as having one on Mulberry street. Little Italy is genuinely, authentically Italian and its historical significance in the area of immigration cannot be matched by any other neighborhood either in Manhattan or out.

Brand Values
– When visiting Little Italy, I want people to get the sense that they are experiencing another culture. I first visited with my mother when I was young, and I certainly felt immersed in another world. Of course, all of New York City was foreign to me back then, but this neighborhood in particular was special. So, Little Italy should brand itself in a way that promotes self-discovery and exploration at the same time. “A Step Back in Time” or “Discover Yourself” could be appropriate slogans for an ad campaign. This becomes much more difficult with each year that passes, because the area is shrinking and there is less to see. Fortunately, Mulberry street is and will likely remain very Italian for the foreseeable future.

Brand as a Person
– If this hypothetical brand were a person, they would be elegant, mysterious, and inquisitive. Maybe it sounds like I am exaggerating how great Little Italy is, but that is what all advertising does to a degree. A humanized Mulberry Street would be fun, exciting, and full of wonder. If you saw them walking down the street or heard them speaking in class, you would want to be friends with them. After all, who wouldn’t want to visit Little Italy if it was portrayed in this type of light?

Brand Flag
In the case of Little Italy, this is an easy question. Since the Italian flag, and, subsequently, the official colors of the Nation of Italy are red and green, those would be the colors used the most in any type of promotional advertisement. Of course, other colors can always be thrown in depending on what ad we are talking about, but the main colors would be those two. Sometimes a particular brand will make variations to promote a special event or just attract more attention in general, such as changing a logo’s color or varying the design slightly. Walmart and Pepsi, for instance, recently redid their logos so that they are still similar and recognizable, but redone. A Little Italy brand may be the same way, but the major colors would always need to be red and green.

Slogan
This ties in a little bit to the values portion of the project, mentioned a few paragraphs back. I would want the slogan to be something that inspires a person to become interested in learning and exploring, and maybe coming away with a new sense of self. I know that for me, I always feel this way after I go to a place like Little Italy or Ellis Island and really pay attention to the displays, photographs, etc. that remind me what life was like for my ancestors all those years ago. “Discover Yourself” sounds cliché and has probably been used many times before, but it doesn’t really need to be any more complicated than that. Some variation that means essentially the same thing would probably work well too.

Logo
I decided to see how much of my photoshop skills I remembered, and actually did make a logo, which you can see at the beginning of this assignment. I didn’t spend much time on it and was just fooling around, but I did want it to look a certain way. I emphasized the “Italy” portion by making it bigger, and tried to find a font that was pleasant to look at. Olive Garden, which is probably the biggest Italian food chain in America, has a strange kind of cursive font that somehow works very well with their image. It is cool and classy, and makes me want to step inside. Here, the font is intended to scream “ITALY” and how it is such an amazing place, and the other text is more serious and straightforward. I am sure that if I were to make a real logo for them, this one would undergo a lot more tweaking before I could call it finished. Still, it’s a good start, and if I knew how to use photoshop better, it would be great all around.

Advertising Placement
I would place advertisements for Little Italy in subways and taxis, but especially subways. Why? Well, there is no one specific income level or class that is being targeted and encouraged to come to Little Italy. Anybody really can find something to do there. Likewise, pretty much all kinds of people use the subway and other forms of transportation. This will give Little Italy maximum exposure and everyone can see the ads. In terms of encouraging outsiders to come to New York and visit, I am not really sure how this would work. As I said before, everyone really already knows about Little Italy. The true challenge is finding ways to remind people that it is there, that it has a great deal to offer, and that they themselves should pay a visit.

Added Value
Ultimately, like with anything else, advertising will only have a limited effect. I honestly have never seen any kind of ad for a specific neighborhood in New York or anyplace else. I have, however, seen a lot of commercials for New York City itself, which may indicate that the city feels as though when people visit, they are coming to see New York as a whole, and not just one particular area. This is probably how it is, because I know that my family, for instance, has never come here just to do one thing. For most people to travel to New York, they want to see all the best that the city has to offer, which is why it is important to make Little Italy stand out and appear in ads around the city so that visitors are encouraged to go.

“Madison Avenue” Week Two

This monday, we visited three different places: Hill Holliday, an advertising agency; MTV, and the New York Times. Each one was incredible and I got much more than I anticipated out of the day.

One of my potential career paths is advertising, but I have never really learned much about it or what it entails. Our hosts at Hill Holliday showed us how the process worked, and told us in detail about their partnership with Verizon, who, by the way, has apparently just redone its entire image. Hill Holliday is responsible for much of the advertising that Verizon uses, but perhaps the most fascinating part for me was to learn that this is not limited to what we generally consider to be advertising. Yes, there are the TV and magazine ads, but they also design entire stores and portable venues for Verizon that they have at stadiums and other similar places. Generally speaking, no products are sold at these things, but visitors can test-use Verizon products and play games, thereby engaging them in the brand. This all amounts to the ultimate advertisement, in my opinion.

Everybody knows about MTV, and has since it became big in the 80’s. Some love it, some hate it. Regardless of how anyone feels, though, it certainly has a way of defining American pop culture at any given time. Technically we visited the Viacom headquarters, but MTV is what everybody knows and understands. We were specifically given a tour in what looked like the Nickelodeon room, which I loved, because I used to watch that channel constantly when I was a kid, and would receive their magazine every month. Our guides, for lack of a better term, gave us Jamba Juice and raffled off iPods. Incredible. We also had a gorgeous view of the city, so by all means, it was a very comfortable visit. We were shown a video about the company and its brands, and I was shocked to learn how many different common names fall under the Viacom umbrella. They also told us about the internship program and how it works.

There is something about the news media that really has an impact on the way we view the world. Seeing as how we usually have no other way to get information on what is going on around the world, this would seem to make sense. I usually don’t like the New York Times, or any mainstream newspaper, for that matter, because they mostly all have a liberal bias, and by the time I will have purchased a paper, I already know about all the top stories anyway. However, the NYT is, I believe, the most circulated paper in the nation and has been around for major historical events. The issue shown above will always give me chills when I see it, because I remember that day and everything that happened. Perhaps what is most special about the NYT, however, is not that they are a major newspaper or that they now have a beautiful new headquarters in midtown. Our tour guides went to great lengths to show us how they are NOT just a newspaper anymore. Rather, they are an entire informational and multimedia organization. They know that print media is dying out, and are taking the steps now to avoid bankruptcy, which many other papers are facing. The link below will take you to their “Innovation Portfolio,” which is wicked cool, to say the least.

http://innovate.whsites.net/

And their new building is equally as remarkable:

Overall, it was a great day. I would say that I learned the most from the first and third visits. Each one of them taught me something completely new. At MTV, I was impressed, but more because of the “wow” factor that goes along with being at MTV. Maybe it would have been my favorite stop if I actually won the iPod raffle…oh well. But it was still a fantastic experience.