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.