January 2011
10 posts
Listen to Gaby Dunn talk about behind the scenes... →
4 tags
#47. BOBBY PULEO - "A hardcore skateboarder."
It takes over an hour before Bobby Puleo mentions going to Japan.
Here’s the funny thing about Bobby: he talks very dreamily about skateboarding and then very factually about his own success.
Bobby’s pretty well-known. Googling his name brings up many videos of him doing tricks around New York City and articles about him being a mainstay in the skateboarding community.
Bobby is a...
3 tags
#26. TONY ORTEGA (THE VILLAGE VOICE) - "The editor...
When I was in ninth grade, I tried to create a school newspaper. But my attempts at publishing were routinely thwarted because the administration at my small, private Jewish high school in South Florida didn’t want to risk angering parents or donors with a student-run paper.
Every month, I’d assign articles to the few students that actually showed up to meetings. Then, I’d...
5 tags
#91. SHAKIRA CROCE - "An animal rights activist."
The worst thing Shakira Croce has ever seen was a video of a fox.
“He was being skinned for his fur and his skin is totally off,” she says, cringing both outwardly, and it sounds like, inwardly as well. “You think he’s dead but then he lifts his head up and blinks at you.”
I appreciate how hard it obviously is for her to describe this video to me. Even imagining...
8 tags
#51. DARYL HAYOTT - "A black belt in karate."
My boyfriend and I drive two hours on Sunday out to Northampton, MA to meet up with Daryl Hayott and his friend, Tomaca. He’s wearing a red, yellow, green and black Jamaican cap and has a barely visible tattoo of the Eye of Horus on his cheek. Daryl is black, as is the ink on his face, which he points out is not a birthmark as some people assume.
I found Daryl through another interviewee,...
9 tags
#38. ANDREW LUAN - "Someone who lost their job in...
The old saying “When life hands you lemons, make lemonade” might seem patronizing and simplistic. I’ve always preferred the messed-up version said by Paul Rudd’s character in Forgetting Sarah Marshall: “When life hands you lemons, you say ‘fuck those lemons’ and bail.”
Luckily, the same can’t be said for Andrew Luan.
Andrew worked as a CDO...
7 tags
#83. HAROLD TOUSSAINT - "A refugee from Hurricane...
Harold Toussaint is in his 60s, but he won’t tell me his exact age. He has Morgan Freeman freckles on his cheeks and tufts of gray and brown curls, mainly on the back and sides of his head. When he sits down across from me, he pulls out a small hairbrush and combs them. It’s such an old-fashioned and adorable gesture, I’m momentarily taken aback. He wears a muddy-colored Cosby...
6 tags
#29. DAVE BERMAN - "Someone who has saved a life."
Dave Berman is a gentleman.
An emergency medical technician in his second year of med school at Mount Sinai, he is one of the only interviewees to insist on paying for me and almost naturally dotes from the get go. “Here, let me get you a fork and some napkins,” he says and before I can say anything, he’s setting them next to my dessert. When I go to leave, he stays with me,...
8 tags
#64. MICHAEL & THEODORA VINEREANU - "Boy/girl...
Discussing incest with twins is not how I envisioned this evening going.
Michael, who contacted me, is an adorable skinny dark-haired gay boy in thick rimmed glasses and a white neck scarf. His twin sister, Theodora or “Theo,” is equally as thin in a bright blue cardigan and has long wavy brown hair. Inside Think Coffee yesterday, I remark that they don’t look alike but then...
The point of the 100 Interviews list is for me to... →
gabydunn:
And I’m being honest when I say I’d never met them, but on one, I fudged a bit.
True, I’d never met an amputee before. But I did know someone who was missing a limb.
And I’d stood idly by while others bullied her.
We all like to think that when push comes to literal shove — when someone is…
So there’s this.