Since 2016 Famous Brooklyn born filmmaker Spike Lee has organized and hosted an annual celebration of the late musician Prince’s life and Legacy. I missed it the first 2 years but in 2018 I decided to grab my camera and head on over to Restoration Plaza in Bed Stuy to check it out.
Purple People Party 3 was held on a beautiful sunny June day and it was well worth the trip! Spike had DJ Spinna on hand to play Prince’s hits and Sway Calloway star of VH1’s Sway in the Morning Show to help Spike MC the party and hand out Nutcrackers to the crowd. The happy and delightfully diverse crowd of sang and danced to every one of Prince’s tracks and even got to be extras in a scene featuring the cast of Spike’s Netflix show “She’s gotta have it “ thanks to Spike and all the people in attendance at Restoration Plaza his legacy will remain alive going forward for all of us to enjoy.
New Yorkers spend so much time with their heads down rushing from place to place or staring at our cell phones that we miss a lot of the beauty of the world around us. Not the obvious things but the hidden beauty of the city.This gallery is my attempt to slow us all down enough for us take the time to look up from our cellphones, raise our heads up and admire some of that hidden beauty.
Have you ever gotten a Snowglobe as a gift? Well anyone who has ever had one knows that from the first time you hold it in your hands until the last time you pick it up, you can't resist the urge to shake it and watch the snow inside swirl around and drift down over whatever scene lies inside. It's like you are holding the world in your hands and making it snow over and over and each time you shake that globe you become perfectly still almost mesmerized as you stare inside it and you don't move until all the snow has fallen. Ever wonder why?
I'm a New Yorker born & bred, but I don't think I'm a typical New Yorker. The term New Yorker itself carries a stereotypical connotation because almost everyone all over the world seems to think they know and understand what people from New York look and sound like but having lived here my entire life I can tell them that they are most likely wrong. The reason I feel that way is because New York's population is made up of so many people with so many different ethnic and economic backgrounds it defies stereotype. Most big cities have their ethnic neighborhoods, like Chinatown or Little Italy for example. New York is no different in that sense but what sets New York apart from the other large cities I've visited is the borough of Manhattan. Where people that come from all over the world to work, vacation and live, intermingle with native New Yorkers to create one of the most diverse and interesting populations you will see anywhere in the world.
This gallery is dedicated to that diversity.
