Critical Reflection 5

I think that I speak for the both of us when I say that we have made many discoveries about our process and habits regarding senior projects. We have noticed that we follow the same general structure when we visit a business. It usually goes that we explore the business, if it is a museum, we walk around and make noticings on physical differences between now and pre pandemic crowds. Next we find someone who has worked at the establishment for over a year because we know they will have experienced those changes. This is where we begin a short interview to learn about how businesses and culture have changed in NYC. One thing that we should begin doing is calling ahead to set up interviews because we will have a higher chance of someone being there who is willing to talk to us. One good habit that we have stuck with is our interest and commitment to this project. I feel as though we have learned so much more in depth about the city we live in. Now circling back to our essential question, “how has the culture in NYC changed?”, I believe that we need to focus a bit more on the actual culture. This might be more tough, but we could speak to regular citizens of the city, possibly people we know, rather than just business owners and workers.

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Critical Reflection #4

An article we initially read that sparked our interest for wanting to learn more about the way the culture of NYC has changed was: https://nypost.com/2020/08/17/nyc-is-dead-forever-heres-why-james-altucher/ . In this article the writer, James Altucher writes that NYC "will not bounce back", and that this "net" that he always used to fall back on will no longer be there for him. We wanted to prove Altucher wrong, and we did. Although the city does have changed and restrictions put into place, it is definitely not dead. Another text we read was a large book on the history of New York. By reading a text that has in depth information about why the city is the way it is, we got an even deeper understanding of the places were were visiting and why. Through reading articles about the current, and reading books about the past, we made our project that much more important to us.

Grand Central

Before Covid Grand Central was always booming with people, LIRR workers, train conductors, business people, tourists and more. Stepping into Grand Central now is a very different vibe then before. There are no longer crowds of people. The dining hall is empty with many iconic stores that used to be there before closed, the infamous clock tower no longer has groups of people trying to take photos in front of it. The apple store is empty, the ticket holders seem bored, and the homelessness issue seems to have grow immensely. One of the biggest shocks for me was that the transit store was closed. When I was a kid I would go to the transit store every Christmas with my family. My eyes would light up at the toy trains dusted in fake snow, and my brother and I would push through the crowds to get the best looking spot. It was really hard to see the store closed, it honestly made me emotional. Another big change that I noticed ...

Harlem Explorations

When we visited Harlem, we walked around several blocks including 125th between Lenox and Adam Clayton Powell Junior Blvd, which were the most crowded streets by far. As we walked further West down 125th street, we passed by several shops set up on tables on the side of the block. They were selling things ranging from jewelry, clothing and phone accessories. We approached a few of these street vendors, and one nice man agreed to talk to us. He was selling sweatshirts on a large table on a busy corner. This man, who wanted to remain anonymous, told us about how his business as a street vendor had changed because of the pandemic, but he also explained how it wasn’t just the pandemic that had caused changes in business, but also gentrification. A new hotel had gone up fairly recently and the man described how, “in this area most of the garment stores are closing down because of this hotel that is driving up the property taxes.” The hotel changed the way that people interact with businesse...

NYC with Acadia and Lily

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